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

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Danny?”

  Katie. I must've been mumbling louder than I thought.

  “Hey.” I push myself out of the chair and move up to her pillow. I slide a sweaty strand of red hair out of her eyes.

  “Don't,” she says.

  “Sorry.” I take my hand off her hair. Guess her forehead hurts.

  “Don't.”

  I'm not doing anything.

  “Don't do what?”

  “Don't tease Weese.”

  Her eyes close. She drifts back to sleep.

  I remember.

  Weese.

  “Wheezer” is George Weese.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  August something-or-other, 1996.

  Summer days all kind of blur together in a lazy haze. But that one day, whenever it was, was different. Not hugely different, just different enough.

  I think it sent out those ripple effects Ceepak warned me about.

  It was almost the end of August, during “Back to School Savings Time.” The TV was already running that Staples commercial about the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” The old Christmas song plays in the background while a happy dad pilots his shopping cart up and down the aisles, chucking in paper and notebooks and pens and all the supplies his sad little children need before they head back to school.

  What we did to George Weese that day was really no big deal. Honest. It was just one of those stupid things bored kids do, especially kids who are fifteen and sixteen. When you're that age, you never realize that some of what you do is pretty awful. I was, basically, a teenage boy trying to figure out how to become a man—I mean, besides the obvious hormone and hair stuff.

  I wanted to be my own man, not just somebody's son.

  My friends and I hung out on Oak Beach almost every day. We lived in our own little world. We all had summer jobs and, like the song says, “Money got made, money got spent.” We laughed and listened to music and cruised the boardwalk and chased girls we didn't even know. We were trying hard to be cool and we thought we were.

  George Weese was not.

  Weese was the opposite of cool. He was a loser. A dork. He was the Wheezer.

  “He sits behind me in home room,” Mook told us. “I swear, that big nose of his? It's stuffed with boogers. He wheezes when he breathes because the air can't make it past the booger boulders.”

  I remember when Weese stumbled up the beach toward our spot that day. He wasn't coming to visit us. He was just passing through.

  “Here he comes!” Mook goofed. “Can you hear him?” Then Mook did this funny bit where he sounded like a donkey trapped inside Darth Vader's helmet, all raspy and asthmatic, rattling a “hee” and a “haw” with every breath. Mook cracked us up.

  Weese was tall and gangly, with a farmer's tan on his forearms—the rest of his skin was basically the same goose-pimply white as raw chicken. He was one of those guys who always squinted but never thought about buying clip-ons or wearing a baseball cap to shield his eyes. And he couldn't seem to coordinate his knees with his ankles. His big floppy feet kept sliding sideways in the sand, and when he'd stumble, his glasses would slip and he'd have to push them back up the bridge of his humongous nose. Mook was right: you could hear the air whistling and wheezing and whining through his nostrils every time he breathed in or out.

  To make matters worse, that day George Weese was wearing these white swim trunks with an elastic navy blue belt looped through the waistband. He looked ridiculous, like he was wearing underpants or a kitchen trash can liner with a blue plastic tie-cord.

  “Nice undies, Wheezer,” Mook said when Weese came close to the plot of sand we had claimed as our own that day.

  It was about four P.M. I remember Jess got off duty at three, I finished at the Pancake Palace around two, everybody was done working for the day, and the six of us were basically chilling, swilling sodas, wondering what we wanted to do until it was time to head home.

  Mook, our self-appointed cruise director, decided what we'd do first: we'd have some fun with a wimp named Wheezer.

  He blocked Weese's path up the beach.

  When Weese tried to step around him, Mook moved sideways, got in his way again.

  “Where you going, Wheezer?”

  Weese didn't say anything. Some girls two blankets over started to giggle. Mook loved it.

  “Oops. I think they can see your weenie, Wheezy.”

  Weese looked down at his swimsuit. The white polyester fabric was thin, almost transparent.

  “It's a teeny weenie,” Mook boomed. “More like a gherkin. One of those teeny-weeny itty-bitty pickles.”

  Jess laughed. I did, too.

  “You been jerkin’ your gherkin, Wheezer?” Mook was on a roll.

  “That's against beach rules.” Jess stood up, dusted some sand off his red swim trunks. “Gherkin jerkin’ is strictly prohibited on all public beaches.”

  “Yeah,” I added. “It says so on all the signs. Right after ‘no glass bottles’ comes ‘no weenie whacking.’ ”

  Mook laughed at my new spin on his joke and we slapped each other a high-five. Jess knocked knuckles with us. I felt great. We were guys. Tough guys, topping each other, saying shit that was funnier than hell.

  Becca and Olivia giggled and tried not to be obvious while they stared at Weese's crotch. Poor guy. His swim trunks weren't just white—they were two seasons too old. Extremely tight.

  “You can totally see his pecker,” Becca said while she pointed. “Totally!”

  Olivia slapped Becca's hand down.

  “Stop!” But Olivia was laughing.

  “It's a teeny-weeny jelly-beanie.” Becca sang it. Olivia lost it.

  Katie shocked us all. She had no brothers, and I think this was, you know, an eye-opening experience for her, so to speak. She kept staring at the nubby lump located between Weese's legs.

  “It sort of looks like a mouse,” she said in this small, astonished voice.

  “Yeah,” Mook snorted. “Like Minnie Mouse!”

  Katie didn't laugh.

  Everybody else, however, hooted. Katie, I remember now, sort of covered her mouth, like she was horrified by what she had just let slip out and wished she could take it back.

  The other girls wouldn't let her.

  “Minnie Mouse!” Becca hollered. She and Olivia rolled backwards, kicking their feet, squealing and howling.

  Katie flung some sand at them. “Come on you guys,” she said. “Knock it off. Don't tease Weese.”

  “Knock it off?” said Mook. “Never!” Then he raised his hand like he was some kind of king making a speech to his soldiers. “No retreat! No surrender!”

  Jess raised his arm, I raised mine. We were the Three Goofeteers. All for one, one for all.

  “No retreat! No surrender!”

  Weese just stood there taking it. I remember his face went pink like the sunburned patches on the tops of his shoulders.

  “Like Minnie Mouse!” Becca gasped again when she finally caught her breath.

  Weese backed up. Looked around. Saw that all the kids on Oak Beach were staring at him. Guys stopped tossing Nerf balls and leered like ringside drunks at a boxing match waiting for the knockout punch and wishing they could be the ones to land it.

  The girls up and down the sand? Most were sitting up on their towels, leaning forward, arching their backs, laughing into cupped hands. I noticed some were looking my way. Sizing me up. Liking what they saw. I remember feeling extremely manly that day.

  The adults? I don't think there were any adults on that stretch of sand. No little kids, either. I guess that's why we hung out there. Oak Beach was Teen Town. We had our own rules, our own laws, our own music—the same station, WAVY, blasting out of every boom box.

  “Hey, Wheezer?” Mook said, shaking the grape soda bottle in his fist. “Think fast!”

  Mook released his thumb, let the foam fly, sprayed Weese right in the crotch.

  “Uh-oh!” Mook screamed. “Looks like Wheezer just got his period!
Anybody have a Kotex he can borrow?”

  Everybody—I mean everybody—busted a gut laughing at that one. Guys, girls, everybody. They were pointing at the purple splotch, thinking Harley Mook was funnier than anything they'd seen or heard all summer. I remember Mook took a little bow. Some of the girls near us dug into their beach bags, found tampons, tossed them at Weese.

  I also remember glancing over at Katie.

  Okay. Not everybody was busting a gut. She was staring at me the way my mom would whenever I did something that “disappointed” her. You know—when she saw me swipe a miniature chocolate egg out of my kid brother's Easter basket when I still had plenty in mine. Stuff like that.

  “Thank you, folks,” Mook said. “I'm here all week.” Mook was bigger that day than Leno.

  I remember other things: Weese narrowing his eyes, not saying a word. The sound as he breathed in through his mouth, wheezed out through his nose. The strong gumball grape smell, like dry Kool-Aid powder.

  “Now don't go running home to tell your mommy,” Mook said, moving in closer, poking Weese's bony rib cage with his empty Welch's bottle. “You do that, we'll come after you. Capeesh?”

  “No retreat! No surrender!” screamed Jess.

  “You can run, but you cannot hide,” I added.

  I swaggered up to Weese to say it because I knew those bikini babes up the beach were still checking me out and there were a couple I hoped to impress further. Those girls weren't disappointed in me. They weren't like Katie or my mom. No, they were intrigued by my savage masculinity. Or so I thought. I guess I had a pretty vivid imagination back then.

  “If I can't get you,” Mook promised Weese, “my friends will!”

  Weese looked at Jess. Looked at me. Then, he turned around. I could see his head tilt down as he dared a quick peek at the front of his soiled swim pants.

  “Careful girls,” Mook hollered and strutted back to his beach towel. “Wheezer here has a one-eyed Purple People Eater in his pants.”

  Katie shook her head. I think she was disappointed in all of us.

  We didn't care. We swayed back and forth and sang a quick chorus of that stupid one-hit wonder: “It was a one-eyed, onehorned, flyin purple people eater…”

  Weese shuffled away. Everybody he passed pointed at his pants and hooted. Some guys shook cans of whatever they had in their mitts and made like they might spray that at Weese, too. Others yelled, “What'd you do? Piss your pants purple?” Girls shook their heads, disgusted by the scrawny doofus with the splotchy crotch who they thought should find some other piece of beach to go geek around on.

  The whole deal lasted maybe five minutes. Ten tops.

  Even Katie got over it.

  We moved on to whatever was next. Chasing each other with squirt guns. Playing paddleball. Meeting some girls from the city who were in town for the week and looking to party. Maybe we plotted that night's beer run. Maybe we ran out of snack food items and argued about whose turn it was to hike up to the Qwick Pick and grab another bag of something to munch on.

  The same old same old.

  We moved on.

  We forgot.

  I guess George Weese never did.

  • • •

  I have to wonder if maybe Mook got hot waiting in his car for Wheezer. Maybe he took a couple of swigs from that twenty-ounce grape soda we found in the cup holder. Maybe Weese saw Mook knock back a few gulps and a certain purple-stained day came rushing back to him in Digital High Def and Surround Sound.

  I guess we'll have to ask him.

  I unclip my cell phone and punch in Ceepak's number.

  He answers on the first ring.

  “This is Ceepak.”

  “Hey,” I say. “We need to find George Weese.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 75 in Avondale, New Jersey, usually does stuff like teach boating safety to weekend sailors.

  But they also have this really fast boat. A forty-four-foot, aluminum-hulled number that can do thirty-five knots. That's like forty mph. I know because Rosie, my skipper, a Coast Guard Reservist, told me so. Actually, she had to scream it because we were flying across the bay so fast—about forty mph.

  When I called Ceepak, he called his Coast Guard buddies. Apparently, they were delighted to help him out by seeing how fast their new boat could go. So now I'm wearing a bright orange life jacket over my bulletproof vest, holding on to a handrail with sea spray needling my face and skimming like a flicked stone across the bay back to the island. This sea puppy's fast.

  Christine will keep an eye on Katie at the hospital. So, of course, will the doctors. Ceepak said he'd meet me at the marina off Bayside Boulevard, over near Schooner's Landing—back where we think George Weese parked his white minivan, stepped out, and took two shots. One at me, one at Katie.

  Rosie pulls back on the throttle. We churn up backwash, lose speed, and drift toward the dock. Ceepak is standing there to salute us on our final approach.

  Rosie snaps one back.

  “Throw him the line,” she barks. It takes me a second to figure out she's barking at me, that I'm all of a sudden her first mate. “Throw him the dock line!”

  I hoist this big coil of rope and heave it toward Ceepak. I almost fling myself onto the dock after it. Ceepak catches the line and wraps it around a cleat.

  “Here's your cargo,” Rosie says when I stumble off the boat.

  “Thank you, Rosie,” Ceepak says. “I owe you one.”

  “So buy me a beer.”

  “Will do. But not when you're on duty.”

  “Roger that,” she says. “Hurry up. Go catch the bastard.”

  “Come on, Danny.” Ceepak motions for me to keep up with him. “We need to join everybody over at the Weese residence.”

  “Did the guys find George?”

  “Not yet.”

  I check my watch. It's 10:52 A.M. We walk faster, heading off the dock into the parking lot.

  “Did they, you know, find any evidence?”

  “Roger that. They tell me there's a white minivan parked in the garage.”

  “Green beach sticker?”

  “On the front bumper not far from the lighthouse license plate.”

  “I thought George Weese lived out of town.”

  “He does.”

  “So what's he doing with a resident beach sticker?”

  “His father cheated. Bought an extra tag, sent it to his son hoping it might encourage George to …” Ceepak checks his notebook. “‘Bring the grandchildren down more often.’ Mrs. Weese bought George the minivan. Apparently, the Weeses are quite wealthy.”

  But they cheat.

  To Ceepak, that's all that matters.

  • • •

  We pull up in front of the Weese house.

  Ceepak's right: these people are loaded.

  They have a humongous house, two in from the ocean at the corner of Beach Lane and Walnut Street. It's three stories tall, with all sorts of angles and extensions and different-shaped windows and jutting decks and this big sweeping staircase up to double front doors with gold-trimmed glass windows like something Tony Soprano might buy at Home Depot. I'm surprised the Weeses don't just hang a sign off one of their roofs: “Got money? We sure as shit do.”

  I see Kiger and Malloy's patrol car parked out front near the two-car garage at the left side of the house. I see the CSI team's Taurus, too.

  Ceepak pulls in but doesn't park very well. He just sort of angles our Ford against the concrete curb with the butt sticking out into the street. Kiger is in the driveway looking like he's eager to tell him something, so Ceepak yanks up the emergency brake and basically jumps out of the Explorer. I follow along.

  “What've you got, Adam?”

  “Weapon and ammunition in the minivan. Rear cargo hold.”

  “The M-24?” Ceepak asks.

  Kiger shakes his head. “Negative. Looks like a paintball shooter. You know—a big toy gun. Black plastic. Molded to look like an army rif
le.”

  “Most likely a Tripman A-5 with reactive trigger,” Ceepak says. Then he turns to me because he knows I'm totally confused. “Same as rifle number three at Paintball Blasters on the boardwalk. I checked last night. Weese wanted to practice on the same type of gun, see if he could manipulate the trigger action while gloved.”

  While I was passed out on that sofa outside the ICU, Ceepak was back here working the case.

  A Ford Expedition crunches up the street. Chief Baines.

  “What've we got, Ceepak?”

  “Potential suspect, sir.”

  “Weese? From the Chamber?”

  “His son. George.”

  “Do we know where this George Weese is presently located?” The chief reaches for the shoulder microphone to his radio, ready to call in strike coordinates on our sniper.

  “No, sir. We've posted an APB based on witness descriptions.”

  “And,” Kiger says, “we have his father and mother inside. Also the suspect's wife and children. Malloy's in there with them, making sure nobody tells Georgie Porgie the cavalry's coming.”

  “What's the prevailing mood?” Baines is curious. “Inside?”

  Kiger smiles. “Pissed off, sir.”

  The chief nods, turns to Ceepak.

  “John?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You sure about this? You sure George Weese is your guy?”

  “It's where all the evidence leads, sir.”

  The chief checks his watch, nods his head.

  “Let's go nail the bastard.”

  Looks like we might beat that noon deadline after all.

  “This is preposterous. George would never do such a thing.” This is his mother talking, naturally. She's short and chubby and chain smokes.

  Two little kids bawl and screech in a playpen in the middle of the living room. One, a boy, looks to be almost two years old. The other? I don't know. I'm no good at guessing how old babies are supposed to be. I wish they had rings I could count like with trees. Maybe the little one's nine or ten months. The way it screams? Got the lungs of a twelve-year-old. Both kids have tears streaming down their cheeks and snot dripping out their noses, and it all ends up as crusty green stuff on top of their lips. There's reason to suspect the small one has a load in its pants, too. Either that, or Mrs. Weese is cooking something foul for brunch.