Whack A Mole: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

by Chris Grabenstein

  Ceepak puts a little clear plastic bag on the table. The ring.

  “I can't believe you found it!” says Brian Kladko.

  It's your standard high-school ring. Big cut stone in the middle of a gold band. The school's coat of arms inscribed on one side, Latin words nobody still alive can translate on the other.

  “Where'd you guys say you were from?”

  “Sea Haven,” says Ceepak.

  Kladko doesn't pick up the ring. He drums the cellophane window on his big Cinnabon box. Take-out breakfast for his family.

  “Where exactly is that?” he asks. “Sea Haven?”

  “Down the shore,” I say.

  He nods. Smiles. Fidgets with the box flaps. “Okay. Sure. Near Asbury Park, right?”

  “Further south.”

  “Okay.”

  He looks at his watch. The ring with its big red rock is still sitting there, all alone in its tiny plastic pouch, stranded like the pimply girl nobody wants to dance with at the prom.

  “Well, thanks for driving all the way up here and all.”

  He stands.

  “Sir?” says Ceepak, pointing to the table. “Your ring?”

  “Oh. Right. Duh.”

  “We hope you'll come visit us in Sea Haven again,” says Ceepak.

  “Yeah. Why not? Be nice to see it.”

  “You've never been?”

  “No. Don't think so.” His voice sounds a little shaky.

  “Interesting,” says Ceepak. “Then I wonder how your ring wound up buried on our beach?”

  “Guess you'd have to ask Lisa.”

  “Lisa?”

  “My old girlfriend. I gave the ring to her. A long, long time ago.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sir, I wonder if I might ask you a few questions?” says Ceepak.

  “Sorry. I really need to….”

  “This will only take another minute. Please.” Ceepak gestures toward the chair, politely commanding Mr. Brian Kladko to sit his butt back down.

  “What? Are you guys private detectives or something?”

  “We're with the Sea Haven Police Department.”

  Kladko sits.

  “Unh-hunh.” Kladko keeps his eyes on Ceepak, the man with the muscles and close-cropped hair—the guy who always looks like he's in charge, even without saying it.

  “I'm curious about the ring's provenance,” says Ceepak. “Its history.”

  “So, is this an official investigation?”

  “No. More like a hobby.”

  Kladko thinks about that. “What? Oh, I get it. You have one of those metal detectors or something.”

  Ceepak nods. Kladko relaxes.

  “Interesting,” he says. I don't think he means it.

  “I find it to be so,” says Ceepak.

  “Well, like I said. I gave the ring to Lisa.”

  “Does Lisa have a last name?”

  “Yeah. De-something. DeSoto. DeMarco. That's it. Lisa DeMarco.”

  “And she was your girlfriend?”

  Kladko grins. Shrugs. His message is clear. She was no big deal.

  I watch Ceepak watching Kladko.

  “Since she had your ring, I assume you two were going steady.”

  “Yeah. I guess. Sure.” I can see Kladko start to wonder where this is going.

  “What happened?”

  Kladko shrugs. “We broke up.”

  “But she kept your ring?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn't ask for it back?”

  Kladko tries to look bored. “Nope. Never got the chance.”

  “Why not?”

  “She left. A month after I gave her the ring, she was gone.”

  “When was this?”

  “Summer of ’83.”

  “Did Ms. DeMarco attend P. J. Johnson High School?”

  “I think so. I forget where we met. It was a long time ago. Hey—I guess I can wear my ring to the twenty-fifth reunion in 2008, huh?”

  The three of us just sit there, inhaling the cinnamon-scented air.

  “Are we almost done? I've got some very hungry kids at home.”

  “Any idea where Ms. DeMarco went?”

  Kladko gives us another shrug. “Sea Haven, I guess. I suppose she went down there to have some fun. Hang out. She liked to party, you know what I mean?”

  Ceepak ignores the not-so-subtle hint.

  “Frankly, I'd forgotten all about Lisa till you guys showed up. DeFranco.”

  “Excuse me?” says Ceepak.

  “DeFranco. That was her name. Lisa DeFranco. I think her mom still lives around here. I see her sometimes at the A&P over on Amboy Avenue.”

  “Shopping?”

  “No. She works one of the registers up front. That's how I knew it was her. The nametag.”

  Ceepak nods. “Thank you, Mr. Kladko.”

  “That's it?”

  “Thank you for your time.”

  “Hey, no problem….”

  He tucks the plastic bag with the ring in it into the front pocket of his khakis the same way you might stuff away one of those curling gas-pump receipts the machine spits out after you fill up on your credit card. Apparently, it holds very little sentimental value.

  “I wonder if Mrs. DeFranco is working at the A&P this morning,” says Ceepak as we watch Kladko hustle down the escalator.

  I have a hunch we'll soon find out.

  On the ride over to the A&P, Ceepak explains.

  “Mr. Kladko is hiding something.”

  “Yeah. I figured as much.”

  “‘Everybody's got a secret, Sonny. Something they just can't face.’”

  Ceepak isn't calling me “Sonny” because he forgot my name. He's quoting Springsteen. “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” It's something we do with each other because we both love The Boss, the poet laureate of the Jersey Shore. However, when it comes to actually having lyrics memorized, Ceepak wins, hands down. I'm better at the sing-along parts. The sha-la-la-la's.

  “Don't you find it curious that Mr. Kladko chose to meet us at a mall?” Ceepak now asks.

  “I guess it was his turn to get the kids their Sunday morning Cinnabon fix. Kill two birds with one stone and all that.”

  “Perhaps. Or, maybe he didn't want us bringing the ring and any questions it might raise into his home.”

  “Questions from Mrs. Kladko?”

  Ceepak nods.

  “He had to agree to see us. Showing reluctance would have seemed odd. However, he immediately assumed we were private investigators. Our very presence made him nervous.”

  It never occurs to Ceepak that simply talking to him about the weather can make someone nervous.

  Especially someone with a guilty conscience.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ipray that when my mom is sixty-five she isn't bagging groceries on the 12-ITEMS-OR-LESS line at the A&P. This is what we see Mrs.

  DeFranco doing when the store manager points her out to us.

  “She has her break at ten.”

  “We'll wait,” says Ceepak.

  It's nine fifty-eight. The manager folds his beefy arms across his chest—it's clear that nobody in his little kingdom ever sneaks off early.

  Mind you, neither Ceepak nor I are wasting our two minutes of waiting time. We're both observing Mrs. DeFranco. Ceepak probably sees more than I do—but I notice some stuff, too.

  Like the way the she jams the bread into the bag on top of the bananas and then adds the sixty-four-ounce Hawaiian Punch can so she can simultaneously smoosh somebody's food and ruin their day, just like all her days started being ruined years ago.

  She looks tired. Haggard. On her feet for too long—twenty years too long. She looks like an old cloth left out in the sun, one you used to clean your car, then dropped on the driveway where it baked until the cotton started to crack.

  Long story short, I'm guessing Mrs. DeFranco is going to be a real laugh-a-minute when we talk to her.

  “Where the hell is Sea Heaven?”

 
“Down the shore,” I answer, not bothering to correct her.

  We're standing in the humid shade out front of the A&P. Mrs. DeFranco is sucking hard on a Marlboro—one of the real long ones so it'll last her the whole break. We had to flash our badges to get her to talk to us. Actually, we had to flash them to get her to quit saying, “Leave me the fuck alone,” in front of all the little kids buying gum-balls from the machines near the sliding doors.

  “We'd like to ask you a few questions about your daughter,” says Ceepak.

  “Who?”

  “Lisa.”

  “You seen her? She in Sea Heaven?”

  “No. Not that we're….”

  “What'd she do? She kill somebody or some shit like that?”

  “No, ma'am. In fact, we have no idea where she might be.”

  “Well, that makes two of us. I ain't seen or heard from her in twenty-four years.”

  “I don't understand….”

  “She ran away!” Narrowing her eyes, she takes another hot drag off the cigarette. I can hear the paper broil. “She hit the highway. Never told me where she was going. Never called—not even once. No postcards, neither.”

  It's hard to tell what she's feeling. The Marlboro seems to interest her more than her daughter.

  Ceepak, as always, wants to help. “Maybe Lisa is still in our area. We could look for her. Initiate a search.”

  Now she laughs. “Fine. Knock yourself out.”

  “She'd be what?” says Ceepak. “Forty-two? Forty-three?”

  “Something like that,” says Mrs. DeFranco. She sends out a steady stream of smoke. “Check all the whorehouses first.”

  “Ma'am?”

  “The whorehouses. That's where she'd be, the fucking little slut.”

  Okay. We definitely have some of those Dr. Phil-type mother-daughter issues going on here.

  “Your daughter was promiscuous?” asks Ceepak.

  “She was a fucking tramp. I heard about it. Heard what she did under those bleachers and out in the parking lot with all them boys.”

  “Back in 1983, when she first disappeared, did you file a missing person report?”

  “Why? She wasn't missing. She ran away. Besides, I was busy. Had my own shit to take care of. Ronny said I was doing the right thing….”

  “Ronny?”

  “This guy I was seeing back then.”

  “Do you have a photograph of your daughter? It might help us find her if …”

  “I threw all her pictures in the trash.”

  “Did your daughter go steady with any particular boy?”

  She laughs. Smoke comes out her nose. “Why buy a cow when the milk's free? That's what she was. A fat fucking cow. Ate too much junk food. Guess that's my fault, too, hunh?”

  “Didn't her father intercede with these young men?”

  “Her father? Hah! That bastard left before Lisa was even born. It was just her and me—and then, when I'm finally getting my own shit together again, she takes off and Ronny dumps me.”

  “I apologize if we've stirred up painful memories, ma'am.”

  Ceepak sounds totally bummed. Not the end he'd imagined for our mission to Edison. I'm bummed, too. For him.

  But Mrs. DeFranco isn't done yet.

  “When she left town, she was even fatter.”

  “Ma'am?” asks Ceepak.

  “Jesus. How stupid are you? Lisa was knocked up, okay? She was fat because she was pregnant.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I found a positive EPT in the trash next to the toilet, didn't I?”

  We wait. She still looks like she has something more to say.

  “And then?” Ceepak encourages her.

  “She packed her shit, took off in the middle of the night, and I never saw her again. She was gone. Fine, I said. She doesn't want to come home, that's her fucking choice.”

  Ceepak looks sad.

  “Anything else you can tell us, ma'am?”

  “Before she left, she showed me a ring. A present from her boyfriend. Oh, she was so fucking proud. But it wasn't no engagement ring and it sure as shit wouldn't pay for no abortion, neither. They don't give you jackshit when you hock those things. I know. And I told her so, too.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Exit 80 on the Garden State Parkway.

  That's when Ceepak finally says something.

  “Can you drop me off at the animal shelter?”

  “Sure.”

  “Rita is meeting me there. Fourteen hundred hours.”

  “No problem.”

  Two weeks ago we collared this dog. A stray. You might be surprised how many families come down the shore with their four-legged friends, decide they're sick and tired of scooping up poop, and set their beloved pets free.

  Of course, it's against the posted regulations and all sorts of municipal ordinances to have doggy scavengers running around loose on the beach, begging at every umbrella for Pringles or the last licks on a Fudgsicle. Eventually, somebody notices and calls the cops. With the help of a long, looped pole, we eventually nab the perp.

  Ceepak, however, is the only cop who actually visits his prisoners at the South Shore Animal Shelter in Avondale. He even gave this one particular pooch a name: Barkley. He said it's a classic. Maybe. I thought Fido was the only classic dog name. Or Rover.

  Anyhow, before we left the A&P in Edison, Ceepak had gone back inside to buy a foil pouch of Pupperonis. I figure he's thinking about Barkley the Dog right now so he can stop thinking about Lisa the Runaway and her miserable-excuse-for-a-mother who couldn't be bothered with filling out a missing person report on her only child because she was busy with her “own shit.” Ceepak can actually help the stray dog. It's doubtful whether he or anybody else can help Lisa DeFranco, who must be fortysomething years old by now and is probably living someplace in Florida or Texas.

  I ease on the brakes. We're inching closer to the shore exits, so the Garden State Parkway automatically turns into a two-lane parking lot. Suddenly we're not moving.

  “A/C good?” I ask.

  “Fine.”

  I used to drive around in a white minivan that I purchased secondhand from my mom. (She cut me an okay deal on it when she and Dad retired to Arizona, but I had to haggle.) Once I started pulling down a regular paycheck, I decided it was time to trade up. Now I've got a used Jeep Wrangler. It's a good beach vehicle. Not that I've ever driven it on one. That would be against the law, and since I'm now a cop, I'd have to write myself a ticket.

  The traffic starts moving again. We're doing at least five, maybe ten miles per hour.

  “Next weekend will be worse.” This from Ceepak.

  “Yup,” I agree. Because of the sand castle contest.

  “We can handle it.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I hear the pro team from San Diego's going to build the Sphinx.”

  Bizarre but true.

  There are actually sand professionals who tour the country competing against each other for cash prizes in “sand carving” contests. This summer, Sea Haven is sponsoring its first one ever. Next weekend. The town fathers hope it'll bump up business in the middle of July, which happens to be when business is already insane. In a beach resort, you make ninety percent of your money in June, July, and August. So you need to keep coming up with new schemes for cashing in while the sun still shines, because after Labor Day the kids go back to school and their parents stay home with the ATM cards.

  We finally pull into the shelter lot at 3:30—an hour and a half behind schedule. The lovely Rita is waiting for us.

  Ceepak sees her and smiles.

  She's got on the white blouse and black pants she wears to work the Sunday brunch shift at Morgan's Surf and Turf. It's a five-days-a week gig for her. Weekdays, she works at a bank. She holds down the two jobs because she's had to raise her son, T. J., all by herself.

  T. J., now sixteen, helps out with their finances. He works on the boardwalk and at Burger King. This Ceepak-financed two-week trip to his aunt's is
the longest vacation the kid's ever had.

  “Say ‘hi’ to Barkley for me,” I say.

  “Will do. See you tomorrow.”

  “Sorry how the trip turned out.”

  He looks at me. Nods.

  “Me, too.”

  “Hey, Danny!” Rita hollers and waves.

  “Hey!” I holler back. “You guys have fun. Pet a dog for me!”

  Technically, they call this cinderblock building an animal shelter, but I'll bet the dogs inside call it the pound or the joint or the big house or something worse. They don't want to be here. They miss their people—even the lousy bums who abandoned them

  That's what we figure happened to Barkley.

  Ceepak and I found him without a collar, hiding underneath the boardwalk. When we crawled in to fetch him, he immediately started sniffing Ceepak's cargo pants, because my partner always carries dog treats in one of the pockets. My dad did the same thing. He was a USPS letter carrier. Treats in one pocket, mace in the other.

  Barkley's sort of shaggy. Got the white whiskers, droopy tail, and hind-leg shuffle you see on old dogs. But he also has this twinkle in his eyes, especially when he smells Pupperonis or Snausages.

  Ceepak gives Rita a quick kiss and then, holding hands, they head in to visit the dog nobody else has any use for today. I wave goodbye, but they don't see it. The fact that I'm kind of a lonely stray myself these days doesn't occur to them. But that's cool. Sure, my apartment is filthy, but at least it's not a cage.

  Dogs are kept here for two weeks, in hopes that their owners will come claim them. After that, they go up for adoption. If no one wants an old, shedding bed-hog who probably farts, well, I don't know what happens.

  I'm pretty sure they don't set the dogs free.

  Man—this is turning into one of the most depressing Sundays ever.

  I head toward the causeway—the long bridge that's the only way on or off the barrier island we call Sea Haven Township.

  I wonder how many hours it'll take to drive the final five miles home.

  I catch a break.

  Traffic's not that bad. Of course, it's almost four o'clock, so anybody who wanted to soak up some sun has already squeezed their way across the bridge.