I don’t remember the rest, just saying I do and being surprised when Alex put a ring on my finger. I hadn’t thought of wedding bands, but Mom handed me a ring when the time came. It was my grandfather’s, a plain band of hammered gold, scratched and worn but very dear. I was betting that my ring had come from Mary Elizabeth. She had small hands too.
And then we were done. Alex kissed me, we signed our license. Pictures were taken by Andy Dickerson and the chef wheeled in a cart with an enormous strawberry shortcake on it. Champagne was opened. There was laughter and joy and some singing.
Jailhouse brought me champagne with a strawberry in it. Living Dead was with Althea and, from her pained look, being subjected to some of my cousin’s terrible poetry. Millennium, BB Heroin and Elder were by the cake. The maids were passing out napkins. But there was also something missing. Someone missing. The small hairs on my arms began to rise as I began looking at faces until I knew the one that was gone.
“Where’s Archie Mobley?” I asked. Everyone else was present in the ballroom. I counted again. The maids were there, Andy Dickerson, even a couple of late arriving tourists who had wandered in by mistake. Or maybe they were the judges.
“He ducked out. I bet he’s checking the stage and adjusting the lights for the memorial,” Elvis said. Seeing my surprise he added: “Archie’s real good with electrical stuff— used to do everything for his shows. All the lighting, fireworks, even makeup and costumes. Though once he started getting criticized for his costumes he decided to use Dana for his gear.”
“Archie is doing the electrical work?” The hair on my neck had erected too.
“Yep. We really thought he had chance of winning in Albuquerque. Especially when I got a bad shock off a microphone and had to drop out on account of being unconscious. But BB won that one after all and Archie kind of packed it in after that.”
So there was the modus operandi, the means and the motive, all in a few innocent sentences.
“Alex,” I called and gestured when he looked my way. He and Hawaii and Dad were huddled near the window, probably catching Dad up on the killings. I met them half way. None of us were smiling.
“It’s Archie. He’s the killer.” I kept my voice low.
“How?” Alex asked. He had faith. He also wanted to stop the next killing and would worry about the whys after.
“The tribute number probably. Electrocution. He’s done it before to get Elvis out of a competition. I bet he plans to spill the aquarium on the stage. It will look like an accident. He’s in there now messing with the wiring.”
“Where?” Dad asked and I pointed at the bar.
“Why?” Hawaii demanded.
The why would take too long.
“Kill’em all, I guess. Let God pick a winner.”
We all turned toward the exit, moving quickly. Maybe we should have come up with a plan first. I know we should have come up with a plan first, but fear had gripped me and it spread to the others, though Hawaii wasn’t as certain as my father and Alex that I was right about Archie being the killer.
The bar was empty except for the night manager. If he had been plugging in microphones or something innocuous, there might have been lingering doubt in Hawaii, but whatever Archie was doing with an electrician’s knife, it alarmed the marshal.
“That’s two-twenty cable,” he said softly. “No need for it here.”
I knew two-twenty was what they used for large appliances.
Behind us, the other guests crowded close, but they couldn’t see much beyond three sets of broad shoulders blocking the door.
“Archie, stop. We know. About Dana and Herbie and everything. We understand.”
He didn’t answer me.
I looked into his eyes and knew that I lied. I would never understand him. I knew what he’d done and could predict the awful thing he would do in the next moment, but the awful emotion that ruled his mind was something I could never know. There was knowledge of his actions, but not empathy.
I watched him reach out with his foot and press a pedal on the floor. Something began to hum. He turned toward the fish tank and struck it with his fist which still held the spliced cord. It had to break bones and slice skin, but the shock came so quickly that there was no time for it to bleed. His body contorted, spinning him away. His head hit the bar. The thing that stays with me is his hand. I saw the flash when the current hit him and the skin turned black in an instant electrical burn.
Mercifully the lights dimmed and then went out after a moment. Hardly anyone saw what happened. Just Alex, Dad and Hawaii. And me.
“Poor fish. Sheriff Darrow will call this an accident, won’t he?” I said, my voice soft and shaky.
Alex put his arm around me and Blue leaned into my legs. They were my props, my mainstays now that those hard times had come around.
“Let him,” Hawaii answered in an equally soft voice, drowned out by the questions and murmurs behind us. “It’s probably tidier this way.”
Chapter 10
“Later we found the costumes in his closet. More than a dozen and all with silver sequins. One, a blue cat suit, had several missing. They matched the ones we had found at the scenes of both murders.”
“The Marshal took them?” The Chief asked.
“Yes, but I don’t know that he’ll ever say anything officially.” I took a sip of coffee. It was still nippy out in Courthouse Park but the leaves were beginning to force their way out on the gray branches and there were daffodils poking through the lawn.
“You figured out the why yet?”
“We will never know for certain why he flipped, but I think we can get close with our guesses. Management wanted an Elvis for their lounge. A good one. Archie reminded them of his own experience but got rejected. Again. It was too much. He suggested the competition and started making plans for payback against all the guys who had beaten him through the years.”
“I’m sorry it happened, Boston. Especially at your wedding day.” And he was.
I shrugged.
“It made for a memorable wedding. And there was one good thing to come from all this,” I added. “Althea never got around to reading her wedding poem.”
“That would almost make the whole thing worthwhile,” The Chief agreed with a small smile. “Althea read it to me last week when she stopped in to bring Dale his lunch. It was called A Wedding Day To Remember. It started— The wedding to remember happened in June not September.”
“Except it happened in March, which less musical. I just hope she doesn’t amend it to include dead Elvises.”
“But it rhymes to well with pelvises.”
“It does at that,” I agreed, also smiling a little. Because we might as well smile. Crying sure didn’t help. “At least our Elvis won the competition. They rescheduled it to Saturday in the ballroom. They tried to make Alex an honorary Elvis so he could sing in the tribute to Herbie and Dana, but he drew the line. It was a stretchy black line with rhinestone trim, but it was a line.”
“How’s Alex now?” The Chief asked.
“Glad to be back, but dreading the visit from his parents.”
“Are they bringing the cats?”
“Not this time. Gwen will babysit while they are here. But they managed to sell their house in San Francisco so they will be looking at real estate now. I had kind of hoped that they would be so angry about the wedding that they never wanted to see us again, but no such luck. They are already asking about grandchildren. They suspect and hope that we eloped because I’m pregnant.”
“Should I have called them after I told your folks about the wedding? I thought about it. For a few seconds.”
I thought about it too.
“No. Suffice it unto the day the evil therein.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Randy agreed. “Especially since I had a premonition that the killer would do something to mess up the wedding and Alex’s dad doesn’t need any more shocks.”
“Lord, no!” I cleared my throat. “Chief, am
I weird?”
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate. “But I like you anyway. Nothing wrong with being weird.”
“Good. I like you too.” I got to my feet. “Better get to work. The scofflaws have had it easy with me gone. It will probably take a few days to restore order.”
“Um, Chloe, the Celtics on Tuesday…?”
“Lakers?”
“Yes.”
“Away or at home?”
“Home.”
“They’ll win.” I threw my empty cup at the outhouse trashcan. “Two points,” I said. “But no crowds go wild.”
The Chief just smiled and shook his head. That was okay though, because there is nothing wrong with being weird.
Hope Falls’ smallest and smartest detective, Chloe Boston, is back on the case in: Death Of A Dumb Bunny
The Chief of Police likes me. Really, he does. If not for skills as an unofficial detective, then because I can tell him what teams to bet on in the play-offs. It’s certainly not his fault that I can’t pass the physical and get out of parking enforcement. And Randy Wallace adores my dog so I know he would never make Blue unhappy unless it was a crisis situation. Like losing State funding for extracurricular projects.
But really, no matter what the town council thought, how important could another public safety lecture be? And why send Officer Bill to conduct it? Did we want this paper mâché creature to be the law personified to impressionable minds? I mean, did these people have amnesia? Sending Officer Bill back to the grammar school was just begging Fate to do something nasty to a lot of innocent children.
Of course I protested the assignment, but to no avail.
“Boston, just do it. You can have this Friday off.” Good Friday. Friday was one of our busiest days and the one day of the week when I was most likely to end up writing up friends and family for parking infractions. Good Friday was even worse since there wasn’t enough parking at the churches and people tended to feel better about offending parking regulations than offending God. It was probably worth playing Officer Bill one last time to get out of it.
“Okay. I’ll do it. This once.”
“Thank you.”
So, there I was, about to inflict myself on small children. I will agree that for many years, Officer Bill was a friend to school age youngsters, especially among those who counted their years on one hand. But that was when the beloved and gentle Alfred Cook was assigned the role of public liaison. After he died I had inherited the costume and job, and not because I had any inclination or gift for interacting with children, but merely because I was the only one small enough to get my skull through the opening in the paper mâché head. Since my inauguration, every Officer Bill appearance had been a disaster. First time out I had gotten Bill’s enormous head stuck in a door and ended up ripping his ears off. The kindergarten had been so traumatized by the dismemberment that there had been mass crying and several children ran away. Then there was the incident at The Falls. Officer Bill fell in a fountain and came out looking like something from a leper colony. That one is on YouTube under Zombie Attack. And lastly there had been that awful murder in October where the corpse was hidden in Officer Bill’s costume and then strung up at the 4-H Halloween Haunted House.
Of course the costume had been replaced since then, but when it was reordered, no one had specified getting it in a larger size, so there I was, on April Fool’s Day, strapping on the Velcro costume and contemplating Officer Bill’s twenty pound, wire reinforced head. And listening to my dog whine with unhappiness because I would look like a giant bobble-head doll in a band uniform the moment I put it on.
At this rate, I would never win the respect of my peers. It took some firm imagining about writing up Good Friday church-goes to reconcile myself to the task.
“Chloe,” Mrs. Roberts, the school secretary whispered as she sidled up to my chair. She had seemed so tall to me as a child, but now I could almost look her in the eye. “I seem to have misplaced the supply room keys. It has the office key too. They are always in my desk— always. But I can’t find them. And I do hate to ask Dick Bensen to let me in to the supply closet again. He always tells Mr. Andrews when I forget something and it makes Mr. Andrews very cross.”
I didn’t blame her for not wanting to call Bensen. The janitor was called Dirty Dick and not just because he had an aversion to bathing. The new principal didn’t sound like anyone real terrific either if Mrs. Roberts was afraid of him. I had known Mrs. Roberts since my own school days and the sweet lady was one of the few people who hadn’t been freaked out by my ability to find things, including sensitive information about some of my teachers.
“Do you know where they are, dear?” She sounded frantic.
A quick glance at the coat on the back of her chair and the sag in the right pocket told me where the keys had gone. It was warm in the office but nippy outside. The out-of-order sign on the restroom door told the story. Mrs. Roberts had had to go out to use another restroom. The nearest was near the auditorium. They were kept locked except when there was a function and she had had to bring her keys to get in. She had also stuffed her pockets with toilet paper from the office bathroom because the stuff in the kids’ bathrooms was about as absorbent as wax paper.
“Right coat pocket, under the toilet paper,” I whispered back and then hefted my Office Bill head. I hated this part because I am just a tiny bit claustrophobic.
“Let me help you,” said Mrs. Roberts. And then softly: “Thank you, dear. I am so relieved.”
“So you must be Officer Boston,” said a falsely hardy voice of the male persuasion.
I stood and turned slowly. In the Officer Bill head, there is no other way to do it. Mr. Andrews is the new principal and ringmaster for the day’s event. The teachers had heard Officer Bill was coming and wisely left campus for lunch, leaving a mostly empty parking lot.
“Oh. My goodness. Well…” Rick Andrews isn’t from around Hope Falls and therefore isn’t used to seeing me. He was obviously having trouble with the fact that I am smaller than many of his fifth grade students.
Mary Roberts faded quickly. It was a pain, but I politely decided to remove my head so he could talk to my real face. Perhaps that would reassure him. Bill’s blank eyes are a bit disconcerting.
“I must be. No one else would be caught dead wearing this costume,” I muttered as I pulled the head off and almost removed my nose. In fact, I am married now. But I carry Cupid’s arrow through the heart without feeling any need to change my name. Not that Lincoln is a bad name. It just isn’t mine.
Blue whined.
“I have been told by the Chief of Police that the children love er… Blue, is it? And she works with you all the time,” Mr. Andrews said nervously, eyeing her therapy dog vest with suspicion as I put on my head back on. I had to admit that she wasn’t behaving very well. Perhaps because she isn’t actually a therapy dog. But I had a firm belief that our new principal simply didn’t like dogs. His clothes were absolutely free of animal hair and he was wearing too much aftershave and an unseasonal tan. I checked his hand— wedding ring. I checked his scalp— hair plugs. I was willing to bet that the new Lexus in the parking lot was also an upgrade, and probably not for Mrs. Andrews benefit since he had it at the school.
“Yes, the kids love her.”
“But maybe, since she is upset, it would be best if she waited in your— um— vehicle.”
“She’ll settle down,” I said, hoping this was true. “Blue! It’s okay. It’s still me in here. Knock it off.”
Blue whimpered pathetically but turned down the volume. She didn’t try to make friends with Mr. Andrews. She probably noticed the lack of animal hair too. For sure she was staying away from the overpowering musk.
“Okay then. I guess it is time to go. The children are in the cafeteria. They’ve eaten already. The noon duty supervisor is there to help maintain order,” Mr. Andrews said reassuringly. He obviously also heard about Officer Bill’s last visit and wanted no repeat disasters. Maybe he thought
keeping the kids in a contained environment was safer than having them on the playground. Personally I was doubtful. If there was a panic kids would get trampled in the stampede away from Officer Bill.
“The door is nice and wide, right? No way will my ears get stuck?” I asked, maybe just a little maliciously.
“Double doors. We should have no spatial problems this time.”
I nodded and almost snapped my neck. The damned head is not only ugly, it’s heavy too.
“Let’s do it.”
“Mary, you watch the office,” he ordered unnecessarily. Like Mrs. Roberts hadn’t been minding the office while he was still a snot-monster in someone else’s school. And I resented him calling her Mary when he plainly insisted she call him Mr. Andrews.
We walked slowly and Officer Bill managed to make it to the cafeteria without incident, though it was hard to stroll with Blue pressed against me and shivering. For a Rottweiler, she sure is a sissy about a stupid paper mâché head. Or maybe it was Mr. Andrews she wanted to avoid. Blue isn’t fond of selfish people.
Around the cafeteria were some familiar brown grass and a leafless tree that hadn’t committed itself to the spring growth yet. School grass and trees always hover on the edge of death. I’m not sure why since no one is allowed to walk on the lawn or play in the spindly tree.
We walked by a garbage can at the lunchroom door and I noticed that it was almost completely full of creamed spinach. The cafeteria obviously still hadn’t gotten the memo on lunch menus. Children don’t consume leafy green stuff. Except for cash. I hear they eat up parental finances like nothing else. Another reason that I prefer dogs.
I stumbled a little at the raised sill. If I had put on the Officer Bill clown shoes, I never would have gone sprawling.
Mr. Andrews guided me down the aisle between long Formica tables to the podium and stepstool set up in front of the fire exit and introduced me in his falsely cheerful voice. The children, mixed ages between four and eight applauded politely. They seemed fine with my presence. I reminded myself that many of the kids were new to the nursery school and kindergarten and wouldn’t have horrific memories of Bill’s mutilation. Things might actually go well this time and I should be optimistic. It would have been nice if Mrs. Vance, the noon duty supervisor, wasn’t malingering in the back of the room, her face naked or both make-up and any sign of thought. She had replaced Mrs. Thomas who retired when I was in college. Mrs. T would know how to quell a riot. I had no such faith in Gail Vance or Principal Andrews.
Viva Lost Vegas Page 6
