by Nic Saint
Darius, a white-haired youth with bad skin, gave Chase a baleful look. “You can’t keep me away from Ackerman, dude. That man is like the sun and I’m the planet that revolves around him. He draws me in.”
“Planets aren’t drawn in by the sun. If that were the case they would be destroyed,” Chief Alec pointed out.
“Exactly, man. Ackerman is destroying me. His brilliance is such that it’s devouring me. Wiping me out.”
“Please tell us what you were doing at the library,” Chase repeated.
“Like I told you—Ackerman called me.”
“Called you,” said Alec dubiously. “Like, literally called you on your phone?”
Darius tapped his temple. “He called me in here, dude. He’s been calling me for a long time. Telling me ‘Come—come to me. Be with me. Be me.’ It’s been tough getting here—seeing as some cops picked me up in Philly two nights ago—but here I am. I heeded the call.”
“You were arrested for the possession of illegal substances,” said Chase. “And released on your own recognizance.”
“The judge knew I had a higher purpose to fulfill,” said Darius, nodding. “No prison could have kept me away from Ackerman and she knew it. So here I am.” He spread his arms. “Tell Ackerman His Loyal Servant has come. I commend my soul to him—to do with as he sees fit.”
“Mr. Ackerman was killed last night, Darius,” said Chief Alec. “Did you kill him?”
Darius frowned briefly, then laughed. “You’re trying to confuse me. Is this a test?”
“This is not a test. Mr. Ackerman is dead and we’re trying to figure out who killed him. Was it you?”
But Darius had covered his ears and was shaking his head. “Ackerman, Ackerman, Ackerman,” he was saying softly, swaying back and forth.
Chase sighed, and so did Alec. They both got up at the same time, and walked out. In the hallway, Alec said, “I don’t think we’re going to get a lot more out of him right now.”
“He’s not exactly of sound mind and body,” Chase agreed.
“He is the second suspect I like, though. In fact I like him even more than Drood.”
They pondered this for a moment. Like kids having to pick and choose between Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Cups or Reese’s Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies, it was hard to determine which suspect was the better choice, the robber or the crazed stalker druggie. Finally, Alec said, “Let’s keep him overnight. Have another crack at him in the morning.”
And Chase said that this was a great idea.
As Odelia and Gran were on their way back from the Hampton Cove Star, Dooley and Max napping on the backseat, she got a call from her boss, Hampton Cove Gazette editor Dan Goory.
“Dan. Have I got a story for you,” she said before he could speak.
“I don’t doubt it,” said the aged editor. “And here’s another one: Chris Ackerman’s son is giving a press conference in front of the library where his father was killed last night and I want you there to write up the report.”
“Ackerman’s son? I just saw him. He didn’t mention a press conference.”
“Get me a couple of quotes, Odelia. And take some pictures, will you? This story has legs, I can feel it in my legs.” He disconnected and Odelia promptly performed a U-turn.
“Hey—where are you going?” asked Gran, shaken out of her perusal of the footage she’d filmed so far.
“To the library. Trey Ackerman is holding a press conference.”
“Weird. He didn’t say nothing about no press conference.”
“He probably didn’t think it worth mentioning.”
“Make it quick. I feel a nap coming on.” Gran darted a quick look in the rearview mirror. “Too bad I’m not a cat. Those catnaps are pretty convenient.”
Ten minutes later Odelia parked her car across the road from the library and got out. Max opened one eye but then closed it again when Odelia gave his fur a gentle stroke.
“Sleep, buddy. You deserve it,” she said.
She and Gran crossed the street. “Huh,” said Gran. “That don’t look like Trey Ackerman to me.”
And indeed it didn’t. A young man was standing on the library steps, a few passersby listening intently, and he definitely wasn’t Trey Ackerman.
“I didn’t know Ackerman had a second son,” said Gran.
“That’s because he doesn’t,” said Odelia. “At least not according to Wikipedia.”
“Don’t believe Wikipedia. They get it wrong all the time,” said Gran. “Like that time they wrote that The Bold and the Beautiful had been canceled. The Bold and the Beautiful will never be canceled. At least not if CBS doesn’t want a minor revolution on their hands.”
“… and I will fight to my dying breath for the right to call Chris my dad,” Ackerman’s son was saying. He was a handsome fellow, with wavy blond hair, nice blue eyes and those clean-cut All-American features women fawn over. He even had nice teeth—so nice in fact that Odelia’s tongue surreptitiously slid over her own set of choppers.
“Nice gnashers,” Gran remarked.
“A dentist’s wet dream,” Odelia agreed.
“Forget dentists. He’s my wet dream.”
Odelia thought it better not to head down that road. “So who is this guy?”
“Aren’t you listening? He’s Chris Ackerman’s son.”
“… Chris was a good man. A kind man. A phenomenal writer. And he had an affair with my mother twenty-three years ago that led to an unwanted pregnancy. And even though Chris was too proud to admit it, a DNA test will confirm that I am, in fact, his son.”
“Oops,” said Gran.
Oops was right. Especially considering the fact that satellite trucks from at least three different TV stations came careening down the street. Soon reporters, camera crews in tow, had joined the melee and were shouting questions at the young man.
He enjoyed the attention, for he bared his perfect teeth in a wide smile and then announced, “Yesterday my name was Aldo Wrenn. But today my name is Aldo Ackerman!”
“Aldo Wrenn,” said Odelia. “Google him, Gran.”
“You Google him. I’m busy.”
Odelia glanced at her grandmother and saw that she was filming the whole thing. Then suddenly the old woman lowered her phone and narrowed her eyes. “Say, isn’t that the final guy on those sketches of mine? The ones I channeled for Big Mac?”
Odelia brought out her phone and checked the sketches, flicking through them just like Chase had done before. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said finally. “You’re right. He was at the library last night.”
“Bingo!” said Gran, making a pumping motion with her fist. “Senior Sleuth is on a roll, baby.”
“I thought you were a desperate housewife?”
“I’m changing my MO. From now on I want to be known as Granny Dick.”
“Um… You might want to rethink that, Gran.”
“Why? I’m a granny and I’m a private dick.”
Odelia bit back a few choice remarks. Instead, she said, “Let’s talk to Ackerman’s newest son. See what he says.”
“On it!” Gran cried enthusiastically. TV crews jostled to interview Aldo Wrenn—or Ackerman—but Gran muscled her way through the throng. “Coming through!” she yelled. “Make way for Granny Dick and Grandgirl Dick!”
Odelia ground her teeth. At least Gran wasn’t using her can of Mace on the reporters.
A few snickers and lurid comments later, she reconsidered.
Maybe Gran should use her can of Mace on the reporters.
Chapter 26
I woke up from some type of hubbub or ruckus and opened one eye to take a peek at its source. Across the street, in the library’s courtyard, some kind of scuffle had broken out between a bunch of people carrying microphones and cameras. At the heart of the scuffle I recognized Gran and Odelia, womanfully trying to force their way through the throng to a guy who looked like he could feature as the lead in a Disney Channel Original Movie.
“What’s
going on?” asked Dooley, rising up next to me.
“I’m not sure. Looks like Gran and Odelia are trying to pick a fight with Zac Efron and a bunch of reporters are attempting to stop them.”
Dooley yawned and stretched. “Oh, look. It’s Big Mac.”
He was right. Waddling across the street was the fast-food-loving cat.
“Hey, Big Mac!” I shouted. “Over here.”
When he saw us, he gave us a kindly nod of the head, and toddled over.
Odelia had cranked the window down and Dooley and I leaned out like seasoned window-leaners, elbows propped up on the doorframe.
“Hey, buds,” said Big Mac, greeting us like old pals.
“Hey, buddy. We keep bumping into each other.”
“Big Mac loves to go to the library,” said Dooley.
“Big Mac loves to check out the dumpster behind the library,” Big Mac corrected him. “Because that dumpster is equidistant from the two best pizza parlors in Hampton Cove, which, according to my calculations, borne out by the facts, means this dumpster is a great place to dig up some grade-A pizza leftovers.”
“Max taught us that pizza boxes are a very important clue,” said Dooley, apropos of nothing. “Pizza boxes lead Aurora Teagarden to solve her mysteries. She sees a pizza box and she knows. It’s a great trick.” He was nodding intelligently. “Isn’t that right, Max?”
I was going to explain to Dooley, not for the first time, that pizza boxes were only a clue in those particular circumstances in that particular mystery on that particular TV show but sometimes one gets tired of repeating oneself so instead I said, “We found almost all of the people you identified, Big Mac. Only one is still missing from the list.”
“He’s over there,” said Big Mac, gesturing to the library. “That spiffy-looking dude on the steps? He was here last night. I would recognize him anywhere. He looks like Brad Pitt before he was Brad Pitt.”
“How do you know what Brad Pitt looked like before he was Brad Pitt?” I asked.
“My human is a big fan of supermarket tabloids. He can’t go through a checkout line without buying a stack of them. And they always have those unflattering ‘before they were famous’ photomontages. I love them. You should see what George Clooney looked like.”
Dooley had been thinking hard. I could tell, for his tongue was sticking out of his mouth. Finally he voiced the question that was bugging him. “Wasn’t Brad Pitt always Brad Pitt? Or did he change his name?”
Big Mac decided to ignore this outburst. Instead, he raised a point of interest. “Have you found the pizza guy?”
“I don’t think the pizza guy is a high priority.” I explained how two people on Big Mac’s list were now languishing in the Hampton Cove lockup, both competing for the dubious honor of being Chris Ackerman’s killer, so his pizza delivery guy wasn’t exactly on anyone’s radar right now. I further argued that pizza guys don’t go around killing their customers with expensive fountain pens. He agreed that there was something in that.
“Still,” he said. “He didn’t smell right.”
“He was a pizza guy. He probably smelled like a pizza guy.”
“That’s the thing, see,” said Big Mac. “He didn’t.”
“So what did he smell like?” I asked.
“Soap.”
“Soap.”
“Yeah, soap. Freshly washed and bathed.”
“So he was a fastidious pizza guy. So what?”
“Pizza guys have to smell like pizza,” he insisted.
He was obviously old-fashioned that way, so I decided not to argue the point. As I saw it a pizza guy could smell like soap if he wanted to. In fact it was preferable. Nobody likes his pizza delivery person to smell like old socks or stinky pits. Bad for business, if you see what I mean. You want the pizza person to project that wholesome, clean image.
The pizza discussion had gone right over Dooley’s head, as his next words indicated. “If Brad Pitt wasn’t Brad Pitt before he was Brad Pitt, then who was he?”
“Oh, Dooley,” I said with a sigh.
Big Mac tapped the car door with his paw. “Gotta go, fellas. People to see, pizza leftovers to gobble up. Catch you later, all right?”
“See ya, Big Mac,” I said, and watched the big cat wobble across the road. Then I thought of something. “Hey, Big Mac?”
“Yo,” said the big cat, turning.
“Wanna join cat choir? Tonight at the park. Practically all the cats of Hampton Cove will be there. We hang out, sing some tunes, shoot the breeze. What do you say?”
“I can’t sing, dude.”
“None of us can.”
He shrugged. “I’ll think about it.” He held up a paw and I returned the gesture. As he walked away, he softly sang, “I’m lovin’ it.” Yep, he really did love it.
There was a momentary silence after Big Mac had left, then Dooley said, “So about Brad Pitt…”
Chapter 27
Odelia and Gran had a hard time getting Chris Ackerman’s latest son to give them the time of day. As it was, he was giving exclusive interviews left and right, passing out quotes like candy. More media people were arriving by the busload—magically multiplying like Agent Smith in The Matrix—and suddenly the young man was the hottest thing in town.
And who could blame the media for converging on this latest sensational story? Chris Ackerman was, after all, a world-famous author, and his mysterious murder had only made him more famous. And now here was a son no one had ever heard about, turning Ackerman, who in all honesty had looked more like a stodgy old college professor than a Calvin Klein underwear model, into someone who sold magazines and invited those all-precious clicks.
Before long, the scene turned into something out of a Mel Gibson movie, with reporters hitting each other over the head with their microphones and pimpled, pasty-faced and overweight cameramen staring each other down, ready to rumble.
“Your colleagues are nasty,” said Gran after a female reporter with nails like Rihanna had stomped on her toe. She was rooting around in her purse, presumably in search of her can of Mace, and Odelia quickly thought of ways and means to avert the impending disaster.
“They’re not my colleagues,” said Odelia. “A lot of these people are celebrity gossip bloggers, so they’re more your colleagues than mine.”
Gran took offense. “I’m nothing like them. I ply my trade with dignity and poise.”
“Which is why you can’t wait to mace them.”
“It’s all about the competitive edge, honey. This is a cutthroat business.”
And if she didn’t stop her grandmother, throats would definitely get cut.
At that moment, though, the whoop of a police siren sounded nearby, and soon cops were descending on the scene.
“We better get out of here,” said Odelia. “Before the riot police starts busting heads and breaking bones.”
“They better don’t break my bones or I’ll sue them for millions.”
“Your son heads the police department!”
“Never let sentiment muddle your thinking, honey. I saw that on Mary Poppins.”
They both moved to the side, and watched as Uncle Alec’s troops returned order to the mob scene. Chase spotted them on the edge of the crowd, and sauntered over.
“What’s this I hear about some dude telling people he’s Chris Ackerman’s son?”
“Better ask him yourself,” said Gran. “We tried to interview him but there was no getting through those nasty reporters. Oh, and before you ask, he’s one of the people I identified this morning. You’ll find his sketch in your files.”
“His name is Aldo Wrenn,” said Odelia. “Only now he calls himself Aldo Ackerman.”
“Whenever a celebrity dies there’s always a rash of these bogus claims,” said Chase. “Remember when Prince died? Over seven hundred people claimed to be his siblings.”
“I could have been Prince’s sister,” said Gran. “What?” she added when Odelia gave her a piercing look. “I’m not sa
ying I am his sister. Just saying I could have been.”
“What makes you think you and Prince were related?” asked Chase, genuinely curious.
Promptly Gran lifted the leg of her colorful track pants to display a bony white calf. “Just look at my legs.”
Chase looked at Gran’s leg. “N-nice,” he said in a slightly choked voice.
“I should think so. These are some princely legs. I’ll bet Prince’s sister has legs just like these and so does his momma. And then of course I’ve got a voice just like Prince.”
“You do?” asked Chase.
“You don’t have to be beautiful. To turn me on,” the old lady began to sing in a reedy voice. It sounded nothing like Prince, but she was shaking that leg, and batting her eyelashes like a pro. A pro pole dancer, though, not a pro singer.
Chase suppressed a smile. “That’s pretty awesome, Mrs. Muffin,” he said finally.
“Just call me Vesta. I think it’s time we got on a first-name basis,” she cooed, placing a hand on Chase’s bicep while she recuperated from her impromptu dance routine.
Chase had the good decency to blush. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Uncle Alec walked over, and Odelia was happy to see he came bearing gifts in the form of Aldo Wrenn—or Ackerman. The moment she and Gran had discovered Aldo was the seventh person Big Mac had identified, she’d shot off a message to her uncle. And a good thing, too, considering Aldo’s impromptu press conference had almost gotten out of hand.
“I think we better hold this conversation at the station, son,” said Alec.
“Why? What did I do?” asked Aldo.
“First off, you managed to disturb the peace. Second…” He nodded to Odelia. “You were seen at this here library last night, just before Chris Ackerman was killed. So I’m gonna want a statement from you about that.”
“That wasn’t me! I swear!”
Chapter 28
“Yeah, that was me,” said Aldo, sounding a lot less cocky than before. Then again, being dragged into a police station instead of CBS This Morning will do that to a person.