by Bill Bernico
Chris looked up at the sky once more before releasing the drapes. It would be getting dark soon and she’d have to bring the kids inside again. After dinner the four of them settled in for some family television. At eight o’clock Chris rose from the sofa and announced that it was bed time for the twins. Without so much as a single complaint, the two of them walked off to their bedrooms, changed into their pajamas and waited for Matt and Chris to come and tuck them in for the night.
“Whose kids are these?” Matt said. “They usually complain about having to go to bed. What happened?”
“Christmas is coming,” Chris said. “They’re trying extra hard to be nice. Of course, it helped that I told them that Santa would be looking in on them. That was enough to help keep them in line.”
Once the twins were tucked in and the lights were turned off, Matt and Chris returned to the front room. Chris led Matt over to the front window again and pulled the drapes back. Sure enough, Jim Wainright’s Christmas lights were on for the entire neighborhood to see.
“Looks like a fist to me,” Matt said. “What does that have to do with Christmas?”
“Keep watching,” Chris said.
A few seconds later one of the knuckles of the fist extended itself from the middle of the roof to the peak, stayed like that for two seconds and then returned to looking like a closed fist.
“See?” Chris said. “It’s enough to make you want to go over there and kick his ass.”
“He’s obviously flipping the bird to someone,” Matt said.
“It’s meant for Bert Grimes next door,” Chris said. “I don’t know what Bert did to piss off Mr. Wainright, but this has been going on for nearly a week now. The police have been over there twice already to warn Wainright and every time he just takes the lights down but puts them back up later in some other disgusting configuration.”
“How about if I go next door and talk to Bert?” Matt suggested. “Maybe I can find out what he supposedly did to irk Mr. Wainright.”
“Would you, Matt?” Chris said. “That Wainright is draining the Christmas spirit right out of the season.”
“I’ll go over there right now,” Matt assured her. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Thank you, dear,” Chris said.
Matt walked the thirty steps to Bert Grimes’ front door and rang the bell. Grimes opened the door, a scowl on his face. The scowl dropped off when he recognized Matt. Bert opened the door and invited Matt to come in and sit down.
“Honey, it’s Matt Cooper from next door,” Bert said. He turned to Matt. “Can I get you something to drink, soda, egg nog, maybe a cup of coffee?”
Matt waved him off. “Thanks, but I’m not a coffee drinker. Never have been. Egg nog always looked somewhat appealing until I realized what was in it—raw eggs. And soda would leave me with heartburn this time of night, but thanks anyway.”
Bert’s wife, Delores emerged from the kitchen, carrying a fancy hat, and smiled when she saw Matt. “Hello, Matt,” she said. “What brings you out this time of the night?”
Matt gestured toward the hat in Delores’s hand. “Still making those custom hats I see. How’s business?”
“Not bad,” Delores said. “If I get many more orders, I may actually turn a profit this year. I never thought they’d take off like they have.”
“Well, that’s great,” Matt said. “I hope you make a go of it. I’m glad you’re both here. I’d like to talk to you both, if you don’t mind and if you have a couple of spare minutes.”
“Certainly,” Delores said. “Won’t you have a seat? Make yourself at home, Matt.”
The three of them sat in the living room, Matt on the recliner and the Grimes couple on the sofa. “So, what brought you over here tonight, Matt?” Bert said, smiling.
“I’d like to talk to you both about Mr. Wainright,” Matt said. He noticed the smile drop off Bert’s face. “I take it you two are not on good terms lately.”
“That idiot,” Bert started to say when he felt Delores’s hand on his arm.
“Is there some kind of feud going on between you two?” Matt said.
Bert and Delores exchanged glances. “Mr. Wainright thinks we stole his dog,” Delores said. “That’s absurd. Granted, we don’t like dogs, but we’d never steal his dog.”
“That’s right,” Bert said. “That damned mutt was always barking non-stop and Wainright would never shut it up. He’d just leave it there in the back yard pen and it would bark all night until someone would call the police.”
“You?” Matt said, gesturing toward the couple.
“Sometimes it was us,” Bert admitted. “But the other neighbors called them, too. Wainright’s been warned several times and five days ago, the barking stopped and the dog disappeared without a trace. I swear, Matt, we had nothing to do with that dog’s disappearance, but Wainright is convinced that we took him and he’s been taunting us ever since with those damned Christmas lights.”
“Chris noticed that the police have already been over there to talk to him about the lights,” Matt said.
Bert nodded. “And he turns off the offensive lights until they leave. Then he goes back up on the roof and rearranges the lights into some other offensive configuration and then the police have to come back and start the whole process all over again. Did you see his latest display, Matt? He’s got those lights hooked up to flip us the bird. For his first light display, he had one that spelled out a curse word at us. The police made him take that one down right away. After that he rearranged the lights to spell out Grimes and fixed the first letter so that it changed to a C and alternately flashed Grimes and Crimes.”
“Well, at least it wasn’t a swear word,” Matt said. “Did the cops make him take that one down, too?”
Bert shook his head. “No, someone in the neighborhood snuck over there in the middle of the night with a wire cutter and snipped the light string in several places so none of the lights worked. Jim had the cops over here, talking to us about it, but it wasn’t us. And now he’s got that bird-flipping display flashing right in our faces. I tell you, I’m about to go over there and punch his lights out.”
Matt shook his head. “Don’t, that’s just what he wants you to do. Then he can have you hauled off to jail and he wins. Best just to try to ignore him. Maybe he’ll get tired of the whole thing and let it drop.”
“That’ll never happen,” Delores said. “He’s too bitter of a person to let it drop. He won’t be happy until we move out of the neighborhood, but we have no intention of doing that.”
“Looks like I’ll have to talk to some of the other neighbors,” Matt said. “Maybe one of them knows what happened to Wainright’s dog or his string of lights. I’ll even have a talk with Wainright himself and see if I can’t talk some sense into him.”
“Thanks, Matt,” Bert said. “Whatever you can do will be greatly appreciated by everyone in the neighborhood, with the possible exception of Jim Wainright.”
Matt said good night to Bert and Delores Grimes and returned home to Chris. He told her of everything they’d talked about and about his plan to visit the other neighbors as well as Jim Wainright.
“You think that’s a wise thing to do?” Chris said. “I mean going to see Wainright. It sounds like he might be a little on the unstable side. He could be dangerous.”
“I think I can handle a sixty-five-year-old retired principal,” Matt assured her. “If he looks like he’s going to attack me, I can always kick his cane out from under him.”
“He doesn’t use a cane,” Chris said, remembering seeing Jim Wainright climbing the ladder to his roof. “He’s in pretty good shape for an old guy.”
“Old guy?” Matt said. “He’d Dad’s age. Better not let Dad hear you say that.”
“That’s different,” Chris said. “Elliott’s always been in good shape. And from what he tells me, he can keep up with you during the day.”
“You’re right about that,” Matt had to agree. “I don’t know where Dad g
ets all his energy. Sometimes he tires me out. You know, maybe I’ll take Dad with me when I go to see Jim Wainright. Those two might have some common ground that I wouldn’t.”
“That’s a good idea, Matt,” Chris said. “Besides, Elliott has a little more tact when it comes to talking to people. Why don’t you just go along and listen? Some of that tact may rub off on you.”
“Thank you, Joyce Brothers,” Matt said. “I know how to talk to people.”
“Yeah? How’s that working out for you?”
“I’ll take Dad along.”
The next morning at the office, Matt walked in to find he had the office to himself. Now that Elliott had retired once and had come back, he could pretty much set his own hours and preferred to sleep in, joining Matt an hour or two after the office opened. Matt had thought about calling Elliott for an early meeting with Jim Wainright, but neither of the men would have been up yet so he decided to wait and talk to Elliott about it when he got in. Elliott finally came in at ten-thirty and took a seat behind his desk.
“Morning, Dad,” Matt said. “Listen, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“I know,” Elliott said defensively. “I’m usually here by ten, but…”
“No, that’s not it,” Matt said and went on to explain about the problems his neighbors were having with Jim Wainright. “I was hoping that you could stop in and see Jim during the lunch hour. He’s retired and would probably be home at that time, and I figured you two are about the same age.”
“And you figured we’re both members in the old-timers club and we’d speak the same language?”
“Something like that,” Matt admitted. “Besides, you’d know more about the mindset of a guy like that than I would. And he’d probably listen to you more than he’d listen to me. Dad, I’ve got to do something to stop my neighbors from killing each other. Can you help me out here?”
“Sure,” Elliott said. “I’ll go with you.”
“Uh, Dad, that’s not exactly what I had in mind. I thought you could go by yourself to talk to Jim and find out what’s bugging him. Things are getting out of hand over there.”
“All right,” Elliott said. “I’ll talk to him. Lucky for you I kind of know Jim a little. We went to school together. We didn’t really hang out together back then, but we were in the same graduating class. Lunch time, you say?”
“That would be super. Thanks, Dad.”
It was nearly an hour later when Matt’s phone rang. “Cooper Investigations, Matt speaking.”
“Mr. Cooper,” the woman’s voice said. “My name is Gladys Bennett and I’d like to know if I could hire you for a few days.”
“Well, Miss Bennett,” Matt began.
“It’s Mrs. Bennett,” Gladys said.
“Well, Mrs. Bennett, can you give me an idea what this involves?”
“I’d rather not talk about it over the phone,” she said. “Could we meet somewhere?”
“Where and when?” Matt said.
“Are you available now?” Gladys said.
“Yes, I am. Where would you like to meet?”
“Could you come to my house, Mr. Cooper?”
Matt thought about it for a moment and said, “That would depend how far away you live. Can you give me the address?”
Gladys Bennett gave Matt an address in Glendale, which was just fifteen minutes from his office. Matt agreed to meet her there at quarter to twelve and thanked her for calling before he hung up. He turned to Elliott. “I have to meet with a potential client,” he said. “I won’t be back before you have to meet Jim Wainright. Just meet me back here when you’re done talking to him, all right?”
“You got it,” Elliott said, gesturing toward Matt’s phone with his chin. “What kind of case do you have?”
Matt shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell me on the phone. You know how women are. They like to use a thousand words when fifty will do.”
“Hi Chris,” Elliott said in jest, looking past Matt’s shoulder.
Matt instinctively turned around before he realized that his father was pulling his leg.
“Had you worried there, didn’t I?” Elliott said. “I take it Chris is a bit long-winded herself.”
Matt nodded. “She’s no better than the typical female, I’m sorry to say. When she emails her friends, she takes up half the screen, talking about whatever women talk about. When she gets on the phone with her friends, it’s nothing for her to spend an hour or more rattling on about nothing. You know, Dad, when I send someone a greeting card, I just sign my name at the bottom and stuff it in the envelope. When Chris sends a card, she has to use up the entire inside page writing a note to go along with the card. And when she talks to me, it always takes her a few minutes to finally get to the point. I made the mistake of saying, ‘yeah, uh huh’ while she was talking and she lit into me like a banty rooster. Now I just let her talk, but I have to admit that a lot of what she says goes in one ear and out the other.”
“You’re learning,” Elliott said. “Get used to the fact that women would rather talk and men would rather do.”
Matt snapped his fingers and pointed at Elliott. “I’ll try to remember that for the future. Gotta run. I’ll see you later. I’ll be anxious to hear how it went with Jim Wainright.” Matt drove east on the boulevard and turned north on Western Avenue. A few minutes later he pulled up in front of the house on Colorado Boulevard. Matt rang the doorbell and a middle-aged woman, perhaps forty-five or so, answered the door. “Gladys Bennett?” Matt said.
“Mr. Cooper, I assume,” Gladys said.
Matt said he was and Gladys invited him in, gesturing toward the sofa in her living room. Matt waited for Gladys to sit before he settled into a recliner. “So, Miss Bennett, what can I do for you today?”
Before she could answer, a voice came from somewhere behind Matt, saying, “Hands up, mister.” Matt froze in his seat, not even moving his head. He looked at Gladys, who was smirking now. He heard the voice again, “Hands up, mister.” Matt raised both hands now and Gladys couldn’t contain her smile any longer.
Gladys pointed to some area behind Matt, urging him to turn around and take a look. Matt turned around and spotted a large white cockatiel on a perch.
“Hands up, mister,” the bird said again and then flapped his wings.
Matt breathed easier now and turned back around to face Gladys. “Is that the only phrase he knows?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cooper,” Gladys said. “Larry isn’t usually this talkative, but he overheard a television show I was watching last night. It was one of those police shows and the cop said to some suspect, ‘Hands up, mister,’ and Larry picked up on it. He’s been saying it ever since that movie ended.”
“Larry?” Matt said. “Not Polly?”
“No,” Gladys said. “Polly’s usually what you’d name a parrot and my friend, Wilma already had a cockatiel named Boyd. That was going to be my first choice, but I settled for Larry.”
Now Matt was really confused. “I don’t…”
“Boyd,” Gladys said, as if it should be perfectly clear to Matt. “Think about what Bugs Bunny would call that little yellow canary. Tweety Boyd, or Boyd for short.”
“Cute,” Matt said, “but how’d you come to pick Larry for your bird’s name?” Then it hit him. “Oh, I get it…Larry Bird. You’re a basketball fan?”
“Not really,” Gladys said. “I just thought it was kind of funny.”
Matt exhaled, scratched his eyebrow and turned to Gladys. “Getting back to the reason you called me, what is it you need me to do for you?”
“Actually,” Gladys said, “I was hoping you could help me get a job.”
“Uh, Miss Bennett,” Matt said, puzzled. “That’s not exactly what we do at Cooper Investigations. You might want to check an employment agency.”
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Cooper,” Gladys said. “I guess I should have explained. I don’t want you to actually get me the job. What I need is for you to find out something about the
personnel manager that I can use to get the upper hand during the interview. I’m scheduled to interview for a job next Monday morning and I figured if I knew a little about the person who does the hiring, well, maybe I could use whatever you find out to help me land the job. See?”
“I’m beginning to,” Matt said. “What kind of information are you hoping to get?”
“Oh, I don’t know exactly, but if you could maybe follow the guy around for a few days and learn something personal about him, maybe I could use it to break the ice between us. You know, like if you find out he likes a certain kind of car, I could talk about cars. If he’s a fisherman, I could talk about fishing.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Matt said. “I’m not sure how I’d go about getting that kind of information, but I’d be willing to give it a shot. You’d need the information by this weekend if your interview is Monday. That gives me three days to come up with something you can use.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I’ll certainly give it my best shot. Why don’t you write down as much information about the man as you know, so I won’t have to start with nothing. The more you can tell me about him, the quicker I’ll be able to find out even more about him.”
“That’s just it,” Gladys said. “I don’t even know who the personnel manager is. I can write down the name of the company but aside from that, you’ll have to dig a little to find out who does the interviewing.”
Matt left Gladys Bennett’s house armed with nothing more than a small slip of paper containing the company’s name and address. Matt returned to his office to dig a little deeper into the company’s background.
Elliott pulled to the curb in front of Matt’s house and rang the doorbell. Chris answered the door and smiled when she saw her father-in-law.
“Well, Elliott,” Chris said cheerfully. “What a pleasant surprise. What brings you here this time of day?” She opened the front door wider, allowing Elliott to come in.
Elliott rubbed his hands together and blew on them. “Little nippy out there today, isn’t it?”
“Can I make you some hot chocolate?” Chris said.