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

by Leigh Ellwood

  Don’t be silly, Jason told himself. What are the odds of that happening?

  All the same, Jason decided to hold it in.

  Lord Jesus, protect us, he prayed silently. I swear I’ll make Father Damien look like a slacker if You help me out of this. Ringo broke free of his hold and put his nose to the floor, sniffing with canine vigor.

  “Thanks, Ben, we’ll be fine,” Dan said to the priest’s renewed request to have the Greeveys stay overnight. “I admit I would feel a bit silly hiding out, especially if it turned out to be an unrelated attempt at burglary.”

  “Well, I certainly wouldn’t,” Father Ben said firmly. “Jason’s right, you don’t know if that person who tried to break into your home isn’t involved in these past murders, or if you should expect a few rounds of bullets sprayed into your living room. You did right to come here, and I see no problem with you staying.” Father Ben directed a hard glare in the detective’s direction. “If the police had any sense they’d have offered you protection in the first place, and maybe that person would have been caught.”

  Simons opened his mouth to retort, but Jason got his words in first. “They said they couldn’t act until something had actually happened to us, Father.”

  “Well, doesn’t this count, detective? What now?”

  “Now, we wait to see what CSU comes up with in the way of prints and other evidence,” Simons answered tiredly. “Then we follow procedure, just as we’ve done with every single case like this.”

  “Seems you take procedures like this rather lightly,” Father Ben muttered.

  “A burglar they might take lightly,” Jason pointed out, “but not the guy responsible for three murders.”

  “Jason,” Dan rolled his eyes. “For the last time—”

  “Dad,” Jason insisted testily, yanking his backpack into full view, “I know who killed Bailey, and Bart and Gordon, and it was the same person. I can prove it.”

  This got Simons’ attention. Dan, however, did not appear as interested. “What are you talking about, son? All you have is an amateur home video of Bailey.”

  He stopped and looked upward. Father Ben was standing over him, a buffer between him and his son, arms folded across his chest and his eyebrows nearly touching the top of his head.

  “What’s this about a home movie? Is the killer on tape now?”

  “I’d like to know, too,” Simons said, “especially if you’re withholding evidence and impeding an ongoing investigation, which is never taken lightly regardless of the crime.”

  Jason and Dan looked at each other. How to explain this to a slow boiling detective, not to mention a man who went ballistic after Maude Findlay had an off-screen abortion twenty-five years ago and continued to blast the milestone in his sermons?

  “It’s not evidence,” Dan groaned. “I don’t think Bailey’s, er, sideline work is related to any of this.”

  “Uh,” Jason faltered, “I’m not sure about that. You see, we didn’t watch much of the tape, but I think there’s a connection.”

  “It’s not exactly family fare,” Dan added. “In fact, I doubt I could get past the opening credits.”

  “Credits?” Father Ben frowned, then his face went slack with realization. “I see,” he said quietly, and blessed himself.

  “There’s more.” Jason unzipped a side pocket but paused before taking out the folder curled inside. He could see his father had no idea that he was about to show something, but something inside him stalled. He glanced at the priest, who, though may have seen quite a bit of unpleasantness in his day, may not be ready for these revelations. “Er,” he stuttered.

  Father Ben, however, showed no signs of offering the two privacy. He parked himself next to Dan on the couch’s armrest and waited. “Go on, son,” he urged, “tell us your theory.”

  “Promise you guys won’t get mad?”

  “It’s usually not good to preface a statement with that request, son,” Simons said grimly. “However, I want to hear what you have to say, and I promise you won’t be in any trouble with the law.”

  “I, on the other hand, can’t guarantee absolution, can I?” Dan nearly shouted. “Just tell us what you have to say, okay?”

  Rattled slightly by the irritation in his father’s voice, Jason timidly passed the folder to Detective Simons along with a condensed explanation of how it came into his possession. Neither Simons, Dan nor Father Ben registered any surprise at hearing of Jason’s daring search and seizure, though the boy was sure a lecture from any one of them would happen in the near future.

  He spoke of his meeting with Adam Wasserman, old news to Simons and Dan, and how Doris Leiber missed becoming a victim by virtue of being an out-of-towner. Dan nodded through his brief explanation of the video found in Bailey’s apartment and his recognition of her co-star, the Elaine Benes lookalike.

  “That’s where I’ve seen her before, at the damn party that started this whole mess.” Dan snapped his fingers.

  “Anyway,” Jason said, “I didn’t get the connection with this woman, this ‘Elaine,’ other than she just happened to be at Jillian’s that night. The pieces didn’t really start to fit together until the funeral.” He then launched into his theory as to the killer’s identity, which did illicit surprise from Dan and Father Ben, and an idea on how to expose him enough to warrant arrest. “It needs to be done soon, too, and you have the folder and the tape in case something hap—”

  “Don’t even finish that sentence,” Dan ordered, a slight quiver in his speech. “Nothing is going to happen to you, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you be put in danger to prove a theory.”

  “A theory you must believe, if you think Jason would be at risk,” Father Ben noted calmly.

  Dan rose and paced the length of the room. “Perhaps there is some logic to what you’re saying, son. Some. You might think you’ve solved a mystery, but some people might find your story a bit far-fetched.”

  “I don’t,” said Simons.

  “I’m not second-guessing your expertise, either, Detective,” Dan added, “but this isn’t a cop show, this is real. People are dead. If what you suggest is remotely true...” he felt suddenly light-headed with anxiety and flopped back down on the couch. “If you do something stupid, I might be powerless to prevent you from being killed next.”

  Jason looked into his father’s pained eyes. “Dad, if I do nothing I’ll probably be killed regardless. We know now Miss Stone sent that threatening photograph, but we don’t know for certain she did it on her own. She may have been forced to do it.”

  “Photograph? What photograph?” asked the priest, and Jason hastily filled Father Ben in on the photograph, the threatening phone calls, and the trivia card souvenirs left on the bodies of the first two victims.

  “Oh, my,” Father Ben said in disbelief. “It’s a wonder there hasn’t yet been an attempt on your life.”

  Jason shrugged and idly scratched behind Ringo’s ears. The dog, completing his survey of the quarters, now craved human attention. “Not really,” he said. “Between school and home, I really didn’t put myself in a position where I could be caught alone. Tomorrow, though, will be different.”

  Dan groaned. Tomorrow evening the entire senior class along with the Colley High faculty would assemble in the school auditorium to rehearse for graduation, to be held the Friday evening after next at Norfolk’s coliseum, the Scope. Though the graduation committee allotted only an hour to go over the itinerary, Dan was very much aware everyone could be stuck at school all night. Needless to say, those things never went smoothly, and what Jason was suggesting could only make a harried situation more chaotic.

  “Well, whatever help you want, I’m in,” Father Ben said, rising toward the kitchen. “I’m offering the benediction this year, so I’ll definitely be there. I’d be there even if I didn’t have to, too. I’ve got something at stake in this as well.”

  Dan arched an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “Jason’s going to be a priest.” Fa
ther Ben nodded toward the young man. “We have to make sure he’s around to take over for me when I retire.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Detective Simons asserted as he checked his watch and headed for the door. “Though the way he thinks, I’d rather he take over when I retire.”

  * * * *

  When the detective’s car wobbled away from the driveway and disappeared around the corner of Princess Anne and Llewellyn Streets, the Greeveys settled back inside their home to sleep away their anxieties. Sleep, however, had come only for the worry-free dog, and Dan and Jason were content to lay on the master bed watching television and half expecting a knife-wielding shadow to fall across the wall before them. It was going to be a long, fitful night.

  “Dad?”

  “Mm.”

  “You scared? Of what could happen, I mean.”

  “A little,” Dan admitted, “but truthfully I feel safe right now. I just can’t sleep right now because I’m hyped up. It’s been a rough day.”

  “Yeah.” Memories of Bailey’s service, the disturbance around the house, and the terrified look on Caitlin’s face floated above the glow of the television, blending into the shadows on the ceiling and hurting his eyes as he squinted for better focus. He felt strangely safe in the dark of his father’s room, comforted by canned laughter as Laverne and Shirley bickered over a cute fireman. The police had tested the locks and nothing appeared to be damaged, but that did not prevent Jason from sliding the metal footstool in front of the kitchen door.

  Laverne and Shirley leered comically and tugged each other’s hair. Their locks had to be defective. How else could one explain Lenny and Squiggy constantly bursting in on them unannounced and uninvited?

  “Do you think we should have stayed in the rectory?” Jason asked.

  “We’ll be fine here. Relax.”

  “I try, but I can’t help but second guess myself. Would it be safer to stay in a priest’s house? The closest thing to a house of God other than church?”

  “We don’t have to go there to be close to God. God is with us right now.”

  “I wish God would end this,” Jason mumbled. “I wish it had ended before it began, before Bart and Gordon were murdered.”

  Dan shifted in place. “I can’t comment on that, son, but we can’t blame God for what’s happened, you know that.”

  “I do,” Jason sighed. “It’s just so frustrating. I want to serve God, but when people get killed for what looks like no reason and it seems like you’re next...I just can’t understand why these things happen. Sometimes it appears as if good can’t prevail.”

  “Good will prevail, son,” said Dan. “Detective Simons and his partner are determined to close this case, and they will. Your involvement, dangerous as it is, is going to help.”

  He turned the remote around in his hands, tapping nervously at the volume buttons to offset the noise of a commercial. “You have to remember that when God gave us free will, not all of us took the high road,” Dan added. “Those who do sometimes have to pay the consequences created by those who didn’t. I can’t say whether or not God intended for Bart or Bailey or Gordon to die so young, but they did and that can’t be undone. The one responsible will have to answer to God.”

  Jason, tempered by the television and his father’s soothing voice, finally relaxed enough to close his eyes. He lay stiffly with his fingers intertwined and resting above his navel, looking very much like the late Bailey Stone in final repose, he imagined. Dan turned toward him and asked if he was asleep.

  “Not yet,” Jason murmured. “I suppose I’ll get there soon enough. I figured I’d pray a rosary ‘til I drifted off.”

  “Huh.” Dan shut off the set and darkness deepened. “Well, why keep it to yourself?”

  Jason launched softly into the Apostle’s Creed, trading decades with Dan until both fell asleep somewhere along the third Sorrowful Mystery, the Crucifixion. The last image Jason meditated upon in his mind before slipping away was that of a limp Bailey Stone cradled in the Lord’s arms.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The school auditorium was alive with animated chatter and laughter as members of the Colley Avenue Senior class milled around the cramped area, weaving through rows of folded-up seats looking for friends, taking and posing for pictures and parading makeshift mortar board hats of construction paper. Principal Rockwell called everyone to order by tapping a microphone set up in the center of the stage by the footlights, sending screeching feedback through the speakers. A collective wince rippled through the crowd as some put their hands to their ears.

  Several faculty members and students were already grouped together onstage, Dan included. He nodded at valedictorian Caitlin and let his gaze drift out to the colorful crowd before him, praying a silent prayer of thanksgiving for another successful school year. That, and for his and Jason’s safety. Take care of them, Lord, they’re the future.

  He spotted Mitch Rice in the crowd sitting atop a chair, his feet pushing the seat up and down, sharing a joke with a few friends from National Honor Society. As a member, he would be among the thirty-five or so honor students to sit in front and receive their diplomas before the rest of the graduating class. Jason and Gooch were also included in that group.

  Jason. Dan scanned the breadth of the auditorium for a glimpse of the garnet and gold Redskins sweatshirt his son was wearing as Principal Rockwell ordered students to various corners of the auditorium to be grouped either by last name or honor society affiliation. As the crowd thinned in the middle Dan eyed the back left exit and saw Jason, arms folded and serious, nodding to something Gooch was saying. Dan felt a pang numb his heart.

  Was Jason letting Gooch in on the plan? Telling anyone outside the small circle—him, Dan, and Father Ben—was forbidden, so the police demanded. Even Willie was unaware, and Dan hated excluding her, but Simons argued that the fewer people knew, the less likely the trap would be foiled. Now here was Jason bragging to his friends that he was going to bag a dangerous killer, just like his heroes on TV...

  Stop it, stop it, Dan told himself, you don’t know what he’s saying, for criminy’s sake. He’s clear on the other side of the room! He could be wanting to borrow a CD or something from Gooch’s vast collection.

  The back door opened a crack and a silver-haired head peered inside, and Dan watched Father Ben call for Jason and handed him his denim jacket. So this was going to happen, he thought. Jason was about to lay the bait, and all he could do is stand on the stage acting nonchalant, like nothing was going to happen, lest Jason’s cover be blown.

  No, he decided. I can’t let this happen. I can’t let anything happen to my son.

  He strode toward the edge of the stage and was halfway down the steps leading down into the seats when a voice beckoned him to turn around. Caitlin was standing behind him, her hair sparkling with a silver garland halo, which many of the senior girls were wearing.

  “Mr. Greevey, they need you at your station.” Caitlin hooked her thumb back to the row of chairs, all occupied except for theirs. “Mr. Rockwell is about to start the run-through.”

  “I’ll be along in a minute,” Dan said, irritated, and stepped deeper down along the left aisle. “I need to tell Jason something.”

  “Jason?” Caitlin stood on her tiptoes and squinted at the cluster of honor students. “Where is he? I don’t see him.”

  “What?” Dan spun back around to the students, who were now lining up alphabetically by last name. Grafton, Greevey, Gucci, Dan had worked out in his head, but what he saw standing between Donna Grafton and Gooch was an elderly priest in a brown cardigan sweater and an innocent look on his face.

  * * * *

  “Whoa!”

  Jason felt something cold dribbling down the inside of his shirt, and thought at first a fly somehow crawled its way underneath the loose collar of his t-shirt and eventually lost its grip on his skin. His shirt was untouched, and as he yanked it away from him he heard a tinny clink—the sound of his four-way medal hitting
the concrete floor.

  He bent down to retrieve it, avoiding a near miss with an approaching shoe. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the eyelet had worked free of not only the chain still hanging from his neck but from the loop attached to the medal.

  By this time, several students were congregated around him, filling the space where the medal had fallen. The eyelet could have been anywhere, kicked under a row of chairs or imbedded in the sole of somebody’s sneaker.

  “Ah.” Jason slipped the medal in his jeans pocket. If this was the worst thing to happen to him tonight, then terrific. Let the kinked chain around his neck fall, too, and shatter into a myriad of microscopic links. Let his pants fall down.

  Just don’t let me die, Lord, Jason prayed. I promise I’ll make it worth Your while.