Mystery Bundle (Saints Preserve Us, Pray For Us Sinners, Murder Most Trivial)

by Leigh Ellwood

  “Really?” Willie exclaimed. “Good for anywhere in Jillian’s? I’d love to try the tappan tables they have over by the pool tables. If I win, we’re definitely going there,” she told Dan.

  Dan raised his iced tea in a salute. “Won’t argue with a lady if she’s buying.”

  Trivial Matters the show was not scheduled to begin for another fifteen minutes, and until then patrons were sufficed to watch a muted Simpsons episode on the video screen. “I hope I do well,” Jason said. “I tend to freeze up on timed tests, and I get stuck on some subjects. Like geography, that’s my big weakness.”

  “I find it hard to believe that you have any weaknesses in academics,” Willie commented with a slight smile. “You’re closing in on the top five in your class.”

  Jason shrugged. “I won’t get valedictorian, though.”

  “What about a major for William and Mary? Have you decided on that?”

  Dan leaned forward, more interested than Willie in knowing the answer to that question. During his middle school and early high school years, Jason had often expressed interest in pursuing journalism, but in the last year said not so much as a word about what he planned to do in college. He tested well in all his subjects, but Dan never saw a true spark of interest in his son’s eyes anymore as he studied and did his homework. Even the passion evident in Jason’s writing and research during his tenure as editor-in-chief for the Colley Avenue High General Gazette diffused somewhat over the past school year.

  Jason would likely use his freshman year at William and Mary to satisfy his core requirements, but the semesters after that were a mystery to Dan. Not even Jason’s guidance counselor, whom Dan queried often, could get any definitive answers from the student.

  Jason swallowed a bite of chicken wing. “I got a few ideas,” he began quietly, but quickly changed the subject by asking Willie about her trivia strengths and weaknesses.

  Willie held up her hands. “Just don’t look to me for any pop culture questions past 1980,” she said. “I stopped paying attention to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 a long time ago.”

  “Yeah,” Dan agreed. “Whitney Spears could knock on my door and ask to use the phone, and I wouldn’t know her from Eve.”

  “Britney, Dad,” Jason corrected him and tucked into another Buffalo wing.

  “What did I say?”

  “You said Whitney,” Willie reminded him. “You were probably thinking of Whitney Houston.”

  “Or J.C. Whitney,” Jason offered with a wink. “Thinking of ordering some car parts?”

  “I know who Whitney Houston is, thank you,” Dan said gruffly. He drained his glass and set it down on the table with a thud. Like magic, Courtney arrived at the table with a filled replacement, and when dinner arrived shortly afterward Dan made a mental note to leave her a generous tip.

  He could only manage one bite of his sandwich before the volume on the video screen rose and the sharp, brassy theme song for Trivial Matters filled the room. Various wait staff and Jillian’s employees took predetermined positions around the dining area as an unseen announcer reminded contestants to play along with the questions on the show. All answer sheets for the first round would be collected, checked, and returned to their owners during the first commercial break. Those who did not advance had to turn in their remaining answer sheets.

  “Okay, let’s do it.” Jason reclined sideways on his side of the booth and poked his head above the family of four sitting directly in front of him as they clamored to get organized. Since Jason was left-handed, he had no problems ticking off the answers comfortably in that position. The only problem any of the three had was the speed with which the questions were read.

  By round’s end, a lanky employee with a pale buzzcut marked Willie’s paper and Dan’s with red ink and took the rest of their sheets away. The family in the next booth was also eliminated.

  “I can’t believe I got that question about Psycho wrong,” she muttered, stabbing her fork into her salad. “I could have sworn Hitchcock won the Oscar for that.”

  Jason shook his head, eyeing the perfect score on his paper with pride. “No, I remembered seeing somewhere that Hitchcock never won an Oscar, at least not for Best Director. I think I saw that on A&E.”

  “God bless television,” Dan sighed, amazed with the things the human mind retained. “My own son can recall a snippit of trivia from a television show long past, but ask him what day he has to bring the garbage to the curb...” He ignored his son’s scowl.

  With the remaining players settled, Trivial Matters returned and Round Two progressed just as quickly, though this time several heads were focused upon Jason as he glimpsed from screen to paper answering the litany of trivia questions. Tiny, chubby fingers curled around the seat as the young child in the next booth peered over at Jason’s progress, watching attentively as Dan offered suggestions on the few current events questions that nettled at Jason’s brain.

  When the buzzer sounded onscreen, many more test-takers were bobbing their heads back, red-faced and disappointed as they were stripped of their final answer sheets. Willie gaped at the increasing volume of papers being collected by Jillian’s wait staff.

  “Those questions were tough,” she commented. “I know I wouldn’t have gotten those science ones right.”

  “You sure did, though, guy,” said the employee with the buzz cut. He held Jason’s paper high over his head to signal another employee who approached the table followed by another, pudgier man, one clearly not employed by the restaurant as Dan noticed he was dressed rather casually in a red t-shirt and nibbling a Buffalo wing.

  Dark, bristly hair crowned this man’s large, melon-shaped head. Round, black eyes shot a suspicious glance toward Jason through tortoiseshell rims. He wheezed slightly as the older employee explained that as a finalist, Jason and the seven others who achieved a perfect score would finish the game at a table by the video screen to make the scoring easier.

  Before Jason could rise from his seat a sticky, fat palm shot forward and nearly grazed the boy’s nose. Jason, stunned by the move, thumped back down on the bench.

  “So, you’re my competition, eh?” sneered the stranger. “Well, best of luck to you. You’re going to need it, too, kid, ’cause you’re going down!”

  He then released a bellowing laugh straight from the gut which startled everyone at the table; Dan swore to himself that the silverware clattered untouched. Jason and Willie laughed timidly along. Dan imagined they were thinking the same thing: whether or not to take the man seriously.

  “Bart Scarsdale, certified public accountant. Glad to meet you,” the man said jovially, giving Jason’s hand a good pump. He extended the same greeting to Willie and Dan, who felt his hand wither in the accountant’s vigorous shake.

  “Dan Greevey, certifiably insane,” he said. “One would have to be to come to a thing like this.” A playful slap from Willie stung Dan’s shoulder.

  Jason introduced himself and Willie and offered to accompany Bart to the finalist’s table. He pointed out the impatient expressions on the faces of the employees preparing for the final leg of the contest. “Looks like the commercial break’s almost over,” he said. “You can tell when the news anchor comes on to tease the news.”

  Bart concurred with a loud slap across Jason’s shoulder. “May the best man win, Jase,” he boomed as they started toward the finalists’ table. “And don’t worry. I will, too.”

  Willie pushed a clump of wilted lettuce soaked in vinegar dressing around her plate, frowning at Bart Scarsdale’s retreating form. “Best man,” she muttered. “There’s three women sitting at that table, you know. I’d like to see one of them clap his clammy neck when she wins the big prize.”

  “What, you’re not rooting for Jason?” Dan threw her a look of mock hurt, and Willie pouted back at him.

  “Oh, Danny, you know I am,” she sighed, and Dan felt his heart flutter. Few people called him Danny, but hearing it from Willie was pleasing, like hearing a favorite melody. There was
something moving about the way she said his name, not unlike how Mary Tyler Moore wheedled Dick Van Dyke nearly four decades ago. Ohhh, Rob...a person would have to be deaf and blind not to sense the love there. Ohhh, Danny, Willie would chide him, and Dan never tired of it.

  Liza talked to him that way, too, he remembered.

  Though more than five years had passed since his wife Liza’s death from cancer, Dan still had difficulty discussing anything pertaining to her, much less thinking about her, without dissolving into tears. That she would never see the momentous occasions in store for her only child—high school and college graduations, job promotions, marriage—was heartbreaking, and just watching Jason studiously mark an answer sheet as the host of Trivia Matters barked questions onscreen with rapid-fire intensity made Dan sniffle slightly. Even in silly situations like these, he knew Liza would be excited for her son.

  Willie leaned her head against Dan’s shoulder; the mere touch brought him back to the present. “I wonder how he’s doing,” she mused aloud. “The show’s giving the answers to the questions, and I can see them checking all the papers as they go along, but there’s no way to tell who’s winning. That Bart guy sure looks confident, though.”

  “That he does.”

  “Either way, this is nice, being here,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind coming back here to eat again.”

  “Payday is tomorrow,” Dan hinted, clasping her hand in his. “And we do have the whole weekend.”

  Willie grinned and opened her mouth to speak when the piercing feedback of a microphone squealed at high volume throughout the bar, standing their nerves on end. They looked up with everyone else in the restaurant to see a throng of Jillian’s employees congratulating Bart Scarsdale as the eatery’s official trivia champion. Jason, a smile of disappointment plastered on his face, applauded with the other finalists as Bart was handed his check. The elated contest winner raised his arms and whooped in victory, his voice a siren above a commercial jingle for cat food and the dining area’s general white noise.

  “Nothing trivial about this!” Bart waved the check in the air and led a one-man victory parade toward the bar, pushing aside several finalists in the process. Jason loped back to the booth, clutching the second place prize of ten dinner gift certificates which he slapped down on the tabletop.

  “One lousy question!” he berated himself. “I could’ve won the whole damn thing!”

  Dan did not like hearing profanity from his son, even mild epithets, but let it pass. “What question was that?”

  “Who was the first president to ride to his inauguration in an automobile? The answer was Harding but I put down Wilson.”

  “Don’t sweat it. I guessed Wilson, too. I suppose it was because he was one of the first presidents of the twentieth century.”

  Courtney arrived to clear plates and offer dessert, which everybody declined. Minutes later she returned with the check just as the final contestant on Trivia Matters blew his chance for the ten thousand-dollar grand prize by guessing incorrectly for whom the Baby Ruth candy bar was named.

  “Duh, Ruth Cleveland!” Jason shouted at the video screen. He turned back to Dan and Willie. “Why couldn’t I have been asked that one?”

  Dan pinned a few folded bills under a salt shaker for the dinner bill and Courtney’s tip. It was only nine o’clock, but he was bone tired. He eased Willie out of the booth and they both stood and stretched. “I figured you’d have gotten some other question wrong,” he pondered. “Like the one about who wrote the Tales from the City series. Even I don’t know that one, and you guys know how much I read.”

  Jason guffawed. “Oh, that was an easy one, Dad. Armistead Maupin.”

  “What are those books about, anyway?”

  Willie led the way to the exit. “Oh, they made a miniseries from the first book several years back. They follow this group of people living in San Francisco in the seventies. I know a professor at ODU who taught them as part of a series on gay literature.”

  Dan arched an eyebrow and cast a sly glance at his son. “Really? When did you become an authority on gay literature, son?”

  “Dad, I work in a bookstore.”

  “Anyway, second place isn’t too shabby, either,” Willie told Jason soothingly. “You won’t have to worry about paying for dinner on Prom Night.”

  The prom. Dan snapped his fingers. Willie was faculty sponsor of the prom committee this year, hence they would be chaperoning the event. “Man, that reminds me. I have to get my good suit cleaned.”

  “Speaking of prom.” Willie fished inside her purse for a tissue. “I haven’t seen your RSVP come in yet, Jason. I hope it’s not an oversight on my part, or that it didn’t get lost.”

  Jason shook his head. “Nah,” he said quietly, shoving the gift certificates in his back pocket. Dan noticed how quickly his son’s face tensed at the mention of the prom. “I just haven’t gotten around to filling it out yet.”

  “Well, be sure that you do. We need a complete head count by next week. If you wait too long you might not be able to get a tux, either. There are three other proms scheduled for the same night around town.”

  “Yeah.” Jason turned his attention toward the video games, shoulders slumped and teeth clenched in the familiar posture of a teenager enduring an oft-heard lecture. Dan opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. He would find a subtle way to bring up the topic of the prom and his son’s sudden discomfort when they got home.

  Downstairs the stands in the food court were preparing to close for the night, yet the Waterside appeared far from deserted. Lively patrons congregated around the stairs leading up to Bar Norfolk, joking among themselves as they ascended.

  “That television character look-alike contest must not have happened yet,” Dan mused. People were still arriving dressed as familiar fictional figures; Dan recognized a Morticia Addams in a form-fitting black dress with a neckline plunging practically to her high heels, followed by a very interested fellow dressed as a character from a medical drama in aquamarine scrubs. The woman winked as she passed, turning Dan’s and Jason’s heads.

  “Hey!” Willie yanked on her boyfriend’s arm. “Remember me?”

  “Hey, check it out.”

  Dan thought at first Jason was watching the same scene, but he followed his son’s gaze back toward the food court. A gleeful, inebriated Bart leaned against the back escalators, flirting with the same drunken Elaine who earlier had cornered him at the Christmas shop storefront.

  “Go, Bart,” Jason muttered. Dan could only shake his head. God help her, and him, he thought, wondering suddenly if Bart was sponge-worthy.

  Chapter Two

  At five-thirty in the morning, Jason was in the shower, so Dan noted as he and their pet beagle Ringo returned from their morning jog. Dan tapped the door of Jason’s bathroom and pushed it ajar, shouting to be heard over running water and the waterproof radio Jason had affixed to the tile shower wall.

  “You’re up early.” Usually each morning saw a struggle to wake Jason before six-thirty, leaving the boy only minutes to prepare for school if he wanted to make the first bell.

  The noise of a raucous morning radio show abruptly muted. “Yeah, I just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep,” Jason hollered back. “I’ll be down in a little while to eat.”

  “Take your time,” Dan said, shaking his head. Surely his own son was not entertaining the idea of actually sitting down to the breakfast table? Since starting at Colley High, Jason had been content to partake of the offerings from the school’s selection of vending machine fare with his friends. Rarely did he eat a breakfast that did not come sealed in a plastic bag.

  Soaking with sweat in a pair of bright orange shorts and a white mesh singlet, Dan padded into his own bedroom. Ringo followed closely behind and hopped upon his unmade bed to resume sleep. A quick shower, shave and change of clothes left Dan feeling refreshed and ready to take on the school day, one he hoped would pass without incident. Not that he expected any troubl
e from his three advanced English classes and his foreign language electives, but as a teacher his authority extended well beyond the students in his classroom. Things sometimes got testy as the halls swelled between bells, particularly with the end of the school year fast approaching. It was not uncommon for students pent up with academic frustrations to release their energy into a midday scuffle by the lockers.

  Dan straightened his tie in his dresser mirror, then paused to glance at the wedding photo of him and Liza perched to his left. Unconsciously he smoothed down his tie, letting his fingers slide down to the point. Until he met Liza he had settled upon clip-ons or not wearing a tie at all; it had taken a good year for Liza to teach him to tie one properly.

  A melancholy twinge rose from his heart and nearly choked him. Everything I do brings a back a memory, he thought. They should be happy memories, too, so why am I not smiling?

  He flashed a crooked grin at the photo. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I forgot your number one rule. No moping, move forward.”