1 The Question of the Missing Head
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Miles Monroe had finally called Lapides from his vacation in Australia. He confirmed that he had been discharged from GSCI without a sufficient explanation, and that there had never been any insinuations of maltreatment by the staff of any of the institute’s guests. “I was wondering what that was all about,” Lapides said he had remarked. “Now I know why I got the golden parachute.”
“The whole thing seems like it was a long time ago,” Ms. Washburn said as I handed her a bottle of green tea from the vending machine. I was drinking from a bottle of spring water. “It’s almost like it happened to someone else, and I just heard about it or watched a report about it on TV.”
“It happened,” I assured her. “And you played no small part in it. Without you, I doubt the questions would have been answered completely.”
Ms. Washburn raised an eyebrow in a gentle warning. “Don’t butter me up, Samuel,” she said. That raised a disturbing image in my mind, but I did not comment. “I promised my husband that I wouldn’t come back to work here because it’s too dangerous. And even though our marriage isn’t necessarily in the best place right now, I’m going to stick to my promise.”
“I would not want to cause any undue stress in your marriage or otherwise,” I told her honestly. “I am merely trying to thank you for helping out so ably in the work you’ve already done.”
She frowned, and that did not make sense to me. “That’s it?” she asked. “You’re not going to try to convince me?”
Mother’s eyes looked up, but she did not stop her work.
“I do not understand,” I told her. “I was under the impression you did not want me to try to convince you to stay.”
“Samuel,” she said, shaking her head, “you have a great deal to learn about women.”
“You can say that again,” Mother chimed in. She had warned me once again before Ms. Washburn had arrived that she was a married woman, to which I had replied that the reminder was unnecessary.
“None of this makes any sense,” I said, my mind receiving more information than I could process at once. “So you do want me to talk you into working here again? Because I would very much like you to come back.”
Ms. Washburn let out a long, slow laugh and sat back in her chair. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I really will have to decide. I do want to work here, Samuel, but I don’t want to complicate my marriage any further. Give me a few days to think about it.”
“You may have as long as you like,” I said. “The invitation remains open.”
She nodded and took a sip of the green tea. “If I do come back—and remember I said if—you’re going to have to get some diet soda in that machine,” she said. “But Samuel, there’s one thing I wanted to ask you.”
That triggered something in the back of my mind, but I stayed on topic, keeping Ms. Washburn’s conversational desire in mind. I nodded.
“What’s your favorite Beatles song?” she asked.
I did not hesitate. “ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever,’ ” I said. “Although it is one of many.”
“Why that one?”
“Because no one else is in my tree.” At her blank expression, I quoted the exact lines to her.
Ms. Washburn smiled. “I think there might be more people in your tree than you realize,” she said quietly.
We sat for a while and drank our beverages. The silence was quite comfortable. But then, I returned to the point I’d just recalled. Ms. Washburn had not said anything for thirteen seconds, so I could assume a new topic would be acceptable.
“There is something about which I have been remiss,” I said. “Ms. Washburn, when you came here that first morning, you had a question you wanted answered, and I never considered it. What was it that brought you here that day?”
Ms. Washburn blushed and waved a hand. “It’s not important,” she said. “It was just something silly that morning.”
“Please,” I urged her. “I would feel I had cheated you.”
She moved her head from one side to another, looking around as if trying to find a spot to focus upon so she would not have to face Mother or me. “It was just … I was doing the Times crossword puzzle, and I got stuck on a clue.”
I smiled. “And you wanted me to answer it for you. But you can look those up on the Internet, or call a number the Times prints next to the puzzle every day. Why didn’t you do those things?”
Ms. Washburn still did not look at me. “That would be cheating,” she said.
I decided not to point out that asking me was just as dishonest. “Very well. What was the clue?”
It took three minutes of persuasion, but Ms. Washburn was finally convinced that this would settle the business between us to everyone’s satisfaction. “Fine,” she said with a resigned tone. “It was an eleven-letter word, and the clue was, ‘Those which prevail.’ ”
“Did you have any of the cross letters?” Mother asked.
“Yes. They were—”
“No need,” I said, standing. I must have been smiling very broadly, because both Mother and Ms. Washburn grinned at me with identical looks of expectation.
“What?” they said at virtually the same moment.
“The answer. To ‘those which prevail.’ It’s very apropos.” I believe I might have chuckled.
“What is it?” Ms. Washburn demanded.
“COOLER HEADS,” I said.
the end
about the author
E. J. Copperman is the author of the Haunted Guesthouse series (Berkley Prime Crime) with more than 100,000 copies sold. Jeff Cohen has published two nonfiction books on Asperger’s Syndrome, including The Asperger Parent.