For one thing, he was always trying to push me around. "Go get us some donuts." "Go pick up my dry cleaning." "Go drive my Corvette around so my girlfriend thinks I'm in town and not in Houston, chasing stewardess tail." Stuff like that gets old, you know? Although I did enjoy driving that Corvette.
Jeff and Michael thought he was just the best, though. "Ralph is so clever!" "Ralph is so smart!" "Ralph smells like a rain forest!" It was always, "Ralph this" and "Ralph that". It got to be tiresome after a while. Another thing was Ralph always liked to make me look stupid to amuse Jeff and Michael. If I ever said or did anything wrong or made any kind of mistake, he would jump all over me and wouldn't let up. Jeff and Michael thought that was hilarious. Yeah. Ha ha ha.
So anyway, Ralph and I were in this warehouse full of books, checking out a tip and closing in on Lester Von Hornrimm (whom I had suspected from the very start but nobody took interest until Ralph said "hey, we should check out Lester Von Hornrimm" and then suddenly everybody was all on board). Jeff and Michael were outside playing with the new tape deck Ralph had just installed in his Corvette (whoopy do!) and keeping us covered. Ralph was bossing me around (as usual) "Turn left." "Turn right." "Shine the flashlight over here." "Not in my eyes, you idiot!" I got frustrated and you know how sometimes you want to say one thing and then you think of something else to say instead and your brain gets all mixed up so you say both things at the same time? That's what happened to me.
"Go what myself?", he laughed. "I've never heard that word before! In fact, I don't think that word exists!" He was laughing harder and harder. "That's quite a vocabulary you have! Look that up in the dictionary for me so I know what it means." I snapped back, "that's quite a vocabulary you have. Why don't you look it up in a dictionary so I know what it means?" He said, "Sure thing. I'll do that. Here's a whole pallet full of dictionaries right here. Wait 'til Jeff and Michael hear this one!"
Then he must have leaned up against it wrong or did something else that was stupid that somehow caused the pallet to tip over and fall on him, crushing him to death. Jeff and Michael heard the noise and came running in. "What happened?!?", they screamed in unison. I said, "I have no idea! Undoubtedly, an accident of some sort, probably caused by Ralph not understanding gravity as much as he thought he did. At any rate, we have a case to solve. No time to mourn or investigate. Let's go get Von Hornrimm. That's what Ralph would have wanted, right? Oh well. Time to move on." The guys were in shock as I led them quickly out of the warehouse which somehow accidentally caught on fire just as we exited.
I figured that was as good a time as any to tell them that Ralph's last words were "I want Clark to have the Corvette."
Ralph was a great guy.
Hmmm. We'll see.
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