by Nic Saint
“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, Fee. 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, Fee. 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, “Fee! 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, Fee. 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, Fee.”
“That’s what?”
“Whoever killed Alistair must have hated the man. Now all we need to do is find out who his enemies were.”
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.”
It was an expression Felicity had never heard before, but then Aunt Bettina usually had a funny way of expressing herself.
As they were letting themselves into the house, the second member of the committee came trotting up. Mabel Stokely was probably the person with the most intimate knowledge of just about everyone in Happy Bays and wasn’t afraid to spread it around. A round woman in her late fifties, she wore Nana Mouskouri glasses and had been a mainstay at Town Hall for as long as anyone could remember, serving under five consecutive mayors. Some people even said she was Happy Bays’s acting mayor, as no mayor ever dared take on a piece of legislation without consulting Mabel first.
“And? Did you catch the killer?”
She seemed perturbed that anyone would have dared try to solve this murder without her, but when Alice told her they were still sleuthing away, her face relaxed into a smug grin. “I know who did it!”
Felicity eyed her curiously. She wouldn’t put it past Mabel to have solved the case already. “Who?”
“Mary Long, of course. It’s always the wife who dun it.” She waved an imperious hand and touched up her hair, which resembled Felicity’s mom’s, only the pink variety. They went to the same hairdresser and this style appeared to be the style of the week. Felicity resisted the urge to touch it. She’d always loved cotton candy.
“She can’t have done it,” Alice pointed out. “She was at the Inn at the time of the murder.”
Mabel frowned. “How do you know that?”
“I have my sources,” Alice said mysteriously, and even Felicity was surprised.
“You didn’t tell me.”
Alice shrugged. “I don’t tell you everything.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Oh, all right. Marjorie told me when she called me just now. She’s running a little late.”
“So? What do we think?” Mabel asked cheerfully. They’d arrived in the living room, where HBNWC meetings usually took place, and everyone seated themselves around the coffee table, except for Felicity. After the incident at the funeral home she decided some oral hygiene was in order, so she quickly hopped into the bathroom to apply toothbrush and toothpaste.
She heard Alice give a brief resume of the facts as they were known, and both Mabel and Bettina hung on her every word. When she came to the part about the coroner’s report Mabel sighed in annoyance. “That father of yours. Really. How can he expect to reduce crime in Happy Bays when he won’t allow the citizenry a role in fighting it? I will have to speak to the mayor about this.”
“Dad is a stickler for police procedure,” Alice stated the obvious.
“I think we need less police procedure and more community intervention,” Aunt Bettina offered. “If every Happy Baysian would simply keep an eye out, crime would be a thing of the past.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” agreed Mabel. “Oh, are those chocolate chip?” she asked when Felicity set down a plate of cookies. “I’ll have one. They’re my absolute favorites.”
“Baked them last night,” she said.
“Have you posted the new Flour Girl video yet? I never miss a single one.”
“We still have to do the video, actually,” said Alice. “Haven’t had time.”
“Of course,” soothed Bettina. “What with all these murders and all.”
She made it sound as if Happy Bays was the crime capital of the East Coast, Felicity thought, which it wasn’t. Then the doorbell sounded, announcing the final member of the committee. The meeting could commence.
Chapter 25
Marjorie Scattering was a thin-lipped woman of about sixty with a face like a horse and hair the color of puke. She’d been widowed for so long no one even remembered Virgil’s father. He’d been a US Marine and soon after their marriage had promptly expired in battle overseas, leaving his bride with a bundle of joy and his army pension, both gifts greatly cherished even as she mourned his premature demise.
She was an avid volunteer, putting in regular stints at the library, the community center, the day care center, the hospital, the nursing home, the animal shelter and others, keeping her finger in a great many pies. Combined with the steady flow of information from her son she could probably fill the Happy Bays Gazette all by herself.
As the ladies settled back with a cup of coffee and a piece of apple cobbler, it was clear they’d done this sort of thing before. In fact, before Alice had started the neighborhood watch committee, they’d come together as friends for some scuttlebutt and pie, but without the express purpose of ridding the streets of Happy Bays of crime. Then Alice had joined them once or twice and so had Felicity, and before long the idea had formed in Alice’s head to turn this informal weekly meeting into an actual committee.
Bettina, Mabel, and Marjorie knew more about Happy Bays and its denizens than anyone else in town, and if they worked together could prevent a lot of bad things from happening. This had been Alice’s vision from the start and that’s how they’d proceeded.
It didn’t take much to convince the holy trinity. Not only could they now busybody with impunity, they would actually be revered for it instead of scolded.
“I think we should examine this matter carefully and methodically,” said Marjorie with pursed lips. She was a voracious reader of detective novels and especially the ones where the detective likes to handle matters carefully and methodically. “We should make a list of clues and suspects and examine the facts as they pertain to the case.”
Alice, who was never afraid to butt in, said she agreed, but couldn’t they just spitball for a bit first, to get the sleuthing juices flowing?
Mabel agreed. A woman with a notoriously loose tongue, she loved the idea of spitballing. Spitballing was what she did all day and was even paid to do. “Let’s just throw out all the facts and one of us could take notes.”
All eyes turned to Felicity, who was, after all, the reporter in the room. Dutifully, she brought out the whiteboard and stood with marker poised.
“What do we know so far?” asked Mabel.
“Alistair Long was a rat and a blackhearted son of a whatnot who never did a good deed in his life and got exactly what he deserved,” Marjorie read from a piece of paper she’d unearthed from her bulky purse. She looked up at the others. “A note Virgil received this morning. One of five anonymous letters.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” opined Bettina.
“It isn’t,” Felicity agreed. “It’s a horrible thing to say. Especially since it isn’t true. Alistair was such a kind old man.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a kind man,” said Mabel. “You do remember what he did to poor Carla Santonica, don’t you?”
Felicity frowned. She knew Carla, of course, who was something of a town Jezebel, what with having had numerous affairs with numerous men over numerous years, which was enough for the town to paint her as a hussy and a Mary Magdalene. “What did he do?”
“She went to him asking money for an abortion,” said Marjorie with a look of disapproval on her face. “Her second,” she specified. “And he kicked her out, telling her that it wasn’t because the child was conceived at the inn that he was responsible for what happened to it.”
Alice’s ears were reddening. “She conceived a child at the Happy Bays Inn?”
Mabel took a nibble of cobbler. “Everybody knows that’s where Carla takes her men. Much to Alistair’s annoyance.”
“Of course he couldn’t d
o anything to stop her. Mary didn’t allow it. She and Carla go way back, you know. When Carla was younger she lent money to Mary at a very difficult time in her life and Mary has never forgotten it.”
“What did Mary Long need money for?” Felicity wanted to know.
Marjorie and Bettina exchanged a meaningful glance. “Mary was pregnant herself,” Marjorie explained. “With her third child. Unfortunately, the inn wasn’t doing well at the time. They were losing money hand over fist and for a while it looked as if they might even lose the place. So when she got pregnant she knew they couldn’t afford a third child and decided to have the pregnancy terminated.”
Alice raised an eyebrow. “Mary Long had an abortion?”
Mabel nodded. “She did. She never told Alistair. He wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Marjorie added. “That Alistair would refuse Carla the money for an abortion while his own wife got one thanks to Carla in the first place.”
Felicity jotted down Carla’s name under the heading of Suspects. “Why didn’t Carla go to Mary?”
This seemed to baffle the holy trinity, but then Bettina suggested, “I know for a fact that Alistair kept his hands on the purse strings.”
“That’s true,” agreed Marjorie.
“You’re right,” Mabel chimed in. “An abortion would have meant a significant amount of money, which would definitely have involved Alistair.”
Felicity frowned. Her opinion of Alistair was undergoing quite a marked change. She’d never even known half of the facts about the man it now seemed. She wondered what other secrets would come out before this affair was over.
Chapter 26
Marjorie shook her head disapprovingly. “Alistair Long was a monster.”
“I don’t think he was a monster, per se,” said Mabel, “but certainly a man of principle.”
“So principled even his own wife didn’t dare confess she’d had an abortion? Nice principles!” Aunt Bettina cried.