Mad Mouse: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

by Chris Grabenstein

  Becca scrunches up her nose like she just smelled boiled cabbage. “Still doesn't sound familiar.”

  “Let's talk about the summer of nineteen ninety-six,” says Ceepak. “That's when you all met?”

  We run down the who-knew-who-first stuff until Ceepak's up to speed. The girls retell the bathing suit fitting room story. I talk about Jess's lifeguard chair. “I used to hang out there, after I worked mornings at the Pancake Palace.”

  “Is that the summer you were a busboy?” Olivia smiles, remembering.

  “Yeah.”

  “And they fired you for dropping too many trays?”

  “They hired me back, like, two days later.”

  “They were desperate,” says Jess.

  “Yeah.” He's right. They were. I was pretty lame busing tables. Kept breaking milk glasses when I jammed dirty silverware inside them.

  “No retreat, no surrender,” Jess says.

  “Springsteen?” Ceepak recognizes the quote.

  “Yeah. That was our motto that summer, remember?”

  We all nod and have to laugh as we remember how cool we thought we were. We actually had A Motto: No retreat, no surrender. It's off Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. album. In fact, it's the same song John Kerry used during his presidential campaign. I always loved the first couple of lines:

  We busted out of class

  Had to get away from those fools,

  We learned more from a three-minute record

  Than we ever learned in school.

  It's all about friends hanging out, probably in the summer, probably on the Jersey Shore, and they promise to always remember each other, swear to stick up for one another, no matter what, to be “blood brothers against the wind.”

  No retreat, no surrender.

  “What did you guys do that summer?” Ceepak asks.

  “You know, the usual,” Becca says.

  Olivia nods. “Work. Then hit the beach.”

  “Chase boys.”

  “Let the boys chase us.”

  “Sometimes we'd just cruise the boardwalk. Check out the arcades. Ride the rides.”

  “I ate way too much candy,” Olivia says, “because Katie had this job at …”

  She pauses, realizes it's the same place Katie was working this morning.

  “… Tammy's.”

  Jess shoots me a look. I nod, hoping to encourage him to say whatever is on his mind.

  “Can we be like totally honest?”

  Ceepak will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do. Total honesty? He's down with that.

  “Of course.”

  “You're not going to, like, retroactively arrest us or anything?”

  Nervous laughter titters around the room.

  Ceepak raises his right hand. “On my honor.”

  “Well,” Olivia says, “we were only fifteen and sixteen.”

  “But,” Becca adds, “sometimes, at night, you know, we liked to party … drink beer.”

  “And Boone's Farm.”

  “Nuh-uh, Olivia. You were the only one who liked Boone's Farm.”

  Olivia shrugs. “At the time, I thought it was wine.”

  “It's basically soda pop that they mix with malt liquor,” Jess says, speculating on the secret Boone's Farm recipe. “And, it had that handy screw-off top.”

  “So,” I say, “we spent our days working, hanging out on the beach. At night, we'd find somebody to help us buy a six-pack or two. Some wino who didn't mind aiding and abetting our underage drinking, especially if we gave him a few extra bucks, bought him a quart of Colt 45.”

  “Then, we'd just, you know, chill,” Jess says. “Maybe build a little driftwood fire. Check out the stars. Listen to music.”

  “Make out,” says Olivia. “A lot of cute boys drift through town during the summer.”

  Becca sighs. “Every week was like a new summer camp full of ’em.”

  “Other people would join us,” Olivia adds. “Kids we knew from school or people we met at our jobs. Kids on vacation with their folks. And Mook? He was always our evening's entertainment. The cruise director. He always had something stupid up his sleeve. Some joke or wild idea.”

  The room gets quiet again. Everybody remembers Harley Mook. Before we grew up and began to change. Before he was murdered.

  “I miss Mook,” Becca says. A tear trickles out from behind the sunglasses. “He was funny back then, you know?”

  Olivia sinks deeper into the sofa. “Yeah. He was.”

  “Wheezer.” Jess hisses the name. “Wheezer.” He's trying hard to remember. Me, too. Was Wheezer one of those guys who used to join us sometimes? Maybe just a summer renter's kid? Somebody from the Pancake Palace? Maybe a lifeguard?

  “What's his real name?” Olivia asks.

  “We don't know,” answers Ceepak.

  “Well, Mook was always giving everybody names. He called me Liver Oil.”

  Becca grins. “I was Betcha-Can't-Eat-Just-One. Like the potato chips. I think it was supposed to be dirty.”

  “I was Jess. Dude never hung a handle on me.”

  “Whom might he have called Wheezer?” Ceepak paces around the room. “A schoolmate? Someone he worked with? Someone he met that summer? We suspect Wheezer is a local.”

  On account of the bumper sticker.

  “But someone who has probably since moved away.”

  How'd he come up with that?

  “We know his complexion is currently pale. Even a local using SPF 50 would show a slight skin coloration.”

  Okay. I'm with him again.

  “We also know Wheezer felt insignificant in your presence. In his last communication, the shooter suggested that you'd never remember him. I suspect he was something of a loner, not one of the ‘cool kids.’ In fact, Mook told Danny that Wheezer was a loser.”

  “A loser?” Becca seems surprised.

  “I always thought we were the losers,” jokes Olivia.

  “We were,” Becca says. “Except Jess. Jess was always cool.”

  “I was not.”

  “Dude, you were a lifeguard.”

  Jess shrugs, and we all rack our brains trying to remember ten summers ago and some loner or loser who drifted into our lives.

  I've got nothing. I look around the room.

  Nobody has anything except lost and unhappy expressions on their faces.

  “Keep thinking about it,” Ceepak says. He checks the time. Four thirty. I don't think he's concerned about the chief's deadline. I think he's worried about the forty-eight-hour rule. Ceepak once told me that if you don't solve your case in the first two days, chances are you never will.

  The clock is ticking.

  “I think it would be wise for all of you to remain in protective custody for the remainder of the weekend,” Ceepak says. “We'll post police officers outside your residences. It would be best if you stayed indoors.”

  “Me, too?”

  “Yes, Danny. I'm pulling you out of the field. I need you to focus on Wheezer. It's how you can best aid the investigation.”

  I nod. He's right.

  A speaker up in the ceiling bongs a series of chimes.

  “Code Blue. ICU. Code Blue.”

  The voice is incredibly calm, but I know Code Blue means there's some kind of medical emergency in the ICU. I hear people run up the hall outside our door.

  They're running to the ICU.

  Where Katie is.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Isit on a couch and stare at a curtain.

  The couch is another one of those teal and speckle jobs that are supposed to calm people down. The curtain is a thin cotton sheet pulled across the glass window into Katie's ICU room. The nurses let Ceepak and me come this far only because we have badges. The other guys had to hang back in the visitors’ room.

  The doctor rolled the curtain across the window because he didn't want us to see them in there pounding on Katie's chest.

  Ceepak is sitting next to me on the couch. When the radio c
lipped to his belt squeals he turns it off. He has about five billion other things he should be doing right now. Instead, he sits with me. I have my head in my hands.

  “She's strong,” he says. “She'll make it. This is not her time. Today is not her day.”

  I know it's a string of clichés, the kind of things people say in made-for-TV movies or something. But Ceepak's seen stuff, watched his buddies being blown to bits in Iraq, seen others who pulled through. Maybe he knows what he's talking about. Maybe he can tell who'll make it, who won't.

  A doctor comes into the hallway and lifts his mask.

  “She's stabilizing,” he says. “She lost a tremendous amount of blood and her BP became dangerously low.”

  “But she's gonna make it?” I ask.

  “She's stabilizing.” That's the best the doctor can do right now. He slides his mask back up and goes into Katie's room.

  “Danny?”

  It's a nurse. Someone I know (of course). Christine Lemonopoulos.

  “Hey.”

  “How you doing?” she asks, genuinely concerned. Christine and Katie are friends. I think they go to chick flicks together, and one of them is always in charge of the Kleenex.

  “I'm hanging in there,” I say.

  “Ma’am?” Ceepak says to Christine.

  “Yes?”

  “Will it be all right for Officer Boyle to remain here in the hallway?”

  “No problem. Just, you know—don't get in anybody's way, okay, Danny?”

  “Sure. I'll just, you know, hang here.”

  “Cool. Can I get you guys anything? A Coke or something?”

  “No thanks,” I say.

  “We're good.” Ceepak isn't thirsty either.

  “Hang in there, Danny.”

  “Yeah. You, too, Christine.”

  “Thanks.”

  We're both going to try.

  Five P.M. Ceepak is still on the couch next to me. The doctors pulled open the curtains when they had Katie's Code Blue situation under control. She's still unconscious but I guess she's Code Green or whatever color it is when you're doing better.

  “Shouldn't you be out there looking for that minivan?” I ask. “Tracking down the surfer gloves?”

  “Soon,” he says. “Don't worry. Our guys are on it.”

  “I'm okay here,” I say, trying to give him permission to hit the streets.

  “Danny, did I ever tell you about the Christmas choir when I was a kid? Midnight mass?”

  Okay. Now he's being totally random.

  “No. I don't think … no.”

  I've only heard maybe one or two stories about Ceepak's childhood, which I know is more than he's told most people. His past is basically unavailable for public viewing because he didn't have a very good one. His dad was a drunk who used to beat up his mom and drove Ceepak's little brother to suicide. Somehow, I doubt his Christmas tale is going to be one of those Hallmark Hall of Fame numbers where somebody discovers the true meaning of the season and saves the day for all the crippled orphans in town.

  Ceepak sinks back on the couch.

  “My father used to play the drums,” he says.

  “You're kidding? Drums?”

  “He was in a rock band in high school. Played some in college. Nightclubs. Bars. Places that paid with free beer. Anyhow, my father kept his drum kit stowed in our basement. Every now and then, he'd go down there and make a racket. I could tell how much he'd been drinking by how badly he kept time, his lack of any discernible rhythm.”

  I can just imagine it: Old Man Ceepak, toasted out of his gourd, drumming away, smashing and crashing cymbals. I'll bet it sounded like all hell broke loose in that basement, like when a two-year-old gets a toy drum for his birthday and gives everybody a free concert and a migraine.

  “Was he any good?” I ask.

  “Not really. But this one Christmas, when he swore to God he was sober, when he promised my mother his drinking days were behind him, he decided he'd show her what a good man he had become by volunteering to play drums for our church's Christmas choir.”

  “And you were you in the choir?”

  “I was nine. I believe participation was considered somewhat mandatory.”

  “Don't tell me: you guys did ‘The Little Drummer Boy?’ ”

  “Of course.”

  “And your dad? He did a drum solo?”

  “Such was the plan. Christmas Eve, I helped my father haul his drums up to the choir loft. Set up the kit. It was all good. At least when we rehearsed.”

  “What? He'd started drinking again?”

  “He never stopped, Danny. He just told my mother he had. He lied to her. Made me lie to her as well.”

  “No way. You lied to your own mother? On Christmas Eve?”

  “At the time, I would have told you I was protecting her from the truth.”

  “What happened?”

  “Midnight mass. Hundreds of parishioners pack the pews. All of sudden, there's this tremendous commotion up in the choir loft. Drums topple over. Cymbals crash to the floor. Microphones squeal. My father was so drunk he slid off his stool and took everything down with him.”

  I probably shouldn't laugh. So I just chuckle.

  “It only lasted a few seconds. My father climbed back onto his stool and was able to pound out the requisite pa-rum-pum-pum-pums. After mass, my mother asked me about the noise, asked me what happened.”

  “What'd you tell her?”

  “I told her the choir director tripped on a microphone cord.”

  “You lied?” I'm amazed.

  “The children of drunks grow very accustomed to telling lies, Danny. It quickly becomes one's hardwired first response.”

  “Come on. Give yourself a break. You were just a kid.”

  “I know.”

  “You didn't want to ruin Christmas for your mom.”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe I was afraid of what my father might do to me if I told her the truth. In any event, I am not proud of my actions that evening.”

  “You were nine years old!”

  “Yes. And it was a minor transgression. However, if I had told my mother the truth that Christmas, perhaps she would have seen my father for what he really was. Perhaps she could have escaped.”

  “Man, you're blowing it way out of proportion.”

  “Perhaps. But actions, no matter how slight or insignificant, have ripple effects, Danny. Unintended consequences.”

  I think I understand where Ceepak's going with this.

  “So you think something small we did back in nineteen ninety-six, some ‘minor transgression’ turned into a big, major deal for this guy Wheezer?”

  “It's a possibility. ‘You'll never remember. I'll never forget.’ ”

  “Yeah.”

  “Try to remember, Danny. Try hard.”

  Ceepak stands.

  “Stay here. Keep an eye on Katie. Get some sleep if you can. Try to remember.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Around seven P.M., Christine brings me a pillow.

  Around seven fifteen, I fall asleep sideways on the couch.

  Suddenly Christine is shaking my shoulder. It's morning. “She asked for you.”

  “Whaa?” I forget where I am, why my breath stinks. Why is Christine waking me up? Are we even dating?

  “Katie,” she says and shakes my shoulder some more.

  My brain sputters, I blink. It's like the grumpy superintendent inside my skull shuffles over to the circuit breaker box, flicks the switches, lights me up for another day.

  “Katie,” I mumble. I remember Katie.

  “She asked for you.”

  “She's awake?”

  “Come on.”

  Christine takes my hand and leads me into Katie's room.

  Katie's eyes are open. There's a thin smile on her dry, cracked lips.

  “Danny.”

  “Hey.”

  I reach for her hand. Christine nods. It's okay.

  I take Katie's hand into mine and would sque
eze it but I see they have an IV needle jabbed in near the thin tendons. So, I stroke her hand instead. I rub it gently, like I'm petting some newborn kitten.

  There's a bunch of water blurring my eyes. I've got a lump in my throat the size of a meatball. I can't believe I'm seeing her emerald green eyes open and looking back at me.

  “Danny.” She sighs, closes her eyes, and smiles like she's having a really good dream.

  “Let her rest,” Christine suggests.

  “Is she … ?”

  “Yeah, she is, Danny. She's going to be okay.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. I'll go grab you a chair. You can sit with her.”

  She drags a vinyl chair into the room.

  “Thanks.”

  “She's on the mend,” she says. “But she needs to rest.”

  About a half hour later, the doctor comes in and sees me sitting next to Katie's bed.

  “How is she?” he asks.

  “She, you know, recognized me.”

  “So I heard.” He scribbles some stuff on the clipboard hanging off the foot of her bed. “That's very good news.”

  The doctor leaves. I resume staring at Katie while she sleeps.

  Every now and then, her green eyes flutter open, focus on me, and she smiles. Then, her eyelids flicker shut and she drifts off. I think a couple of those IV bags are pumping down pain medicine, the kind that makes you drowsy. Katie should definitely avoid operating any heavy machinery for the next few days.

  My mind is spinning. I wish I'd had one of those dreams last night where all is revealed. A dream where the real Wheezer stands up like in that old TV game show To Tell the Truth. No such luck.

  Maybe one of the other guys figured it out. Probably Olivia. She's the smartest. I check the cell phone clipped to my belt. No new messages. The others have probably all gone home with their police escorts. They're sitting somewhere right now like I am, with the word “Wheezer” running around their heads like a hopped-up hamster.

  “Wheezer.” I whisper it. “Wheezy, Wheezer, Weasel.”

  It's becoming a chant, like saying the rosary, which is something I forget how to do but I remember it involved a lot of mumbling of the same words over and over.

  “Wheezer, wiener, weenie, wienerschnitzel, weenie, weasel, wheezy, wheezer …”