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

by Leigh Ellwood

  This was getting weird, Jason decided, but for the sake of keeping the old woman from dissolving into the panic of reality, he played along with her inventive memory. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I remember it well. It was a Florsheim box. Very nice shoes. Now, how is that darling lady of yours? You two should stop by sometime for dinner.”

  “Uh, she’s great.” Avalanche. Watch for falling rocks. “You’ve met her, right?”

  Edith thought a moment, then admitted no, she had not. From the revelation formed an idea in Jason’s mind.

  “That’s right,” he slapped his head. “I could have sworn I brought her by before. She’s standing over there, let me go introduce you right now.”

  Caitlin was munching on a pimento cheese finger sandwich and making small talk with Bart’s sister Esther when he appeared at her side. To her it probably sounded as if Jason had hissed yermahwy in her ear.

  “What?” she asked through a mouthful of sandwich.

  Jason locked his hand in the crook of her elbow and gently pulled her away. “Excuse us, please,” he said to Bart’s sister, and repeated his words. “You’re my wife. Mrs. Scarsdale thinks we’re married.”

  “Really? How did she come to that conclusion?”

  “Look, you’re the drama student. Just play along, okay? She isn’t all there, she thinks Bart’s still alive!”

  “Right,” Caitlin whispered back, now serious. Introduced to the elderly woman, she flashed a gracious smile.

  “So nice your fella finally managed to bring you by. I know how busy you young couples are these days,” Edith said, her smiling face falling slack with worry. “I’m sorry Bart isn’t home yet, he’s usually not so late.” She sat up slightly and looked around the room as if all the mourners present did not exist. Caitlin cast Jason a glance that said You weren’t kidding.

  “God forbid he should miss a meal. It’s a good thing I left the stew to simmer in the crock pot, else it’d all get cold, now, wouldn’t it? I suppose he’s making a house call. The closer to tax time it gets, the more anxious his clients become. Everybody needs help, and they won’t stop pestering him until they’re certain to get a check back.”

  The tax deadline was last month, but neither Jason nor Caitlin dared to mention it.

  Lisa interrupted them to inform her mother of some new arrivals. “Quite all right,” Jason conceded, squeezing the old woman’s hand. “Take care of yourself, Mrs. Scarsdale.”

  “I do hope you’ll stay until Bart comes home,” Edith said. “He shouldn’t be much longer, and he’d love to see you.”

  “Right.” Jason and Caitlin eased away to allow another couple to pay their condolences. They were back at the doorway where Mitch and Gooch had made their way back together. Both appeared ready to bolt.

  Caitlin exhaled, eyes wide. “Can you believe that?”

  “Believe what?” Mitch wanted to know.

  Gooch, however, was no longer in the mood for idle chatter. Fifteen minutes was long enough in a stranger’s house filled with strange people. “Tell us in the car. We can leave now, right? You’ve made your peace with whatever?” he asked Jason.

  “Almost,” he said to Gooch’s weighty sigh. He looked around him to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. “Hang here a few seconds more? I gotta pee.”

  “Hurry up.”

  Jason found a guest bathroom in a second hallway spawned from a second entrance in the kitchen. For show he slipped inside and washed his hands in the event a mourner or a Scarsdale materialized nearby. Waiting a few moments, Jason tiptoed from door to door, uncovering a linen closet and a bedroom trimmed with yellowed lace curtains and thick cherry furniture and reeking of ointment. This had to be Edith’s bedroom.

  The third door, across from that, revealed a twin-size bed, an oak dresser, framed posters depicting various bikini-clad models, and a work station littered with paper and floppy disks.

  “Man,” Jason muttered. Bart’s room was no bigger than his own, and at first sight it appeared the late accountant had lived like a teenager as well, considering the trappings of the past dotted throughout the room. A high school banner was tacked to the closet door, and pictures of what looked to be Senior Year Bart posing with friends were tucked into the dresser mirror frame.

  He turned an ear down the hall; sounds of the shivah hummed with conversation and clattering silverware. Jason was not missed.

  A surface scan of the desk revealed nothing out of the ordinary for an accountant’s office, at least, nothing in Jason’s view of accounting. Manila folders were spread out in a fan pattern, each color-coded with stickers in a system only Bart could interpret. Jason sifted through a plastic case of computer disks, but no names on the labels struck him as odd—each month of the past three years had its own disk. The temptation to boot up the PC passed quickly, as Jason doubted the machine could cooperate with him in the short time he had. Who knew if he could decipher filenames in the hard drive, anyway.

  He paused, his hand poised above the desk. What was he looking for, anyway? Evidence? A reason to think Bart might have known his attacker, therefore negating the random mugging gone bad theory? There was always that possibility; perhaps Bart did know his attacker. Maybe he did the guy’s taxes.

  “Maybe he was killed because he didn’t produce a big enough refund check,” Jason muttered. Ridiculous. He did not blame Gooch and Mitch for being annoyed with him. Then again, people killed for a lot less these days.

  To hell with this, he thought. I can’t see how I could find anything...

  His thoughts dissolved to silence as his eyes fell to a folder tab jutting out from underneath a light blue three-ring binder. He brushed the bulky object aside and lifted the manila folder containing invoices and carbons. Bascock, Incorporated was printed neatly on the tab, and for some reason Jason could not let go of the folder.

  He wanted a peek, but the growing volume of voices in the distance alerted him to pending unwelcome guests and caused his heart and head to throb in unison. He peered out into the hallway and, seeing only shadows slithering up the far wall, made a break for the adjacent guest bathroom and locked the door behind him.

  He emerged seconds later, the folder tucked discreetly into the back of his jeans and underneath his long-sleeve work shirt, to see a tall man in a charcoal suit staring back with a sour expression.

  “Pardon me,” Jason muttered, but the man only elbowed him aside and slammed the door shut.

  The cabbage, he decided. It had to be.

  Chapter Eight

  “What’s yours say, Gooch?” Mitch fiddled with the cellophane wrapper of his own fortune cookie. The four argued over dinner on the trip back to Ghent, settling on Chinese only after Caitlin got Gooch to curtail his obnoxious Jackie Chan impersonation, flying fists and all, and focus on the road. Now stuffed from multiple servings of sweet and sour chicken and lo mein noodles, the four lingered over fortune cookies, arguing over how to divide the check.

  Gooch squinted at the thin strip of paper between his thumbs and forefingers and said, “‘Confucius says your car is being towed.’”

  Caitlin choked back a sip of Diet Coke. “It does not say that!”

  “It does so. It’s written in pencil, too.”

  “Give me that.” Caitlin reached across the table for Gooch’s fortune, but the boy was too wily. He held the scrap high above his head and batted Caitlin’s advances with his free hand. “Stuh-op!” he whined. “You’ll lose it, and I want to play the lottery numbers on the other side.”

  Caitlin folded her arms. “I see, and what are your numbers? One, two, three, four and five?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Forget it.” Caitlin pried open her own cookie. Small worries will vanish soon read the fortune she extracted.

  “Bearing the burden of any small worries, Cait?” Mitch asked, eyebrows raised.

  Caitlin stuffed the cookie shards in her mouth and slowly shook her head. “Just finals, and those are hardly small.�
�

  “Come on,” Gooch groaned. “You’re the freakin’ valedictorian! Your smallest worry is gonna be whether to wave with your palms facing out or in when your minions carry you onstage aboard your golden caravan.”

  “Knock it off. You know it’s not official yet,” she said. “Barry Frey’s GPA is identical to mine. They may have to go all the way back to the sixth grade like they did last year with Megan and Tiffany to determine who gets what. There’s no telling what could happen during Finals Week, either. You’re only as good as your next exam.”

  “Who’s ranked third?” Gooch asked. “Not that I care. The only numbers that matter to me are in my earned run average, the lower the better.”

  “Ashleigh Thornton,” Caitlin stated matter-of-factly, then cast a wan smile at Jason. “You’re fourth.”

  Jason smiled sadly and flipped his own fortune between his fingers. A friend admires you from afar. Pretty standard stuff as far as fortune cookie platitudes went, he thought. He hoped dearly that an enemy was not watching from afar as well. Or near.

  “Hmph,” he muttered. “If this were the Olympics I wouldn’t even get a medal.”

  “You’ll get one for being in National Honor Society,” Caitlin said soothingly, “all of us will. Plus the top ten students get academic letters.”

  “And twenty years down the road, none of it will be worth a damn.” Mitch raised his dewy glass in a mock toast. “Like IBM is going to care about my brief career as treasurer of the senior class when I apply for work after college.”

  “Like IBM is going to let you in their front door,” Gooch cracked.

  Mitch stuck out his lower lip. “Just for that, the next time I create a virus I won’t name it after you.”

  “The Gooch virus. Has a nice ring to it.” Jason sipped his lukewarm tea. It did little to ease the ache in his head. Lisa Scarsdale’s shrill voice provided an unsettling background noise in his brain. Mama, mama, Bart’s dead. Snap outtavit!

  So rapt was Jason that he did not realize Mitch had snatched his fortune paper until it was read aloud.

  “Ooh, baby,” Mitch whistled. “I wonder how afar your admirer is.”

  “Hopefully not too far, so she can get here by prom.” Gooch’s eyebrows bobbed up and down in a suggestive manner. “Unless, of course, you already have a date, then it could get ugly.”

  “Who are you taking to prom, Jason?” Caitlin asked. Her body stiffened against the high-backed chair.

  “I don’t have a date,” Jason admitted, omitting that he had not even reserved a ticket. With all the excitement surrounding the trip to and from Bart’s shivah, he decided to leave well enough alone and avoid another lengthy conversation. Caitlin would want to know why, he figured, and he was not about to get into that.

  To his relief, Caitlin did not press too hard. “Oh,” she relaxed. “That’s not unusual. Lots of people are going stag, I am, too.”

  “Really?” Gooch said, surprised. “Nobody asked you?”

  “Believe it not, no.” Caitlin looked at Jason as she said this.

  “Yeah?” asked Mitch. “Wanna go with me?”

  “What?” Caitlin was flustered. “I thought you were going to ask Mimi.”

  Mitch pushed a final, unwanted bite of sweet and sour chicken crust around his plate. “Yeah, well,” he griped, “that didn’t work out. Now I’m stuck with this limo deal. I’m going to look like a moron riding by myself. You and Jenny ought to ride with me. You too, Jason.”

  Mitch leaned closer to Caitlin. “C’mon, it won’t be that bad,” he assured her with a smile. “It’d beat going alone. Oh, sorry, bud.” he added to Jason.

  “Quicquid,” Jason said. Whatever.

  A miniature Chinese woman pushing a serving cart piled on the party’s emptied dishes, nodding enthusiastically as Jason handed her a fistful of bills with instructions to keep the change. “Well,” he glanced at his watch. “I got about twenty minutes before my curfew. How much more mischief can we squeeze in ‘til then?”

  “Dunno, is there an all-night shivah nearby we can crash?” Gooch asked. “Maybe pilfer some more dead people’s belongings?”

  Jason knew he was talking about the folder, which lay unopened in the back seat of Gooch’s car. Stealing it from the Scarsdales had bothered him plenty since leaving the house, and his growing guilt prevented him from inspecting it. Bascock, Inc. could turn out to be a dead end, he knew, and what would he have proved except that some company was going to be calling the Scarsdale house wanting their records and they would be missing.

  “Not cool,” Gooch had said. “Snacking on the free food was one thing...”

  “Hitting on the cute mourners another,” Caitlin needled.

  “Just get it outta my car, Greevey. Making eyes with a nice-looking lady is not illegal, but burglary is, and we weren’t exactly blending in well over there.”

  Jason glanced at his watch again. A few stray waitresses busily wiped away crumbs from lacquered tabletops while a busboy pushed a manual carpet broom across the same patch of burgundy floor. The cashier eyed the quartet anxiously as she shuffled fives and ones on her counter.

  “It’s gone,” Jason assured Gooch, “it will be. Mitch is taking me home, so it’s the last anyone needs to know of it. I don’t think anybody took note of your license number either, bud.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry,” Gooch mumbled. “I guess your paranoia is starting to wear off on me.” He elbowed Jason in the ribs, who laughed nervously. “And I’ll give you a ride home, don’t worry about it. I figure we’d already have been hunted down by now.”

  Caitlin sat up straight, ignoring Mitch’s attempts at monopolizing her attention. “Oh, I can take you home, Jason,” she offered quickly. “I live closer. There’s no sense for Gooch to drive through Ghent and then all the way back to Larchmont.”

  Gooch shook his head. “No problem, Cait, I don’t mind. Anyway, his stuff’s already in the back seat.”

  “Yeah,” Jason checked his watch again. “Nineteen minutes now. I need to get some sleep. Father Ben’s short a server for the eight o’clock and I promised to fill in.”

  Finally allowing the staff of Ghent Palace to close, the four exited into a cool breeze which rattled the flyers stapled loosely to the corner lamppost. Scraps of discarded straw wrappers and miscellaneous litter skidded past on the sidewalk, eluding Caitlin as she fussed at people’s ignorance of the environment in general and stooped down to pick up some trash.

  “Caitlin, don’t bother,” said Gooch, slinging open his car door. “You’ll be here all night.”

  “If this was Shea Stadium you’d be helping,” Caitlin retorted under her breath.

  But Gooch was already at the wheel of his Mustang and executing an awkward three point turn in a lull of traffic. Jason rolled down the passenger window to talk to Mitch and Caitlin. He folded his long arms underneath his chin. “Hey, you guys wanna get together this week to cram for the physics final?”

  Everyone liked that idea and agreed to talk more at school Monday morning. Jason waved from the retreating car as it crawled slowly along Colley. He faced forward in his seat when Gooch’s car turned left on Princess Anne Road. He missed seeing Caitlin in the distance, shoving Mitch with all her might against the picture window of the restaurant.

  * * * *

  They took the long way back to Jason’s house, rolling along Waterside Drive, blasting the stereo at high volume and surveying the crowds of people crossing the street toward the riverfront plaza. Hard to believe a murder occurred here just last night, Jason thought. People drifted in and out of the building as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened; nary a sign of police crime tape either, none that Jason could see passing by at thirty miles an hour.

  Despite having eaten earlier, they paused at the drive-through lane of a nearby Taco Bell, thereby lending credence to the myth of Chinese food leaving a person hungry an hour later. Or, in this case, twenty minutes later.

  Gooch wolfed down a bean burri
to in four bites and tossed the balled-up wrapper into the back seat, where it bounced off the folder. “So, Kojak,” he cajoled, “any ideas whodunnit?”

  Jason tore off a strip of flour tortilla from his own burrito and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger before popping it in his mouth. “The one thing I would really like to know: what happened to Elaine.”

  “Who’s Elaine?” Gooch angled the car for another sweep past the Waterside. Another red light, another group of people strolling toward a night of drink and revelry. Jason studied their profiles; was Elaine among them tonight?

  “Well, I don’t think her actual name is Elaine, but she was dressed to look like Elaine from Seinfeld for some contest Bar Norfolk was putting on,” Jason explained. “I saw her flirting with Bart when we left that night. Funny how none of the news reports mentioned that a woman with her description might have been a witness to his death.” Or, he shuddered, involved.