Skunk Hunt

by J. Clayton Rogers

  The reaction from the others was not what I would have expected—and revealed where everyone stood in the information pyramid. Yes, Monique, Barbara and Jeremy (and myself) scrambled a dozen yards away from the grave, perfectly horrified. And I would have sworn Marvin's hair stood on end.

  "Son of a bitch!" he cried out, staggering backwards. "It's a frame-up!"

  But no cops came pouring out of the junk cars. No SWAT team bellowed a catastrophic 'freeze!' through a philharmonic gathering of bullhorns. No, there was a different sound: a chuckle, followed by another chuckle. Uncle Vern and Mom were grinning stupidly, almost ecstatically. While Michael wore an expression of deep satisfaction.

  "What?" I demanded of them. "Do you know who this is?"

  "You bastard!" Marvin was beside himself, his venom directed at Uncle Vern. This was no way to talk to one's uncle, but there was no peep of protest. Instinctively, we agreed with the nephew.

  Uncle Vern and Mom exchanged another one of those cryptic meaningful glances. Mom went over to the skeleton foot and stared at it in the beam-light.

  "Do you think we need to…" she began.

  "Exhume him?" Uncle Vern laughed. "No need to go to that much trouble. In fact…" He turned to me. "Mute, would you please re-fill this hole? Toss that foot back in, first."

  "Wha…" I sort of whined.

  "Do as he asks, Mute," said Mom, coming around the hole and putting a hand on my shoulder. "Mute? Look at me. All of you, look at me."

  Everyone looked at her.

  "We're rich," she said. "We're all very rich."

  CHAPTER 30

  And we were, too, if what I heard during the ride back to Richmond was true. And for once, a notary public was not needed. Because there really was no other explanation.

  The man in the grave was none other than Dr. Whacko.

  I had heard about the Kissmecanoe Polar Bar controversy on the news a couple of years ago. I had not made the connection between the disappearance of Archibald Penrose and the corporate dilemma because, as a child, I had only known him as Whacko, and had only been filled in on the ice cream connection this very day.

  "But you told me," Marvin sputtered at his uncle soon after we reached I-64 and the beeline to town. "You lied to me, when all the time you owed me!"

  Uncle Vern yawned deeply. When was the last time he'd slept? Would we get home alive, or end up taking a Jet Blue Special into the trees? At least we would not become anonymous corpses, to be discovered a la Whacko years later by a group of jack-offs. It was morning rush hour. People who lived in the countryside were going to work in Staunton; people in Staunton were headed for Charlottesville; workers from Charlottesville were going to their offices in Richmond. It was a hell of a carbon footprint for a few measly bucks, but since those paltry salaries kept people alive, I was reluctant to lodge a protest with the EPA.

  What all this meant was that our theoretical crash would be witnessed by hundreds of drivers, all of whom would become heroes by pressing their intercontinental ballistic cell phones, thereby demolishing whatever privacy our demise might have provided us.

  The sun was darting into our eyes. I was blinded and annoyed. I didn't feel rich, or I didn't feel that it mattered—hard to say which. Twenty million, split nine or ten ways. Did that put us in the upper 1%? Maybe not, but since most of us had dropped beneath the income radar coverage years ago, any percentile was an improvement.

  We had started out as a convoy: Uncle Vern, with me and Todd and Marvin; Yvonne, with Jeremy and Michael; and Monique and Sweet Tooth bringing up the fairy tale caboose. The line didn't last long. We were scarcely out of Bartow when Yvonne (no doubt at Jeremy's prodding, though Michael would not have cared) shot ahead of us, screeching up the mountainside, and were soon out of sight. Soon after, Monique crossed the double line on a dangerous curve and zipped ahead. Uncle Vern considerately braked, or else she and Barbara would have head-on'd an oncoming Winnebago tilting back and forth down the road. Sweet Tooth must have dumped a load of helicopters as the fenders almost kissed. I thought it served Monique right, having her passenger bucket seat filled to the rim with the same kind of ghastly ooze that had chased a hundred customers out of Starbucks. But I questioned my complacency. I had instinctive reservations about seeing babes in distress. More moron me.

  Uncle Vern lowered his sun visor and squinted ahead.

  "Want me to take the wheel?" I asked.

  "Marvin, I want you to dispense with your phony wrath," he told his nephew testily. "From the very beginning, you have been concerned only about the money. Now you have more than you dreamed of."

  "I have pretty big dreams."

  "Then lay back and enjoy them," Uncle Vern admonished.

  "You led me on," Marvin persisted. All of his monitors were switched off, leaving him free to stare daggers into the back of his uncle's head. "You had me playing games with this bozo—"

  "The bozo who just made you a millionaire," Uncle Vern said. I appreciated the correction, but it still made me squirm. Monique had been convinced that Uncle Vern, and maybe Marvin too, had killed Carl and Dog in my bedroom. I still voted for the Congreve brothers, but that was only because I was more comfortable with the idea, now that they were safely under lock and key. Uncle Vern continued: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't all the high-tech pinballing your idea?"

  "You agreed to it. You financed it."

  "It's true, we had to check out the opposition," Uncle Vern granted. "In the end, your methods succeeded, except in the one thing we most wanted: the body." He turned sideways, a perilous procedure when half-asleep and driving. "Mute, you agree that we are all better off than we were before?"

  Define 'better', I thought, but a referendum on my inner common sense held my peace.

  "Don't go mute on us," Uncle Vern continued. "You've done plenty of talking, lately. You have no congenital defect that would prevent you from using your mouth."

  "All right," I said. "Who killed Dr. Whacko?"

  "Skunk had more moxie than any of us gave him credit for," Uncle Vern explained. "Penrose was blackmailing your family, and it is assumed Skunk handled it the best way he knew how."

  "Blackmail? But Whacko didn't need the money," I protested. "You told me—"

  "Not money. Information and access. Once he found out that Skunk was shifting his children around like chess pieces—"

  "Not Skunk," I said. "I mean, not chess."

  "Like checkers?" Uncle Vern ventured, kowtowing to my niggle-fit.

  "Yeah," I said, although the only game I had ever known my father to play was with our heads. I was trying to delay Uncle Vern's revelation.

  "Skunk never spoke much about it. Even your mother knew nothing of the details. But around the time they concluded Penrose had gone from being a pest to a threat, the man miraculously disappeared."

  "Really convenient," Marvin snorted.

  "Hey!" Todd complained. "You got snot on me!"

  "We assumed Skunk had something to do with it," Uncle Vern said. "It's only now that we know for certain. He knew where the body was."

  "You don't know how he died," I responded.

  "I wasn't inclined to dig up the entire body to find a bullet hole in the skull," Uncle Vern shot back. "It's 'no questions asked', so it doesn't matter. Besides, for all we know, Skunk threatened Penrose—you know how he could get when he pulled out all the stops—and the professor dropped dead out of sheer terror."

  Many had been the times my own heart had stopped in the face of Skunk's wrath. I had been young enough to survive without benefit of defibrillation.

  "Once he was declared dead, all questions regarding dispersal of the Kissmecanoe inheritance should have been settled. But a funny thing happens when a million becomes tens of millions. Human psychology deteriorates."

  As if a kid never punched another kid over a quarter, I thought.

  "The law, which is never very clear in the first place, becomes thick as molasses. Let's just say that when Archibald disappeared, his
brother Morris thought he would get the whole enchilada, and his sister, Margaret, begged to differ."

  It sounded like all those renaissance princes whose elder brothers died, which was pretty frequent in those pre-penicillin, poison-drenched days, leaving the throne to them. You might recall that I was reading a biography about Catherine de Medici during the time this story takes place. This was a woman who knew her hemlock, but also had the sorrow of seeing her sons become kings of France, only to croak one after the other. You had to wonder if someone in the Penrose family had laced a relative's Kissmecanoe Tar Bar with deadly caramel, or an overdose of fructose. It's universally acknowledged that sweets will kill you.

  None of this meant that I would give up Kissmecanoe Drippy Cones or Kissmecanoe Angel Tits (okay, 'tips'), but I would certainly now consume them with a respectful nod to the dead.

  "Hey, creepazoid," I said, turning to Todd. "When's the last time you ate Kissmecanoe?"

  "For breakfast yesterday morning," he said without a blush. "A Kissmecanoe Nose Snarfer."

  Crapolicious. Same here. All the identical twins I had ever seen interviewed on TV doted on each others' shared habits, like getting sick at the same time and using the same brand of toilet paper and that kind of thing. As you well know by now, I find the concept repulsive. I spit upon my brother's Coke can.

  "I can assure you," said Uncle Vern, "the reward is still valid."

  "But why does Michael have to be the one to claim it?"

  "Yeah," Marvin groused. "If he's like his twin brother…if he's like any of the McPhersons—"

  Todd and I snarled in unison, but not in disagreement. Before leaving Bartow, Uncle Vern had sketched out the arrangement. Michael had legitimate credentials. The rest of us had credentials, too, but they wouldn't bear close scrutiny. Not that, by the terms of the reward, we needed credentials. But you see what I mean....

  Michael's employer, the Radcliffe Agency, was one of several detective agencies hired by Kissmecanoe to try and track down the missing Whacko. He had been reticent about sharing his findings with the university. The foundation sponsoring his grant wouldn't know for a while that he was fobbing off second-rate, second-hand results as his own. Dr. Whacko was, in fact, a plagiarist, which must have accounted for his do-unto-others-what-they-sure-as-hell-better-not-do-unto-me mentality. The detectives who went to the university to find out what Penrose was working on when he disappeared would find a blank chalkboard. Even if the school had known our name, we would have been covered by a confidentiality mandate. A good snoop could have bypassed that restriction, and they probably had—only to find nothing to be found.

  Michael had the inside track. He could not clearly recall Penrose, but his foster parents filled him in. Unfortunately, Whacko had become cagey when it came to the McPherson clan and had given Michael's stepparents a phony name. He had also inflated their heads with promises of monetary remuneration for being a token Mumsy and Dadsy. All they had to do was let him take a swab here and there and keep him apprised of Michael's lousy upbringing. It was as if a little gold mine had landed in their midst. No need to break a sweat. Just stick out a hand.

  But the promise had gone unfulfilled because Whacko had abruptly disappeared. It was later, when Kissmecanoe hired his agency, that Michael remembered their story about the weird genetic researcher. The timing was right, the location ideal. He and Whacko had to be one and the same.

  "Michael contacted me soon after Skunk's death. His adoptive parents had contacted him to tell him his beloved biological father had been blown away, wasn't that sad. Sure, he was a good for nothing, but he had been one of them and it was too bad he had to go out like a busted light bulb that way. "Remember all those stick-ups he pulled off?" they said by way of sympathy. "And why not? He had to support your real mom and your twin brother."

  Well...speaking of light bulbs....

  Why else would Archibald Penrose aka the Nutty Professor be interested in little Michael, except because of his twin? Michael pretty much confirmed this by studying a list of deceased alumni and noting their specialties.

  "To top it off," Uncle Vern continued, "his stepparents told him about Skunk's participation in the Glass Heads. They thought it was a hoot. There was no need for Michael to visit the prison and ask for my name. All he had to do was google the group...is that the right word? Google?"

  "It's the only word," Marvin asserted. "And yeah, it means to do a search on the internet."

  "I wasn't sure I could use it as a verb, that's all," said Uncle Vern exhaustedly. "Michael found out I was the director of the Glass Heads. From that he discovered I was the owner of the Ice Boutique. He knew through his agency that there had been a long series of unsolved jewelry store..."

  "Robberies," said Todd.

  "It's just a word, Uncle Vern," Marvin added.

  But Uncle Vern had betrayed a sensitivity to words, as his googling question attested. 'Robbery' was fraught with low-class connotations. He, for one, had never sullied himself by being on-scene whenever one of his jobs came down. Skunk and his other cohorts, however, were mere laborers who followed detailed plans even the sluggish-minded could comprehend. Advanced Felony for Dummies. He did not appreciate Marvin spelling out the obvious: he might be considered a mastermind in some quarters, but in the end he was just a lowlife.

  "Michael told me what he suspected—that I was behind the robberies. As a matter of fact, the Radcliffe Agency was employed by some of the jewelry stores that had been robbed, and it would be quite a feather in his cap if he turned the spotlight on me. But he had bigger game in mind."

  "To help him find Whacko."

  "I don't know the terms of his employment. Does he work on commission? But tonight's work has been a lot more profitable to him than anything else that has ever been assigned him."

  "He could still come back on us," Marvin said.

  "As you know, that possibility is being attended to."

  "But I don't speak Portuguese!"

  "Goddamn it!" Uncle Vern shouted.

  Too late—the cat was out of the pet carrier. Uncle Vern and his extended family was headed for Brazil. Or it could have been Portugal. But I doubted it. Not enough luscious babes and nearly bankrupt.

  "Well...when Michael approached me, and told me his suspicions, I said something innocuous, like 'How can I assist you?'"

  "Try 'lame'," said Marvin.

  "You were still recovering at home, but I expected you to be up and about soon enough. A miracle of modern surgical technique."

  "Lame," said Todd.

  "Michael talked you into tricking me," I said pointedly.

  "Not just you. We thought that Skunk must have told one of you—or all of you—where a great deal of money could be found. We didn't want to admit we were looking for a body. You might have been spooked."

  "Truly," I said.

  "We had to bring your mother in on this because she had always assumed Skunk had done away with Penrose and she knew about the reward. She would have seen through any lies."

  A vague gargling sound from the back. This was Todd. His very own mother had kept him in the dark. Sort of a betrayal. Aw, poor guy.

  "So we promised the Brinks money, then the jewels—which I used on Marvin." Uncle Vern made a sound that did not sound regretful.

  "Payback," said Marvin lowly.

  "I think the payback has already happened," Todd said.

  "Right," I chimed in, immediately reading him. "You were mixing up the bait so we couldn't pin you down. What you didn't count on was everyone stabbing everyone else in the back. But you set the tone. I think we all guessed there was something fishy about the Brinks story. Nothing we could put our finger on, except after I found out Dad had sunk all that money in the West End…Todd."

  "Hey, like I benefited! I had to go to a private school, join the soccer club, look for a job…it was hell!"

  It sure sounded like hell to me, and I was glad to have dodged it.

  I said, "When I realized the Brinks
money was only a tease, I became more cautious."

  "You were cautious from the very beginning, but we didn't realize how cautious," Uncle Vern said. "But to cast myself in a better light, I took my cue from Michael, who told his partner they were looking for stolen jewels."

  "Partner? Yvonne?"

  "Why are you covering your eyes? Never mind. Michael told Yvonne not to repeat the story about the jewels to anyone, especially Jeremy."

  "Or me," I said.

  "Yes…his use of her seems to have gone beyond the bounds of decency."

  "Huh?" Todd exclaimed. "You mean—"

  "So you've proved my point," I said quickly. "We knew there were plenty of lies in the air, but we didn't know what direction they were coming from. Don't you think that cost Carl and Dog their lives?"

  There. I said it. Again. Maybe Uncle Vern hadn't pulled the trigger, but it probably would not have taken much to convince one of Skunk's former players in the Glass Heads to pull the trigger. Give them a twenty—hell, a quarter, as in twenty-five cents—and they'd snuff anyone.

  Uncle Vern yawned. Damn, whenever I tiptoed around the subject he threatened to go catatonic.

  "Sure you don't want me to take the wheel?"

  "Oh no, I'm fine, just barreling down the road, no problem."

  His three passengers exchanged glances of deep apprehension.

  "Keep him talking," Marvin prodded after a long silence from his uncle.

  "I'm sitting right here, in front of you," Uncle Vern said. "Besides, we're only ten miles from home."

  "Isn't that in the 'most-accidents-happen' range?" said Todd.

  "Carl and Dog were a complete surprise," Uncle Vern said. "I hadn't counted on outside parties being brought in. Two more splits..."

  "We'd still end up millionaires," I said.

  "A million will get you a dime in this world, and I should know. I am the most excellent fence you'll ever meet, and I'm still destitute."

  "Uncle Vern..."