Do Wah Diddy Die

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “What the hell was that?”

  Luci didn’t answer right away. She appeared to give it serious consideration. “Two people...communicating?”

  “That,” Mickey said, positively, “was not communicating. That was...not even in the same star system as communicating!”

  Luci looked at him the way someone looks at a lunatic. “Okay. We weren’t communicating. No problem. But the aunts are still alone in the garage with your stiff.”

  “The garage?” Mickey heard his voice rising and cut it off at the pass. “It’s in the garage?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated, then added, “Louise is getting tea.”

  “Tea?” Delaney looked uneasy. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It’s not like there’s a lot of room in there between the Nash and the freezer. Unless we set it on top of the freezer. Oh, well.” She gave them a cheery smile. “We’ll just have to see what they have in mind, won’t we?”

  This time they didn’t look at each other. Perhaps, she decided, they didn’t want the other to see the stark fear in each other’s eyes?

  Mickey followed Luci and Delaney along the sidewalk that bordered the long side of the property. Due to the dense growth that mingled in and around the fence, he could only catch the occasional glimpse of the area behind the house. The fence barely contained the plant life and couldn’t begin to contain the rich scent of leaf and bud, strangely mixed with a hint of disinfectant.

  Trying not to look at Luci’s swaying hips just ahead of him, Mickey’s gaze bounced off a small Ford that was parked under the shade of an oak tree. Inside was an elderly couple studying a map. He wasn’t in the mood to be helpful, and before they could notice him and ask for help, he re-directed his attention toward the small gate that closed off the garage area from the street.

  “I’m trying to get the Nash up and running,” Luci explained, or at least giving the Seymour equivalent of an explanation. “So I can get around. I wanted to rent a car but the aunts freaked, and now I can’t get one because of this proctologists’ convention.”

  “Your aunts have something against rental cars?” Delaney asked.

  “Only against children driving rental cars. They have no problem now that I’m a grownup. Or they wouldn’t if I could get one. Won’t matter if I can get the Nash running.”

  “You’re going to fix a Nash?” Mickey didn’t try to hide his skepticism. “I suppose now you’re a mechanic, too?” It was getting hard to keep up with what she did.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t claim to be a mechanic. That implies professional knowledge of car repair, and I repair by intuition. I expect it’s something I inherited from my father’s side, because the Seymours are dangerous around engines.” She stopped at the gate, pushed it open, and then stepped into the tiny courtyard.

  Mickey, with a sense of foreboding, followed Delaney inside.

  Like many in New Orleans, the courtyard still retained its other-century feel. Small, with a meager cobbled driveway and a high wooden fence around the perimeter, it had been adequate in the days of horse and carriage. Now there was barely room to navigate an automobile, if the paint on the posts was any indication. There were also ominous signs that cleaning had taken place recently. The cobblestones still showed signs of damp in the high hot sun, and the latches of the gate and garage’s double doors had been polished and oiled. The scent of disinfectant was much stronger here, too, mingling with the smell of green growing things and horse. From the partly open door could be heard the murmur of several high-pitched voices.

  Against a rising instinct to run, Mickey went to the garage and pulled open the door. At the rear of the stable/garage, on the other side of a Nash that matched the paint on the posts, three old ladies stood in a semi-circle around the open freezer—which had flowers arranged on either side and a big, black bow hooked over the latch.

  “What are we supposed to envy about that?” Miss Hermi asked, in her fluting, fluttery voice.

  “I was a little surprised, too,” Miss Theo admitted.

  “Well, I’m disappointed.” Miss Weena said flatly.

  “I always suspected that men blew it all out of proportion,” Miss Theo said. “But then, men have never made any sense to me.”

  Her sisters nodded their agreement like small faded vultures.

  There were a lot of things Mickey would have preferred doing besides stepping into that garage. This included facing serial killers and drug dealers with assault weapons. But Luci pushed the other door open, letting sunlight flood in and alerting the old ladies that the law had arrived.

  Seemingly oblivious to their discomfort, she sidestepped past the Nash and joined her aunts. For a long, unnerving beat, they stared into the freezer, the four heads angled the same direction for half of it, then the other direction.

  “I see you found a place for the cake,” Luci said

  “Well,” Miss Theo said. “He wasn’t using that spot under his knees and I only had to move him a very little to get it there.”

  “It was my idea to put the point of the heart between his cheeks,” Miss Weena said with obvious pride.

  Luci smiled and put her arm around her little aunt. “Sheer genius, Miss Weena.”

  Mickey choked, drawing their attention to him. Miss Theo directed a sweet smiling look at Mickey. “Oh, good. You’ve come to get him out. He’s in the way.”

  “Well, that tears it,” Fern said. “They’ve found whatever it was Artie wanted to move and brought in the cops. Any guess how long it will be before they find the money?”

  “They didn’t go into the house,” Donald muttered. He scratched his crotch as he considered the situation. “Might still be able to pull it off.”

  “Why don’t we walk past, see what they’re doing?” Fern was tired of sitting in the car. Even under the shade of the old oak and the windows down, the temperature was way past uncomfortable. She could feel Donald thinking, and the effort sent the temperature in the car up a few more degrees.

  “Just wait a minute, Fern, they ain’t been gone that long.”

  Fine. She’d tried to be nice. Now it was time to get nasty.

  “I want to get out of this car, Donald,” Fern said with pointed calm. “I’m not as young as I used to be. And I won’t be getting any older if I don’t get some air.”

  “All right, all right. You can take a stroll...but take it slow! Careful-like. Don’t want to draw no attention to us.”

  Right. Like the biddies peeking out from behind their lace curtains hadn’t seen them sitting here for the last couple of hours. Donald might be cunning about killing, but he was clueless about the suburbs.

  Fern opened the door and had one foot out when the water erupted in the yard next to them. Only a narrow sidewalk and low white fence separated them, so she got a face full of water. She slammed the door closed, just as Donald grabbed her arm.

  “What?”

  “Listen” he hissed, pulling the map into position again.

  She didn’t want to listen. She wanted to get out. The water had cooled her off until it evaporated, leaving her hotter than before. And now she was shut in the hot map tent again, where even the sultry air couldn’t get at them. Then she heard it, too, and forgot about being hot. The distant sound of sirens. Lots of them. And the passing of each sweaty second brought them steadily closer.

  “New Orleans has lots of crime, Donald,” Fern pointed out. “I’d be surprised if we didn’t hear sirens.”

  “Getting an itch, Fern.”

  Fern’s eyes widened.

  “Maybe we ought to get out of here...”

  “Good idea.”

  Donald shoved at the map, the folds resisting as Fern fumbled for the ignition where the keys dangled.

  “Take it slow!” Donald’s hand clamped over hers, his expression anxious, sweaty. “Easy. Casual-like.”

  Before he finished speaking, two police cars, their lights flashing but without the warning sirens, turned the corner, coming at them from
two different directions.

  “Donald!”

  “We’ll go down fighting, Fern!” he cried, groping for the Uzi he’d stashed under the seat, even as the map tangled around his head.

  As her heart accelerated to dangerous levels for her age, weight, and physical condition, the cars bounced across the rough road surface, coming closer...closer...closer...while in the distance the wail of more sirens got steadily nearer.

  “I think I’m having a heart attack, Fern,” Donald moaned, clutching his chest.

  Fern’s sweat-soaked hand slipped on the keys as she tried to fire the engine. The first police car drew level...then slid past them and screeched to a halt at the foot of the driveway the Seymour woman and her escorts had disappeared into. The other car never even came close. It slid into position near the first car as its officers slid out and hurried up the drive and out of sight.

  For one long, agonized moment, Donald and Fern stared at each other in bewilderment and shock.

  Then Donald quavered, “Get the hell out of here, Fern! Before the rest of them get here!”

  She got, the car wobbling as she headed for the corner. In the rear view mirror, she thought she saw a man sitting in the midst of the sprinklers before she turned the corner. She forgot about him or anything else until she’d put several blocks between them and the cops and that terrifying official noise...and until the air conditioning had cooled the car to a breathable level.

  Donald scowled, his recovery assured with the passing of immediate danger. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know.” But she didn’t think they’d be going to Disneyland anytime soon.

  Though thawing around the edges, the corpse was still solid. Huddled in the bottom of the freezer with a wrapped cake under his sprawled knees, his arms were at his sides and his head was back against the edge of the freezer. His skin was tinted blue and frosty from the warm air that mingled with the cold. And, Mickey was forced to concede, frozen solid, the corpse was not a credit to his sex.

  The only comment Delaney made before he went to call in the crime boys was that he must have frozen before rigor set in. This thinly veiled reference to the fact that rigor can sometimes add some emphasis made Mickey choke. While waiting for the reinforcements to arrive, Mickey had ample opportunity to study the corpse and to realize what Luci meant when she said she recognized the corpse but didn’t know him.

  Their John Doe had one of those faces that you feel like you just have to know, if you could just remember where.

  “ID’s going to be a sonofabitch,” Mickey had muttered to himself, but Luci’s aunts heard.

  “Really?” Miss Theo said, moving in for another look.

  “I didn’t realize men were so—similar.” Miss Weena stared at the corpse, then looked at Mickey.

  For the honor of his sex, he’d tried not to look self-conscious. Now he looked at the Crime Lab technician. “You find anything?”

  “Didn’t leave much to find.” The tech gave him a glum glance. It was hot in the garage and the smell of disinfectant was almost overpowering.

  “So, are the old broads nutty or just naive?” The forensics investigator from the Coroner’s office grinned at Mickey and Delaney. He could afford to grin. He only had to deal with the stiff.

  Mickey shrugged. “Probably both.” He stretched, then rubbed at his temples where the ache was now a sledgehammer pounding away at his concentration.

  “If you didn’t find much, what was in those bags you hauled out of here?” Delaney mopped at the sweat beading along the worry lines that creased his forehead.

  “Have to give the taxpayers their money’s worth. Besides, you never know. Might be something there we can use.”

  Mickey looked at the CI. “How long before we can get the results from the autopsy?”

  He shrugged. “You won’t even get a prelim for three or four days.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Gotta thaw him first. This ain’t no Thanksgiving turkey, Ross. We can’t shove him under running water.”

  “We need an ID.”

  “We’ll be able to get his prints by tomorrow or next day. Extremities thaw first. Looks like his family jewels are already starting.” He grinned.

  Mickey didn’t want to talk about family jewels. He looked at the tech. “Anything unusual?” Everyone stopped and looked at him in disbelief. “Anything else?”

  The tech rubbed his chin. “I did notice one thing, but I’m not sure what it means.”

  “What?”

  “I think he might’ve been hosed before he was froze.”

  There was a moment of silence as each of the men assimilated this. It was a long moment, because this was not easy to assimilate.

  “Hosed?” Mickey asked, looking at Delaney instead of the tech.

  “Think so.”

  “How can you tell?” Delaney asked.

  “He’s shining like a new penny. Practically polished. Smells like PineSol, too.” This produced shudders all around as the tech turned to spit. He caught the eye of the CI and turned the action into a cough instead. Coroner hated anyone contaminating the crime scene with outside bodily fluids, even crime scenes that had been scrubbed.

  “I noticed some of the usual gunshot indicators were missing,” the CI said with a frown. “No external bleeding. No powder or burns. For a violent death, he’s uncommon clean.”

  “Just some gunshot tattooing that couldn’t be scrubbed away,” agreed the tech, sending another round of shudders through the group. “Surprised the perp didn’t take a Brillo to that. Not that it would help. Can’t scrub away tattoos. Just surprised he didn’t try.”

  “Maybe the perp knew it wouldn’t help. Thanks to television, every school kid in America knows the basics of forensics,” said the CI.

  “Yeah, but—hosing a body?” Mickey asked.

  The tech shrugged. “Maybe the perp had a thing about cleaning?”

  Delaney and Mickey exchanged glances at this remark. Was there a connection between their scrubbed John Doe and the not-exactly-normal Seymours?

  “Maybe the old ladies did it,” said the CI, echoing Mickey’s thoughts. “They sure cleaned this place up good.”

  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” Mickey said, not entirely honestly. He really did want to jump to conclusions. It would wrap things up, if not neatly, at least quickly, if the old ladies did it. With a caseload up the whazoo on his desk, quick was nice. The old broads would never see jail, wouldn’t last that long. And if they did? Well, just pity the poor schmucks who had to do time with them.

  Trouble was, his gut was telling him the easy solution didn’t quite track. Damn his instincts, he thought. They’d gotten him in more trouble than he cared to remember. In a city of complex, not entirely straight-forward political relationships, good instincts weren’t always wonderful to have.

  “It’s possible,” Delaney said, “that someone familiar with this setup and crime scene techniques is our perp. Other than the stupidity of leaving the body frozen, there is a calculation to this that isn’t completely insane.”

  Mickey nodded agreement, looking at the tech. “You notice anything else?”

  “Well, I’m not the doc, you understand, but the lividity seems...well, odd.”

  “How?” Delaney crossed his arms over his chest and watched without expression as the body, resisting efforts to reduce it to a discreet, flat bundle, was wheeled away.

  “I don’t know how freezing effects lividity, but it looks to me like he was moved. The blood pooled along his buttocks and legs and along his front. Like he lay on his face for a while.”

  Mickey thought for a moment. “What does that mean?”

  The tech shook his head. “Don’t have any idea. Just thought it was unusual.”

  “So basically, we don’t have much to go on?” Delaney said.

  “Not much that I can see,” agreed the tech.

  “Sorry,” added the CI. “Maybe after the autopsy?”


  “And our ID?”

  “Gonna be a bastard if he’s not local. You know how slow the FBI is. But we’ll do the usual. Circulate photo, prints, dental. Might scare up someone who knows him.” The CI frowned. “Who does know him, I mean.”

  “You know you haven’t a hope in hell of getting a time of death, don’t you?” The CI turned to go, then looked back to add, “Guy could’ve been in there for years.”

  “Not years,” Mickey protested. “The old ladies must have used it recently.” Though, how, he had to ask himself, likely was it that they’d be using a freezer stored in a garage?

  “Ought to ask them,” the tech suggested with a smirk. “And tell them thanks for the tea.”

  He gave an evil chuckle.

  Mickey gave him a stiff smile with a glare attached.

  “Good luck,” said the CI. He was smirking, too. “Think you’re gonna need it.”

  The garden was very much like her aunts, Luci decided. She looked with interest at the long, narrow space nestled behind the house as she made her way towards the slider swing tucked under the blossom-weighted branches of the magnolia tree.

  Some of it she vaguely remembered from those long-ago visits, like the cement cherubs, urns, and gargoyles that Miss Hermi was so fond of inserting in the middle of the flower beds. But the brick pathway, winding between those randomly placed flower beds, circling the thick trunks of magnolia, oak, and cypress and passing close to the bougainvillea before finishing at the small patio crowded with metal and wicker patio furniture, seemed new. And of course it all looked smaller than she remembered.

  Only one small corner had escaped the ordered disorder that was Miss Hermi’s gardening style. Near the shed, and mostly out of sight of the house, was a raw scar of bare ground with lumber stacked near it.

  Luci looked at it, frowning as she kicked off her shoes and sank onto the slider swing. Before relaxing against the over-sized cushions that made the wooden surface bearable, she poured herself a glass from the tall pitcher of lemonade on a tray that Louise had left perched on a cement birdbath.