by Nick Poff
“Not if we cover our asses before we do anything. Listen, Mom; can you un-resign? Get back in there and sneak a copy of the by-laws away from Irene. I’ll see if Muriel can get a complete copy of the contest rules from Rupert Fry.” He giggled wickedly. “I’ll bet she could even talk Rupert into sweeting the pot and really get Harriet drooling. Then, when we know she doesn’t have any options to use against us, you can nominate Josh for membership, and get all the women you’re still close with to support him. Harriet will turn greener than her lawn!”
Norma gasped. “Edward Stephens, I was right. You were sent from the devil.” She began to laugh. “Bless his evil heart!”
###
“So do you think you can get a copy of the contest rules from Rupert and also get him to add something tempting to the jackpot? Ed asked Muriel.
“No sweat,” she said languidly, leafing through a magazine. “He owes me.”
“For what?”
“I’ll think of something.”
They were in the Cooley Street house living room, going through more of the eternal boxes. Ed wearily opened another one to find it jammed with Reader’s Digest Condensed books. “Ugh,” he sneered.
Muriel glanced over. “Really. Even bookstores won’t take those. They’re worthless.”
Ed shoved the carton into the pile going to the dumpster, which was now half full. He was already planning to call the rental company and order another one. So far the only things in the tiny “keep” pile were two boxes of clothes in surprisingly good condition he intended to drop off at Goodwill, and a set of wood carving implements he was saving for Clyde.
Muriel, who was supposed to be helping but was actually making her way through a stack of old Life magazines from the sixties, gestured to him. “Look at that,” she demanded, showing him an advertisement for makeup. “Oh, how I miss that white lipstick!”
“Why? It was ugly.”
“I know. That’s why I miss it. Women looked so marvelously clownish when they wore it.”
Ed rolled his eyes and opened another box. More Reader’s Digest Condensed. He heaved a sigh and shoved it across the room.
He looked at Muriel, seemingly unconcerned with his frustration. “I thought you came along today to help.”
“And I thought,” she said, dropping one magazine and picking up another, “that by gracing this dismal room with my astonishing beauty I was helping.”
“You thought wrong.”
“Why, Ed Stephens. I thought even though homosexual men lusted for other men they knew how to appreciate beautiful women.”
“We do. When we actually see a beautiful woman.”
“Ooh, meow,” she giggled happily.
“Seriously. Are you going to help or not?”
Muriel looked at her watch. “Can’t. I have an editorial meeting in a half hour. If you want me to butter up Rupert I certainly can’t miss that meeting.”
Ed growled. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I picked you up?”
“Now, temper, temper,” she said. “I’m doing you a favor by speaking to Rupert, so the least you can do is drive me to the Courier office.”
Ed stood up and fumbled in his pocket for his keys. “Well, then let’s go. I could use a break anyway.”
They piled into Ed’s truck, and Muriel immediately reached for the radio as she always did, pushing buttons until she found a song she approved of. She finally paused when she heard Brenda Lee singing “I’m Sorry”. “I haven’t heard this in ages! I love this song.”
“Me too.”
“I wonder if Brenda Lee ever wore white lipstick.”
“If she did I wouldn’t want to be the one who reminds her of it.”
Ed rolled the truck to a stop to wait for the traffic to clear before crossing Stratton Avenue. He listened to the song, musing that he had not heard Brenda Lee on the radio since Christmas, when all the stations had played the hell out of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”.
“Good ole Brenda Lee,” Muriel sighed along with the violins in the song. “Didn’t they call her ‘Little Miss Dynamite’ or some such?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Ed said, seeing a break in the traffic. “I think she sang…”
He had let his foot off the brake but abruptly slammed it back down. The truck lurched to a halt. Muriel’s satchel slid off her lap and spilled on the floor as Ed gasped.
“What? What?” Muriel yelped. “Did you hit something?”
Ed backed up and rolled the truck over to the curb. “Brenda Lee!” He shouted. “Brenda Mae Tarpley!”
“Huh?”
“Brenda Lee’s real name is Brenda Mae Tarpley.”
“Well, good for her.” Muriel was hunched over, shoving things back in her bag. “So what? What does that have…?” She turned to him with her mouth hanging open. “Oh, shit,” she whispered.
“Is it a coincidence? Just how many B.M. Tarpley’s can there be?”
“Well, it’s not Brenda Lee!”
“Of course not! It’s someone using her name as a cover.”
“Brenda Mae Tarpley,” Muriel muttered. She looked at the radio, now into a commercial for a used car dealership. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she chanted. She turned to Ed. “Someone is sorry for what they did to Evie!”
“And they didn’t want anyone to know about it! I’ll bet Evie knew, though.”
“Have we cracked it,” Muriel said in wonderment, “or are we cracked?”
Ed put the truck in gear and gunned across Stratton Avenue. “Either we’ve cracked it or we’re crazier than Evie was.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Okay, let me see if I’ve got this right.” Rick leaned back in his office chair and fixed a skeptical gaze on Ed. “Someone in Evie’s life, for whatever reason, dedicated time and money into making sure she was taken care of. However, this someone didn’t want anyone to know they were doing it, so to escape detection they created a dummy company and for whatever reason further hid their identity by using the real – not the performing name – of a popular singer, something only a record nerd like you would figure out.”
“Don’t forget the ‘I’m Sorry’ part,” Ed said, shuffling through the real estate handbills on Rick’s desk. He had immediately driven to Rick’s office after dropping Muriel at the newspaper building.
“Baby, Brenda Lee wasn’t a one-hit wonder. She had tons of hit records.”
“Yeah, but ‘I’m Sorry’ is the one most people remember. Unless it’s December. C’mon, it’s so far out it could just be right.”
Rick snorted. “My first impulse is to find out what you and Muriel were smoking this afternoon, but you’re right; the name thing is one hell of a coincidence. I wonder…” He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.
“What?”
“If there was someone that significant in Evie’s life, surely someone in this town is aware of it. Maybe it’s time we started questioning some of those old quidnuncs.”
“Such as?”
“Well, your mom, for starters. I always go to her when I’m looking for background dirt on customers and their houses. What about your older clients? Put them together and they could probably provide an entire twentieth century oral history of Porterfield.”
“And who knows what we might stumble over in one of those boxes in the house.”
Rick smirked. “Have you found anything yet?”
“No,” Ed smirked back at him. “But the next place I intend to investigate is that coat closet under the stairs. And, darlin’, who knows more about hiding things in the closet than us?”
###
The next day, Saturday, Ed and Rick arose early and drove across town to the Cooley Street house. The weather had settled into what Ed’s father had called the “July Muggs”, a seemingly endless series of hot, humid days. They hoped to make some progress on those boxes before the day – and the house – became unbearably hot.
They were pulling boxes out of the closet when Rick suddenly
stopped, looked around, and frowned.
“What’s up, darlin’?” Ed asked, dropping his load.
“Evie died suddenly, right?”
“Yeah. Someone found her unconscious outside the courthouse ladies room. They took her to the hospital, decided she’d had a stroke, and she died before they could do anything.”
“That’s what I thought. Doesn’t this house seem awfully tidy for someone who died suddenly, and away from home?”
“Well, yeah, but we don’t know how she lived here, or just how much living she actually did in this place. She wasn’t your average citizen.”
“I’ll grant you that, but she should have left something behind; something in the refrigerator or something in the cupboards, even if it was just a jar of peanut butter.”
Ed sat in one of the dilapidated easy chairs and nodded. “You’re right. There’s really nothing here…except these boxes.”
“And that leads me to believe that whoever was helping Evie swooped in here after her death and removed all traces of her, even her personal effects, whatever they may have been.”
Ed glanced around the living room. An uneasy feeling, as though he were being watched, rolled through him. “Do you suppose that person was right here in town?”
“Probably. I suspect B.M. Tarpley had a confederate here, watching out for her, and it sure as hell wasn’t James Briscoe.”
Ed sighed. “I feel like I’ve fallen into one of those whodunits I’ve been reading lately.”
Rick squatted and shoved two of the boxes away from the closet. “They say, or at least Lit professors always seem to say, truth is stranger than fiction. We both need to get busy talking up the older folks in this town. Meanwhile…”
“Boxes!” Ed reached for the flaps on the box nearest him. He languidly pulled them loose, saw the contents, and gasped. “Whoa, Nellie! The motherlode! I knew the good stuff would be in the closet.”
“What? What?” Rick crawled across the floor and peered into the box. He began to laugh. “Talk about truth and fiction! Somehow Evie must have known you’d be snooping around here someday.”
The carton was packed full of 45 RPM records. Ed began to shuffle through them. He did not recognize the artists or the song titles, which puzzled him, until he noticed the letters stamped on each one.
“WPFD,” Ed said, pointing out the letters to Rick, who was also pawing through the box. “That was the radio station here in town, remember? The one I told you went out business in the seventies. These were promo records, the ones record companies sent to radio stations hoping they’d play ‘em and make ‘em popular. I don’t see anything I’ve heard of, so these must have been the duds.”
“And when the radio station went belly up,” Rick continued, “they threw this box in the garbage, and our Evie promptly took it and brought it home to add to her weird mounds of treasure.”
“And she may, for once, have found something valuable. I’ll bet there are record collectors out there who’d pay serious bucks for these.” Ed carefully refolded the box’s flaps. “And who knows? There could be some killer songs in here we never got to hear because someone else decided they weren’t any good. I’m gonna take ‘em home and play ‘em all!”
“Right now?” Rick asked acidly.
“Yes, dear. I’m going home and leave you here, sweating, while I listen to records in air conditioned comfort. No, I think I can wait a few hours.”
Rick leaned over and kissed him. “Thank you for your amazing restraint. I appreciate it.”
They turned to the other boxes they had removed from the closet. They discovered nothing of real interest until Rick opened a carton and turned to Ed, a puzzled look on his face. “You’ve read Animal Farm, haven’t you?”
“Sure. Years ago. Why?”
“That’s too bad. We now have about thirty or forty paperback copies.”
Now it was Ed’s turn to crawl across the floor and peer into a box. “Now, where did she…” Ed selected a copy and opened it. “Ah, now it makes sense.” Inside the front cover of each book was a stamp: PROPERTY OF PORTERFIELD HIGH SCHOOL, PORTERFIELD, INDIANA.
“No dumpster in this town was safe,” Rick remarked. “Ah, look; they even included the teacher’s study guide. I wonder if this was the same one that battleax Mrs. Cronk used when she had us read Animal Farm in freshman English. I loved the book; couldn’t stand her.”
Ed idly flipped through the teacher’s guide. He had come across plenty of those at home, remnants of Mrs. Penfield’s many years of teaching English at Porterfield High. “That’s weird,” he commented, turning the pages. “There’s not a single note in here. Mrs. Penfield was always writing notes in the page margins of her guides and textbooks.”
“Well, not all teachers are alike. I should know. Mom was always absurdly tidy with her supplies, and she used to call Dad Hansel for leaving a trail of history notes wherever he went. He’d write on anything – notebook paper, scratch pads, magazine covers, you name it.”
Ed took a closer look at the paperbacks, frowning. “These books are awfully clean for being hauled around by a bunch of bored high school kids.”
Rick took a closer look. “You’re right. I don’t think these books were ever actually read.” He shrugged. “There must have been a curriculum change before they could be used.”
“I wish Mrs. Penfield was still here. I’d love to ask her about it.”
“Yeah. Oh well. It’s no big deal. Should we keep the books?”
“Seems a shame to toss out books in perfect condition. Let’s hold onto them for now.”
Rick sealed the box and pushed it next to the one with the records. The he mopped his brow with the tail of his t-shirt. “Ugh. It’s already hot.” He pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it on the book box.
Ed began to open another carton but paused, observing Rick’s back. There were a couple of zits on his shoulders; he’d had an even worse time than Ed with teenage acne, and still had occasional outbreaks. Ed barely noticed that. What he saw were the broad, capable shoulders of a strong, kind, and – in his eyes – very sexy man. His eyes moved down Rick’s back and he had to smile. His elastic waistband shorts had slid down, revealing a generous amount of ass. Ed thought about teasing him about having real estate agent’s crack, but instead crawled across the room, put his hands on his shoulders, and lightly kissed the back of his neck.
Rick looked around, surprised. “What’s that for?”
“We own this house, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well, we haven’t christened it yet.”
Rick turned around and faced Ed. “Who says we have to,” he said, reaching out to stroke Ed’s beard.
“I do.” Ed’s finger traced the line of hair from chest to navel, paused, and then began to investigate under Rick’s shorts.
“Um, I see.” Rick’s hands were now doing some intense investigation as well. “Far be it for me to disagree, but we still have more boxes to open.”
“Fuck the boxes.”
“I’d rather the fucking be left between us.”
Ed managed to slide Rick’s shorts down his legs. He gave a good tug and they cleared his tennis shoes. “Well, I think this is a good start.”
Rick grinned. “Stand up, baby.”
Ed did. Rick kicked his shorts aside, and proceeded to slowly pull Ed’s shirt over his head and off and slowly slid his shorts down to his own beat up tennies. “Wanna step out of those, mister?”
Ed did so as Rick pulled him into his arms. His partially open mouth found Ed’s, as Ed reached low and grabbed a generous handful of stiffening manhood. “Damn, you are sweaty, darlin’.”
“And I intend to get even sweatier, baby.”
###
Ed deposited the box of records next to the hi fi in the front parlor. He had determined the records would probably sound better on Mrs. Penfield’s vintage machine as opposed to the more modern stereo equipment in the den.
He was pulling 45�
�s out of the box and arranging them when Neal, dressed for work, came downstairs. He watched this activity with some interest. “Don’t you have any CD’s?”
“Nope.”
“Well, you do know, don’t you, that at some point they’ll probably stop making records.”
Ed paused in creating neat stacks based on the dates stamped on the records – 1968, 1969, 1970; apparently there were only three years represented by the castoffs in the box – and looked at Neal. “Well, unless they start making more new music that I think is worth buying I guess it won’t be an issue for me, will it?”
Neal grinned as he headed out of the house. “You’re getting old, Ed!”
“Yeah? You better watch your mouth, kid, or the next time you go to take out the garbage you’re gonna find your Madonna CD’s covered with coffee grounds!”
###
The next afternoon Ed walked to his mother’s house and from there the two of them proceeded one block east and one north to Matt and Claire’s house on Maple Street. Norma had swiped the club bylaws from Irene Booth. There were no restrictions on age or sex for membership. Rupert Fry had come through as well, telling Muriel about the previously unannounced grand prize from the seed company. They were ready to let Josh in on their plan.
Judy ushered them into the living room where the TV was on, obviously tuned to MTV as Cutting Crew were lip-synching their way through “(I Just) Died in Your Arms”. Norma glanced at the screen and rolled her eyes. “And I used to think American Bandstand was bad.”
Josh!” Judy hollered up the stairs.
Josh came down with what looked like a Breck’s bulb catalog under his arm. He seemed surprised by his visitors. “What’s up?”
“Sit down,” Ed said kindly. “We have a proposition for you.”
Not without suspicion, Josh flopped on the couch next to Judy, who hit the mute button on the TV remote.