Mad Mouse: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

by Chris Grabenstein

  Becca's mom and dad own and operate the place, and the family occupies rooms 101 through 103. I've always thought it would be so cool to live in a motel. You could get a bucket of ice anytime you wanted and your toothpaste cup would always be sealed in plastic, your toilet seat Sanitized For Your Protection.

  But Becca tells me the ice machine moans all night long and clunks out cubes so it sounds like an avalanche, and sometimes she has nightmares about rockslides and gravel trucks. Not to mention Becca's the one who sanitizes all the toilets.

  I drop by to see how she's doing. Ceepak has gone to the house—that's what we call the police station—to report our findings to Chief Baines. I guess I've aced my final exam.

  On the way over to the motel, I grabbed Becca a box of saltwater taffy. The Sea Haven variety comes in a white box with striped letters on the front. There's also this drawing of a beach chair, a sand bucket, and a starfish. Actually, it's the same box they use anywhere that has a beach.

  “Thanks, Danny,” Becca says, sucking on a peppermint tube.

  “You feel okay?”

  “Yeah. How do I look?”

  “Like Ray Charles.”

  Becca has on this huge pair of Ray-Ban Daddy-O sunglasses despite the fact that we're sitting inside in the lobby.

  “You seeing Katie today?” she asks.

  “I might, you know, drop by the Landing.”

  During her summer school break, Katie works at Saltwater Tammy's, a candy shop in Schooner's Landing, this multilevel mall of shops built around a tall ship, a schooner, I guess. The sails have “Schooner's” and “Landing” painted on them like huge, flapping billboards.

  “She likes you, you know,” Becca says.

  “Well, I like her, too.”

  “I mean she likes you.” Becca punches my thigh.

  All of a sudden, I feel like we're back in fifth grade: “Katie Landry told Becky Adkinson to tell you …” We should pass notes or at least text message each other.

  “You two make an extremely cute couple.”

  It's been a while since I've been in a couple, cute or otherwise.

  “She has her break at three thirty. Be there.” Becca pops another stick of taffy in her mouth, the blue one, whatever flavor blue is. “And thanks for the taffy!”

  Three twenty P.M. I sit on a bench in Schooner's Landing across from the entrance to Saltwater Tammy's.

  The candy shop has huge plate-glass windows, so I can see bins of bright-colored goodies. Gummi Bears. Jelly Bellies. Spearmint Leaves. Pinwheel lollipops that stand on the counter like funky sunflowers. It's Willy Wonka land in there. The display case is crammed with malted milk balls, chocolate-covered pretzels, chocolate-covered coconut clusters. Ladies with wide bottoms and shorts that strangle their dimpled thighs waddle out the door with white paper sacks and say, “Just one more piece, then I'm saving the rest.”

  So far, no one I've watched has saved anything.

  I don't see Katie. She might be in one of the side windows dipping apples in caramel goop or working the taffy-pulling machine.

  Schooner's Landing, tucked into three square blocks, has its own tiered boardwalk and ramps. The buildings are all designed to look like sea shanties or New England cottages. There's a big lighthouse at one end of the top level and a pretty decent seafood restaurant called The Chowder Pot at the other.

  Three twenty-two.

  I figure I'll “drop by” in about five minutes. While I wait, I watch this old lady on a bench toss chunks of her soft pretzel to some gulls. At the same time, five jocks thunder past like the front line of the Giants. They trample the pretzel crumbs. Smoosh ‘em flat.

  Three twenty-four.

  It's time to pretend to be “just in the neighborhood so I thought I'd drop by.” “Danny?”

  It's Katie. She comes out of the candy shop, smoothing down her shorts, fluffing up her hair. She doesn't have to. She looks great.

  “What're you doing over here?”

  “I was just, you know … in the neighborhood.”

  “Cool.”

  “You wanna go grab a coffee or something?” she suggests.

  “Hey, cool. Yeah.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  If we manage to remember some words beyond “cool” and “yeah” when we hit the coffee shop, we might actually have a conversation.

  Sun Coast Coffee is up on the third level. Katie and I sit outside under an umbrella. She has a cappuccino. I'm doing a double espresso.

  “So, what'd you do on your day off?” she asks.

  “Hit the boardwalk. I think we found the kid who paintballed us last night.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Awesome. I've got bruises on my butt!”

  I think about saying, “Can I see them?” but don't.

  “We got a lucky lead this morning. The same kid vandalized the Pig's Commitment.”

  Katie's eyes sparkle. “The blue balls?”

  “You saw it?”

  “Yeah. I know it's terrible.”

  “But kind of funny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought so, too. But don't tell Ceepak.”

  We both sip our coffees. Katie gets some froth on her lip and licks it away with a flick of her tongue and a giggle. She's in uniform today. Sleeveless white top with Salt Water Tammy's stitched over her left breast, not that I'm staring at her breasts which, okay, I guess I am. I quickly shift my gaze over to the marina. Up here on the third floor, you get a great view of the whole bayside of the island. This is where the older people like to live, the ones who dig sailboats and sunsets more than the beach and surfboards. I can see a new development of condos under construction up past where the yachts are docked.

  “Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You look nice today,” she says.

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  “Oh, you like a girl in uniform, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You like girls? Not that there's anything wrong with that.”

  “No,” she laughs. “I like it when, you know.”

  “When I wear my uniform? My cop cap?”

  “It's not so much the hat. It's, I don't know. You're doing something worth doing.”

  “Directing traffic? Writing parking tickets?”

  “Protecting people.”

  “Yeah, well—I think it's cool what you do, too. Teaching kids.”

  “You think you'll go full time?”

  “I put in my application. We'll see. Sometimes, there's a lot of politics involved … only one slot.”

  “Yeah.”

  We sip and sort of smile at each other for a while.

  “You know what makes summer so great, Danny?”

  “What?”

  “It's like dessert. You only get it after you put in a fall, winter, and spring. If it was summer all the time.”

  “We'd be in Hawaii.”

  “Yeah. I think Hawaii would be boring. Nothing to do but nothing to do, you know?”

  “Yeah. I like working,” I say, sort of surprised to hear myself say it. “I mean lately.” I cannot tell a lie, and not because Ceepak would bust me if I did. Katie knows my history. Until now, work had been what I did during the day to pay for the fun I had at night.

  Katie gives me her softest smile, melting my heart faster than a Good Humor bar dropped on August asphalt.

  “Relax, spazz!”

  My head whips right. It's this new instinct I've developed ever since I started working with Ceepak. My radar's always up.

  “We're goin’ for a ride!”

  It's those five muscle boys I saw downstairs. The football team. They're pushing this scared kid in a wheelchair up the ramp from the second level. The kid's head is sort of droopy and tilted sideways. One of his arms seems frozen in front of him, limp at the wrist, dangling like it's dead. Palsied.

  “It's Jimmy,” Katie says. She sounds scared. �
��Tammy's son. He's … you know …”

  “Let's go on a roller-coaster ride!” The lead jock races ahead of his buddies, shoves Jimmy's chair up the ramp fast—makes him pop a wheelie.

  “No! Stop!” The kid sounds like he's going to cry.

  I look at all the shoppers standing around licking ice cream cones or nibbling monster chocolate chip cookies. Nobody's doing much besides shaking their head.

  I stand up. I don't have a gun. I don't even have my badge or cop cap. It's my day off. I don't know what I think I'm going to do. I just know that these knuckleheads are totally freaking out the poor kid.

  “Ready?” the biggest guy hollers down the slope to his buddies.

  “Ready!” they holler back. “Send the retard down!”

  The one who's holding on to it is about to let go of the wheelchair, about to send Jimmy rolling back down the ramp.

  “Stop!”

  I run over, push him aside, and grab the wheelchair handles.

  “Hey, man! What the fuck?”

  “I'm with the police.”

  “Then arrest this little retard. He blocked traffic, took up the whole fucking ramp.”

  The guys down below thump up the incline. They have me and Jimmy surrounded.

  “I'll take care of this,” I say.

  The big boys move in tighter.

  “You gonna arrest him?”

  “We'll help you roll him over to the jail, dude.”

  “Kid's a retard. He should stay inside.”

  “Yeah, he's scaring away the ladies.”

  “Okay, guys.” I try to channel Ceepak. “Thanks. Now, why don't you move along?”

  “I got a better idea,” the biggest one says. “Why don't you go fuck yourself? We were just having some fun, right retard?”

  Terrified, trembling, Jimmy nods.

  “We were just about to give him a free rolly-coaster ride.”

  “I can't let you do that,” I say.

  “Retards like rolly-coaster rides.”

  “Leave him alone.”

  “Make us.” The circle shrinks. I wonder if I'm cut out for this job I just told Katie I like so damn much.

  A menacing wall of sweaty meat surrounds me. I could use the wheelchair to bulldoze over a couple of them but that would probably leave Jimmy traumatized for life or, at least, pretty bruised.

  “We were just having fun. Right, spazz?”

  “Maybe you should go have it somewhere else.”

  It's Ceepak.

  He's behind me licking an ice cream cone. The football boys take one look at him, and, suddenly, they aren't so menacing anymore.

  “You heard Officer Boyle,” he says. “You need to move along. You need to do so in an expeditious manner.”

  “What?”

  “Leave. Now.” Ceepak tosses what's left of his waffle cone into a trash bin and wipes his sticky hands with a paper napkin. He crumples the napkin into a tight wad and tosses it into the can, too. When he crushes stuff, you can see the veins and muscles and tendons rippling in his arms. You have to figure his fists will be somewhat furious.

  The five guys step backwards in virtual lockstep. Like they're not really leaving even though they actually are. It's the tough dude retreat, the fadeaway admission of defeat.

  “Watch your back,” one of them remembers to hiss at me. “Watch your back!”

  “You okay, Jimmy?” Katie's beside him now. She's kneeling in front of the wheelchair so she can look Jimmy in the eye, so he can see her familiar smile.

  “I want ice cream.”

  “Then we'll go get you some, okay?” Katie looks back at us. “Thanks, Danny. Mr. Ceepak. You guys are the best.”

  She takes the wheelchair in hand, turns it, and waves, as she heads down the ramp with Jimmy.

  I wave back.

  “That's Katie?” Ceepak says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice lady.”

  “Yeah. Real nice.”

  I'm glad Ceepak approves. He has high standards for everything. Women included.

  “Becca suggested I might find you here,” Ceepak says. “She told me to wait until fifteen forty-five.”

  That's army talk for three forty-five P.M. I guess Becca wanted to give Katie and me fifteen minutes alone.

  “What's up?” I ask.

  “Not much. Just wanted to report in on my conversation with the chief.”

  “And?”

  “Are you free tomorrow evening? He'd like to take us out to dinner. I suspect he wants to discuss something with you.”

  “The job?”

  Ceepak refuses to rise to the bait. I never actually thought he would.

  “Not knowing, can't say,” he says.

  It doesn't matter.

  It's The Job.

  It's mine.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Friday morning. September first. I feel like a full-time cop already. I'm working sewer duty. Or maybe it's water main duty. Basically, I'm acting like a human traffic light—signaling cars to slow down and move into the center lane of Ocean Avenue so these backhoes can dig up the street and pull out eight-foot-wide sections of concrete pipe.

  I hope it's a water main. I don't want to think about an eight-foot-wide tube of sewage, even if it is buried underneath a ton of asphalt.

  You've got a lot of time to think about stupid stuff when you're a human traffic light and it's 92 degrees in the shade—of which there is absolutely none in the middle of Ocean Avenue. The heat makes me loopy. If I weren't wearing my cop cap, I think my head would melt.

  Ceepak isn't directing traffic this morning. He's working with the bosses on the battle plan for Monday and the World's Biggest Beach Party and Boogaloo BBQ. I guess they want to make sure security is tight but loose—in other words, that we're all over the place but nobody notices. Every cop on the force, me included, will be on the clock Labor Day. The full-time guys probably score double overtime. I hope that's me next year. Double overtime sounds nice, especially when you think your head is about to melt.

  I'd gone by the house this morning for roll call. Dominic Santucci was in the lobby standing next to the gumball machine. Why the police station has a gumball machine, I don't know. It's not like people on the street say: “I need some gum. Let's go see if the cops have any.” Maybe the gumballs are just for Santucci. He sure chews a lot of them. He likes to chomp while he sizes you up.

  “I hear you're going on a date tonight,” Santucci said smugly. “You and the new chief.” He likes to think he's in the know on departmental scuttlebutt.

  “Yeah. Sorry your boy won't be joining us.”

  “My boy?”

  “I figured, you know, you recommended someone else for the job. One of the other guys. One of the losers?”

  “It ain't over till the fat bastard sings. Capeesh?”

  Santucci tends to mangle his clichés like that, but I let it go, set my snicker on its silent mode.

  Anyway, what he probably doesn't know is that dinner is scheduled for seven P.M. at Morgan's Surf and Turf. That's a swanky restaurant up Ocean Avenue, across the street from the big green water tower.

  I'm working this dusty sewer-pipe detail with Skip O'Malley, another summertime cop. I know Skip applied for the full-time job like I did, but he's only twenty-one and hasn't helped solve any major crimes this summer.

  I don't mean to gloat. I guess Ceepak somehow just managed to make me feel like I've got the job in the bag.

  I turn around and see O'Malley at the other end of our detour—directing traffic with one hand, yakking on the cell phone he holds in the other. I know he's got this serious girlfriend so his phone is constantly glued to his ear. They talk so much I don't know what they talk about since they never seem to do anything except talk to each other.

  A black Ford Expedition comes up Ocean. It's the chief's car. I see him behind the wheel.

  I pivot and watch it cut this amazingly dangerous U-turn right in front of me. I would definitely write it up for a tire-squealin
g stunt like that but, like I said, it's the chief's car. He pulls off to the shoulder on the far side of the intersection.

  I stand up a little straighter and flick my traffic-signaling wrist like a pro, like one of those white-gloved guys you always see on America's Funniest Home Videos, only I don't do the little dance.

  I watch Ceepak climb out of the passenger side and stomp across the intersection—after waiting, of course, for the WALK signal to give him permission.

  “Danny.” He acknowledges me as he marches past.

  I just nod gravely and keep signaling my traffic. From the totally serious look on my face you'd think I'm trying to move motorists around a nuclear power plant meltdown, not a water-pipe installation. I do, however, crane my neck enough to see where Ceepak is going.

  To jump in O'Malley's face.

  Ceepak has his hands on his hips and leans in to give Skipper an earful. I see O'Malley close up his cell phone and clip it to his belt. He's fifty feet away, but I can see him go so bright red I wouldn't be surprised if all the cars down there slam on their brakes. With his big Irish head, he's starting to look like a stoplight.

  Yeah. I gotta figure Skip O'Malley won't be offered the full-time job even if his father is on the town council, which, of course, he is.

  I don't mean to gloat.

  I'm just looking forward to dinner.

  Thankfully, I was able to head home and grab a quick shower after work. Protecting bulldozers all day left me looking like some kind of rusty sand man, dusted with whatever red crap the backhoe scraped off the pipes down in that ditch.

  After my shower, I made a couple of quick phone calls. Reached my folks out in Scottsdale. Told them what was up. Mom was proud. Dad was busy in the garage, tinkering with his golf cart. It's what they drive instead of cars at their condo complex. Knowing my dad, he's souping up the battery-powered engine so he can race guys to the 7-Eleven.

  Next, I called Katie. She wished me luck and said to say “hey” to Olivia. Our friend is a waitress at Morgan's. Katie also recommended I stay away from the crab pie that Morgan's is famous for. “Too much butter. It'll clog your arteries.”

  Wow. She's already worried about my arteries. Wow.

  I told her I'd swing by tomorrow morning with a full report on my big night. She'll be at the taffy shop early because Tammy has to take Jimmy to his Saturday morning physical therapy appointment on the mainland. She also said she had something special she wanted to give me. A surprise.