FlabberGassed

by Michael Craft

  When we had tiptoed back to the parlor, Mary replaced her shoes. I called into the hall, “Where’d everybody go? Did you find Mister Puss, Olivia?”

  “We’re in here,” called the girl, followed by the sounds of some bumping and jostling as she got out from under the table.

  When Mary and I strolled into the hall, Olivia darted out of the dining room to meet us, saying, “Mister Puss and I are friends now.”

  I said, “That’s wonderful, Olivia.”

  Mary took the girl’s hand. “Ready for some cookies?”

  Olivia answered with an enthusiastic nod. As they headed toward the kitchen door, she said, “Mister Puss was snoring.”

  Mary told her, “That’s called ‘purring,’ Olivia. Cats purr.”

  “And guess what—Mister Puss talked to me.”

  “Oh, did he now?” said Mary with a hearty laugh. “And just what did he say?”

  “He called me a sasspot. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Very funny,” said Mary, sharing the child’s laughter. “I have no idea where he picks up these things.”

  “Mrs. Questman?” said Olivia as they walked into the kitchen. “What’s a sasspot?” The swinging door whooshed behind them and closed.

  Mister Puss sauntered out of the dining room and crossed the hall to me, sitting at my feet.

  I looked down, studying him.

  He looked up, studying me. Then he reached his paws to my knees.

  When I took him in my arms, he revved up his purr, climbed to my shoulder, and stretched his snout to my ear.

  Did you get that?

  Yes, I thought. I did indeed get that. I pondered Olivia’s words: “I feel bad for Mommy. She’s so sad that Daddy died.”

  Sheriff Simms needed to know what I’d been up to that afternoon, but a phone call or e-mail wouldn’t cut it. What I wanted to discuss was both complicated and iffy. This would require some face time.

  When I returned from Mary’s to the office and called Simms to ask if we could meet that evening, he asked, “Is it urgent?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Here’s the thing, Brody: little Tommy has a pack meeting tonight.”

  I asked, “He has a … what?”

  Simms laughed. “Cub Scouts. He’s new to it this year. There’s a monthly pack meeting at the school hall, and I like to go with him. You know—the bonding thing.”

  “Of course, Thomas. But, um …”

  “Look,” he said, “I need to get him there by seven. Maybe we could stop at your place first, six-fifteen or six-thirty. Will that screw up your dinner?”

  “Not at all—we’ll make it work. Thanks, Thomas.”

  When I told Marson the plan, he said, “Don’t worry about dinner. We can go out afterward, whenever you’re ready.” Then he asked, “Do you want me at home for this? If not, I could just stick around the office and catch up on a few things.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I would like you at home for this. Simms will have little Tommy with him, and I’ll be explaining how I eavesdropped on Olivia, who goes to school with Tommy, and—get the picture?”

  “Got it. You might need me to distract the boy.”

  Grrring.

  At the loft that night, around twenty past six, I answered the street door and greeted Sheriff Simms and his son.

  Simms looked dapper as ever in a dark business suit, white shirt, and jaunty necktie. The suit appeared so fresh and unwrinkled, he must have changed out of his day duds before heading out for the evening. But Simms was never truly off duty; a polished leather shoulder holster glinted beneath the flap of his jacket.

  Tommy looked adorable in his crisp blue uniform, with its yellow neckerchief, gold sliding clasp, and button-topped cap—which his father reminded him to remove as he stepped indoors. Tommy could have been a model for a recruiting poster, and the sheriff’s pride in his little guy beamed from ear to ear.

  And yet, I felt uneasy seeing Tommy like this. Inez, my radical-lesbian single mom, had not only raised me as a heathen, but had also instilled in me a dose of the pacifism she’d embraced during the Vietnam era. I recalled one day when we were picnicking in a local park, where a nearby table was occupied by a group of scouts, grilling hot dogs. As she eyed them with a disapproving gaze, she leaned to tell me from the corner of her mouth, “Putting kids in uniform. They teach’em young, and before you know it, they’ll be a new crop of cannon fodder.”

  Knowing Thomas Simms, I was certain he had no such motive for putting his son in uniform. But still, the paramilitary overtones were unmistakable. And Tommy was only seven. In a sense, it struck me as the flip side of tarting up little girls—like Olivia in a princess dress.

  Marson stepped over from the kitchen to greet our guests. After shaking Simms’s hand, he turned to Tommy and, standing ramrod stiff, offered a comical salute, telling him, “Good evening, young man.”

  Tommy laughed. “Good evening, Mr. Miles.” He offered his little hand and shook a few fingers of my husband’s hand, which suddenly looked as big as a holiday ham.

  Marson said, “I know you guys need to talk. Can I get you anything? Something to drink, Thomas?”

  “Nah,” said Simms, “but thanks.”

  Marson told me, “If you need anything, just holler.” And he returned to the kitchen, where he fussed with something.

  Simms, Tommy, and I settled around the low table in front of the fireplace with its rows of fake candles, which Marson had switched on. Simms said, “I’m all ears, Brody. What’s this about?”

  “Yesterday,” I said, “Tommy had a play date with Olivia after school.” The boy’s head snapped in my direction. I continued, “And I understand it worked out pretty well, considering that the girl’s behavior has been less than sterling lately.”

  “Right,” said Simms, “Gloria told me all about it. Seems everything went fine.” He turned to his son. “Right, Tommy?”

  The boy nodded.

  “So,” I said, “Mary Questman asked Olivia’s mother if she’d like to send the girl over to play with Mister Puss after school today. I was there, too.”

  “Nice. How’d it go?”

  Tommy’s attention ping-ponged from his father to me, following our every word. I called over my shoulder, “Uh, Marson?”

  He stepped over to us. “Yes?”

  I said, “Tommy’s never seen the loft before. I’ll bet he’d enjoy having a look from upstairs. Maybe give him the grand tour?”

  “Happily. Come on, Tommy.” And Marson led the boy over to the spiral stairs, explaining that the space had once been a haberdashery.

  “A what?” asked Tommy as they started clunking up the metal stairs.

  Smiling, Simms leaned in my direction. “Okay, coast is clear. What happened?”

  With a grin, I told him, “The whole setup was pretty slick.”

  Simms laughed. “You set up that sweet little child?”

  “Yes. I wanted to give her some alone-time with Mister Puss. Children sometimes speak more openly with pets than with grown-ups.”

  “So you set her up with the cat—and then spied on her?”

  “You bet. So did Mary. We heard every word. It was mostly just kid talk—goofy gabbing and singing—but finally, Olivia said something I’d call relevant.”

  “Oh?” said Simms, getting interested. He pulled out his notebook and readied his pen. “What did she say?”

  “She had sort of a ‘down’ moment, telling Mister Puss that she’s been confused lately. Then she told him, ‘I feel bad for Mommy. She’s so sad that Daddy died.”

  Simms made note of it, then studied it. He shrugged. “So? Makes sense.”

  “Don’t you see—?” I started to ask, but then Simms’s phone made an urgent-sounding racket.

  He whipped it out and answered. “Simms. What’s up?”

  I turned in my seat and glanced up to the mezzanine, where Marson stood with Tommy at the railing, giving an animated lecture on some aspect of the rehab.

&
nbsp; “Okay, what’s the address?” said Simms, jotting on his pad. “I’ll be there in a couple minutes.” He hung up and told me, “Thwarted robbery—under control, but I should get over there.” Then he thwacked his head. “Tommy. The pack meeting.”

  Too quickly, I suggested, “I’ll take him, Thomas. Happy to help.” What was I thinking?

  Simms stood and called up to the mezzanine, “Tommy? Daddy’s gotta run—it’s important. But Mr. Norris will take you to the meeting. I’ll meet up with you as soon as I can, okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  All right. I hadn’t eaten, but had been looking forward to a night out with my refined and sensitive husband, expecting a leisurely meal somewhere nice, somewhere quiet. And now, instead, I was in the car with a boy in uniform buckled up securely in the backseat, driving him to a long meeting in a grubby school hall that would be swarming with possibly hundreds of other little men in uniforms, with their sashes and their merit badges and whatnot. I also envisioned their potbellied fathers tagging along in their quest for a second childhood, looking ridiculous in their stretched old uniforms, popping their buttons, strutting their stuff, redolent with the musk of heterosexuality.

  Or was I being too harsh?

  If Tommy Simms was in any way typical of current-day scouting, he was a fine tribute to the organization. While plying the dark streets of Dumont, I looked over my shoulder to ask him, “So, Tommy—what have you been doing in Cub Scouts?”

  “Learning to fold the flag.”

  I imagined my mother’s voice in my ear: Uh-huh? What did I tell you, Brody?

  “But now we’ve started a new project,” said Tommy. “I’m building a birdhouse out of Popsicle sticks.”

  “Really? How do you do that?”

  “It takes a lot of glue and shellac.”

  “I’ll bet it does.”

  He asked, “Mr. Norris? What’s shellac?”

  I thought hard before admitting, “I have no idea.” We both laughed. Then I asked, “So you’ve been eating a lot of Popsicles lately?”

  He shook his head. “They got a big bag of the sticks somewhere. They’re all clean.”

  A few minutes later, I slowed the car as we pulled into the school parking lot and found one of the few remaining spaces—between a pristine pickup with a jacked-up suspension, and a hunting van with a camouflage paint job, plastered with trout decals. I really wasn’t sure how to handle this. Would I have to pledge allegiance?

  I parked, killed the engine, and unsnapped my seatbelt. “Well, Tommy, let’s do it.” I was about to open the door when I glanced in the mirror and noticed that the boy hadn’t moved. He was still strapped in, sitting perfectly still. I turned in my seat, asking, “Something wrong, Tommy?”

  His head was lowered. “Can I ask you something, Mr. Norris?”

  I reached back to pat his knee. “Of course.”

  “Back at your house, you told my dad that you saw Olivia this afternoon.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Mrs. Questman and I thought she’d enjoy a visit after school—the way she went to your house yesterday.”

  The boy looked up at me. “I was just wondering if maybe she told you the same thing she told me.”

  “I’m not sure, Tommy. What did she tell you?”

  He hesitated. “I think it might be kinda dirty.”

  With sudden apprehension, I asked quietly, “What did she say?”

  “I don’t know what she meant, but she said—” He broke off, hesitating again, and then told me, “Olivia was talking about her dad, and she said, ‘His penis was icky.’ She said, ‘It hurt me.’”

  I felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the car. I felt the blood pulsing in my temples as my mind raced to piece together the events of the weekend when Jason Ward was murdered.

  When I could summon the breath to speak, I asked Tommy, “Have you mentioned this to your father?”

  “Gosh no, Mr. Norris. I’d never tell him that. He wouldn’t like it.”

  Chapter 15

  When that exhausting day at last came to an end—after the pack meeting, after regrouping with Sheriff Simms, after deciding on our next steps, and after a late meal with Marson at a loud, bright Applebee’s because everywhere else had closed—when at last I bedded down with my husband and kissed him good night, I feared that my mind would never stop spinning, that I would never fall asleep.

  But I was wrong. I drifted off quickly. And my sleep was unperturbed by dreams of the murder or its method or its motive. In fact, it seemed as if I didn’t dream at all that night—a peculiar sensation that I had experienced only once before, as a young boy, when I was four or five, when I had gone to bed, fallen asleep, turned over, and opened my eyes to discover the broad daylight of morning, as if no time whatever had passed during the night, as if I had rocketed from one day to the next.

  Now, Friday morning, I awoke upstairs in the loft—dazzled by the brightness from the skylights, wondering where Marson had gone, puzzled by the sound and the smell of coffee brewing downstairs, and bewildered by the very same sense of accelerated time travel that had astonished me as a child. More surprising still, this existential fast-forward had left me suffering no queasy effects of jet lag, as one might assume, but quite the opposite. I felt thoroughly rested, refreshed, and ready to take on the important events of the day ahead.

  I shrugged into a robe and wound my way down the spiral stairs.

  Marson looked up at me from the kitchen island. “Hark,” he said. “Has my Sleeping Beauty at long last arisen?” He was dressed and primped for the office, lingering with his coffee and the morning paper.

  I padded over to him for a kiss, then poured a mug of coffee. “What a weird night,” I said. “I was so whipped, I didn’t even dream.”

  “You were dead to the world when I got up, so I didn’t want to rouse you. How do you feel?”

  I clinked my mug to his. “Raring to go.” Glancing down at the front page of the Register, I noticed the headline of the daily election update: EARLY VOTING BEGINS MONDAY MORNING. Sheriff Simms now had a mere seventy-two hours to convince the people of Dumont that he was better suited than Deputy Kastle to serve as the county’s top lawman. And the most efficient means of achieving that was to name Dr. Jason Ward’s killer.

  It was shortly after eight o’clock. I assumed Simms had already arrived at headquarters, so I phoned his office.

  Taking the call, he said, “Hey, Brody. Can you be here at ten?”

  “Sure.”

  “Late last night, I had a long talk with Heather Vance,” he said, referring to the medical examiner. “And just a few minutes ago, I phoned both Frumpkin and his daughter, telling them that Heather needs help with a few questions regarding some newly discovered physical evidence. I said we’d like to meet at ten.”

  “How’d they react?”

  “Frumpkin was sorta flustered, but cooperative. Sarah just seemed annoyed, since the short notice meant they’d have to cancel several patients. But she agreed to come. She said, ‘If it’ll help get to the bottom of this, I’ll be there.’”

  A few minutes before ten, I arrived outside the sheriff’s office, and a deputy showed me in, leading me back to the conference room with the big windows, the dusty bookshelves, and the cracked, inscrutable old painting that depicted a man with a horse and a monkey.

  Already present was Heather Vance, who stood at the table, digging through files in a bulging briefcase, as well as Simms, who paced the room, checking something on his phone. I greeted Heather with a hug and Simms with a handshake, telling them, “Thanks for letting me sit in today.”

  They glanced at each other. Deadpan, Simms told me, “It wouldn’t be quite the same without you.”

  While we were still standing, comparing notes, the deputy opened the door again to admit Dr. Francis Frumpkin and Sarah Frumpkin Ward. The doctor had apparently begun the process of emerging from his grief, as his snappy outfit was no longer muted by the somber hues of the funeral,
but had blossomed anew with the silken jewel tones more typical of his splashy wardrobe. His daughter’s attire, which never varied much, was still as drab in grief as it had been in happier times, but the lines that etched her face made it plain that her healing had not yet begun.

  The doctor shook Simms’s hand. “It was a wonderful surprise to get your call this morning, Sheriff. It seems you’ve made some progress?”

  “Maybe. I hope so. I’d like to get this wrapped up for you.”

  Frumpkin countered, “And I’d like to get it wrapped up for you. The election’s only three days away, you know.”

  Simms grinned. “Yeah. I heard.”

  Heather introduced herself to Sarah. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Ward. All of us in the medical examiner’s office are deeply committed to resolving your late husband’s case.”

  Sarah managed a weak smile. “Thank you, Heather. My father and I appreciate your efforts. I understand you have some new evidence.”

  “Well,” said Heather, “it seems so. That’s what we need to talk about—that’s why we’re all here.”

  “Excellent,” said Dr. Frumpkin. He turned to Simms. “Where would you like us to sit, Sheriff?”

  “Wherever you want,” said Simms. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

  Frumpkin didn’t hesitate to choose the chair at the head of the table, seating himself beneath the cryptic, yellowed painting. He extended his arms and comfortably gripped both corners of the table that extended before him, as if signaling his permission for the rest of us to carry on.

  Sarah took a chair adjacent to him, along the side of the table.

  Simms seated Heather Vance at the other end of the table, facing Frumpkin. Then Simms and I sat across from each other, with Simms adjacent to Heather. He laid an attaché case on the table and opened it, removing his notebook and a few folders.

  “Now, then,” said Frumpkin, taking charge and checking his watch, as if wanting to move things along, “what’s this all about? The sheriff said something about ‘newly discovered physical evidence,’ I believe. That leads me to assume you have some late test results from the postmortem.”