Bingo You're Dead

by Lou Fletcher

  “Rose?” I asked.

  “My wife, Hank. She died twelve years ago. I haven’t been able to get rid of any of her things.”

  “I understand, Joe.” I thought of Nancy’s clothes still hanging in the guest room closet at home.

  “Hmm, how sweet,” Tippi said.

  Joe ignored her sarcasm and kept talking. “I decided a fire would be romantic so after I got that going, I made coffee, and waited. I thought she was taking an awful long time so I went upstairs. I discovered the bathroom was empty and the robe was still where I’d laid it out. I got scared she’d fallen or passed out—I didn’t know. I ran back outside and that’s when I found her. She was still in the hot tub, sorta floating. Her eyes were open and I called her name, and when she didn’t answer, I shook her. That’s when I saw her bra was wrapped around her neck. It was bizarre.”

  I nodded, imagining the scene. “Then what?”

  “I felt for a pulse...”

  “Good,” Tippi cut in, “because...”

  “Let Joe tell his story, Tippi.”

  “She was dead, Hank.” He choked, unable to go on.

  “Why didn’t you call for help?” I tried to shut off the image in my brain but couldn’t.

  “I honestly don’t know. It was like I was dreaming and somebody else was inside my body, you know?”

  I nodded because I did know.

  “Next thing I remember, I was walking. I walked to the Metro Park out on Route 128 and hid out there.” He paused, his eyes moist. “I fell asleep and when I woke up, it wasn’t light yet. I decided to take my chances and to go ask Marty for help. I told him everything and as my friend,” he emphasized, “he believed me and agreed to help. He had a tent and other camping stuff so we loaded it into his VW and, like I said, he took me back to the park. The rest, I’ve told you.”

  None of us spoke. My left foot had fallen asleep from where Tippi had been standing on it. Joe’s GI track continued to emit gases powerful enough to lift a hot air balloon over Mt. Adams.

  “I hafta get out of here,” Tippi said. “I can’t breathe and I’m getting claustrophobic.”

  “Joe, let’s all get out of here. Look, we’re all your friends here. Just tell the others what you told us and they’ll understand.”

  “Do you guys believe me?”

  I was reluctant to make a commitment. “It certainly sounds plausible.”

  “He’s had a lot of time to come up with his story, Hank. Must be the fumes making your brain soft.”

  I admit she had a point. I was ready to say anything to open the door and take a breath of fresh air. Besides, the whole left side of my body had started feeling like a pincushion.

  “See, Hank. That’s exactly what I mean. Nobody’s going to believe me. I’m gonna wait here, and you can bring me stuff to eat and when the coast is clear...”

  “That’s enough, Joe. I’m opening the door, and Tippi and I are leaving. You can stay in here or come out and take your chances but we are not going to play along with this crazy scheme. You’re going to have to come clean...”

  “Good one, Hank,” Tippi snorted.

  “Joe, this is going to end now.” I opened the door and stepped out.

  FIFTEEN

  Tippi followed and we waited to see what Joe would do. I started hopping around on the leg that was numb from my toes to my hip.

  “What is your problem?” Tippi said.

  “I either had a stroke in there or my leg fell asleep.”

  “Don’t be such a crybaby, Hank.”

  Joe stepped out and faced us. “Okay, I’m ready.” He looked from Tippi to me then back to Tippi. “You’ll back me up?”

  “Just tell everyone what you told us, Joe.” I hoped I sounded reassuring, but the truth was I didn’t know how the others would react.

  “I’ll gather them up and we’ll meet you in the lounge,” Tippi said.

  “Let’s get it over with then.” Joe led the way down the hall. I motioned to a startled Applebee to come with us as we passed by the office where he’d set up his radio. When we arrived at the lounge, Mr. Wittekind was putting Marcy’s coat on for what I guessed was a quick outing. Elrod’s eyes popped open as I hurried Joe to a seat next to the fireplace.

  Within minutes, Tippi had rounded up everyone including Herb B. and Guenther. The murmurings grew still when I urged Joe to stand and face the group. I stood beside him as a show of support.

  “If everybody will take a seat,” I said, “Joe here has something to say.”

  Joe repeated most of the story he’d shared with Tippi and me, leaving out some of the more salacious details. “That’s what happened,” he concluded. “That’s the truth.” He outlined an imaginary figure in the carpet with his toe and stared at the ceiling while waiting for a reaction.

  Herb B. rose from his seat by the door and came up to confront Joe. “Get the shovels, folks. It’s gettin’ deep in here.” He turned around to face the others. Their looks of shock made me step a little closer to Joe’s side, fearing a possible attack. The poor guy was shaking, his face crumpled.

  Herb B.’s thin little mouth contorted in hate. “That story is a lot of hooey. This guy’s a dangerous murderer, and since I’m the director, I’m gonna take him into my custody until Grange decides to hoist his fat, lazy ass outta his nice warm office and get over here.”

  By this time, everybody was on their feet. One of the men shouted “Lock ’im up” then Hazel yelled back “Shut up, you moron,” at which point the group quickly took sides hollering insults at each other.

  “Everybody shut the hell up and sit down!” a voice rang out over the din. Elrod was standing on a chair shaking a fish stick at us. His fly was open, showing the corner of a plastic baggie. A red streak snaked down his pant leg.

  “You all settle down,” Elrod’s deep voice boomed. “Joe is our friend and we’re not a bunch of vigilantes. This is a case for the law.”

  A hush fell over the room. The only sounds were the shuffling of feet and a couple of nervous coughs.

  “All right then,” Herb B. said, taking charge. “Take him to my office,” he commanded Guenther. “I’ll make sure he’s secure until I turn him over to the sheriff.”

  No one said a word as Guenther led Joe away. As the condemned man passed by Tippi and me, he whispered, “Friends, Hank?”

  “Joe, I’m sorry.”

  We watched the threesome disappear down the hall then into Herb B.’s office. The door slammed behind them.

  “I feel terrible,” I told Tippi. “I should have left him alone until we could get Grange over here to handle him. Even if he did, uh, hurt Alice...”

  “Murder Alice,” Tippi corrected.

  I still couldn’t believe it. “Even if he did, he doesn’t deserve to be at the mercy—or rather the lack thereof—of Herb B. I need to figure out how to fix this mess.”

  Applebee rolled up, his face grim. “I don’t know what to believe, guys.”

  “Maybe Tippi is right. He went after Alice because she was preventing him from playing the field,” I said.

  Wittekind joined us, and we tried out some more theories on Joe’s possible motives.

  “Joe sure had opportunity and a possible motive for killing Alice if he thought things were getting too serious. That seems like a pretty weak justification for murder, though,” Applebee said. “The most damning evidence is that he ran away. If he’s innocent, why would he do that?”

  “Don’t forget, he doesn’t fit Gert’s description of the person who watched Applebee do a swan dive into the pond. We could be dealing with a pair of killers. That’s very common,” Tippi said with authority.

  “Really, Tippi,” Applebee sputtered.

  “Yeah, but we don’t know that Gert’s ‘watcher’ was the same person who sabotaged Bob’s chair,” Mr. Wittekind said. “It might still be Joe. After all, now we know he was at the center.”

  “This talk of murder, or attempted murder, is giving me a killer headache. Shit,” I sai
d, realizing my mistake. “I need some fresh air.” I noticed a chill coming over the room and remembered I had originally set out to build up the fire and help the women pass out refreshments.

  “We all need a break,” Tippi said. “I’m going to check on Marcy. She’s no doubt succeeded in wheedling more cookies and hot chocolate out of Mary. The kid’s a master manipulator.”

  “Takes one to know one,” I whispered under my breath.

  Applebee went back to his radio. Wittekind pulled up a seat next to Elrod. “You okay, buddy?” he asked Elrod, pointing to the red streak on his pants.

  “Oh, that,” he chuckled. He wiped the smear with his finger and held it up for inspection. “Stewed tomatoes.”

  I suppressed a laugh. “It was great the way you handled the situation in there. Things were getting ugly.” I could have saved my breath. Elrod was asleep.

  …

  The excitement must have taken its toll, because people started going back to their books, cards, or naps. The room was eerily quiet, yet the atmosphere remained charged as though a riot were only one wrong remark away.

  “There’s the paper for your fire,” Tippi said, pointing to a pile of newspapers behind the door when I came back in with a load of wood.

  Only white ashes smoked in the grate. I wadded the sheets into tight balls before tucking them between the ash and hickory logs I had arranged for maximum heat.

  “Want to help?” I asked.

  “I’ll watch.” She pulled up a chair and tucked her feet beneath her. “Give me one of those throws, will you?”

  “I’ll get it.” Applebee had wheeled into the room and tossed her an afghan. “Hope there’s plenty more where that came from, Hank,” he said, nodding at the stack of wood. “This storm is a doozy. The guy on the Weather Channel is calling it the ‘storm of the century.’ We could be stuck here for a while.”

  “Just wake me when it’s over,” Tippi said. She snuggled deeper into the chair. “Wish we had some music—real music—not kazoos, or the one man band,” she nodded towards Perry, who was sprawled out asleep on the sofa in the corner.

  “My flute’s in the back,” Applebee said. “I haven’t played for a while but I could probably squeak out a few tunes. I’ll see if Hazel will join me on the piano.”

  Frenchie straggled in, zigzagging across the room like a guy coming home from an all-night bender. She nosed the carpet, her bobbed tail drooped. The puppy laid her head on Applebee’s shoe, and immediately fell asleep. He lifted her onto his lap and whispered into her ear. “Too much partying, huh, baby? Here you go,” he said, placing the dog on Tippi’s lap. “Looks like you two have the same idea.”

  “Great,” Tippi said, as the puppy nosed her way under the cover and made herself comfortable. “Gonna have dog hair all over my new pants,” she said, stroking the animal.

  The logs were beginning to catch fire, so I wandered back to the office to take another look at Gus’s printout on the RVs. The table was bare.

  SIXTEEN

  “Looks good,” I told Violet, back in the kitchen. She was loading up a tray of mugs filled with steaming chocolaty liquid. Marcy smiled up through a whipped cream mustache. “What’s new?”

  “Not much,” I answered. “What’s new with you?”

  Violet raised her eyebrows at me while making up a second tray with the cookies and napkins. “Pass the cocoa around before it gets cold. Don’t stop to yak,” she instructed.

  “Applebee said he’d dig out his flute for us,” I told Violet. “How about if we set this stuff up in the lounge? Wanna help, Marcy? You can hand out the napkins.” The child jumped down from her perch and followed me down the hall.

  We rounded up the hardy souls who were ready to put the business with Joe aside for the moment and make the best of our confinement. The sleet had changed over to all snow and, according to reports Applebee was getting from the National Weather Service, it was falling at the rate of three inches an hour.

  We settled ourselves around the lounge while Applebee and Hazel looked through a stack of sheet music and arranged their selections at the piano. They began with Greensleeves, and then Applebee performed a solo with the hit tune from the movie, Titanic. The duo played for nearly an hour, encouraged by calls for new selections each time they tried to stop.

  I looked around at the group of friends, found at a time in my life when I least expected such a gift. Watching Applebee carefully pack away his flute, I realized again how close I’d come to losing one of my dearest friends. I ran over the events of that night in my head for the millionth time and couldn’t for the life of me think of anything that struck me as suspicious or even a little strange. The people at the wake, including Joe, were all people I dined with, played cards with, and thought of as friends. One of them a murderer? No way.

  When I looked around the room again, it hit me that something wasn’t right. Our small group had gotten even smaller. I leaned over and whispered in Tippi’s ear, “Have you seen Gus?”

  “Not since lunch. Maybe he found somewhere to take a nap?” she murmured.

  “I’m going to check, make sure he’s okay.” I tried to sound unconcerned.

  “I’ll look in the conference room. Maybe he went back in there,” Tippi said. She rearranged the quilt on a sleeping Marcy before heading down the hall.

  I asked Gert and Ernie to keep an eye on the little girl in case she woke up. They both nodded and snuggled, laughing, underneath their afghan. At least some people were enjoying our confinement.

  I checked the men’s lavatory—no Gus. Next, I searched each room, behind furniture and equipment, worried he may have fallen. I stuck my head in Herb B.’s office. He was sitting with his stocking feet on the desk, watching a small television set. An espresso maker gurgled on the windowsill.

  Joe sat on a folding chair in the corner, with one wrist fastened to the chair by a pair of furry green handcuffs. He looked as miserable as I felt for encouraging him to come forward.

  “Are you a friggin’ nut job?” I turned my anger to Herb B. “Take those things off him right now or else.”

  “You’ll what, Hank?” He dangled a key in front of my face.

  “I’ll be back to take care of this in a minute, Joe. I have to do something first.” I turned back to Herb B. “Have you seen Gus?”

  He shook his head and cranked up the volume on the TV.

  “Jerk,” I said under my breath as I slammed the door.

  “I’m worried,” I said, when Tippi returned with no news of our friend. “Surely he wouldn’t have tried to go home?” I thought of the ’99 Cadillac Gus drove, and pictured him wrapped around a tree somewhere.

  “Let’s check the parking lot,” she said, grabbing my hand.

  The snow already came up to my knees and was still falling as dusk began to settle across the landscape. Fat, wet flakes blanketed trees, coated the split rails of the fence surrounding the property, and nearly obliterated the contours of the sloping drive that wove through the snow-laden landscape to the main road. The only sounds were the creaking of tree limbs drooping under the weight of snow and the scrape of the plow blade as Guenther carefully maneuvered his truck around the parking lot.

  “Hold on to me,” I told Tippi. We crept along to the handicapped parking area.

  Gus’s Cadillac was gone. The blowing, drifting snow was erasing what remained of the car’s tire tracks.

  SEVENTEEN

  I pushed open the door into the foyer, almost breaking Herb B.’s nose.

  “Damn you, Hank. Watch where...”

  “How is it Gus walked right past your office into a blizzard and you didn’t stop him?” I balled up my fist ready to punch the guy in his smug little face.

  Tippi tugged on my sleeve, “He’s not worth it, Hank.”

  “Maybe not, but it would make me feel a hell of a lot better. You moron,” I shouted at the director. He scowled back at me. His fingers gently probed the sides of his nose. “I doubt very much if Gus will get too far
in this storm. He’ll either run off the road or the highway patrol will pick him up for ignoring the Level 3 emergency. Either way,” I leaned so close to the man I could feel his breath on my face, “if anything bad happens to him, I’ll make sure you personally get so much heat not even a band of Merry Men will be able to save you.”

  “Fuck off,” he countered. He turned shakily on his heel and slammed his office door behind him. I heard the lock flip into place.

  “Joe, I’ll be back,” I called through the door.

  “Hank, if I weren’t so mad at him for driving off without a word, I’d be worried to death.” Tippi stepped into my arms.

  “I know, honey. Gus is a smart guy. He’ll be careful. He was probably worried about Edna and wanted to get home before dark. He’ll be okay.” I wish I really believed it.

  I rocked her and smoothed her hair, which was starting to frizz from the snow. “Let’s go sit by the fire and get these wet shoes off.”

  I pushed one of the love seats close to the fireplace and threw another log onto the fire. The group in the lounge was quiet. Some dozed or talked while Violet and Hazel played bridge with Gert and Ernie. I adjusted the covers around Marcy, who was sleeping on a stack of cushions next to the fire, then sank into a seat beside Tippi. We watched Elrod wander in, his pants lumpy and sagging, with a telltale wet line making its way down one of his trouser legs. He found an empty recliner and immediately fell asleep.

  “Wonder what he’s got in there now? Hot chocolate and cookies?” Tippi chuckled.

  “Don’t laugh. We might end up raiding his, um, goodies, if this storm keeps up.”

  “That’s just plain disgusting,” Tippi said, snuggling close to me.

  “Let me massage your feet.” I lifted them onto my lap. “How long have we been friends?” I rubbed harder. “Rachel asked me the other day and darned if I could remember when we met.” I focused on Tippi’s feet.