by D R Lowrey
“Interesting that you, of all people, should mention a blow to the head,” said the detective. “According to the coroner, the cause of death was a blow to the head.”
Nigel folded back his upturned finger.
The room went silent except for the sound of a dozen ears stretching toward Nigel in anticipation of a juicy confession.
“Why is everyone looking at me?” asked Nigel. “And tuck those ears in. You can’t honestly think I had anything to do with this man’s death.”
“We wouldn’t like to think so,” said Stefanie, always the voice of reason. “But we would all be more certain if you confessed.”
“Confessed? Confessed to what?”
“To whatever you should confess to,” said Stefanie. “We’re not saying you committed this particular murder, necessarily, but we know there must be things in your past. We can see it in your tormented eyes. Maybe now is the time to bare your soul. You could at least enjoy your jailtime with a clear conscience.”
“Jailtime?” protested Nigel. “For what? I haven’t done anything, and there’s no evidence. Is there evidence?” He hoped there wasn’t evidence.
“We know the man was hit sharply in the back of the head, behind the right ear, with a rounded object about an inch in diameter,” said the detective. “I’m thinking a ball-peen hammer. Do you own a ball-peen hammer, Mr. Blandwater-Cummings?”
“Own a ball-peen hammer? I don’t even know what a ball-peen hammer is. What is it?”
“This”—Detective Winjack said, holding up the diabolical implement—“is a ball-peen hammer. Do you know where I got this ball-peen hammer, Mr. Blandwater-Cummings?”
“How would I know? Murderers-R-Us?”
“Your garage.”
“My garage? How did you get in my garage?”
“Do you deny that it’s your hammer?”
“Let me see that.” Nigel gave it a once-over. “Aha! This is not my hammer. It’s a loaner. It was loaned to me by my father-in-law, Stanley, for working on rain gutters. I’ve never even used it.”
“Excuse me,” said the turbaned, sunglassed mother-in-law, speaking for the first time since entering the Sandoval residence. “I have intimate knowledge of this man, Stanley, of whom he speaks. Stanley would never loan out his tools to such a dubious character. Never.”
“Thank you for that, miss,” said the detective, turning again to Nigel. “Is it not true that there was an explosion and fire at your house the day after the body was discovered?”
“What of it?” said Nigel.
“Fire, that ancient destroyer of evidence. The fire could have been purposefully set to destroy this ball-peen hammer, or any other evidence from any other crimes.”
“Other crimes? What other crimes?”
“I wouldn’t know. But then, I did not start the fire. Of course, arson is a serious crime in and of itself.”
“Arson?”
“When you finish the arson investigation at his place,” said the turbaned mother-in-law, “you can start one on mine.”
“I have one more bit of news before I go,” said the detective. “Is Mr. Sandoval here?”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Sandoval, raising his hand.
“Mr. Sandoval, I have some bad news.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Oh, dear, indeed,” said the detective. “You, Mr. Sandoval, are dead.”
“Really? I’ve felt disoriented lately, but I didn’t think it was as bad as that. Actually, I’ve seldom felt better. What killed me?”
“The cause of death is listed as unknown, but you were declared dead a few weeks ago. No one told you?”
“If they did, I don’t remember.”
“Did anyone else know that Mr. Sandoval was dead?” asked the detective.
“Everyone thought he was dead,” said Stefanie. “You, apparently, were the last to find out. But I have news for you, Mr. Detective. He’s alive!”
Stefanie and Esmerelda jumped up in a fit of squeals to caress their dented but reclaimed father.
“You can jump up and down all you want,” said the detective, “but it’s not as simple as that. He’s been declared dead. A person can’t just show up after having been declared dead and expect to live as if nothing had happened. Not without going through a lot of hell first. He’ll need a new Social Security number for a start. But there’s an even bigger issue at stake.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Esmerelda.
“He needs to prove his identity. Who are we supposed to believe? An official document from the Bureau of Vital Statistics with the state seal of Texas on it, or the word of some old geezer who turns up with armadillo shell shoes?”
“He’s not an old geezer. He’s my Papa,” protested Esmerelda.
“I’m sure you want to believe that, ma’am, but we need to establish the truth. For all we know, he could be an illegal alien. Did he come with any kind of identification?”
“I’m sorry to cause such trouble,” said Mr. Sandoval, “but, no, I have no identification. For a long time—many years, maybe—I didn’t even know who I was. Bit by bit, parts of my memory came back. Eventually, I remembered my name was Sandoval and that I came from New Antigua. I hoped that if I could make it back to New Antigua, I’d find out more about myself. And now you tell me I’m dead. I had hoped for a better ending.”
“Ridiculous!” declared Esmerelda. “You’re alive and you’re my Papa. Obviously, any documents declaring him dead need to be nullified.”
“For him to have been declared dead,” spoke the detective, “some member of his family must have filed the paperwork. There must be affidavits testifying to his death or disappearance. Who filed the paperwork? Who entered the affidavits?”
Every member of the gathering scanned every other member of the gathering, expecting to see a raised hand. Instead, every member of the gathering saw every other member of the gathering scanning all the other members of the gathering while not raising a hand.
“No?” said the detective. “So, I am to believe that no member of the family filed for a death certificate or entered an affidavit, even though we have this brand-spanking new death certificate. Strange.”
“I say this with all due respect,” said Nigel, turning to the detective, “but you seem to be a detective without a clue.”
“I believe,” said the detective, inspecting the head of the ball-peen hammer, “that once we’ve matched this hammer to the dead man’s injuries, I will have far more than a clue.”
A shiver traveled down Nigel’s back and then up his front. “Do you even know who the dead man is?” he asked.
“As yet, we do not,” replied the detective.
“So, you have a dead man you cannot identify, whose cause of death is an ever-changing story, and a live man you seem to think is dead. Please excuse us if we remain skeptical. Am I right, people?”
“Would not surprise me in the least if you did someone in with a ball-peen hammer,” replied his mother-in-law.
“Me neither,” said Abuelita as her functioning eye punctured Nigel like a flaming icicle.
“Well!” said Nigel. “Thank you all so much for standing by me in my hour of need.”
The crowd began to disburse.
“Tomorrow, I’ll organize a noose-tying class. Nothing like a good, wholesome, shared activity to warm the blackest of hearts. If the weather’s nice, we can build a gallows. I’ll contact the local chapter of Habitat for Inhumanity, and, if we all pitch in, we’ll have it up by noon. Any volunteers to make the lemonade?”
“Mr. Nigel, please don’t be too upset,” said Mrs. Sandoval. “It’s not that everyone feels you’re a murderer. We sincerely hope you aren’t. It’s just that we feel you’re a pretty lousy butler. If you buckle down and become a respectable butler, you might have more people on your side. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“I see. A matter of priorities. I get it.”
“Good. Now, get me a tequila. This whole thing has mad
e me tense.”
When Nigel returned with two shots of tequila—one because she’d asked for it, and the other because she would ask for it—he noticed Annie conversing with the detective. After leaving the tray for Mrs. Sandoval, Nigel hid himself behind some curtains to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“So, you honestly have no idea who the dead man is?” asked Annie in a withering tone.
“As of yet, no. These things take time.”
“Maybe I can save you some time,” said Annie. “See if your victim doesn’t match up to an Emilio Anguilero.”
“Emilio Anguilero, eh? This name pop out of a bad dream? An old boyfriend, perhaps? Or something your Ouija board coughed up?”
“Call it a professional hunch. Maybe it’s him. Maybe not. If it’s him, then you’ll have an actual lead toward finding the killer. It’d sure beat pissing in the wind, wouldn’t it?”
“I assure you, no one is pissing in the wind.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that on your shirt?”
Nigel couldn’t see the follow up, but he knew the routine. Annie knew how to talk to these detectives in a language they understood. Nigel turned to sneak away.
“Yoo-hoo, Mr. Nigel,” called out Mrs. Sandoval. “I see you! Could you bring me some ice cream? Vanilla custard, two scoops, crush some Tums to sprinkle on top. Thank you.”
*****
Nigel felt unnerved, like a chicken finding a snake in its coop. These constant insinuations that he was a murderer made it hard to maintain a butler’s reserve. As soon as he could find a moment for himself, he texted Annie to meet him in the study. She wasn’t always the comforting type, but he needed the perspective of a professional.
The seldom-used study featured a giant mahogany desk backed by a wall of musty leather-bound volumes Nigel perused while waiting for Annie. He would not have typed any of the Sandoval residents as scholarly readers, but the titles on display contained works of classic literature, philosophy, history, science, and law. Impressive it was, until he reached for Isaac Newton’s Principia to discover that it was neither leather-bound, nor a volume, but part of a three-dimensional wall façade.
“Okay, what you got?” asked Annie, interrupting Nigel’s disappointment.
“Ah, there you are. I thought you might have gotten lost,” he said, sliding himself on top of the desk.
Annie leaned against one of the facing chairs. “I was just persuading Mother how harmless you are, even if you happened to be an assassin.”
“Were you convincing?”
“Of course. She knows you, and she knows me. I’m packing heat, and I know how to use it. Case closed.”
“Good for you, but we both know I’m not the killer. I have an idea who is.”
“You think it’s Abuelita’s fiancé, Jack Watt.”
“Correct. We think alike.”
“No. Thankfully, we don’t. He bears watching, but he’s not the killer.”
“Why not?”
“Murderers don’t stick around for their investigations. If he were the killer, he’d be long gone. I’ve got plenty of questions about Jack Watt, but he’s not the killer.”
“Then who?”
“Don’t know. But I have an idea who the dead man is, and that’s a start.”
“How do you know that?”
“The petition filed for Mr. Sandoval’s death certificate. Almost certainly, the petitioner was that evil lawyer behind the Abuelita catfishing scheme. To clear the way to inherit her fortune, he manufactured some documents, including that petition for Mr. Sandoval’s death certificate. He wanted a clean deed to the estate so once he married and murdered Abuelita, the property would be his, no questions asked.
“The petition included two affidavits from associates of Mr. Sandoval from his South American expedition. They each testified to his disappearance on that trip and their belief that he was dead. Our corpse fits the description of one of those men.”
“Great that you figured that out, but what do you propose to do now?”
“I’ve given the name to Chief Inspector Bozo. If he’s even halfway competent, which may be a stretch, he should be able to confirm his identity. If not, I’ll have to investigate on my own.”
“But what about the killer?”
“I’m researching the other associate. The way I figure it, our dead man was killed by someone who knew him, possibly an accomplice. It may or may not have been the other associate, but I would certainly like to question him.”
“But why would they be here at the Sandoval estate?”
“Don’t know. That’s a good reason to find the accomplice, isn’t it?”
“I’ll give you a better reason. To keep me off death row. That harebrained detective thinks I did it.”
“Get real. Calling that detective a harebrain is an insult to hares. Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it? Did you see his performance today? He has a hammer from our garage. If that thing should match the injury, I could be cooked. Fried, I should say.”
“Did you kill the guy?”
“Of course not!”
“Then forget about it.”
“What if the guy was killed by a ball-peen hammer? What then?”
“Have you ever seen a person’s head after a blow by a ball-peen hammer?”
“You mean before Monday? Not that I recall.”
“You still haven’t. A coroner would not need two days to establish the cause of death for a blow to the head by a ball-peen hammer.”
“No?”
“No. You saw the body, right?”
“I did.”
“What’d it look like?”
“A dead person.”
“Right. A person. A ball-peen hammer would leave something not like a person. More like a bloody mess with bone fragments and scattered brain bits.”
“You’re making me feel so much better.”
“It’s my job.”
“As a detective?”
“As your wife. My job as a detective is to keep you out of the frying pan.”
“I’m feeling pretty hot right now,” said Nigel, pulling Annie close and planting a big kiss on her lips.
A shuffling noise forced his eyes open in time to see Mrs. Sandoval beat a hasty retreat.
A private eye might explain away such an indiscretion as an unfortunate requirement of the job. A butler would have a harder time of it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Treasure of the L3 Vertebrae
Following dinner, Nigel partook of a solitary walk around the grounds. He did this not to enjoy the evening air, but because the house felt infested with twitches and shudders. The apprehension was palpable even though he strove to keep his hands in open view and had dispensed with articles of clothing capable of concealing a ball-peen hammer. Nevertheless, his presence, without fail, provoked abrupt conversation, ashen complexions, and the voiding of rooms.
Little wonder that in a house containing Nigel, the Ball-Peen Hammer Assassin, and Mother, the Turbaned Death Queen, residents huddled in sheltered enclaves to formulate defensive strategies and escape routes.
Upon returning from his walk, Nigel retreated to his sleeping chambers to find Grumps slumped in his chair, wearing his helmet and watching Fox news.
“Good evening,” said Nigel, causing Grumps to belch.
“You must not be very popular down there.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Why else would you be up here at this hour? Besides, don’t take no genius to see you’re not the belle of the ball.”
“Maybe I prefer to spend time with you.”
“Yeah, right. If it’s between me and that Abuelita, I might believe you. She’s a piece of work, that one. If I had to choose between spending an hour with her and scrubbing my colon with a Brillo pad, I know which one I’d choose.”
“Come now, Grumps. Abuelita must have been something in her day.”
“What day would that have been? Halloween, 1900?”
>
“Laugh if you want, but you know she’s getting married on Saturday?”
“I did not know that. The groom is blind, deaf, and stupid, I take it.”
“No, no. As far as I can tell, he has all his senses.”
“No sense, if you ask me.”
“Seeing as how she owns the house we’re staying in, we should probably change the subject,” said Nigel, even though Grumps was clearly on a roll. “Tell me, why do you wear that helmet?”
“Need the protection. Head injury.”
“From the war?”
“After the war. Working on a charter fishing boat. I was the party of the third part in a fight between a man and his wife.”
“That’s unfortunate. What did he hit you with?”
“She. She hit me. A four-foot hammerhead shark, square on top of the head. I weren’t the target, you understand. She was going for her husband. She’d have got him too, if she had caught a six-footer. It was my mistake for gettin’ between ’em. Should have let ’em go after each other. Anyway, the lady swung her four-footer, came up short, and crumpled my braincase. Never expected to get waylaid from behind by a fish. You know what started that fight?”
“Who would clean?”
“Drag adjustments on her fishing reel. When he told her to loosen, she’d tighten. When he told her to tighten, she’d loosen. I ain’t never been married, but it seems like the kind of stuff you’d work out beforehand.”
“Absolutely. Communication is everything. So, you’ve worn a helmet ever since?”
“Pretty much. I could have got my head fixed. They gave me some money, those two lovebirds. But instead of a metal plate in my skull, I bought a motorcycle.”
“Of course you did. You can’t drive a metal plate around town. Besides, you already had a helmet.”
“Darn tootin’. Maybe if I’d had my Wilhelmina, I’d have cared about a stoved-in head. But seein’ what I been through, a dent in my skull seemed fitting, if you know what I mean. It’s like those guys who got injured during the war but didn’t get their purple hearts until years later. That’s kind of what I feel like with my dented skull. Like I really earned it when I got that letter, but the physical manifestation didn’t happen ’til I got dinged with a hammerhead. Delayed injustice, you might call it. Funny how things work out.”