by Nic Saint
“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Alice asked as they stepped into the delivery van Felicity had borrowed for the occasion.
“What?”
“I think we should get you a gun.”
Felicity looked up in alarm. “A gun?”
Alice nodded, her face now grim. “Rick was right. We’re dealing with a crazed killer here. Who knows what this guy is capable of?”
“So now we’ve decided it’s a guy?”
“It’s always a guy, honey, or at least nine times out of ten, according to my sources.”
“Wikipedia.”
“Right. So I got you this.”
And with a flourish she brought a huge weapon out of her purse and laid it in Felicity’s lap. She jerked up at the sight of the thing and yelped. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you some protection. Mind you, it’s just a loaner. One of Uncle Mickey’s used ones. But give it a whirl and if you like it we can get you a keeper.” She beamed at Felicity, as if she’d just done her the world’s biggest favor.
“But I don’t want a gun!”
“Trust me. You want it. If that guy decides to come after you, you can turn the tables on him.” She grimaced darkly. “He won’t see that coming!”
“He will! I don’t shoot!” Well, apart from that one time she’d discharged a firearm in Rafi’s Deli, but that had been an emergency.
“I’ll teach you.”
“But I don’t want you to teach me!”
Alice gave her a pat on the shoulder. “That’s settled then. Now drive, honey. We don’t want this case to turn cold before we’ve had a crack at it, do you?”
Chapter 21
“I have a little surprise for you, son.”
Reece eyed his father curiously. After the gun range, he figured he’d had enough surprises for one day and here the old man was about to spring another one on him. “What is it, Dad?”
The bulky package lay on the table in the cozy but sparsely furnished dining room his father had inhabited for the past forty years. Nothing Reece could say or do had ever convinced Jack Hudson to trade his small house on the outskirts of Happy Bays for a more luxurious one. And for the first time since he’d left to carve out a career for himself in Hollywood, Reece could see why. The place might be cramped and a bit on the spartan side but it had a coziness and a homeliness many of his own properties sorely missed.
“Just open it!” Dad cried, impatiently gesturing to the package.
Reece displayed the lopsided grin that had made him such a mainstay with movie audiences the world over and started removing the strips of adhesive tape.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Dad grunted, pushed him aside and started tearing at the paper with the impatient gestures that were so typical of the old man. Then, seeming to realize he was spoiling the surprise, he gave the package a gentle nudge in his son’s direction. “Here, the rest is for you. I took care of the hard part.” He grinned. It was a little joke between father and son.
As a kid Reece loved grapefruit but had trouble removing the skin from the segments, so Dad would take care of that for him, then hand him the flesh on a plate, telling him he’d taken care of the hard part.
Reece frowned with amusement. He couldn’t imagine what his dad had gotten him. It wasn’t even his birthday, nor was Christmas around the corner. Then, as he peeled away the last layers of paper, he gasped at the sight of what lay within.
It was…a puppy. The small doggie, perched in a small basket, gazed up at Reece with tender, brown eyes. Then, suddenly, as Reece was still reeling from the surprise, the pup stood on wobbly legs, barked and gave Reece’s face a lick.
Laughing, he picked it up and held it out in front of him. “He’s lovely, Dad! I thought you said you had Lady spayed?”
Lady was the family lab and by now quite elderly.
“She’s not Lady’s,” Dad said. “And yes, he’s a she.”
Reece, his face wreathed in smiles, hugged the dog close. “This is the nicest gift anyone has ever gotten me, Dad,” he said, and found to his surprise that he actually meant it. “She looks just like Benji, doesn’t she?”
Dad grinned. “That’s the reason I got her.”
For as long as Reece could remember he’d missed Benji, the trusty old companion from his childhood days. Dad had bought him the mutt when he was a kid, right after Mom died, and the two of them—and Lady—had grown up together, Benji even walking to school with Reece every day. Then, as Reece got older, he’d had less and less time for the dog, and when he left home for the West Coast, Dad had taken care of Benji. The dog had died a couple of months later and Reece had never forgiven himself for not being there when it happened.
“How did you know?” he asked.
Dad shrugged. “I know.”
He turned to his old man and gave him a half-hearted hug. “Thanks, Dad. This means the world to me.”
Hudson Senior nodded and seemed a little moist around the eyes. “I just figured…I was down at Peter North’s the other day and he told me about this litter at the Foster place. So I went over there and who would I find but this exact lookalike to Benji. So what with you coming to town and all, I just figured…” He cleared his throat. “Let’s just say Christmas came early this year.”
Reece cuddled the dog close and the little puppy yapped happily, then jumped onto the table, into his box and waited patiently to be picked up again. “I’m christening you Benji II,” he said, tapping the dog on the nose.
The dog barked once, and both Reece and his dad laughed. “I think she likes the name, son.”
“I guess she does.”
“Do you think, um, Dorothy will like her?”
Reece looked up. Dad had taken a seat and seemed reluctant to turn the conversation to the elephant in the room.
“I like her, Dad, and that’s all that matters.”
Dad chuckled. “I just thought, seeing as how Dorothy is so fond of Pekes, she might object to getting a mongrel.” He shrugged. “Just saying if she doesn’t want her in the house for some reason you can always bring her back to me. Plenty of space around here.”
Reece took a seat across from his father. “Dorothy will love Benji, I’m sure.”
“Of course she will,” Dad said with a touch of wistfulness. “Is she—that is to say—are you expecting her soon?”
“Well, she told me she’s coming. She just needed to take care of a few things in New York. Some last minute stuff.” He swallowed. “Work-related.”
Dad nodded thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on the table. “They’re keeping her busy, huh?”
“Yeah, you know how it is.” He remembered the text she sent him earlier. Some craziness about a department store manager she wanted fired. A twinge of doubt assaulted him yet again at the thought of Dorothy coming to Happy Bays. He wanted her to come, to meet Dad. But he had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate the old man for who he was, or the place where he lived. He knew that he himself had long disrespected his humble beginnings and once he’d struck gold had even dissed his small-town past to his new Hollywood friends.
Now that his career was going well and he didn’t have to worry about his next paycheck he found his thoughts drifting more and more to Happy Bays and the happy days he’d spent here as a kid.
He patted his dad’s callused hand. “As soon as she can tear herself away she’ll come down, Dad, and she’s gonna love it here. I just know she will.” Dad nodded and took out an iPad. Reece’s jaw dropped at the sight of it. “I—I didn’t know you were into technology, Dad?”
“Oh, sure I am. These days you have to be. I even have the Wi-Fi now.” He put on his reading glasses and frowned at the display, which came to light with an abundance of color. Reece swallowed when he saw Dad had Dorothy’s Facebook page open. “Let’s see,” he muttered, then looked up. “I’ve been following your girl closely, Reece. Ever since you got engaged…” He frowned at the screen. “She’s at some place called The Crichton, having liqu
eurs with a girl called Avril, and she’s complaining that…” He squinted as he read. “…‘the service sux a** and if I don’t get something to eat soon I’m gonna die! #ripoff #NewYorkSux #partyhardbitches.’” He stared at a mortified Reece over his half-moon glasses. “That urgent work stuff seems pretty serious if you ask me, son.”
Chapter 22
Felicity gulped as she entered Charlie’s Funeral Delight. It was not her favorite place and she’d rather have a very painful bikini wax than have to come here. But then Alice had received an urgent message from her uncle that ‘the body was in’ and urged her to join him so he could get to work.
The family had opted for an open casket funeral, and since Alistair had apparently fallen on his face after being shot, all of Uncle Charlie’s skills were required to make him presentable.
She walked past the showroom with its display of caskets and followed Alice to the back, where the prep room was located. She knew the place well. Not too long ago Alice had found it appropriate to prepare her friend for a date by applying Uncle Charlie’s make-up in that exact room. It was also where they’d discovered five strays Alice’s uncle had taken in. The quintet was now a fixture of Stanwyck Street 41.
“Do you think I should be here for this?” she asked again. Just hearing the creepy Muzak Uncle Charlie insisted on playing had her stomach turning cartwheels.
“Yes, I do,” said Alice decidedly. “How are you going to write your story if you haven’t even seen the body? You’re a crime reporter now, Fe. So buck up and just do it already.”
Felicity winced, wishing she was home. Why the heck she ever wanted to be a reporter was beyond her. She was stretching her comfort zone to the max on this assignment and she’d only just begun.
Uncle Charlie, who’d been patiently awaiting their arrival, stood with hands sheathed in plastic gloves over a body bag. Felicity’s stomach lurched once more.
“Alice, you do this,” she whispered. “I really can’t—”
But Alice took her by the hand and pulled her along. “Just a peek, Fe. You need to see this so you can share your story with the world.”
“Yes, but—”
“Ah, ladies,” caroled Uncle Charlie. “Shall we begin?” He was a potbellied man of about forty, with a bushy rust-colored mustache, his jet-black hair styled with plenty of gel and usually dressed like Elvis Presley, his personal idol. Today he’d opted for scrubs.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” said Alice, who seemed to be looking forward to the procedure.
“I checked the report you sent me and the conclusions are pretty straightforward. Alistair Long died from a single gunshot wound to the chest. The bullet penetrated the rib cage between the third and fourth rib and—”
Another lurch in her stomach told Felicity she wasn’t going to make it to the end. She hadn’t even enjoyed the beginning. She gritted her teeth and willed her stomach to behave itself. She’d witnessed this scene on cop shows so many times it should have been a cinch. Instead, it was that whole high school incident with the frog all over again. The biology teacher had dissected a frog and Felicity had suddenly found herself feeling queasy. Then, before she could stop herself, had barfed up her lunch.
Uncle Charlie was still talking, though the gist of the discourse escaped her. Tuning out, she discovered, was the only thing that could save her from a repetition of the frog incident.
“Now let’s see what we have here,” said Uncle Charlie with relish. With a flourish, he unzipped the body bag.
The moment she caught a glimpse of Alistair’s ashen face, she knew she’d been fighting a lost cause. The middle part of the man’s face appeared to have been bashed in with a rock. Instantly she turned the same color as the dead man. And then she was running for the nearest bathroom, slamming the door behind her and heaving her entire lunch into the bowl. And such a delicious lunch it had been, she thought sadly as the last remnants disappeared into the pink toilet, Elvis Presley’s face staring back at her from the toilet seat.
Chapter 23
Alice wondered where Felicity had gone after she hadn’t seen her for a couple of minutes. She’d been too busy checking the body Uncle Charlie was surveying to notice anything at first, but when she turned to ask her friend’s opinion and found her not amongst those present, she started to worry.
She knew about the frog incident in high school. In fact it had been her idea to do the experiment in the first place, eager as she was to find out what made frogs and other members of the amphibian family tick. She’d asked their biology teacher if they could dissect a frog, but teach had balked, not wanting to do more harm to the animal kingdom than humankind already had. But then a frog had died from natural causes in his own backyard, and he’d relented.
The frog hadn’t suffered, but three students had, most prominent amongst them Felicity, whose virulent upchuck had upstaged the dissection in sheer entertainment value.
Alice started wandering the halls, hollering, “Fe! Where are you?”
“In here,” finally a small voice came from the lavatories, and Alice set her face. It was just as she’d suspected. The sight of the dead body had taken its toll on Felicity’s frayed nervous system, and she’d gone into hiding.
She took up post outside the door. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but the chicken I had for lunch is now swimming with the fishes.”
“Good for him. But I wasn’t talking about the chicken. Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes,” Felicity’s voice came back. “At least I hope so.” She paused, then asked tremulously, “Has Uncle Charlie finished with Alistair?”
“He’s only just begun. He says there’s a lot of damage and he will need all his skill to plaster him up.”
“Oh, God. Don’t tell me these things. I think I’m gonna be sick again.”
“He says Alistair’s lucky he had such a nice bushy beard. It broke the fall.”
“Alice…” Felicity groaned.
“Though of course it’s a pity his beard didn’t extend to his nose, which was flattened when he hit that rock.”
“Don’t, please,” Felicity pleaded.
“Oh, well, can’t be helped I guess. If the family wants an open casket funeral what are you gonna do? Will you be in there all day?”
“Until Uncle Charlie is finished. Seems like the safest place right now.”
“No need to see the rest. I’ll give you a running commentary,” Alice assured her friend. “I know how you reporter types work. You want every last detail so you can add verisimilitude. Make the reader believe he’s present at the scene. The sights, the smells, the sounds…”
From the toilet the sound of retching came, and Alice arched her brows. Apparently that chicken hadn’t gone swimming after all. Or at least not all of it.
She leaned against the door and thought about the mysterious case of Alistair Long. According to both the medical report and Uncle Charlie, the killer had shot the man from point blank range. And in his opinion a killer only shoots a victim like that if the murder is personal. It requires a strong stomach—Felicity was definitely not a suspect—and usually indicates a personal grudge. A crime of passion, perhaps? Or revenge?
Finally the sounds from the other side of the door indicated the heaving was done. The door opened and a pale and bedraggled Felicity appeared.
“Ah, there you are, “Alice said, well pleased. “I thought you decided to follow that chicken and jump in.”
“Not a chance.”
Alice eyed her friend critically. “You have a distinctly green pallor, Fe. Reminds me of that frog we dissected in high school. Remember the little guy?”
Felicity seemed to remember well, for she gave her a look that could kill, then muttered in a hollow voice, “I hate you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s it, Fe.”
“That’s what?”
“Whoever killed Alistair must have hated the man. Now all we need to do is find out who his enemies were.�
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Felicity heaved a deep sigh. “Let’s get out of here first. My brain ceased to function somewhere between the sight of Alistair’s bashed in face and Elvis grinning at me from your uncle’s toilet seat.”
Chapter 24
Dusk was falling as Alice and Felicity hurried home along Raines Street. The HBNWC was finally meeting and they didn’t want to be late for the auspicious event. Alice had been giving her friend a brief report of her conclusions and Felicity saw she was right on the money.
“Revenge, huh? So we need to start looking into all the people Alistair ever had a beef with.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard. I’m sure the girls will be able to spill the dirt on Alistair.”
“I’m sure they will.”
Five minutes later they arrived at the house, and Felicity wasn’t surprised to see Aunt Bettina already hurrying up, eager to learn all the bad news. Bettina, Felicity’s mother’s sister, was a large middle-aged woman with a perm so rigid it appeared to have been molded from concrete. It even had the same color.
“What did I miss?” she asked, panting a little, for she’d had to come all the way from the bakery, two streets away, where she worked.
“We’re cracking the Alistair case wide open,” Alice told her.
Bettina rubbed her hands in gleeful anticipation. “Wonderful. Simply wonderful.”
“Chief Whitehouse has blocked us from the investigation,” Felicity explained, “so we decided to conduct one on our own.”
“Right. I think you’re right,” Aunt Bettina said, darting her eyes left and right along the street as if on the lookout for the chief. “No offense, Alice, but your father never solved a murder in his life, so why should he think he can do so now?”
“Virgil is assisting him,” Felicity said.
Bettina cackled. “That broken reed? He couldn’t find a donkey if it bit him in the patootie.”