Yeah, that’s another thing about Lou and me. Neither of us owns a computer, cell phone, or any other up-to-date electronic device except a DVD player. My phone is black, heavy, and has a rotary dial. So what if I don’t have Caller I.D. or Call Waiting. I’ve made it this far without all that stuff.
One change Lou and I made since retirement is that we recently agreed to socialize with the outside world. I mentioned earlier some of the literary detective heroes. While I’d heard of many of them since I was a child, it was only after retirement that I began to read and study them. Lou suggested we frequent the Scene of the Crime Mystery Bookstore, and since it didn’t require rigorous activity or missing any meals to do so, I agreed to accompany him to check it out. We checked it out all right. Or should I say we left our checks. Our first visit cost each of us $148.23. Both of us bought the same books and had the same agenda. Read the books in a certain order and discuss them afterward. I learned something from that first visit. On our second visit, when we escaped we had spent less than $100 each. I’ve learned that I need to buy fewer books or buy paperbacks. At least that’s my thinking until our next visit to Scene of the Crime.
In a weak moment, Lou and I agreed to attend a monthly get-together of mystery readers. So far, we have attended only once, but a couple of other readers recommended some contemporary authors to us. I made a “to buy” list for our next visit. I planned to try a book from the Death on Demand series and one from the Henri O series by Carolyn Hart, the Alpine series by Mary Daheim, a selection from the Claire Malloy series by Joan Hess, a whodunit from one of Tim Myers’s series, and a book from the Puzzle Lady series by Parnell Hall. I will try those, but I’ve sworn Lou to secrecy. No one at the department is to know that Lou and I are reading a series with a character known as the Puzzle Lady. Who knows how much guys like George Michaelson and Frank Harris would kid us?
Chapter Six
As I thought about the Colonel’s dilemma, I thought back over the last couple of months and what we had been through. Much of my thoughts had to do with the change in Lou.
Evidently the winter weather was worse on Lou than I thought. I had no forewarning of how bad he had become until he slid into the car one morning, buckled up, looked over at me and smiled.
“What’s wrong with you, Cheshire cat?”
“I got a Wii.”
“Excuse me,” I replied.
“I said I got a Wii.”
“I thought that’s what you said. Why didn’t you go before you came out of your apartment? It isn’t like I was going to drive off and leave you.”
“No, no, no. A Wii. W I I. I got a Wii Fit, too.”
“Well, what’s a Wii without a Wii Fit.”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you, Cy?”
“I’d say that makes two of us. If we’d been on a case, I’d say that you’ve been working too hard, but obviously that’s not the case.”
“Cy, a Wii is a video game system. Wii Fit is an exercise program you use with the Wii in order to get in better shape, and lose weight if you need to.”
“Well, you don’t need to.”
“But Doc says I need to get in better shape.”
“Then change doctors.”
“I don’t want to. I Wiied for over thirty minutes this morning and I feel great. It’s a wonderful workout. I understand there’s over forty exercises altogether.”
“Do they have anything for exercising your brain? I think yours has taken a hiatus.”
It was then I got a dissertation on what a Wii and Wii Fit were. It was almost enough to make me lose my appetite. Almost, but not quite.
+++
We arrived at the Blue Moon, stepped out of the car and into the diner. My eyes seemed to deceive me. It looked like Lou was a little sprier as he jumped up onto his stool.
After a little small talk, Rosie took our order. I ordered the usual. Then it was Lou’s turn.
“I’ll have a veggie omelet and a bowl of fruit. Maybe some berries, sliced banana, and a sliced apple, if you have it.”
As soon as Rosie realized that Lou was serious, she turned to me. I figured I was about to find an ally, someone whose common sense hadn’t left her.
“What’s wrong with him today?”
I made a mistake of telling her.
“He Wiied for over thirty minutes this morning.”
I wasn’t prepared for her answer, or the conversation that ensued.
“You got a Wii?”
“Yeah, it came in yesterday. Wii Fit, too.”
“I’ve had mine for two weeks. I love it. I think the super hula hoop has taken a half an inch off my waist.”
“I haven’t done that one yet. What do you think of the basic step?”
“Oh, I’ve already unlocked the advanced step.”
I had already decided that someone had unlocked a door that should have remained locked.
“I’m just getting started. What are some of your favorite exercises?”
As both sides of the counter reverberated with names of the exercises I’d heard all the way to the diner, I felt I was going to lose my food, until I realized that Rosie hadn’t yet turned around to hang our order on the spindle. The last thing I heard was two people agreeing on what fun it was to head soccer balls. I began to wonder if two heads hadn’t taken too many cannonballs.
+++
By the grace of God I managed to get through the rest of the day. I went home and prayed for Lou, that he would come to his senses. If he continued to work out on that contraption, he’d lose weight. Surely God would spare him if I continued to pray in earnest. Otherwise, people might start calling me Jack, as in, “Here comes Jack and the Beanstalk.” I couldn’t imagine Lou being skinny. He had always had a healthy body, like mine.
+++
Everything was fine until the next morning when a smiling sergeant slid into my car and asked me if I thought he looked thinner.
“You know, Lou, now that you mention it, I think you have lost weight, and all the weight you’ve lost is above your neck and behind your eyebrows.”
Lou just looked at me and smiled, as if he thought that some day he could convert me.
+++
Wasting Away Lou dominated my thoughts. Even when I got home and picked up a good mystery, I couldn’t concentrate on what I read. The next morning everything had gotten to be too much for me. I did something irrational. I set the alarm for just before daylight, sneaked out of the house and over to Lou’s apartment. I got to his front window just as Lou was shutting off the TV. The sweat on his body told he had already Wiied. I slinked back to the car, went home, fell back into the bed, and pulled the covers over my head. I had missed all that sleep for nothing.
+++
The following morning I arose even earlier. I figured that Lou Wiied at the same time each day, so I missed even more sleep to see Lou in action. I parked a few doors from Lou’s building and slipped down the street lurking in the shadows as much as possible. By the time I got to Lou’s place, my ears were cold and red. I set up shop in front of Lou’s window and watched a very overweight man twist his hips as he emulated the cartoon character he had created on the Wii, the character he was watching on the TV, a character who was spinning a hula hoop around his cartoonish body. I must have laughed loud enough to be heard through a storm window, because a few seconds later Lou stepped off his Wii Fit board and hurried to the window. I wiped the slobber from my jacket and managed to get away without being seen. As I shut the car door, started the car, and turned the heater up high, I realized that I had experienced some of the most hilarious free entertainment I had seen in some time.
+++
I went to bed extremely early that night, so that I could go back for more entertainment before dawn the next day. When I arrived at Lou’s place, I noticed a shrub I hadn’t seen before. It was blocking Lou’s window. The night before I thought of Lou doing his imitation hula hoop and trained myself not to laugh. If I was going to get up long
before God intended me to arise, I wanted to get the full show.
As I neared his window, I could see Lou Wiiing while standing on one leg. The other leg was tucked up against his thigh. I didn’t realize Lou was capable of such a move, but then I noticed he was using the back of a chair for support. I stepped forward to get right next to the window. I was glad that it was a cloudy night. In a few moments, I ceased to be glad it was a cloudy night. I heard a thud inside the house. From what I gathered, Lou was no longer standing on one leg. He was lying on his front, back, or one side or the other. From what I could tell, Lou keeled over just after I screamed. I screamed just after I stepped into a bear trap and it crushed my ankle. I lay in the snow writhing in pain.
It was several minutes before I failed to notice the pain. The first thing to distract me from my pain was a voice that said, “Hold it right there!” and then someone shined a light in my eyes. I recognized Officer Davis’s voice before his light illuminated my face.
“Well, Lt. Dekker, what are you doing here? Did you get the call about a prowler, too? I thought you’d pretty much retired except for murder cases.”
Murder. The way I felt there was about to be another murder.
“Oh, hi, Officer Davis. I just came over to watch Lou Wii.”
“Excuse me, Lieutenant.”
“Wii, you know that exercise thing. Lou got one. You should see him working out on it. It’s hilarious.”
“Oh, he’s got a Wii, too. I’ve had mine about a month now. I don’t have the Fit yet, but I love to bowl on it. And boxing and tennis are a good workout.”
I was freezing, but my brain hadn’t yet been affected. I had just figured out that the whole world had gone crazy, when something else distracted me. Something whisked by Officer Davis and crawled up onto my body. I knew that tongue seemed familiar when I heard a screech nearby.
“That’s it, Twinkle Toes. Let Cyrus know how much you love him. Cyrus has been hurt.”
My next-door neighbor was about to lean over and caress me, when I remembered the bear trap and kicked with all my might. “Oops!” I exclaimed, as my next-door neighbor cried out in pain. From the way she hobbled around for the next couple of minutes, I think I caught her in the shin. My conscience kicked in and wiped the smile from my face, so I refrained from doing the same to her varmint.
A day or two later, my senses returned, and I engaged Officer Davis to help me extricate the bear trap from my ankle. I decided to hold on to the instrument that caused me so much pain. I was torn as to whether to leave it outside my next-door neighbor’s front door, or the door of the man inside the apartment, the man who used to be my best friend before he started having mental problems.
Officer Davis drove me to the hospital to get my ankle checked. An hour later, I was home again, soaking my ankle. It gave me time to think. There were only three ways that Heloise Humphert could have known that I had been hurt. She could have followed me, which I doubted, because she would have pounced on me much sooner if she had, she could have purchased a police radio, which I was pretty sure she hadn’t done, or she could have been alerted by an ex-friend of a sergeant. I didn’t know how, but some day I was going to get even with Lou.
+++
I was concerned about Lou. I wanted him to get help, so the next morning I placed a call to the police psychiatrist. I let him know about Lou’s new fetish. He let me know what the Wii Fit had done for him. I hung up and remembered that some people think psychiatrists are the looniest of all people. I had only two other recourses, Thelma Lou, Lou’s girlfriend, and Internal Affairs. I decided to wait before contacting either. I was beginning to think like the one man whose body hadn’t been taken over by the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Wii fanatics were everywhere. Soon, there would be only skinny people. I reminded myself not to buy stock in any fast food restaurant, and to eat an extra helping of dessert, unless the Blue Moon Diner quit serving dessert. After all, Rosie had been affected, too. What if the cook is next?
Chapter Seven
Lou and I made it through March and the first half of April without too much trouble. Well, no trouble except I had to listen to Lou expostulate about the Wii everyday and received a weekly report on how much weight he had lost. I was concerned about him. His pants were slipping down, and I noticed how Lou had to move his belt over a notch. Also, I learned that I’d lost one of my allies. Lou had had Thelma Lou over twice to Wii. He’d Wii for a half an hour and then she’d Wii for thirty minutes. Then, they repeated their workouts until both had Wiied for an hour. I wasn’t convinced. If God had meant for us to Wii, He’d have put something in the Bible about it. I challenged Lou to show me where in the Bible we were instructed to Wii, and the best I could get out of him was something about the body being a temple.
Luckily, the Wii hadn’t taken over Lou’s entire life, just one hour a day and most of his conversation. And Rosie had convinced Lou that he didn’t need to give up any of those foods he liked, just cut back on them. Well, if Lou wanted to starve himself to death eating only a half of a meal at a time, so be it. Less food on his plate meant the possibility of more on mine.
Other than Lou’s workout, our routine each day was the same as it had been. We checked out the weather before we left the house each day to see if sunshine or rain was forecast and what the temperature was expected to be. We’d also developed a few friends at the Scene of the Crime, mostly old women, old men, stay-at-home wives, and one guy who worked the night shift. A couple of days ago, Lou and I’d finished reading John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins and were about to start a work by a current mystery author. We were beginning to enjoy our new life. At least until I received a phone call I never expected.
I was sitting at home, lying back in my recliner, thinking about buying a computer. I couldn’t get Hershey, Pennsylvania out of my mind, so a few days earlier I asked one of the elderly women in the reading group if she owned a computer. She responded by saying, “Doesn’t everyone these days?” Reluctantly, I informed her that at least two residents of Hilldale didn’t, although who knew what other changes Lou would make in his life. This resulted in her sharing our faux-pas with the others in the group, and immediately everyone gathered around Lou and me to encourage us to take the plunge. For a minute it seemed like Lou and I had stepped into an A.A. meeting by mistake. The last time I’d experienced such encouragement was when one of the guys at the department bet on me in a pizza eating contest. When someone asked why we wanted a computer, I told them I understood there was a place we could go to look up information about various people and places. My new friends told me that even a novice could learn how to do that in five minutes, and immediately I wondered how much smarter a novice was than I.
+++
It was now a few days after hearing the Colonel’s bad news, which was very much still on my mind unless I made myself think of something else. One of the things I never think about is setting an alarm. I make it a point to get up each morning just after I hear the rooster crow. I will not change this habit until someone in my neighborhood buys a rooster. I wouldn’t put it past my next-door neighbor to buy a rooster, an ugly one, but then the term “ugly rooster” is an oxymoron, which is slightly different than my neighbor. There is nothing “oxy” about her.
Like Lou, I began my day as I usually did, doing my morning exercise, lifting myself to a sitting position. I’ve learned how to accomplish such a feat in only three jerky moves, with a grunt or two along the way. After sitting upright and still until I remembered where I was, I stumbled to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face, and looked in the mirror. Immediately I wanted to replace the sleep I washed from my eyes and return to bed. Only visions of sugary and fatty foods dancing in my head kept me from doing so.
My valet had failed to lay out my clothes, so I rooted around in my dresser and closet until I located something to wear in public. Then, I looked outside at the April showers that were helping to grow the May flowers that I never plant, and selecte
d something different from my wardrobe. I detest getting wet, but there is nothing manly about using an umbrella or a raincoat to protect oneself from the elements.
After taking time to read my daily devotional and asking God to forgive me for the thoughts I had about my next-door neighbor, I called Lou to let him know that the breakfast patrol was on the clock.
I locked the door, stepped out into pouring rain. I turned and saw something that caused my stomach to turn as well. I grasped the railing to keep from falling. Standing not fifteen feet from my door was my neighbor and her rat, both wearing pink raincoats trimmed in silver studs. I hoisted a black umbrella I had stored by the door, more to protect my eyes from this unsightly interruption than to keep myself from getting wet. My eyes had never adjusted to seeing Heloise Humphert so early in the morning. Nor had my stomach.
“Miss Humphert, what are you doing in my yard?”
“Waiting for you, Cyrus. Twinkle Toes and I wanted to wish you a good morning.”
“I would prefer that you wish it to me from the top of Mt. Everest.”
“Oh, Cyrus, you’re so funny. Are you hinting that you think the three of us should go away together? You know how much Twinkle Toes and I like you.”
“And I like you, too. I’d like you to be as far away as possible.”
“I understand, Cyrus. You’re shy, and you don’t want other people to know about us, yet.”
3 Murder In The Library Page 4