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

by Leigh Ellwood

As far as destiny was concerned, Jason was doubtful any women would ever be a part of his, if his feelings could be trusted. That he was not planning to let his father and friends in on his thoughts right now was the only certainty; he did not mind so much being the butt of a joke as a trivia contestant, but this...

  “Hey!”

  Jason snapped his head around to the picture window to see Caitlin pressed against the glass so that her otherwise pretty face looked like a horror movie prop. Mitch rounded the display and met her face with his own, prompting Caitlin to shriek back with laughter. Nobody saw Greta and Joycelyn emerge from the office.

  “Nice, Mitch,” Greta drawled. “I don’t think we’ll be attracting many customers tomorrow with an imprint of your mug on the window.”

  “But it’s my good side,” Mitch protested.

  Greta said nothing, pointing instead to the front counter. Underneath the register was a storage shelf with a roll of paper towels and a squeeze bottle of window cleaner, which Mitch used hastily to erase his smudge spot. After Greta was satisfied not to see any streaking, she let the boys change into their jeans in the restroom and released them for the evening.

  “So, what’re you guys doing tonight?” Caitlin shifted her weight from foot to foot, swinging her thin-strapped purse. She cast an anxious glance at Jason.

  Mitch unbuttoned his work shirt, revealing a bright swatch of white t-shirt as his hand traveled down his chest and abdomen. “We’re getting some pizza at Fellini’s with Gooch,” he said. “Then back here for the nine-thirty movie. What about you?”

  “We’re going to Rocky Horror tonight.” Mimi crooked her head toward the Naro Theater across the street. The old-fashioned marquee of the theater was alive with orange and white light bulbs blinking in rapid succession, underneath which a small line of patrons was queuing up to purchase tickets for the seven o’clock showing of The Pink Panther.

  “That’s not for four hours,” Jason said. “You two are gonna sit out here that long?”

  “Well,” Caitlin replied, still looking intently at him, “if a couple of guys asked to go to Fellini’s for pizza, we suppose we might accept. To kill time, naturally.”

  “It’s going to take a lot of pizza to kill four hours,” Jason joked.

  Caitlin winked. “I’m hungry.”

  “Well, you ladies are welcome to come along.” Mitch slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. “We’re just waiting on Gooch. He should be here in five.”

  “Please,” Caitlin scoffed. “Knowing Gooch, he’s planning some grand entrance like a one-man motorcade down the street.” She started back to her car, Mimi in tow. “We’ll meet you there,” she called over her shoulder.

  “See you there,” Jason called blandly after them.

  Gooch’s car eased around the corner from Shirley Avenue and paused alongside them. “Let’s go!” he hollered from his open window. “Pizza!” Mitch locked up his car and the two piled in the back of Gooch’s. It was easier to leave Mitch’s Toyota where it was, as parking was a premium on Colley Avenue on Friday night.

  They found Caitlin and Mimi seated near the bar, crowned by a cloud of smoke. Mimi’s cigarette smoldered in an ashtray in the center of their table. Gooch, to Jason’s relief, bounded straight over and stubbed the offending stick into ash.

  “Hey!” Mimi nearly spat out a mouthful of water. “I wasn’t done with that.”

  “Yes you were.” Gooch eyed her sternly. “Pollute your lungs all you want, not in my space.”

  “Well, you didn’t have to sit here,” Mimi huffed, folding her arms.

  “You didn’t have to join us for dinner,” Mitch jumped in, and Jason wondered if his friend was no longer entertaining thoughts of asking Mimi to prom.

  Mitch drummed his fingers on the table, inching them closer to the open soft pack by Mimi’s wrist; Mimi snatched it away before he could do the same.

  “Look, I just wanted one lousy cigarette,” she insisted. “It’s not against the law.” She looked Caitlin for support, but her friend was pretending to study the menu, holding it up to conceal her face.

  “Hey, I prefer any pizza without the rich smoky aroma, thank you very much,” Gooch said, “and I’m sure everyone else here agrees with me, right?”

  “Right,” Mitch nodded to the waitress, who approached with five glasses of water for the table.

  “Jason?” Gooch prodded.

  But Jason’s attention was fixed upon the bar television, which flashed a late news tease with a photo of Bart Scarsdale, followed by a clip of a body covered in a dark tarp being wheeled into an ambulance.

  Chapter Five

  “How’s the soup?”

  Dan faced the large picture window that granted patrons of the Wild Monkey a view of Colley Avenue, deaf to Willie’s query. He focused instead on a slender long-haired woman in a denim tank dress walking an equally slender whippet. Sitting still in his seat, with his right hand curled around his water glass, he followed the woman with her eyes as she strode past the Dairy Queen and a string of frilly boutiques until she was out of sight.

  The woman had hair like Bailey’s; Dan shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. He saw Bailey everywhere now: on the street, at the bank, in his mind. Why was he letting her stalk his mentally as well?

  “Dan?” Willie waggled her fingers in her date’s face.

  “Huh?” Dan absently stirred his bowl of sausage gumbo before bringing a thick mouthful of broth to his lips. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “You say something?”

  “Oh, no,” Willie replied. She buttered a hard roll and set it down on her bread plate, as if rethinking a bite. “I was just saying to myself that our waiter has a nice-looking butt.”

  “Uh-huh.” Dan was not listening.

  “You know, he hit on me while you were in the bathroom. I’m thinking of inviting him over to my place after I get rid of you tonight. He claims to be double-jointed.”

  “Sounds like fun.” Dan tore his roll in half and soaked a piece in the soup bowl.

  “You’re not even listening.” Willie playfully flicked a bread crumb at Dan’s head.

  “Am so,” he insisted. “The waiter hit you on the way to the bathroom and his joints ache.”

  Willie exhaled loudly. Behind them the chatter of other diners rose to a crescendo, overpowering the light jazz seeping though speakers mounted in the ceiling’s corners.

  “Look behind you,” Dan said suddenly.

  Willie complied, twisting her torso to see the activity across the street. She watched Jason and Mitch conversing with two young ladies outside Book Bonanza.

  Willie recognized the petite blonde. “That’s Caitlin Stevens in the pink sweater. The other girl I don’t know.”

  “Mimi Washburn. She was in Jason’s youth group with Mitch for a while, until her parents left my parish for St. Christopher’s.”

  “Caitlin seems rather sweet on Jason, you think?” Willie asked as the kids tumbled into their respective cars. “It’s difficult to misread how she looks at him sometimes.” She turned back to Dan. “Are the feelings mutual?”

  Dan shook his head. “You know as much as I do, maybe more. He’s taken her out to movies before, but in a group with his friends. Jason hasn’t really dated.”

  He scraped up one last spoonful of gumbo before the waiter arrived with their entrees. Willie paused over her own order of pan-fried tilapia and black-eyed pea hash. She balked when Dan asked the waiter for hot sauce. “How can you do that to your stomach? As if that jambalaya isn’t spicy enough to blow steam out of your ears.”

  Dan speared a chunk of andouille sausage. “I like spicy food.”

  “What about spicy women?” Willie raised an eyebrow.

  “You know any?”

  The next crumb she tossed in Dan’s direction landed right in his dish.

  “Don’t start that with me,” he warned kindly. “I haven’t lost a food fight yet. I’m a regular welterweight.”

  “And I’m a weight watcher,” quippe
d Willie as the waiter returned and set a bottle of Texas Pete set near Dan’s waterglass. “Try not to mix those up.”

  They ate quietly for the next few minutes, pausing only to query each other about the quality of dinner. It was not until Dan observed a group of young people no older than Jason stroll past the window on the way to the adjacent movie theater that either one spoke again.

  “You know anything about prom?” Dan asked. “I mean, I know you’re the committee advisor, but do you know who’s taking whom?”

  Willie thought a moment, then folded her napkin down in her lap. “I know you’re taking me,” she said sweetly. “Seriously, you already know who the regular couples are around school.” She ticked off several names with her fingers, then added, “I haven’t heard of any recent breakups, so I’m guessing those pairings are set. I hear Marcus Gucci is taking Jenny Casaletto.”

  That came as no surprise to Dan. Jenny ran track and played volleyball and softball for the school, and was voted alongside Gooch as Most Athletic. One could not think of a more appropriate match.

  “I tried asking Jason about it, and he’s still evasive.”

  “Well, like I told him last night, if he wants to go he had better get his slip in to me soon.” Willie set her fork down and looked into Dan’s eyes. “You think maybe he’s too preoccupied with college? Granted, he’ll only be an hour away, but there’s still going to be quite a bit of moving involved.”

  Dan shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s not as excited about school as he initially was, either. Eight months ago all he could talk about was getting his degree and maybe studying abroad a semester. Now,” he sighed, “all he does is hole himself up in his room. I think that Trivial Matters thing was the first time he genuinely felt happy in weeks, losing notwithstanding. I just wish he’d open up to me and tell me what’s on his mind.”

  “He’s a teenager, Dan. An adult, actually, now that he’s just turned eighteen,” Willie pointed out. “Surely you were secretive with your parents at that age, too. Maybe it’s just cold feet. He’s wanted to get out of high school for years, and now that the time is here he’s just scared, is all. I felt that way, too. Everybody feels like that.”

  Willie scooped up the last of her meal. A few pockmarks of rice clung to the edge of her plate. “Shoot, my first quarter at Agnes Scott, I called my mother every night crying to come home, and I was only on the other side of town! It still scared me, though, being on my own.”

  “I imagine it’s a different experience for everyone,” Dan agreed. “Old Dominion looked so appealing in the catalog when I thumbed through it in my room, and when I got there you’d have thought I was on a whole new planet.”

  “How’d you get over the jitters?”

  Dan smiled sadly. “I met Liza.” Willie smiled, too.

  “So maybe Jason will meet somebody nice at W&M to take his mind off of being homesick, but not enough that he’s distracted from studying. Plus, won’t Mitch be his roommate for the first year? They can have fun together.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “That he’ll have his friends around him?” This puzzled Willie.

  Dan waited until the plates were cleared and the check was requested before leaning closer to Willie. “What I’m about to tell you isn’t a joke, okay?” Willie, taken aback by Dan’s serious tone, nodded and leaned close as well.

  Dan swallowed, his face creased with worry. “I was putting away some laundry when I found some...magazines under Jason’s bed. I was snooping, I admit it. I’m concerned about my son, and I feel as long as he’s under my roof I have the right to examine his, er, belongings in the event he has something he shouldn’t have.”

  “Dan, Jason’s a good kid. I doubt he’s stockpiling weapons, otherwise you’d have discovered that during your little inspection.” When Dan appeared irritated at this, she calmed her voice. “So you found some magazines. Boys that age are curious, but in time Jason will realize he doesn’t need that kind of material. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who’d become a lifelong subscriber to Playboy.”

  Dan shook his head. “It wasn’t Playboy. It was Pumping Iron, Muscle and Fitness, you know.” Dan’s lower lip trembled slightly as he spoke. “That sort of thing.”

  “And we’re concerned because...” Willie prodded.

  “Because they’re all filled with pictures of muscle-bloated men with shoestring swimsuits so tight you can tell which ones are circumcised,” Dan hissed, suddenly aware of how his voice carried through the small restaurant. The couple next to them, now enjoying coffee and dessert, ceased their own conversation to the pretense of eating, but Dan sensed they were eavesdropping.

  Willie took Dan’s hand and gently unclenched his fingers to intertwine with hers. “Danny, last time I checked, those magazines are only trying to sell that level of fitness to their readers and inform them about bodybuilding. Of course there are going to be revealing pictures. Of women, too!”

  “Trust me, I know what a woman in a bikini looks like. These weren’t women.”

  “Well, I doubt Jason is using those magazines just to ogle muscle men, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Willie huffed.

  “So why would he hide them under his bed, then?” Dan asked, more quietly this time. “Why not leave them out in the open like he does with the rest of his crap? He’s certainly not shy about his preference for rock music. The whole neighborhood knows that.”

  “Maybe he thinks you’ll rib him about wanting to get into shape.”

  “Jason already is in shape,” Dan argued. “He’s played baseball for years, and he and Mitch and Gooch are always playing football or basketball or something. He’s never expressed a desire to pump anything in his life. I can’t even get him to fill up the tank in the car.”

  “Have you bothered to ask him, instead of jumping to the conclusion that your son might be gay?” Willie asked.

  “No, I haven’t. I guess I’m afraid to, afraid he’ll say yes.” Dan fiddled with his napkin. “I’m thinking this whole prom business is tied in somehow. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about prom because he doesn’t want to go with a girl.”

  “I still think you’re jumping the gun,” Willie said firmly. “Besides, I buy fashion magazines that feature pictures of scantily-clad women, and it doesn’t make me a lesbian. Of course, it doesn’t make me feel good to be constantly bombarded with pictures of skinny women, either.”

  She paused a second and regarded Dan with a quiet, pleasant gaze. “This is when you’re supposed to say that I look fine just the way I am.”

  “Huh?” Dan snapped awake from whatever bubble was enveloping his thoughts, and he squeezed Willie’s hand. “Willie, you know you’ve always looked good to me. More than good; you’re the loveliest woman in school in this restaurant, in Ghent...”

  Willie leaned back in her chair and smirked. “Go on, I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  “I could go on for days,” Dan hinted, “but we’d miss the prom, and I have a feeling these people want to go home and close up the place.”

  Willie slung her purse over her shoulder. “So let’s walk and talk,” she said.

  They paid the check and strolled up one end of Colley Avenue, pausing at each darkened storefront, admiring decorative displays of cookie jars and embroidered pillows, and colorful travel posters beckoning passersby to consider a winter retreat in the Caribbean. They crossed Baldwin Street to Starbucks for a couple of iced lattes, which they sipped in between conversation as they meandered back up the street.

  “Danny?”

  “Mm.”

  “What if Jason were to tell you he might think he was gay, what would you do? What would you say to him?”

  Dan answered almost immediately, as if he had been rehearsing silently a reaction to such a situation for several years, in the event. Be prepared, echoed the familiar Boy Scout motto that was his mantra as a youth. “I would pray, first of all, that God would grant me the patience to get through something like
that. I’d pray for Jason, for myself, for guidance on dealing with it. You know, when Jason was growing up, the possibility of him having homosexual tendencies never crossed my mind. I guess I was too concerned about his welfare and his grades, whether or not he was eating well and getting enough exercise.”

  “You were being a dad,” Willie observed.

  “Jason’s my boy,” Dan said. “He’s all I have left of his mother, and all that’s left of the Greeveys, since my father and I were only children. I’d always hoped he’d eventually marry and have his own family—”

  He stopped talking and abruptly let go of Willie’s hand. She noticed Dan’s eyes were suddenly glassy and rimmed red.

  “You know,” he continued, his chest heaving lightly, “I thought I had an answer, but honestly I don’t know what I’d do or say, or how I’d react. Would I yell and scream, or cry, or just stare dumbstruck at him like when Liza told me about her cancer?”