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

by Leigh Ellwood

  “But it was worth it,” she sighed dreamily, “’cause he won’t get my money. I earned that money, and I’m only just beginning.”

  A chill shimmied down Jason’s spine at the mere image of Bart, maced and pleading for his life as a nylon noose tightened around his throat. Not a pleasant way to go, he thought, grateful at least that Maura and Lawrence had not tried to do him in the same manner. Of course, they could always use the sink to drown him, which would be worse. They seemed to clog naturally.

  “Wasn’t it Bailey’s money, too?” Jason prodded. “She starred in some movies, from what little I saw.” Okay, he told himself, Miss Arnaiz confessed. Where were the police?

  “Bailey? Puh-leaze!” Maura scoffed, enjoying the attention given to her. “I brought Bailey in myself. She needed some extra cash, but she was kinda frigid at first. So I told her to pretend she was doing somebody she liked. I’ll give you three guesses,” she added with a wink.

  Jason felt whatever dinner was left digesting in his stomach bubble up his esophagus. He swallowed hard and wondered aloud if Bailey, too, wanted a bigger cut of Bascock’s profits. “Maybe she thought she was a better actress than you and deserved more. That’s what Lawrence here said.” Dear God, forgive these lies.

  “Nooo, Bailey eventually grew a brain and discovered none of the ‘Danny Boys’ in front of the camera was the one she wanted, so she wanted out. She was going to get your father back, which didn’t bother me at first. Better Bailey than that ni—.”

  “Don’t say it,” Jason interrupted her, forceful despite the fear in his voice.

  “Sorry,” Maura countered with a mock gasp and bent her forefingers in quotation mark. “African-American, yeesh! But then she tells me she’s going to come clean and tell Danny Boy everything about the films. Well!” She threw up her hands. “I had to kill her. I mean, your father may be a hunk, but he’s a freakin’ Boy Scout! He’d give us up in a heartbeat. I’m just glad I was able to get to the hospital in my scrubs so soon after Lawrence called me on his cell phone.”

  “You have scrubs?” Jason arched an eyebrow. Fishnets and a leather bustier too racy for Madonna seemed more appropriate.

  Maura smiled. “Souvenirs from Fallen Angels of Mercy. Great loop we sold to the Spice Network. Highly recommend it.” She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and inspected her lashes for mascara clumps. “Those cops didn’t suspect a thing. Nobody did, I just waltzed right in there and altered her chart. I knew what her blood type was from her personnel file, so I made sure she got a lethal transfusion.

  “Now those cops, they were hot.” Satisfied with her beauty, she turned back to Jason. “I wouldn’t mind a screen test with either or both of them myself. At the same time, even.”

  “Right,” Jason said. Speaking of those cops... “But what about Gordon Petersen? What did he ever do to you?”

  He directed the question to Lawrence, who had been eerily quiet since Maura’s entrance. The drama teacher was standing slightly behind Maura and eyeing her with some amusement. Maybe he would take the gloves to her instead to keep her from incriminating him, Jason thought, but Lawrence would have done that sooner. Maybe Lawrence just got a thrill out of watching the normally reserved Maura behave like an idiot.

  “I didn’t even know the guy,” she shrugged. “I’m sure he was cool. He just was in the wrong trivia contest at the wrong time. I got the serial killer idea as a way to cover our tracks after Bart, you see. Our friend Petersen just happened to be roaming the Waterside the same night I was club-hopping, so I figured what the hell? I picked him up and we went back to his place, and bada-bing! Took a cab home and treated myself to a bottle of Chanel No. 5 with the cash I found in his wallet.”

  “Ah,” was all Jason could say. So Gordon’s death was mere happenstance. If the guy had just stayed home that night, he’d be alive. Worse yet, if Adam Wasserman had run into Maura at the Waterside, then it could have been the cantor found dead.

  “So I take it then those little trivia cards on the bodies were your idea, too?” Jason asked. God, where is Detective Simons? Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee...

  “Actually the trivia card on Bart was a joke,” Maura explained. “I found them scattered around the bar at Jillian’s and noticed one with a question about Deep Throat on it. I wanted to shove it down his throat, what with how he was screaming from the mace. Good thing the music and noise blaring from Joe’s Crab Shack drowned us out.”

  “But you continued the calling card with Gordon,” Jason concluded, “to keep the serial killer guise authentic. I suppose you have something for me.” Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus...

  Maura snapped open her clutch and pulled out a thin green Trivial Pursuit card. “It’s from the sports edition. Here’s one for you: what team won the first NFC championship?”

  “Dallas,” answered Lawrence and Jason in unison, and Maura cackled.

  “Correct!” She set the card on the lip of the sink closest to her. “You be sure to give JR and Miss Ellie my love when you get to TV heaven now, you hear?”

  With that, she plucked a stubby .22 from her purse and Jason felt his own lifetime growing shorter. Holy Mary, Mother of God, he prayed fervently, pray for us sinners. Pray for me, right now!

  “That’s not part of your MO,” he warned with a trembling voice. “You strangled the others, the cops will pick up on this.”

  “Duh! I know that. This’ll look like a copycat. The cops are supposed to pick up on it, so they’ll screw up.” She craned her head back to Lawrence. “Since you’re being so useless, you might as well go wait in the car with Debra.”

  Debra? Jason’s jaw dropped. “Miss French? She’s in on this, too?” Did any of the faculty of this school teach for a living besides his father and Willie?

  “She will be.” Maura’s smile was pure mischief. “Remember that Morticia from the Waterside who nearly caused your father’s eyes to pop out of her sockets?”

  “Yeah...that was her?”

  “That was her audition for the silver screen,” Maura said matter-of-factly. “She told me she’d do anything to get out of teaching, and I need some new talent. I figured if a couple of her colleagues couldn’t recognize her made up she’d do just fine. Hell,” she ran her tongue across her upper lip, “I might even call up Caitlin Stevens to comfort her after your funeral.”

  No, not Caitlin. “That gun’ll make a sound, you know,” Jason’s legs began to buckle. “Everybody in the building will come running; you won’t get out in time.”

  “With all that yakking in the auditorium, are you kidding? When I walked past I couldn’t hear myself think for the noise, and the doors were closed.” Maura raised the gun and aimed for Jason’s forehead. “No, this’ll sound like snap, crackle, and pop. Personally, kid, I’m looking forward to consoling your daddy, too.” She kissed the air between them and cocked the trigger just as the eruption of several uniformed men behind them pushed Maura and Lawrence into the wall.

  * * * *

  “Mr. Greevey? Mr. Greevey!” Principal Rockwell called to Dan’s retreating form. “Where are you going?”

  Dan continued a beeline to the back exit, passing a perplexed Father Ben on the way out the double doors. Growing more and more nervous with each passing second, he could no longer stay seated at the corner of the stage an read students’ names off of index cards while the one student he loved more than the world might be lying dead in the boys’ restroom.

  “Dan!” Father Ben followed him out into the hallway. “What are you doing? You’ll blow Jason’s cover.”

  “You want Jason to be blown away?” Dan snapped angrily. “I can’t believe I let him talk me into this. Not just him, either. Simons, you!” He strode forcefully down the hall, leaving the priest to jog behind. “You realize how long it’s been? Jason could be knocked unconscious or —”

  He stopped abruptly and the priest crashed into his back. Both men watched as Detective Simons
, clad in a bulletproof vest and visor shield, slithered around the far corner with both hands clamped around his lowered gun. He cocked his head to better hear the voices in his earpiece, too rapt in his job to notice the far voyeurs.

  Father Ben’s hands clasped in spontaneous prayer. “Christ, have mercy,” he whispered. “See, Dan? It’s almost over. He’ll be okay.”

  Suddenly Simons hollered a command and a stream of cops followed his charge into the bathroom. Despite the distance, both men heard clearly Simon’s order to freeze and a woman’s scream, which baffled them.

  What did not baffle them, however, was the gunshot. Dan felt the floor give way.

  “Jason!”

  He sprinted on rubber legs to the bathroom as Father Ben called from behind. He was at the door just in time to see a tangle of blue bodies wrestling Lawrence Brantley and Maura Arnaiz to the ground, with Detective Simons screaming into his two-way radio. “Get the EMTs in here, now! The kid’s been shot! Repeat, the kid’s been shot!”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Say hello to the future head of the FBI!” cried Principal Rockwell in a rare display of emotion as Jason Greevey, honor graduate, hobbled toward him on crutches for the customary congratulatory handshake. Per regulations and courtesy, those attending the graduation ceremony had been asked to refrain from applauding for their respective graduates until the last diploma was distributed, but given the events of the past week the crowd could barely contain itself. Jason was guided back to his chair with a standing ovation.

  Willie, standing and clapping alongside Detective Simons on the floor of the Scope in a section reserved for faculty and their guests, leaned closer and said, “Make that the future Pope, you think?”

  The detective chuckled as the din eventually calmed. “If that’s the case, then I guess we’ll have to pray at least a hundred times as much as we did when Jason was in the hospital.”

  “To make sure he gets there?”

  “To make sure he survives once he does.” Simons looked across the coliseum to the stage, zeroing in on Dan. Stationed at his post, Dan dutifully read graduates’ names off the index cards handed to him, nary flubbing a pronunciation or neglecting to give an NHS member proper credit by adding “honor graduate” to each name. Even from the long distance, Simons and Willie could see Dan’s eyes sparkling with tears of joy and relief. The worst was over.

  Jason had been rushed to the nearest emergency room with a superficial bullet wound to the hip following the arrest of Maura and Lawrence, all the while howling in pain. “It sure doesn’t feel superficial to me!”

  Dan, skidding in after an entourage of EMTs, doctors and nurses, was as shocked as the rest of them as Jason’s sweatshirt was pushed upward to reveal a bulletproof vest. “What were you doing with that thing on?”

  Jason tried to lift his head but a gloved hand gently eased it back. “Detective Simons gave it to me before I came to school,” he replied sheepishly, “just in case. I guess he figured it could get ugly.”

  “Or deadly. Why wasn’t I told about this?” Dan demanded. “If I’d known you’d have to wear one of those things—”

  “Yeah, a lot of good it did, too,” Jason yelped back. “I protect my chest and get shot in the butt. They should make underwear out of this stuff.”

  Looking at Dan now, the memories of last week seemed forgotten. Jason only required a few days of bed rest, and beyond that there would be no lasting impediments. Everybody was happy to see he was able to get around the Scope without too much difficulty, and if Jason was feeling any pain he concealed it with a broad smile. No way was he going to miss this day.

  Dan watched as Jason and those around him moved their tassels on their mortar boards to the right, signifying the end of their high school careers. He thanked God for seeing to it Jason did not miss it, nor miss many more important days to come.

  * * * *

  “So what was the deal, you know, with Mr. Brantley and Miss Arnaiz?” Mitch twirled a strand of lo mein on his fork but was met with a swift swat on the shoulder by his mother before he could eat it. Sitting in between his parents at one end of the long table at Ghent Palace, Mitch struck an uncomfortable impression, more so since being hit.

  “What?” Mitch rubbed the throbbing area, oblivious to the look on his mother’s face. His sister, on the other side of Brenda Rice, giggled into her sweet and sour chicken. “I wanna know!”

  The look persisted still, a silent reminder to Mitch that he had breached a taboo subject. Jason, well familiar with its connotation and consequences, came to his friend’s rescue after a spoonful of wonton soup. “Oh, the police have the tape with Miss Arnaiz’s confession that was on me at the time,” he said. “It’ll be up to the DA to decide how to formally charge them.”

  “What’s to decide?” Brenda Rice wanted to know. “First degree murder for both of them.” I hope they lock ’em up and throw away the key.”

  Willie shook her head. “It won’t be that simple,” she said. “Only Maura confessed to any killing. Lawrence admitted his guilt to using school money for those videos, and to coming on to Caitlin Stevens and several other senior girls. That alone should put him away.”

  “Yeah, it seemed Lawrence just let Maura incriminate herself,” Dan added. “I wouldn’t put it past him to cop a plea and all but give her to the police. He was screaming about how it was all Maura’s idea, the movies, that she had known about him propositioning the students and basically held him captive.” He shook his head. “I worked with that woman for years! Never suspected a thing.”

  Jason speared a floret of broccoli soaked in soy sauce. “I don’t think so, it had to have been a partnership. I mean, I thought at first Bascock stood for Bailey Ann Stone. It really stands for Brantley, Arnaiz, and Stone. That’s what the detectives said, anyway. And the papers.”

  “Anyway.” Dan jumped in, hoping to change the subject. The local media was saturated with reports and interviews and follow-up profiles pertaining to the murders, many with his son’s picture in prominent view. How wonderful it would be for the two of them to leave the house without being stared at, he thought. “All that is no longer our problem. We have only to look ahead and make sure you two get through college without too much trouble.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Mitch rolled his eyes. “I got a feeling Jason will be spending more time with his nose in the Bible than his head in the clouds. He’ll be the roommate of my parent’s dreams.”

  Dinner lingered through second helpings of lo mein and kung pao chicken, sustained by a lively recap of the day’s events and speculation of who would be filling the vacant positions in the coming school year. Debra French’s days of wilting by the teacher’s lounge phone were over, though her near-involvement with Maura and Lawrence was not the reason. “She was offered a job the day after the arrest and quit on the last day of school,” Dan told the Rices. “Luckily for her, the police didn’t find any reason to hold her for anything. Maura was going to let her in on the film business that night.”

  Willie cracked open her fortune cookie and studied the strip of paper issued from it. “‘Your creativity is boundless’,” she read with a wry smile, and looked at Dan. “You think it’s a sign I should apply for the drama job as well?” Her interview for Mrs. Wallis’s old job was already scheduled.

  “You want to be the new drama teacher?” Dan raised his eyebrows. “I mean, not that I don’t believe you can’t do the job,” he rejoined as Willie suddenly frowned, “but that’s a resource teacher position. If there’s ever a budget cut...”

  “The arts are always the first to go,” Brenda Rice sighed.

  “I suppose I’ll have to ensure that won’t happen,” Willie said. “I can keep a good budget, and there will be AP money coming into the school provided that Lawrence and Maura didn’t screw up everything. Besides,” she sat up in her seat, “I’d be good at it.”

  “Not only that,” Mitch cracked, “but all her actors would keep their clothes on.”
/>   * * * *

  The Greeveys, the Rices, and Willie returned in separate cars to Dan and Jason’s, where Gooch, Caitlin, and Father Ben joined them for cake and ice cream. While the women cooed over Caitlin’s new matching opal earrings and pendant, the menfolk circled around Gooch’s graduation gift—a royal blue Dodge pickup truck.

  Gooch smoothed his hand over the still-warm hood. “My dad figures if I’m going to Georgia I’d better blend in,” he joked.

  Back inside, Dan presented Jason with a silver-wrapped box and told him not to expect any keys. “Talk to me after summer school,” he groaned, dreading the next six-week summer session of teaching standard junior level English to those who couldn’t quite grasp it during the regular year.