by Elise Sax
“I must have lost my touch,” I said and kissed him lightly.
I fed the dogs and got dressed. Dick was already working on the house, and he was still naked. I tried to ignore his willy and went over to the Gazette office. Klee was asleep at her desk again, and Silas was typing as usual.
“Where’s Tilly?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Beats me. Haven’t seen her. How’s the story going?”
“What?” A niggling sensation ran through me, which was followed quickly by suspicion and dread. Tilly had disappeared, which probably meant that she snuck back to Inga’s to get enough money to send her on a round the world cruise. “Excuse me. Gotta go.”
As quick as I could, I got my purse, jumped in my car and drove to Inga’s house. I drove like a maniac, almost running into Nora’s food truck on the way. But I had to be quick. Tilly was probably already digging the cash out from under Inga’s mattress. With everything going on, I hadn’t made the anonymous call to the Sheriff’s Department about the cash.
I parked in front of Inga’s building and hopped out of my car. I ran into the building and collided into someone. I stumbled backward and caught my balance. At first, I thought I had run into Tilly, but it wasn’t her. It was Jack.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “You should be in school. Your mother is going to kill me.”
“I’m on a field trip,” he said.
I put my hands on my hips. “To Inga’s house? I don’t think so.”
“My class is at a field trip. I made a detour. My mother will never find out,” he said, staring at his shoes.
“She is going to kill me,” I said. “She’s stronger than I am. She must lift weights.”
“I once saw her take down a steer with her bare hands.”
I swallowed. “See? She’s going to kill me.”
Jack put his hands out. “Please, Matilda. I hate school,” he whined. “It’s boring. Chemistry. Blech.”
“Chemistry’s important,” I insisted. “You have to learn. Learning’s important.”
“Help a guy out. Be a superhero. Don’t send me back to homeroom. You’re the nicest boss I’ve ever had. You make the Gazette an awesome place to work. You’ve given me the courage to become the next Bob Woodward.”
He blinked at me, and I slapped his arm. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” I told him.
“You shouldn’t swear in front of me. I’m just a kid,” he said, smiling.
“Fine. Come on up with me. I’ll need help to subdue Tilly and get the cash away from her.”
“What cash?”
“Come on, Bob Woodward.”
We walked upstairs. The police tape was still in place, and when I touched the door, it opened with a creak.
“Tilly?” Jack called.
I shushed him. “Don’t give her advance warning. We have to attack in surprise. Surprise is key to victory.”
“Like the chicken army? They surprised my aunt, and now she has to see a shrink in Albuquerque three times a week.”
Geez, if Napoleon would have had chickens for his soldiers, he would have kicked ass in Waterloo.
We slinked quietly into Inga’s apartment, but there was no sign of Tilly.
“Maybe she’s hiding under the trash,” Jack suggested.
“I’m going to check to see if the cash is still here,” I said.
The cash was still where we left it under the mattress, but I had the sneaking sensation that I was being watched. I looked under the bed, but it was stuffed with more garbage. Her bedroom wasn’t as much of a disaster as the rest of her place, but it was still filled with stuff. There were stacks of newspapers crammed against the wall, along with stacks of empty cans and plastic bottles stored in bags.
That’s when I spotted it. There were a few square inches of a door peeking out from the trash. Holy crap. There was another room that nobody had searched. I could only imagine what was in it. More money? A clue about her murder?
“Jack, can you come help me?” I called.
He came into the room, holding up a magazine. “I found a MAD magazine from 1974. It’s got to be worth a fortune!”
“We’re not allowed to take anything…oh, what the hell. Go ahead and take it. Nobody will notice it, and we can say it’s payment for all of that reporting you’ve done.”
Jack’s face lit up in a wide smile. “Gosh! Thanks, Matilda.”
“No need to thank me for helping you commit a crime. Can you help me? I think I’ve found another room.”
We worked together, pushing the trash aside. Sure enough, there was a door behind it. Jack and I stood shoulder to shoulder looking at it.
“Here we go,” I said and turned the knob.
Behind the door, there was another bedroom, even bigger than Inga’s bedroom. Jack and I walked inside.
“Is that a naked blowup doll?” Jack asked.
I slapped my hand over his eyes. “Don’t look!” I urged.
It was a red room. Not actually red, but a red room just like in Fifty Shades of Grey, but instead of high-end kinky crap, this was bargain basement kinky stuff.
And lots of it.
“Let me see! Let me see! I’m a man! I can see it if I want!” Jack tried to remove my hand from his face, but I had it clamped on real hard.
Unlike the rest of her apartment, the red room was neat and tidy and highly organized. There was a display of whips on one wall, organized in order from small to large, from a light feather duster all the way to a cat o’ nine tails. There were two long tables in the middle of the room. One had shackles on it. The other was covered in kinky paraphernalia. I didn’t recognize most of it. There were two blow-up dolls in a corner.
Jack dropped to the floor, freeing himself from my grip. “Holy moly!” he cried in glee when he got a big eyeful of the room. “It’s like an R-rated movie! I’ve always wanted to see one. This is way cooler than any stupid school field trip. What’s this?” he asked, holding up a pair of edible undies.
“It’s…a thing for pilates. This is all pilates. Exercise. That’s what it is. Yeah, that’s right. Pilates.”
“Sure it is,” Jack said, rolling his eyes.
“Wait for me in the other room,” I ordered in my best authoritarian voice.
“No way. Bob Woodward would never leave the room.”
I stomped my foot. “Your mother is going to kill me!”
But Jack didn’t care. He was investigating the room and taking notes in the reporter’s notebook he carried in his back pocket. He opened a cupboard in a corner and looked inside.
“Costumes,” he said. “She must have liked to play dress-up.”
I nudged him aside and looked through the outfits. There were a half dozen black latex bodysuits with masks. There were also gags and other things I would have preferred to live my life without ever seeing.
“Please leave the room. You’re a kid,” I told Jack.
“Fine. I saw everything anyway. Totally not a big deal. You want me to write a story about Inga being a sex maniac?”
“No! I mean, yes. I mean, we have to ask Silas about this, and don’t tell your mother.”
“You want me to lie to my mother?”
“Yes! I mean, no. I mean, I’m not a parent. What would your mother do?”
“She would yell at me and make me mow the lawn,” he said.
Damn it. I didn’t have a mower. And there was no grass around Inga’s apartment building.
“You’re not going to give up, are you?” I asked Jack.
“I’m a journalist.”
“You’re only fifteen.”
“I’ll be sixteen next month,” he said. “Uncle Amos was a cop at sixteen. They made an exception for him. And Uncle Boone went off to college when he was sixteen.”
I sighed. “Silas is working on your mother,” I said. “But you have to go to school.”
“School sucks pilates.”
I called Amos and shooed Jack out of there. I didn’t want his mother findi
ng out that I had totally corrupted him. But I couldn’t keep the new information from law enforcement. First the money and now the sex stuff. It was time to let Amos know what I had discovered. He was going to give me hell and possibly arrest me, but I couldn’t keep it secret anymore.
I heard his boots clomp up the stairs a few minutes after I called him. “Did you kill someone else?” he demanded when he found me in the kitchen.
“I’ve never killed anyone.”
“You almost killed my brother yesterday, not that I’m complaining.”
“He slipped.”
Amos put his hands up in surrender. “I misspoke. You don’t kill them. They just get killed around you.”
“It’s not my fault,” I said, and a tear popped out of my eye. I wiped it away and willed myself not to cry, but another tear fell.
“Oh, please don’t,” Amos pleaded, removing his hat. “I can’t handle it when women cry. My wife cried once, and I had to buy her a Lexus. I’m sorry I made you cry. I was just teasing you.”
“It’s not you. I’m a little sensitive lately. I’ve got exorcists after me, and you remember what the mayor said.”
“Don’t take it to heart. I’ll tell them it’s Boone’s fault. That will get them off your back, and Boone will be exorcised. Win-win. Now, show me why I’m here.”
I led him to the sex room. It was awkward being alone in the room with him. We had shared a kiss before. It hadn’t gone beyond that, because Amos was still in love with his dead wife. But now I was dating his brother, and I didn’t want there to be any pilates equipment around when we were together.
Amos stood in the middle of the room and turned around slowly. He whistled. “I don’t know where to start. Sure, the sex toys stand out, but the most striking thing is that it’s neat and tidy.”
“And organized,” I said. “The whips are hung according to size.”
Amos looked at the wall. “Holy crap. You’re right.”
He put on a pair of latex gloves, picked up a shackle, and let it drop onto the table. When he discovered the bodysuits, he shook his head.
“People don’t surprise me often, but I never thought Inga Mueller was into kink. Not like this. This is Olympic-level kink.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “She was a loner. She did odd jobs.”
“About that,” I interrupted. “I have something else to show you.” He followed me back into Inga’s bedroom. “Look under the mattress.”
He dug the money out and tossed it onto the bed. “There must be a hundred thousand dollars here.”
“One hundred and fifty,” I said. He gave me the stink eye. “What? I’m a curious person. But I’m not a thief. It’s all there.”
Amos sat on the bed. “So, what do you think?”
“You’re asking me what I think?”
“Yes. Any theories?”
“Really?”
Amos didn’t blink. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get you on the force. You have the best deductive mind since Sherlock Holmes.”
My face got hot, and I covered my cheeks with my hands. “I’ve heard Jessica Fletcher before, but never Sherlock Holmes.” I was giddy that he thought I was Sherlock Holmes. It made up for the exorcists and the mayor.
“Come on. Give me your best theory.”
“My first thought was that she was murdered for the money,” I said. “The killer came looking for it, and she wouldn’t talk. He leaned hard on her, and she died without divulging where the money was.”
“Good thinking,” Amos said. “That was your first thought. What was your second?”
“Rough sex gone horribly wrong. Maybe they were doing something outside of the red room. Maybe he saw the bucket of resin, and they decided to improvise.”
Amos nodded. “Another good thought. Do you have a third thought, by any chance?”
“There’s not a lot of money in coal jewelry. Maybe the kink was Inga’s side job. Her side-side job.”
“Yuck. I can’t believe people paid Inga to have sex with her.”
“Maybe she wasn’t having sex. Maybe she was having sort-of sex.”
A memory floated around my brain, waking up some brain cells. Adele mentioned an uptick in sex talk at the diner, and something that Inga said. I needed to ask Adele for more information.
“What’re you thinking right now?” Amos asked. “Your face did a weird thing.”
“Nothing.”
Amos sighed. “Okay. Keep me in the loop. You discover something interesting, you let me know. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said, which wasn’t a complete lie. But it was probably mostly a lie.
Amos called in his deputies to help with the scene, and I left the apartment. Closing the door behind me, I heard a psst! and I turned to find an old man peeking from the other door on the floor.
“You,” he whispered. “Come here. I got something to tell you.”
He opened his door wider and gestured for me to come in. It was dumb to walk into an apartment of a stranger, across the way from where a woman was just murdered. I could have been looking at the killer in front of me. He could knock me unconscious when I walked into his place and kill me right there.
But he could also give me a clue about Inga’s murder.
I wasn’t Jessica Fletcher. I wasn’t Sherlock Holmes. But faced with a murder mystery, I was helpless. I couldn’t be smart until after I solved it.
That’s why I walked into the stranger’s apartment and let him close the door behind us. His apartment wasn’t exactly tidy, but it was clean for a man’s place. He was around Inga’s age, obviously retired. His clothes were clean, but he had given up on shaving and washing his hair.
“Sit,” he told me, waving at his couch.
I moved a blanket out of the way and sat down. “How can I help you?” I asked.
“I’ve seen you around. Heard about you.”
“I’m not possessed. And I’m not crazy. That’s exaggerated,” I said.
The man cocked his head to the head. “Huh? Not that. You’re the one who figured out that duffel bag case. Am I right?”
I nodded. “Oh. Yes. I thought you were talking about…never mind.”
“I got nothing against Sheriff Goodnight, but you’re the one who’s been locking down the killers lately. Except for the lunatic who’s killing young girls. I guess you haven’t gotten around to that case yet.”
I felt the familiar wave of guilt I felt when I thought of the abducted girls I wasn’t helping. I pushed it down and told myself that I would focus on that soon.
“Do you have information about Inga’s death?” I asked him. “Do you know who killed her?”
“I wasn’t here that day. I was fishing for a couple days. I’ve got an RV. I’ve been thinking of moving into it and just traveling the country.”
“That sounds nice,” I said and looked at the door. I was pretty sure I could outrun him out of the apartment if necessary. “About Inga…”
“I was getting to that. Inga was in that club. A bunch of freaks.”
“What club?”
“You know. The sex club.”
“What sex club?”
He frowned at me, as if he was disappointed in my real-life mystery-solving skills. “The Goodnight sex club. Half the town is in it. Big people. Prominent people. The crème de la crème of Goodnight. All a bunch of sex-crazed maniacs. Inga was one of them.”
Part III: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” –Groucho Marx
Mourners Shocked at Wake
by Silas Miller
Mourners gathered at a wake at Goodnight Mortuary were shocked when an imposter deceased person was found displayed in their loved one’s coffin. Gary Stone died last week of a stroke. Mourners, who attended his wake, paid their respects at Mr. Stone’s open casket, and discovered the mistaken identity.
“My wife passed out,” Franco Juarez, who attended the wake, said. “We were Gary’s neighbors. We were expecting to see Gary. That wa
s no Gary. I don’t know who that was.”
Panic ensued when the discovery was made. “I was calm, but there was a lot of screaming. That’s when it happened. The coffin went over, and that strange man fell out. Then, it got weird,” Patty Rice, another mourner, explained.
Unlike Mr. Stone’s slim build, the dead imposter was approximately three hundred and fifty pounds. When he fell out of the coffin, he landed on two mourners, who wish to remain anonymous.
“It was just like Vietnam, man,” Harold Haines, another mourner, said. “Mayhem, death, chaos, and two poor [expletive deleted] who were flattened by a fat corpse.”
The two victims were treated at Goodnight Clinic and released with minor injuries. The large man in the coffin has not yet been identified, and Gary Stone remains missing.
“In the history of Goodnight Mortuary, this has never happened before,” Sinclair Reisman, an associate at Goodnight Mortuary, said. “But it’s been hard to focus with the Pooper Baskets showing up everywhere. It’s impossible to keep track of clients when there’s a Pooper Basket in the embalming room. My nerves are shot from dog poop.”
Chapter 9
It was hard to believe that Inga belonged to a sex club. But it was hard to believe that she had a wall of whips in a secret sex room too, and I had witnessed that.
More than any of that, it was hard to believe that there was a sex club in Goodnight. I didn’t have a name for any of the members except for Inga and didn’t know anything more about it except for the fact that there were prominent people in it.
I wondered if there was a crossover with Goodnight Gazette’s list of most prominent people. So far, Jeb and Adele were on the paper’s list. Could they be in the sex club too? Did the sex club have anything to do with Inga’s murder?
I left the man’s apartment with a promise that I would use my sleuthing skills to solve Inga’s murder. Inga’s apartment was a hive of law enforcement activity. I snuck down the stairs without being seen. Outside, I scanned the area for Jack, but there was no sign of him. I hoped that he had returned to school.
I drove my Altima toward the diner, but on the way, I spotted Adele walking across the Plaza. I stopped next to her and opened my window.
