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

by Leigh Ellwood

  Jason loped slowly up the stairs, tossing the one videotape on his bed before joining his father. “Seriously, Dad,” he attempted to sound calm. “You guys can go out. I’ll call Mitch and Gooch and we can just hang here tonight and play video games.” He watched his father mill about the room, silently willing him away from the box.

  “Hell, why not call your other friends over, too?” Dan suggested. “You guys could have the whole downstairs, rent some movies and get a pizza. Willie and I can stay up here.”

  To Jason’s relief, Dan drifted into the bathroom, allowing Jason access to the box. “I-I guess we could do that,” he called. Two tapes were found easily among the collection, but Jason’s pulse quickened upon discovering a lone green label pulled apart from its mate. Great, Jason thought, now what?

  “Check my wallet. There should be a twenty in there,” echoed Dan over running water. “Get whatever you want and a small veggie pie for me.”

  Dan emerged to find the bedroom empty and his wallet missing. He found Jason in his room, propped up against two pillows on his bed. “The rental card’s in there too.”

  Jason shifted uncomfortably as the pointed edges of the videotapes poked through the pillows into his back. He tossed back Dan’s wallet and reached for the phone. “S’alright. I’ll have Gooch pick up something if he’s home.”

  He was. “Give me thirty to shower and change. I just got back from a pickup game at the courts,” Gooch said breathlessly over the phone. “I got some videos to watch, too, don’t worry about that. You’ll call Jenny, too, or you want me to?”

  “Go ahead,” Jason nodded, knowing to tack on an extra thirty minutes for Gooch, well aware that his friend was meticulous about grooming wherever Jenny, or any girl, for that matter, was involved.

  Caitlin was only too happy to be invited to the impromptu party, and offered to pick up some soda—thereby ensuring enough decaffeinated diet cola for herself, Jason knew—and Mimi. Mitch was not at home, but was expected back from the mall with his younger sister any minute now, so said Mrs. Rice. “I’ll tell him to just go on over, Jason,” she said pleasantly, then inquired about Dan. The two had been linked for years over junior team sports and Boy Scout outings, though Dan’s involvement with both ended as Jason entered high school. Belinda Rice, however, had three more boys after Mitch and his sister, Sarah.

  “He’s fine, Mrs. Rice.” Jason eyed his father coming into focus and smiled at his quickly paling face. Belinda Rice only called whenever she wanted Dan to serve on some sort of church committee, all of which the woman ultimately chaired. How she managed to give so much of her time to volunteer work while raising five children was anybody’s guess.

  “He said he’d see you at Mass next week, Mrs. Rice. Bye now,” he rang off, enjoying the look of disdain on his father’s face.

  “Thanks a lot,” Dan said coldly. “Now that woman’s going to chase me all over church for God knows what. I’ll lay odds she wants me to help her husband set up booths for the summer bazaar.” He rubbed the small of his back as if it were already aching from the labor. “She’d come to both Masses, too, to find me.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Dad. It’s for the church. Give something back.”

  Dan stomped out of his son’s bedroom, concealing from him a sly grin. “Oh, I will,” he promised. “I’ll give them my son as an eager volunteer.” He was down the stairs before Jason could protest.

  “Great,” he grumbled. Maybe he could sign up for a summer course load at William and Mary and opt out of helping, he thought.

  Certain his father was well out of earshot, Jason reached behind him for a tape and inspected it. He had plucked the one without a label and hoped it was the correct one, considering the sticky residue shining on its spine.

  The tape was standard VHS issue with the tab missing, he noticed, with about half of the tape already played. He could not tell at which speed the tape had been recorded, but guessed that it was set to record for two hours. He popped open the head and stared at the strip of black tape running the length of the cartridge, hoping the answers to all his questions would spill forth. What did Bascock do, and how was Bailey employed by them? How were Bart Scarsdale and Gordon involved, and what was so important about this company that people had to die?

  God, please help me, he prayed. Too many needless deaths are happening, and over what? I don’t want to be next, but now I feel I might be okay, unless the killer suspects I’m on to him.

  I wish I were on to him, thought Jason. I’d be happy to wake up Detective Simons in the middle of his nap. Let him catch the guy.

  He set the tape down on his nightstand and folded his hands on his chest. Downstairs he heard Willie’s light salutation and then Dan conversing with her. Feeling comforted by the white noise, Jason dozed off himself, the repetitious Jesus prayer cycling through his mind. Not even the jostling of the mattress by Ringo as the dog hopped upward and snuggled against his chest woke him. That task fell to Gooch, who arrived exactly one hour after speaking to Jason.

  Gooch motioned to Jenny to keep still while he crept forward and pounced on the mattress, jolting the dog and his owner awake with surprised yelps. “Gotcha!” he yelled, and trapped his friend in an awkward headlock which Jason tried desperately to contest with jabbing motions toward Gooch’s ribcage. The two ended up on the floor with a dull thud as Jenny leaned against the doorjamb and giggled.

  “Who’s your daddy, punk?” Gooch forced Jason onto his bottom while he knelt behind him, maintaining the headlock while ensuring his friend a true challenge if he wanted to retaliate.

  “The greatest fighter in all of Norfolk, you lightweight!” Jason dug his fingers into the crook of Gooch’s elbow, freeing his head from the hold. He sank to the floor, rolled over and sprang for Gooch’s waist, knocking him back into the bed. The two then formed a human wrecking ball and might have ended up destroying the room and its occupants had not Jenny’s squeals and Ringo’s barking alerted the adults to the friendly melee.

  “Peace!” bellowed Dan, and the two boys stopped in mid roll. Gooch’s hand grasped the left corner of Jason’s desk. Willie’s head appeared in the doorway between Dan and Jenny, and she gasped upon seeing that both boys were on top of the cords connected to Jason’s computer.

  “You do realize if you tugged on those cords enough that computer’d come crashing down on your heads?” she admonished them.

  “Good.” Dan was firm. “Let it. Serve you guys right for horsing around like a bunch of maniacs. Miss Casaletto, always a pleasure,” he greeted the blushing girl. “Come on down when you guys are ready to act your ages and not your IQs. I called in the pizzas, seeing as how Sleeping Beauty was unavailable.”

  Gooch squirmed free of Jason’s grasp. “Very funny, Mr. Greevey,” he called back. He stretched on the hardwood floor and clicked his tongue, beckoning Ringo to join him. “I’m not going to hurt you , boy,” he cajoled with a snap of his fingers.

  Ringo cowered atop the comforter and shivered. He seemed to take to the more sedate Jenny who, sensing the coast clear, stepped cautiously into the room and perched on the corner of the mattress. Silently Ringo toddled up to her and sniffed the brown paper bag in her lap.

  Jason bounced next to her. “So, what’d you guys bring?”

  “You’ll see,” Jenny teased. “Nobody will guess in a million years what Gooch picked to watch tonight.”

  Jason, however, knew all too well his friend’s passion for bone splitting martial arts films. Years from now he was certain he would be attending the baptism of his friend’s firstborn son, Jackie Chan Gucci.

  “Nope,” Jenny shook her head as Jason suggested that the bag contained such movies. “Guess again.”

  Jason did not get the chance. A faint doorbell chime signaled new arrivals, and the three scrambled downstairs to greet whomever was waiting to be let inside.

  * * * *

  Everybody nearly arrived at once. Caitlin brought two-liter jugs of Pepsi and root beer, plus a Diet Sprite fo
r herself, while Mimi toted a party-size bag of tortilla chips. Mitch, his hair slicked back and glistening after a quick shower, trailed behind the pizza delivery man, bringing more chips and his shy younger sister, Sarah.

  “Mom wanted me to bring her,” he whispered to Jason, rolling his eyes as if he had been forced to perform a more unpleasant task. Jason thought that fine; he liked Sarah. Thankfully the other girls appeared willing to break the ice as well as Jason made introductions and encouraged the girl to help herself to pizza.

  “Plenty to go around,” Dan assured her as he passed out paper plates. “Just watch yourself around these two.” He nodded to Mitch and Gooch, whose plates were heavy with slices of pepperoni. “You might lose a hand.”

  “Thanks,” Sarah said quietly with a smile, directed at Jason in particular. Her brother took the opportunity to wield his power in the art of sibling embarrassment. “Forget it, kid, he’s a member of the FPA. Future Priests of America.”

  All activity stopped in the kitchen, and Jason looked up at his friend. How could Mitch have known? He was not planning to tell anyone of his plans until after graduation. The only people who knew were people who could hardly broadcast gossip: Father Ben, his father, and...

  His eyes darted to Caitlin, who was pulling a particularly cheesy slice of pizza away from its pie while trying not to lose the ingredients. She froze in mid pull. “Oh, God,” she blurted, “was that still supposed to be a secret? I’m sorry.”

  “So who else knows?” Jason folded his arms. Everybody in the room raised a hand.

  “Before Mitch said so just now?”

  This time only Sarah’s hand lowered. Seconds later the room erupted in mild laughter. “Dude. I think it’s cool.” Mitch slapped Jason on the back. “I’ve always wanted my own confessor.”

  Dan swiped a few paper towels from a roll. “Careful what you say, son,” he warned. “Priests can’t absolve sins you haven’t yet committed, and don’t think that having a priest as a friend means getting any spiritual perks, either. Parents, on the other hand...” He grabbed the smaller pizza box while Willie carried two canned sodas and glasses of ice upstairs.

  “You guys aren’t staying?” Caitlin asked.

  “As much as we’d love it, we have some business to attend to.” There was no mistaking the sarcasm in the Dan’s voice. “Jason, a word?”

  Once out of earshot from the kitchen, Dan whispered to his son to keep quiet about Bailey’s death. “They’ll find out in due time on Monday,” he said. “Tomorrow if it makes the obits or if Father Ben says something at Mass. No sense spoiling the evening for them.”

  “Sure, Dad.” Jason wondered, given the events of the past few weeks, if his mood would ever recover fully.

  * * * *

  “Okay, Gooch.” Jason rolled his eyes and gestured about the living room. Everybody was present and accounted for, sitting on or in front of the couch as his friend had requested. Thin round coasters were strewn about the floor and two end tables, but everyone preferred to hang onto their condensing drink cups while balancing paper plates on laps.

  Jason, squeezed in between a giggling Caitlin and Mimi, inspected a drying spot of pizza sauce on his jeans and sighed. “While we’re young, Gucci,” he droned. “Show us what you got.”

  “Alright, alright.” Gooch plunged his hand into the paper bag, ignoring the taco chip tossed at him, and produced a copy of The Wizard of OZ for approval. “But that’s not all,” he added, dipping one last time into the paper bad for a compact disc. “Everyone, I give you the dark side of the rainbow!”

  Murmurs of confusion floated around the room as Gooch held together the film and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. What Gooch had planned was unclear to all except Sarah, whose eyes widened with excitement.

  “Ooh, I’ve heard about this!” she said. “You play the CD against the muted movie, and it’s supposed to synchronize with the action in the film. Like at the end of a song where there’s a heartbeat, uh—”

  “‘Brain Damage’,” Mitch reminded her.

  Sarah snapped her fingers. “Yeah. The heartbeat plays right where Dorothy listens at the Tin Man’s chest when he says he doesn’t have a heart. It’s supposed to be really freaky.”

  “Well, that’s one very enthusiastic vote,” Jason said. “I’m game to see it if everyone else is.”

  Several ‘yeahs’ and ‘sures’ followed, though Caitlin wished aloud that somebody had the foresight to make a list of musical and cinematic coincidences to find while watching.

  “Taken care of, no worries,” Gooch announced, and twisted around to show her the folded papers sticking out from his back jeans pocket. “Jenny, hon, get that would you? Jason, wanna pop this in the stereo?”

  Jason set the VCR for his friend before obliging. Sarah, meanwhile, instructed him not to press play until the MGM lion roared three times. “That’s what I read on the Internet,” she said.

  Once set up properly, the group sat transfixed for the next fifty minutes as the Pink Floyd soundtrack provided an eerie subtext for the usually jubilant film. Oohs, aahs, and wows punctuated various scenes of the movie—when Dorothy’s eyes drifted heavenward while mouthing “Over the Rainbow” to roaring airplanes in “Breathe,” when thunderous bells and jolting alarm clocks heralded the entrance of the sinister Miss Gulch on her bicycle, and when David Gilmour sang “got to keep the loonies on the path” just as Dorothy and the Scarecrow skipped merrily down the yellow brick road.

  True to Sarah’s word, Dorothy’s ear was bent toward the Tin Man’s hollow drum of a chest just as “Brain Damage” faded into a heartbeat. Sarah bounced in her seat and Caitlin and Jason looked at each other with mouths agape.

  Gooch, cuddled with Jenny on the floor, could only say, “Cool.”

  “Cool?” Mimi exclaimed. “That was, like, weird. You’d think Pink Floyd planned the album to do that.”

  “Oh, I read that, too,” Sarah said, becoming more conversant. She downed the rest of her second Pepsi. “They deny it, of course, saying it’s just a coincidence.”

  “Right,” Mitch snorted. “Or it could be a ploy to sell more records.”

  “Like Pink Floyd needs help selling records,” was Gooch’s opinion. “Isn’t Dark Side of the Moon the biggest selling album of all time? So everybody in the world should own a copy.”

  Caitlin thought Michael Jackson’s Thriller held that title, while Mitch argued for a Led Zeppelin album, thus sparking a heated debate, all the while Dorothy and company continued down the yellow brick road in silence.

  “Hey, what now?” Jason mashed the pause button on the remote control. “The movie’s only half over. Do we play the CD over the rest of it or what?”

  Gooch shrugged, making it obvious he had not thought that far ahead. Everyone impulsively then looked to Sarah, who had no answers either. “I only know about running the CD through the beginning part,” she said sheepishly. “I guess we could play it again and see what happens.”

  Everyone punted that proposal around the room, but some were not willing to sit through the same music. When Caitlin dashed for the downstairs bathroom, the party gradually drifted to the kitchen for refills.

  “So, do you have something in your video collection worth showing?” Mimi asked Jason as he poured her a cup of root beer.

  “Well,” Jason said, “I have some Fawlty Towers episodes I taped from a John Cleese marathon on Comedy Central.” He drifted into the living room to tell Gooch but his friend waved away any instructions.

  “All taken care of, my friend,” he proclaimed. When Caitlin returned from the bathroom and rejoined the assembly after a run at the snack buffet, Gooch reclaimed his spot by the television as master of ceremonies.

  “Get ready to laugh, folks.” He snatched the remote and pressed the play button, expecting the screen to become alive with the apoplectic mannerisms of a British hotel owner. What everyone saw instead was hardly amusing; in fact, the squeals of disgust coming from the front row betrayed the min
dset of everyone present.

  Sarah, blushing an even deeper shade, almost purple, quickly shielded her eyes with a throw pillow while Caitlin gaped at the fleshy images writhing to a whining synthesizer soundtrack. “What is this?” she spat. “And where did you get it, you creep?”

  “Hey, don’t look at me,” Gooch said innocently.

  “What do you think it is?” snapped Jason as he lurched from the couch and snatched back the remote, oblivious to Mitch’s and Gooch’s mild protests. All activity onscreen switched back to sold blue. “Gooch, what is that matter with you, pulling a stunt like that? What if Dad or Miss Pratt came downstairs?”