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

by Leigh Ellwood

  “Oh, baby,” Willie reached for him and was relieved when Dan did not resist her arms around his shoulders. The plastic cup in her hands felt wet and cold against his cheek. “I didn’t mean to make you upset, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Dan whispered back, his face softening. Reluctantly he walked free from Willie’s loose embrace and guided her back to the car. “I’m not upset. I don’t know if I should be or not. This could all be in my head, as you said earlier. If it isn’t, I’ll let Jason come to me on his own time.”

  “Still, if Jason were, uh,” he stammered. He could not even bring himself to say the word. Did he actually believe saying it out loud would make it reality, he wondered. “You know what I mean, Willie. I’d hope Jason could feel he could come to me, with any problem or concern on his mind.”

  “He will.” Willie kissed Dan on the cheek, who followed up with a quick brush on the lips to Willie’s delight. She turned back to another storefront and missed Dan’s face creasing back into a worried frown.

  * * * *

  They wound up at Willie’s apartment, squeezed together in front of an A&E documentary both had wanted to watch. Willie popped a bowl of microwave popcorn while Dan competed with Carmen Jones, Willie’s tiger cat, for couch space and the mistress’s affections. The playful battle that ensued between man and cat escalated into such a mess—popcorn in the sofa cushions and on the rug—that Willie threatened to put them both out for the night.

  As it was, Dan left before the late news. Perhaps one day, he told himself as he kissed Willie goodnight, the goodnights would no longer be followed with a car trip home. He bestowed one last scratch behind Carmen’s ears to show no hard feelings and whistled into the cool May night; a thick haze glowed overhead, creating ethereal coronas around the lampposts along Willie’s street. He felt tempted to leave the car and walk home, it was that nice outside.

  Light filled the windows of the kitchen and back door as he steered into the driveway. Exuberant, chortling voices brawled into the night; Dan heard them walking to the door.

  The second his key penetrated the door lock, however, the conversation immediately ceased. A shadowed figure approached in the curtained window and Dan was let inside by his son. “Hey, Dad,” said a barefoot Jason, still in his jeans and t-shirt. He pointed an open bottle of root beer at his father. “Want something to drink?”

  “No, thanks.” Dan tossed his keys on the kitchen counter and nodded to the priest sitting with his back toward him as if he had remained rooted to the same spot the whole night. Ringo lay at the older man’s feet in a deep stage of sleep.

  “Ben,” Dan warmly greeted his friend, “how was the show?”

  Father Ben sat up and stretched. “Very good, very good, thanks. Very informative interview. I kind of wish now I had taken some notes, or at least got the address to order a transcript of the program. There were some points on the Humanae Vitae made that I’d like to use in a sermon someday. I suppose I’ll have to trust my memory to that.”

  “You should’ve said something earlier,” Dan said. “I have plenty of blank tapes I could have used in the DVR.” As soon as he said that, however, he realized the priest did not have a DVR of his own. What use was a DVR to a man without a television?

  “I could fire up the Net and go to EWTN’s website,” Jason offered. “I’ll get the address of the show for you there.”

  “That would be great, thanks,” Father Ben smiled. “Well, I think I’ve overstayed my time here.” The priest declined the Greeveys’ offer to stay a while longer and have some coffee. “Thanks, anyway. There’s Mass early in the morning, not to mention the usual round of visits to EVMS and Immaculata. Oh, yes,” he pointed at Jason. “I’ll need the name of that fellow again so we can put his name in the petitions.”

  Dan draped his jacket over an unused chair and loosened his tie. “What name? What petition?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Jason wrote Bart’s name on a Post-It note to give to Father Ben and looked up, his smile vanished. He then launched into a brief summary of Bart Scarsdale’s death, paraphrased from the report on the eleven o’clock news.

  “I saw a bulletin on the TV at Fellini’s, and I had Mitch drop me back here after dinner. I mean, I was just so freaked I couldn’t do anything after hearing that,” Jason added. Looking at the empty plate where Jason had been sitting, traces of meatloaf crumbs and brown gravy dirtying the goldenrod floral design, Dan observed to himself that the shock of the man’s death did little to suppress Jason’s appetite.

  “That’s terrible,” was all Dan could say. So it was Bart who was found dead last night; he had forgotten all about that tidbit of news from Maura. Bart, so confident and ebullient after winning that contest...so tragic.

  “Don’t I know it!” Jason said, leaning back on the sink. “We talked to that guy just last night, and now he’s dead! The news said the police were treating the case as a homicide. That could’ve been one of us, Dad!”

  “We don’t know that, son, don’t get all excited. Maybe the police are only treating it as a homicide now because they don’t have all the facts yet.” Bart could have suffered a heart attack or a stroke, Dan thought. An autopsy would confirm that. “What did the news say?”

  “All they said was that somebody found him floating underneath the walkway, down by where the ferry and the bigger boats dock,” Jason said. “Had to have been between the time we left and eleven last night, if it first made the news last night, though. The cuff of his pants caught on a nail and kept him near the docks, so he didn’t drift away. They didn’t say anything more, like how he was killed.”

  “Died. We don’t know his death wasn’t accidental,” Dan said. “He looked to me like he had put away more than his share of beer, so maybe he fell into the river and and drowned and nobody saw. It just seems odd that somebody could get away with murdering a man at the Waterside, especially last night.” The plaza was abuzz with activity and loud music, he remembered, and because the rest of Norfolk tended to wind down at ten o’clock, many local night owls willing to pay for parking could still partake of cold beer and hot wings at Hooters, Jillian’s or any of the other bars on the second floor of the crescent-shaped building. Surely there would have been people milling about by the boats. Somebody had to have seen something amiss.

  “That’s a possibility,” the priest hypothesized, “but I’d think if a person slipped from the docks somebody on one of those boats would have witnessed it. Of course, if the witnesses were drinking, who knows?” Father Ben folded the Post-It note and slipped it into his pants pocket. “I doubt I’d sound credible myself after a few pints. I’d be pointing out the dancing hippos from Fantasia gliding across the Elizabeth.”

  Dan escorted the priest out of the kitchen toward the front door. “And you call yourself an Irishman,” he groaned.

  Later, as Dan prepared for bed he spied a faint light spilling from Jason’s bedroom. He peered inside to discover his son bent over his desk, writing intently on a yellow steno pad. He too was dressed for bed in a sleeveless Norfolk Tides t-shirt and ash sweatpants. Ringo, curled on his corner of Jason’s bed, acknowledged Dan’s entrance with a sleepy look, but did not wag his tail.

  “Getting a head start on exams?” Dan prodded. “You realize tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  “Huh?” Jason bolted upright. “No, I was just trying to figure out something.”

  Dan bent slightly forward to see over his son’s shoulder and saw a rough sketch of an aerial view of the Waterside and surrounding areas. Jason tapped the eraser end of his pencil on the end of the building—the right side facing Waterside Drive—which was connected to the Sheraton Hotel through a narrow walkway.

  “I was thinking about what you said earlier, about people walking around at night,” Jason explained, “and so I was trying to think of any parts of the Waterside that are secluded, like over here by Joe’s Crab Shack.” Jason rubbed a trail of eraser residue on the pad as he mapped out an imaginary path to the hot
el.

  “Say Bart was just outside getting some fresh air,” he posed. “The killer sneaks up behind him with a gun or knife or whatever and moves him over to the walkway near the bushes, which is pretty dark in the daytime and you don’t normally see a lot of people around there, and he’s killed.”

  Jason moved his body to one side to allow Dan a better view of the pad. “I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? They’re out of the way, and even the people sleeping on the boats don’t hear anything.”

  “Okay,” Dan played along, scratching his chin, “but Joe’s opened up the patio section, so wouldn’t the people eating outside have seen or heard something? How does the killer manage to get Bart underneath the docks? Bart’s, er, Bart was a big guy. No way one person could’ve carried him from the bushes to the docks without being conspicuous.”

  Jason sniffed. “Who says there was just one killer? It was never determined on the news how many people were involved.”

  “What about motive?”

  “Robbery,” Jason said emphatically, loud enough to rouse Ringo from his slumber. In protest, the dog stood on the bed, shook until his medals jangled, and left to find peace and quiet in Dan’s room. “Bart just won that thousand dollars, didn’t he? Somebody followed him out of Jillian’s, hustled him into the bushes where nobody could see, took his wallet and killed him.”

  “Why kill him for a check that can’t be cashed?” Dan paced the room, kicking away a pair of discarded blue jeans and empty CD jewel boxes. Why did Jason not apply the same zest to cleaning his room as he did in examining the death of a man they barely knew? “I’m sure the police took note if the check was missing and began alerting the area banks.”

  “Okay, so maybe the death was unintentional, Dad,” Jason said. “Maybe the killer only meant to rob Bart, got too forceful, and put him in the water to make everyone think he’d drowned.”

  “It just doesn’t seem logical, unless the person or people thought Bart was carrying a lot of cash. They get what, the contest check and some credit cards? All easily traceable.”

  “Don’t forget the Trivial Matters tickets.”

  Dan nodded. “So if these guys are stupid enough to kill a man in a high traffic area, maybe they’re stupid enough to actually go to the show.” Dan crouched by Jason’s bed. “Now all we have to do is find out when the taping is and alert Trivial Matters. Tell ’em to be on the lookout for two shady characters in a New York television studio, and I don’t mean Dave and Regis.”

  Jason sighed. His shoulders dropped and he loosened the grip on his pencil. “Hey,” Dan said soothingly, patting his son’s head, “leave the sleuthing to the police, okay? It’s their job to solve this, not yours.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Jason scooted his chair back and stretched his long, tanned arms. Dan noticed slight toning in the boy’s biceps and triceps. Was Willie right, had Jason really been reading those magazines only for the bodybuilding tips?

  “I just can’t believe he’s dead, you know. I mean, we didn’t know him very well or very long, but he seemed like a nice guy.”

  “He certainly didn’t ask for such a gruesome end,” Dan agreed. “Nobody does.”

  “One thing I can do, though.” Jason lurched forward and landed palms down against his bed. Flipping over with a bounce, he opened the top drawer of his nightstand and produced his First Communion rosary. His since he was seven, the cocoa brown beads showed evidence of wear from years of being pressed between fingers. Some of the tiny chain links and the crucifix head also long ago lost their sheen.

  “Want me to join you?” Dan asked. “We can alternate decades like we usually do.”

  Jason shook his head. “S’alright, you go on to bed, Dad. I kinda need to stay up. I got a lot more to say, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, okay,” Dan said softly, slowing backing out of the room. “I’ll wake you for Mass, then?”

  “Sure.”

  They bade each other goodnight, and as Dan reached his room the light in Jason’s extinguished. Just as well he did not join Jason’s rosary prayer, Dan thought as he slid into bed, careful not to disturb Ringo snoozing on the left side where Liza used to lay. He was bone tired, and did not doubt that his own light would dim once his head hit the pillow.

  Lord, whatever he prays, it goes double for me, he prayed silently. He doesn’t seem to want to tell me what’s bothering him these days, but he’ll tell You, and I know You probably know better what to say back than I do.

  Dan closed his eyes, weighed down by thoughts of Bart’s death, his relationship with Willie, and Jason’s...what? Possible interest in freelancing for health magazines? Bodybuilding?

  Men?

  Through all these hot button issues dancing about in his brain, Dan was comforted by at least one truth learned this night.

  At least he and Jason were talking about something.

  Chapter Six

  True to his word, Father Ben acknowledged Bart Scarsdale’s passing during the reading of the petitions at Mass the next morning, and implored the scant parishioners in attendance to pray for deliverance of his soul and those of others faithfully departed. Dan and Jason, sitting up front, bowed their heads earnestly.

  “We pray to the Lord,” the priest intoned.

  “Lord, hear our prayer,” the parishioners murmured. Eternal rest grant unto him, Lord, added Jason silently. Mom, too.

  The Greeveys returned home to a howling dog and a ringing phone. “I’ll get it,” Jason called as he dived over the sofa to grab the handheld receiver resting on an adjacent end table. “It’s probably Mitch wanting to know if I need a ride to work.”

  “Fine.” Dan rummaged through kitchen cabinets for cooking utensils. “How do you want your eggs?”

  “Scrambled, please.” While several strips of bacon sizzled on the stove, Dan reached for a spatula just as a paled Jason stumbled into the kitchen and fell into a chair. The look on his son’s face concerned him, and for a moment he wondered if Jason realized he was clutching the phone with whitened knuckles. “What? Who was it?” Dan wanted to know, thoughts of bad news of his elderly mother coming to mind.

  “Jason, answer me. Who was on the phone?”

  Jason only stared straight ahead, his breathing shallow. He opened his mouth to speak when the phone chirped loudly in his hand. Jason instantly tossed it on the table with a gasp, shrinking away as if avoiding a poisonous snake.

  A puddle of bacon grease exploded in the pan and tiny droplets shot upward and stung Dan’s forearms. He rubbed away the discomfort. “You going to get that?” he asked his son as the phone continued to peal.

  Jason, still mute, shook his head, and Dan lurched over with a sigh to answer the phone. “Take over,” he barked. “Make sure the house doesn’t burn down.” He answered the phone to Bailey Stone’s breathless, pouty greeting.

  Great. “Uh, Bailey, this isn’t a good time right now,” Dan said, craning his head back to watch his son robotically cook breakfast. “We’re in the middle of ah, a family situation right now. Perhaps another time?”

  “Sure,” Bailey sounded disappointed. “Actually, what I have to say really needs to be said in person. Are you free tonight? We could go to a movie or something.”

  “I can’t tonight.” Or ever, why can’t you accept that? Dan gripped the back of the chair for support; the aroma of blackening bacon filled the kitchen and suddenly he felt nauseous. He pressed the receiver to his chest. “That looks good, Jason, go ahead and take it out.”

  Jason ripped a few paper towels from their roll and layered them on the counter to dry the bacon strips. Carefully he poured the excess grease into a tin can Dan kept in the refrigerator and then started cracking eggs into the same pan.

  “Oh, okay,” Bailey said quietly. Then, a bit more forcefully, “So, you’re going out, then?”

  “Bailey,” Dan sighed. “Please, can we talk later? My son is about to set the kitchen on fire.” He hung up without saying goodbye and slumped into th
e same chair where his son had been.

  “I’m not burning the kitchen down,” Jason said defensively, sounding like his normal self again.

  Dan opened his mouth to retort when the phone rang yet again. “Now what?” he cried as the receiver shook slightly in his hand. He mashed the talk button. “Grand Central Station,” he greeted the caller.

  “Hello?” called a cautious, wilting voice on the other end. Edna Wallis.

  “Mrs. Wallis, hi.” Dan felt his heart leap upward. His colleague must have thought he was out of his mind.

  “Am I calling at a bad time? I can try again later.”

  “Oh, no, no.” Dan picked up a fork as his son set plates of bacon and eggs at the table. “We’ve just come from church.”