Corpse on the Cob

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  On the way to the restaurant, I’d placed a call to Greg and gave him the latest update, especially about my dinner plans with Chief Littlejohn.

  “I knew I should have gone with you,” he’d told me.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” I responded, trying to put his mind at ease. “I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s not just that, sweetheart. I’m sorry I’m missing this family reunion. It’s turning into a regular soap opera. Each installment gets more bizarre. But chief of police or not, please be careful, and call me later.”

  Chief Littlejohn nodded to a few folks as we made our way into the restaurant and found a table near the edge of the screened-in porch. Many people stared and whispered as we walked by.

  “Everyone’s heard about this morning’s events,” he told me in a quiet voice. “And about my mother.” He paused before correcting himself. “Our mother. Can’t keep anything quiet in small towns like these.”

  “Well, there were news crews covering it.”

  “I’m sure it’s much worse in California. The news media, I mean. Stuff like this rarely happens around here, so this is like throwing them a Grade A T-bone.” He gave off a slight snort. “Although, even without the media, details of what happened would have made it as far north as Nashua, New Hampshire, by now, just through gossip.”

  “Chief Littlejohn,” I began.

  “Clark, please. We’re family, after all.” His tone was neither sarcastic nor warm.

  I gave him a small smile of what I hoped would be reassurance of some kind, though for what I had no idea. “Okay, Clark.”

  He stopped me by holding up a hand in the halt position. “First things first.” He handed me a greasy menu from a stack wedged between the napkin dispenser and condiments. “We can talk while we eat.”

  I was all for that. The air in the restaurant was blanketed with the smell of cooking oil and fish. My mouth watered, and my gut danced in joy. The menu consisted mostly of fried seafood, with a few steamed and grilled items tossed in as a salute to healthy eating. In spite of my desire to follow up the earlier fried Twinkie and corn dog with more grease, I settled for something grilled.

  “My husband would love this place,” I commented, trying to ease into some feeling of camaraderie. “He’d fry milk if he could.”

  “This place and the ice cream stand next door are both owned by Gilchrist Dairy—family owned and operated. Been around forever. They make all their own ice cream, too, right up the road at the dairy farm. Flavor selection is limited, but it’s the best you’ll ever taste. Lots of family-operated businesses like this throughout the area. Like Buster’s, the vegetable stand across the road. It’s owned and operated by the Brown family farm. Has been for generations, even before there was a Buster Brown.”

  “Buster Brown?” I smiled with amusement.

  “Yep.” Clark grinned back at me. “Buster’s real name is Boniface. He has a brother named Clement. Their crazy mother thought naming her boys after popes would assure them a place in heaven, but why she didn’t pick the names John or Paul is anyone’s guess. Clement goes by Clem.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “Not at all. Ask anyone. Thing is, instead of being saintly, those names made fighters out of those boys. Meanest sonsabitches to walk this earth. Run a nice farm though.”

  Clark put down his menu and looked at me. “So, what would you like? Here, we go up and order, and they bring it to us when it’s ready.”

  “I’ll take the grilled halibut.”

  “Like hell you will. This place is famous for its fried food. You order anything grilled and I’ll be the laughing stock of three counties. After what went down today at that damn corn maze, don’t add insult to injury.”

  Although he’d removed his sunglasses, I couldn’t tell if Clark was serious or joking. His face remained blank, his voice even.

  “Tell you what, California girl, I’ll order for us both.” He got up to go to the order window. “You allergic to anything, like shellfish?”

  I shook my head.

  “Beer, coke, lemonade?”

  “Iced tea, if they have it.”

  After he left our table, I stopped a middle-aged waitress with a low-cut top who’d just delivered a tray to a table near ours. I inquired about the ladies’ room. When I returned, Clark was back at our table, on which was the largest plastic glass of iced tea I’d ever seen, along with utensils. Clark was drinking coffee.

  While we took sips of our drinks, Clark Littlejohn and I studied each other. He seemed to be scrutinizing my face, taking in every line, pore, and nuance. He also seemed to be looking past facial characteristics, as if he could penetrate skin and bone and study my brain simply because he wanted to. It was easy to see he wasn’t going to be an easy nut to crack. I, on the other hand, would probably crumble in his hands like a toasted French baguette.

  “You look like Mom,” he finally said.

  “So I’m told. And you have her eyes and mouth, which puzzles me.”

  “How so?”

  “You said you’re my big brother, indicating you’re older than I am. When you first said that, I assumed you were the son of my mother’s husband, not her blood son. But you definitely look like Mom. My mother left California thirty-four years ago, and, please excuse me for this, but you are way over thirty-four years old. However, the Officer Littlejohn I saw at the maze today is about that age, yet he looks less like me than you do. What gives?”

  “You’re very observant. I like that.” He took a big gulp of coffee. “I am your mother’s son and your half brother, and so is Grady—Grady Littlejohn, the other Littlejohn cop. It’s a long, complex story.”

  “I’ve got time, and this is pretty much what I came here to find out. The murder was a bonus.”

  “I see you have the family trait of sarcasm. Mom’s the queen pin of cynicism and mockery. It totally bypassed Grady.”

  “Is that good or bad for Grady?”

  Clark didn’t respond but looked away, focusing instead on a small crowd of teens who’d just piled out of a truck in front of the ice cream stand.

  I threw out another question. “Have you always known about me?”

  He turned back to face me. “No. Mom finally told me, actually told both of us, after my father died. Until then, she’d never said a word about you or where she’d been after she came back.”

  “She left me for you?”

  “She left me first, Odelia.”

  Our food came. The waitress unloaded it from a large tray onto our table. I’d never seen so much fried food for two people. Outside of the fries and coleslaw, I wasn’t even sure what most of it was, although it all smelled divine.

  “We expecting company?” I asked once the waitress took her leave.

  “I used to smoke and drink,” Clark explained as he arranged the paper containers. “Now I eat when I’m stressed. Looks like that’s another family trait we share.”

  Was he calling me fat? I started to get my feathers ruffled but quickly calmed down. Who was I kidding? I am fat. It’s not like I can hide my two-hundred-something pounds with a little foundation and a few vertical stripes, so I owned up to it.

  Although hardly thin, Clark was just a little thick and paunchy. “But it only shows a little on you,” I said. “On me, this stuff will kick off its shoes and make itself at home.”

  The comment produced a slight chuckle. “Don’t kid yourself, Sis. I have to work out almost every day to keep my girlish figure. Imagine what I’d look like if I didn’t.”

  He pushed a small cup of chowder in front of me. “Start with this. Best clam chowder in all New England.” He pronounced it chowda. Next, he moved a plate containing a long toasted bun filled with something mixed with mayonnaise. “This is a lobster roll.” It came out lobsta. “Just lobster meat, mayo, celery, a little lettuce and onion.”

  Clark picked up his own lobster roll and took a bite that lobbed off a third of the bun. While he chewed, he pointed to the other items.
“Fried clams, fried scallops, coleslaw, and fries,” he said with a partially full mouth. He swallowed. “The fries came with the other stuff or I would have skipped them. There’s tartar sauce in that dish and cocktail sauce in that squeeze bottle next to the salt and pepper.” He punctuated his food commentary by taking another bite of his lobster roll.

  Not to be left behind, I picked up a spoon and dug into the clam chowder. Although the other stuff was new to me, I’d had chowder before, but Clark was right—this was the best I’d ever tasted. After a few spoonfuls, I took a small bite of the lobster roll, followed by a fried clam and a scallop. It was all heavenly and made me wish I could take some home for Greg. But good food or not, I was also hungry for information. After a couple more bites, I tried to get us back on topic.

  “Where do you want to start, Clark? With our sketchy family or with the murder?” When he kept eating, I continued. “Is Mom a suspect? Where is she now? Who’s the dead guy? And who’s the kid they took away in cuffs?” I had more questions but thought those were enough for now. No sense going into overload at our first meeting.

  Clark regarded me while he continued eating. Having polished off his lobster roll, he was now doing damage to the clams and scallops, rotating between dipping them into tartar sauce and cocktail sauce. I couldn’t tell if he was avoiding my questions altogether or wondering how much to tell me.

  After one final bite of coleslaw, I pushed my plate back and wiped my hands with one of the packaged towelettes delivered with the meal. I pulled my iced tea glass closer and fixed my eyes on him.

  “Well?”

  “I’m trying to decide what’s mine to tell.”

  In silence, he polished off the last fried clam, licked his fingers, then tore open and cleaned up with his own moist disposable towel.

  “Want more tea?” he asked, getting up from the table. As soon as I shook my head, he left to replenish his coffee mug from a nearby beverage refill station. Now I knew how Greg felt. Clark’s procrastination was driving me nuts, just as my stalling drove Greg crazy.

  When Clark returned to the table, I prodded with more oomph. “What do you mean by ‘yours to tell’? I came all this way to find out about my mother. Now she’s involved in a murder. Whatever you know, spill it.” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms across my chest.

  A slow smile crept across Clark’s face, then scurried away. “As far as the murder goes, I’m not really supposed to be involved. CPAC is handling it, and since my mother is a suspect, at least for now, I wouldn’t be investigating the case, even if they weren’t.”

  “But surely they’ll tell you what they suspect or what they find out? I mean, at least as a professional courtesy?”

  He shrugged with his face, his eyebrows raised, his mouth twisted to the side. His shoulders remained still. “Maybe, maybe not. But at this point, they haven’t learned anything concrete. Just that Mom was found at the scene of the crime with the victim’s blood on her hands. But that part you already know. As for the victim, his name was Frankie McKenna.”

  “Did Mom know him?”

  “Highly doubtful. He was from the Boston area. Not sure why he was here.”

  “The fair?”

  Clark scoffed again. “Also doubtful.”

  He took a long drink of coffee and stared out the window. The teens had long since gotten their ice cream and left, and others had arrived to stand at the windows for their own cones and cups. The parking lot was filling up, but as time passed, most of the new arrivals were making their way to the Blue Lobster for dinner. Around us, the place was starting to hum. It looked like we’d gotten there just before the Saturday night dinner rush.

  “The kid in cuffs had nothing to do with the murder. It was a drug bust that happened to go down at the same time. Just a kid smoking pot. We dragged him in and questioned him about the murder, then gave him a slap on the wrist and let him go.”

  “I’m sure you had bigger things to worry about today than a little weed.”

  “For sure.”

  He lightly tapped his fingers on the table. “As far as the family history goes, I think that’s something Mom should tell you herself. It’s her story, we’re just bit players. But I will tell you that you, Grady, and I all had different fathers. My father, Leland Littlejohn, adopted and raised Grady as his own.”

  “My father died a few months ago.” As I said it, my heart lurched a bit. “We were very close.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Leland died about eight years ago, shortly after I came back to Holmsbury.”

  “What about Grady’s father?”

  Clark turned back. “Don’t know. Grady was only about two when Mom returned to Holmsbury. Not sure he even remembers his dad, if he ever even met him. Always had a difficult time accepting Leland, even though Leland loved him and provided for him. He tried to find his father once, but Mom wouldn’t help him. He doesn’t even know his name.”

  “It’s not on his birth certificate?”

  “Says father unknown. Until Leland adopted him, his last name was Grey, like yours.”

  My mother, for whatever reason, had wreaked havoc on all three of her children’s lives. Did she not even care? Was she really that selfish and callous?

  “Mom was a big drinker last I saw her.” I had uncrossed my arms and was leaning forward, toying with the straw in my tea. “One day, I came home from school, and she was gone. Never heard from her again. I was sixteen at the time.”

  Clark shook his head in what I took to be empathy. “She’s been sober close to twenty-five years. She tried to stop drinking off and on, but finally Leland put his foot down, said if she didn’t get help and stop once and for all, he’d kick her out for good. Seeing she had no place to go, she cleaned up.” He snorted softly. “Being sober didn’t change her disposition none, though. She’s pretty cantankerous. People either love her or hate her. There’s no middle of the road with Grace Littlejohn.”

  “What about you?”

  The question brought Clark Littlejohn up short for a moment, but he recovered quickly. “She’s my mother. I love her, but I don’t have to like her.”

  “Can’t get much more honest than that.” I took another drink of tea. “What about your family, Clark? You married? Have kids?”

  “Divorced.” He paused to think. “About six years now. Linda and I were separated a few years before that. Have two daughters—Marie, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband and daughter. My other daughter, Lorraine, is in grad school in Wisconsin. She’s single but has been living with the same guy for a long time.”

  Wow, I thought. I’m not only a sister, but an aunt and great-aunt. It boggled my mind. “I hope I get to meet your family one day.”

  Clark offered a small, short smile. “I hope you do, too. Though I’ve never mentioned you to them, so it would be quite a shock.”

  I paused to think about what I wanted to ask next. “Do you think she killed that man? Mom, I mean? Give me your professional opinion.”

  “Professionally speaking, it looks bad—but professionally, I also know things are usually never how they appear.”

  “What does she have to say about it?”

  Clark raised his face to the ceiling and blew out air. I could see the muscles in his thick neck go taut. After a few seconds, he looked back at me.

  “Mom’s giving everyone the silent treatment about the murder. Won’t say a word about why she was there, if she knew McKenna, nothing. Not even to the lawyer I got for her. Only thing she said was to Grady, back at the farm. Kept telling him over and over that his sister was in the maze, that she saw you.”

  “He never spoke to me at the farm.”

  “Grady thought Mom had slipped a cog. You know, in shock over the murder. When he told me, I went through the witness list, and there you were—Odelia Grey—up front and center for the spectacle.”

  “But Grady knew I existed?”

  Clark paused, measuring his words carefully, like salt added to a delica
te dish. “The way Mom put it when she told us, we sort of assumed you were a child who had died years before.”

  Ouch. Not only was I abandoned, I was left for dead and buried. Inside, I felt raw and bloody, like fresh hamburger, as if I’d just been discarded all over again. I felt my hands start to shake and grasped my iced tea glass to still them. Surprisingly, my eyes were dry. I knew I had to keep moving forward, no matter how much it hurt.

  I gave Clark a quick rundown of how I had found the envelope and traced my mother to Holmsbury, including how Cynthia Rielley had encouraged me to go to the fair.

  “Mrs. Rielley’s a nice lady. Nosy, though—better than having a private security company patrolling the neighborhood.”

  “Nasty little dog she has there.”

  He smiled slightly. “Yeah, Coco thinks he’s a rottweiler. Back in high school, I dated Mrs. Rielley’s daughter, Darlene. Darlene’s a college professor now, living in Nebraska.”

  There was something both soothing and scary about living in a place where everyone knows everyone else. Seal Beach, where Greg and I live, is a small, densely populated beach community covering only about twelve square miles, but except for the people on our short block and maybe a few people on other streets, we didn’t know many other folks in the area, at least not well. Here, people knew everyone for miles in every direction. And they knew their families for generations.

  “Where’s Mom now?”

  “At the hospital.” He must have read alarm on my face, because he added, “Not to worry. They’re keeping her for observation because of the shock and her age. She’ll be out tomorrow or the next day. After that, it will depend on what the detectives find out and her cooperation. Even if she’s charged, she’ll probably be released on bail because of her age. She’s hardly a flight risk.”

  A few weeks ago, I didn’t have a mother. Now I had a mother facing a possible murder charge and leading people to believe I was dead. Not for the first time, I wished I’d never seen that envelope.