Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

  “C’mon,” Megan said, “just tell us.”

  “I finally figured out what I’m going to write,” Jimmy said. “My master project.”

  “Well don’t tell me it’s songs,” Eddie said. “Song writin’ ain’t as easy as you think. I just make it look that way.”

  Jimmy got serious. “All right, now you have to see this as a long-term project, okay? No telling how long it’s going to take.” He turned and pointed to Eddie. “That depends on you.”

  Eddie tipped his hat backwards on his head and threw up his hands. “I give up.”

  Jimmy opened the spiral notebook and put it on the table for Eddie and Megan to read. There, in large block letters were the words: THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT — THE EDDIE LONG STORY. “I’m going to write your biography.” Jimmy sat back with his hands behind his head. He was beaming.

  Eddie broke into a huge, flattered smile. “Damn, son. You serious?” He looked at Megan, then at Jimmy. “I think it’s a great idea.” He turned to Megan. “What do you think?”

  Megan couldn’t help but smile. She knew Jimmy was miserable reviewing Little River Band concerts, and she could see how enamored he was of this idea. “I think it’s perfect.”

  “I do see one small problem,” Eddie said. “Seein’ how nobody knows who the heck I am, why would anybody want to publish my life story?”

  Jimmy pointed at Eddie. “Because my second revelation was that you are going to be famous.”

  “That was your other revelation?”

  “Yessir. And who’s been following your career from the beginning? Who better to chronicle your development from struggling singer-songwriter to Nashville superstar?”

  “I think he’s right,” Megan said, reaching over to touch Eddie’s arm again. “You’re too talented not to succeed.” She let her hand linger.

  Jimmy nodded. “I’ve seen you, what, thirty, forty times? Something made me keep coming back to see you, right?”

  “I thought it was ‘cause I kept buying you drinks.”

  “Didn’t hurt, but that’s not it,” Jimmy said. “I watched the crowd react to you tonight and it struck me plain as all get out that you have what it takes to make it in the business. Your performance gets better every time I see you. You’re good looking, you’re talented, and you’re a pro. Look, it’s no skin off your nose, right? I’m the one taking the chance. Whaddya say?”

  Eddie shrugged. “What the hell.”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Megan repeated, her hand still on Eddie’s arm.

  “Me too,” said Eddie. “Seems like a helluva lot of work, though.”

  “Hey, if anyone can do it,” Megan said, “it’s you.”

  “Thanks.” Jimmy appreciated the comment, but he noticed Megan was looking at Eddie when she said it.

  6.

  Tammy had inherited the old four poster bed from her grandmother. It was a queen with five wooden slats underneath to support the box spring and mattress. It had six slats originally, but one got lost in a move about twenty years ago. And now, in a moment Tammy had been looking forward to since Eddie announced his road trip, those old slats were being sorely tested.

  Tammy dug her heels into Carl’s back and urged him on. “Oh, baby, yes! Find the spot! Find the spot!” She tended to direct the action as much as participate in it. “Right there, baby! Now give it to me!” Carl didn’t mind. It was better than trying to guess what she wanted, the way he had to do with his wife. “Rock me, baby! Yes!” Carl was screwing to beat bobtail and thrusting so furiously that he soon worked the slats out of place causing one side of the box spring and mattress to crash to the ground, leaving the lovers at a precarious angle.

  “Whoa!” Carl grabbed the headboard.

  “Don’t stop!” Tammy hollered. “I’m almost there. Go! Go!” Carl hung on and, after another minute of turbulence, finally delivered the goods. Tammy trembled and jerked and made a noise that sounded like a yodel. “Oh, baby,” she cooed afterwards. She let out a long sigh and closed her eyes.

  For Carl, the guilt always came right after he did. It never showed up in time to keep him from doing wrong, so he always did it, and he always felt bad right after. Carl was lying there at a sideways forty-five degree angle, fretting about the potential consequences of sleeping with another man’s wife when Tammy nudged him. “Carl, honey, be a sweetheart and fix the bed, would you? I’m gonna get something to eat.”

  “Bring something back,” he said. As long as he was breaking rules, he thought, he might as well go all the way. His own wife didn’t allow eating in bed. Carl climbed out of the bed, put on his briefs, and put the slats back in place. A minute later, Tammy came in carrying three cardboard food containers. “Whacha got there?” Carl asked.

  Tammy held the boxes up one at a time. “Orange beef, mu shu pork, and shrimp in garlic sauce.” She handed the shrimp to Carl.

  “The hell’d you get Chinese food?”

  “Me and Eddie went to Feng Shang’s in Memphis coupla days ago. I always order way too much so I can have leftovers.” Tammy climbed in bed and started in on the orange beef.

  Carl sat there looking dumbstruck. “You didn’t bring no beer?” Tammy didn’t respond; the answer seemed too obvious. Carl grunted as he got out of bed. He headed for the kitchen.

  “Hey, puddin’?” Tammy called from the bedroom. “Bring me one too, okay?”

  Carl gritted his teeth, grabbed two beers and went back to the bedroom. He climbed back in and started nibbling around the broccoli stems in the shrimp dish. “You know who’s working the register today?”

  “I think it’s Mary Jo, why?”

  “No reason, just curious.” Carl and Tammy worked together at the Dollar Store. He was in sporting goods. She was in the young women’s department. Carl finished off the shrimp then tilted the box to drink the last of the garlickly juice.

  Tammy looked at him, then tapped her chin with a finger. “You got some sauce on you.”

  Carl wiped his mouth with the sheet, burped, then started in on the mu shu pork. “Hey, lemme have a bite of that orange beef,” he said.

  Tammy shook her head and jerked the box away. “You didn’t share none of yours,” she said. “So don’t you come sniffin’ around mine.” Tammy made quick work of the remaining beef then put the container on the bedside table. While Carl chewed up the bits of pork and egg and green onion, Tammy shut her eyes and started rubbing her temples.

  “This is good stuff,” Carl said, finishing the mu shu. He glanced at the clock on the dresser and saw that they had about two hours before they had to be at work. Carl drained the rest of his Bud and dropped the can on the floor. He reached over to Tammy. “Hey, you know what? I’m thinking I might want me some seconds, puddin’. Whaddya say?”

  “I got a damn headache,” Tammy said, pushing his hand away.

  Carl gritted his teeth again. If he wanted a woman with a damn headache he could’ve stayed at home. Tammy got up and padded into the bathroom. “I need an aspirin,” she said. Carl laid in bed wondering if he ought to make a quick exit or if he should wait and see if Tammy was willing to give it another go after she medicated herself. After a moment he decided to get out of there. He was looking around for his pants when he heard a crash in the bathroom. It sounded like Tammy had just raked everything off the shelves in the medicine cabinet. “You okay?” He waited a second but Tammy didn’t answer. Then he heard an odd gurgling noise. With one leg in his pants, he hopped toward the bathroom to see what had happened.

  Just as he reached the door Tammy staggered towards him, her face frozen in horror. She was spitting pink mucus and she couldn’t breathe. She lurched forward, grabbing Carl, nearly pulling him to the floor. “Holy shit!” Carl had no idea what was happening, but he knew it was bad. He had never seen such terror in anyone’s eyes. “The hell’s wrong?”

  Tammy convulsed and managed to say, “Carl.” Then she collapsed. Carl was paralyzed as he watched Tammy’s face lapse into a hideous twitching seizure.
He thought about giving her mouth-to-mouth, but quickly decided against it. He could tell this wasn’t about needing air. And the unsightly foam gathering around her mouth was damn unappealing. It seemed like he stood there for an hour watching her die, but she actually stopped moving within a couple of minutes. Carl squatted down and felt for a pulse, but there was nothing. She had died all at once. Carl suddenly got a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. Fuck! The Chinese food’s poisoned! I’m going to die! With my pants half on! He raced into the bathroom and tried to make himself throw up but he couldn’t do it. After a minute he tried to get a grip on himself and assess his health. Other than being scared sick, he felt fine. Maybe it was just the orange beef. He was suddenly glad Tammy had refused to share.

  Carl’s mind raced as he considered his options. What the hell do I do now? If I leave her here, someone will eventually find her and God knows I left plenty of DNA evidence. I shoulda used a damn rubber. Plan B? If I call the cops and tell ‘em what happened, Eddie and my wife will find out we was screwing around but at least I’ll be less of a suspect, since suspects don’t usually call the cops, do they? Hmmm, that’s a plan of last resort. Plan C? What if I dump her body in one of the big lakes? Sardis? Arkabutla? Enid? Hell, there’s no time for that, I’d be late getting to work, besides which there’s bound to be a hundred people at every lake in the state this time of year. Plan D? What if I make it look like somebody killed her? No, wait, somebody did kill her, right? Or did they? Why the hell was she dead? Wait a minute! Plan E! Best idea yet. He thought it through the best he could and decided it was the right thing to do, all things considered.

  Carl knew he had to act quick. He didn’t think the plan would work if Tammy started to get cold on him from the feet up. First thing he did was run into the kitchen and put on the pair of bright yellow rubber Platex gloves. They were two sizes too small but they’d prevent the further spread of fingerprints. Next he ran back into the bedroom and grabbed the little .22 pistol Tammy kept in the dresser drawer. He stopped for a second to think about everything he’d ever learned from television cop shows, then he put the gun in Tammy’s hand, put it to her head, and helped her squeeze the trigger. He looked the other way and got as far as he could so nothing would splatter on him. Pop! The .22 kicked a little when it fired. Carl looked and was relieved to find it wasn’t too messy on his side of Tammy’s head.

  He left the gun in her hand and watched her for a minute. Dammit! He’d waited too long. There was hardly any blood coming out of the wound. Without more blood, even the dumbest cop would know she was dead before she was shot. Carl decided to give her some CPR to pump some out. Once he’d coaxed a little blood onto the floor, he started to wipe his fingerprints off everything he’d touched. He went into the bathroom and put everything back into the medicine cabinet, including the box of Dr. Porter’s Headache Powder. He looked at the clock. Thirty minutes before he and Tammy were supposed to be at work. Just one thing left.

  Carl took a piece of paper and a pen and wondered where to begin. He had never written a suicide note. What would she say? Wait a second, I can’t write the damn note. Eddie’d know her writing. Quick, Plan B? Uh, got it! Carl rummaged though drawers until he found some scissors, some glue, and a couple of People magazines. Like a frantic kidnapper, he cut letters out of big print ads and story headers. After a few minutes he had what he needed. He took the glue and pasted together the shortest suicide note in Quitman County history. It said, simply, “Depressed.” He put Tammy’s fingerprints all over it and propped it up against the flower vase on the dresser.

  Fifteen minutes till his shift started. Carl made the bed, then ran back to the kitchen where he grabbed a plastic garbage bag. He gathered the Chinese food to-go boxes and the beer cans, then he stopped and looked around for anything he might have forgotten. It looked good. He put on one of Eddie’s baseball caps and snuck out the back door.

  7.

  Henry Teasdale had political ambitions. They weren’t big ones, but they were ambitions nonetheless. The Teasdales had lived in Quitman County for five generations and, over that period, had evolved from a clan of clay-eating peckerwoods to a family of social standing. Henry was well known throughout the county as a successful businessman. He had a controlling interest in a large catfish farm, owned significant tracts of arable land, had some oil and gas holdings, and he owned the county’s largest retail business, The Dollar Store in Hinchcliff, Mississippi.

  Recently, after his district’s incumbent was convicted of taking kickbacks from an FBI agent posing as a culvert contractor, Henry decided the time was right for him to run for a seat on the County Board of Supervisors. With the election still five months away, Henry still spent most of his time managing The Dollar Store. It was the best way to keep his employees from robbing him blind and it was also the easiest way to campaign. He just roamed the store pressing the flesh and handing out twenty-percent-off coupons to anyone who agreed to vote for him.

  Carl had been at work for about an hour when his boss walked into sporting goods. Carl was nervous as a frog on a busy road with a busted jumper but he tried to remain calm. There was no way Mr. Teasdale could know anything, right? Still, Carl was afraid there was something about the way he looked that might give away his terrible secret. He feared Mr. Teasdale could see his heart pounding beneath his polyester shirt and vest. Carl knew sleeping with the boss’s daughter was against company policy, but, as Carl knew better than anyone alive, that wasn’t the worst of it. Just relax, Carl told himself. Take a deep breath. Speak. “Hey Mr. Teasdale, how you doin’?”

  “I’ve felt better,” Mr. Teasdale said, “but it cost me more.”

  “Yes, sir. Me too.” Carl fiddled with a display of aluminum baseball bats, trying to look busy and worth having as an employee.

  “Carl, you got any idea where that useless daughter of mine’s at?”

  Carl swallowed hard and acted ignorant. It was the easiest thing he’d done all day. “I thought she was working.” He looked over in the direction of women’s wear.

  “No, she didn’t show up for her shift. I called over to the house but got the damn machine.” Mr. Teasdale leaned an elbow on the shelf with the catcher’s mitts and rubbed at his forehead. “How the hell am I supposed to run a business if my employees don’t show up, huh? Tell me that, Carl.”

  Carl shook his head and shrugged, hoping his anxiety didn’t show. “I don’t know, Mr. Teasdale. It’s not like her to miss a shift.”

  Henry nodded. “I guess I’ll ride over to her place and see what’s going on.”

  “Yes, sir.” Carl almost broke down and told his boss he’d been with Tammy just a few hours earlier and that she had died suddenly from a bad serving of orange beef and that in his panic, he’d made the whole thing look like a suicide and Lord knows he was sorry. But somehow Carl managed to keep his big fat mouth shut. He knew if he let that cat out of the bag, the rest of the litter would follow. If it was known Carl was present at the time of Tammy’s death, the coroner might go poking around in areas that would lead to certain foreign bodily fluids and, what with Eddie being out of town and all, Carl would be in the awkward position of having to give some blood. And that would lead to Carl losing his wife, his job and, depending on how jealous a husband Eddie was, possibly his life.

  8.

  Henry Teasdale didn’t want to believe his tormented eyes, but there she was, lying on the floor, too dead to skin. “Oh honey,” he whispered. “Why’d you do it?” It was a terrible sight, the sort of thing no man should have to see, but Henry’d seen it and there was nothing he could change. Or was there?

  You ask anybody in Quitman County and they’d tell you Henry Teasdale was nothing if not practical. Yes, he had emotions and feelings and such, but he had become successful not because he was in touch with his inner child, but because he was a pragmatist. So after the initial shock wore off, he got to thinking about things he could fix. He couldn’t fix the fact that Tammy had killed herself and, in so
doing, had committed a terrible sin, but he could fix whether it looked that way.

  His daughter was dead and he’d have to grieve, but that could wait. God would pass judgment on what Tammy had done, but unless Henry did something about what lay in front of him, every voter in his district would pass their own judgment on Henry and his suitability for the Board of Supervisors. After all, this would be the third Teasdale suicide in the last fifteen years. The rumors, already bad, would become unbearable. Henry knew he’d never get elected if his opponent started raising the question of insanity in the family gene pool. He had to do something. He decided to make it look like murder.

  He went to the kitchen and got the rubber gloves. They were small but he managed to squeeze his hands into them. He returned to the bedroom and pocketed the suicide note. Next, he wiped the gun clean. Then he wondered what to do with it. Put it across the room? No, there were powder burns on her head. Why would a killer shoot her at point blank range and leave the gun across the room? Now that he thought about it, why would he leave the gun at all? Henry decided he’d take it with him and drop it off the Talahatchie Bridge. That was fine, but still, something seemed wrong. But what? Oh. Tammy wouldn’t have just stood there and let the intruder shoot her. She’d either have something under her fingernails from putting up a fight, or her hands would have been tied or something. Reluctantly, Henry went to the back yard, pulled down the wash line, and returned to the bedroom.

  After wrestling Tammy’s stiff arms behind her back and tying them, Henry set about making it obvious that Tammy had walked in on a burglar with anger control issues. He rifled through all the drawers, throwing stuff on the floor, overturning lamps, taking jewelry. Having achieved the desired walked-in-on-a-burglar effect, Henry picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1.

  9.