“No, no. Mom would never have taken her own life. She wasn’t that sick. The meds were working. The liquor bottles were for a month’s recycling.”
“We didn’t know that.”
“And I never cared about the house or her money.” Alan put a glass of water in my hand.
“I know. But we kind of panicked. I admit it. My clients, the country club. Who wanted that kind of talk? So we, ah, decided to make it look like she left on her own, then maybe met with foul play or who knows what. We were only thinking of you, Mira. I swear.”
I didn’t believe him, but his stepson Dillon shouted: “You moved her body? Don’t you idiots know that’s against the law?”
“I told you, we panicked. So I called Carl, who was having lunch with Susan. The fool brought his mother with him.”
Alan was shaking his head. “I always figured it took more than one perp to get rid of the evidence. I told you right off, babe, when you hired me. You didn’t want to believe she was dead, only missing.”
I kicked him, under the table. “Where…where did you put her?”
Now Carl spoke up. “It wasn’t my idea, Mira. I swear. I always liked your mother and thought she deserved better. But how could I let my father face a trial?”
“What the fuck did you do with my mother?”
Rochelle gasped and put her hands over her ears.
“They put her in my freezer in big black garbage bags, along with her purse and all those pills,” Mrs. Markoff said, “while I wiped up the kitchen here. I didn’t want to be a witness, you know.”
Brain-numb, I grasped at straws. “Okay. We can have a funeral parlor go get her, and have a proper burial.”
“You think the police won’t be interested in where you found her body?” Dillon and Shavon asked together. “They aren’t stupid, you know.”
Dad brushed them off. “Well, that’s not an issue. Remember the hurricane last year, when everyone’s basement flooded and the power was off for a week?”
“Tell me no.”
“Wish I could, sweetheart, wish I could. Everyone had piles of trash out on the curb. Appliances, ruined furniture, black bags filled with rotten food.”
Mrs. Markoff cackled. “I got two hundred dollars from the insurance company for my loss.”
Now I shrieked. “Your loss? Your loss? What about mine, not knowing, wishing I’d come home sooner. Or made her put in an alarm. What about poor Mom? What about her loss? She had lots of years left, the doctors all said so.”
Alan had his arms around me. “Sh, babe. It’s done.”
“And you knew she didn’t simply wander away. You knew.”
“Nothing else made sense. But I wanted to help you.”
“You’re as bad as them! Get out. All of you murdering, lying, selfish monsters.”
“If you go to the police, we’ll deny it all. And the statute of limitations must be over.” The two lawyers nodded. So did the private detective. Bastards, every one of them.
“Would you really rather see all of them in orange jumpsuits and shackles?” Alan asked. “That won’t bring your mother back.” I kicked him again, harder.
“I want her recipes back. And my good blouse. Dry-cleaned. I want you all out of her house. My house. Take your Thanksgiving dinner next door, where you take all your so-called mistakes, or give it to a food pantry. I don’t care. Just get out. Now!”
I locked myself in my bedroom while the caterers packed and cleaned up. Alan said he’d call me later, or break the door down if I didn’t answer the phone. I knew I’d forgive him. Maybe tomorrow. The rest of them? Maybe someday, when hell froze over.
I finally went downstairs, wishing I’d told the caterers to save me a plate or a pie. All they’d left was the casserole dish with the kugel and a bottle of blackberry brandy. Thanks, Dad.
I saluted Mom’s portrait one last time with the bottle, before pouring it down the sink.
The kugel? I ate the whole damn thing. Happy Thanksgiving, Mom.
Lisa’s Cranberry Chutney
Lisa Wagner
12 ounces fresh or frozen cranberries, rinsed
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup crystallized (candied) ginger
2 to 3 large navel oranges, or 4 clementines/mandarin oranges, peeled and sectioned
Add half the cranberries to a large food processor cup. Sprinkle cranberries with the sugar and ginger. Process until coarsely chopped. Add the remaining cranberries and orange sections. Process until chopped and combined, but not smooth or liquidy.
This recipe tastes best when made 1 to 2 days ahead of when it will be served, as the time will allow for the flavors to mingle. Store in a glass lidded bowl in the fridge until ready to enjoy.
Makes approximately 3 cups
Serves 6, 1/2 cup each
The Mashed Potato/Cranberry Thanksgiving Murder Case
By Big Jim Williams
“I thought it was cranberry sauce,” claimed Miss Prudence Peach.
A man’s bloody head was face down in his Thanksgiving plate of mashed potatoes in the dining room of a senior citizens’ retirement home. A big kitchen knife was stuck in the back of his neck.
“No, it’s not cranberries—it’s real blood covering the deceased and his creamy potatoes,” replied Police Detective Sedgwick Segway, nicknamed “Scooter” by his fellow officers.
His right eye squinted through a big magnifying glass as he examined the knife wound. A black patch covered his left eye.
“Judging by the angle of the knife,” continued Segway, “I’d say he was murdered by either a right- or left-handed killer.”
“That narrows it down,” said Miss Peach, a longtime retirement home resident. “You’re really sure he was murdered?”
“That’s my best guess,” added Segway, gazing at the knife piercing the dead man’s neck. He thoughtfully rubbed his chin as graduates of the Barstow Undercover & Murder (BUM) crime-fighters correspondence course were taught to do.
“Are they instant or regular mashed potatoes?” inquired Miss Peach, an octogenarian. She examined the death scene through pince-nez glasses.
“Makes little difference,” sighed Segway, flashing his badge. “But I believe they are regular mashed potatoes.”
“Ah, then ‘tis a mushy murder, as Shakespeare might have said,” added Miss Peach.
“However, dead is dead,” continued the detective. “I’m sure our highly qualified, crime-fighting, factory-trained astute police lab technicians will confirm they aren’t French fries, Tater Tots or potato chips.”
“Oregon, Idaho or Irish?” she asked.
“What?”
“Or are they Russet, Yukon Gold or white potatoes?”
“Not important, Miss Peach. That too will be determined by our highly qualified, crime-fighting, factory-trained astute police lab technicians.”
“You’re repeating yourself,” she said.
Segway blushed, cleared his throat and pointed to the cadaver. “Miss Peach,” he asked, “do you know one person here in the Golden Age Gracious Home for Retirees who would want to kill this poor man?”
“No, I don’t know one,” she replied, “but I do know about fifty who would have happily pushed our dead diner through the Pearly Gates of Heaven, or sulfur-stained doors of Hell!”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a thief, philanderer, extortionist, liar, woman chaser, bigamist, blackmailer, gangster, gigolo, pimp, scoundrel, scam artist…”
She caught her breath and then added:
“…and an anti-environmentalist who deliberately fails to rub rather than blot as suggested on old paper towel dispensers.”
“Then you knew him?”
“I certainly do…did,” corrected Miss Peach. “He’s my ex-husband, the Reverend Blister B. Bullett of the famous Bullett family of swindlers, sword swallowers, knife jugglers, playboys, and tambourine-pounding, plate-passing, tent-traveling evangelists, famous for picking pockets at revival meetings.”
“He got around?”
“Like a Hula-Hoop on speed,” she exclaimed. “A con artist without a conscience. He’d steal a blind man’s white cane and then sell him a blind seeing-eye dog.”
“Hmmm,” loudly muttered Segway as Chapter 2 instructed in his Detective School Handbook. He thought of rubbing his chin again for effect but decided once was enough.
“Maybe he committed suicide?” questioned Miss Peach. “Could have stabbed himself in the back—”
“Since he was also an excellent contortionist,” interrupted resident Miss Agnes Lilywhite, entering the room. “On our wedding night Blister Bullett ignored me. However, to prove his agility and win a ten-dollar bet, he bent over backward in the hotel bar and kissed his own derriere.”
“You were also one of his wives?” asked Segway.
“Number two,” confessed Miss Lilywhite, a descendent of the famous Boston Lilywhites, whose Prohibition-era, rum-running past wasn’t lilywhite. “Years ago as a new ex-virgin, I stood at the altar with him—a young traveling salesman then—my daddy’s twelve-gauge pressed against his shaking back. I believe as a contortionist he’s capable of stabbing himself in the back to collect his own life insurance.”
“But how could he profit from that?” asked Segway. “He’s dead.”
“Knowing the crafty old crook as well as we do, he’d figure a way to get the money to the great beyond,” concluded Miss Lilywhite. “Probably have it wired there by Western Union.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” warned Scooter.
“Reverend Bullett had a bad heart,” sighed Miss Lilywhite. “Last week he passed out in his soup and almost drowned.”
“What kind of soup?” inquired Miss Peach.
“Chicken noodle.”
“That’s odd. When we were married he always preferred pea soup.”
“He may have been a rascal,” continued Miss Lilywhite, eyes on the deceased in the Matterhorn mound of potatoes. “But life with Blister Bullett was never dull. We had more laughs together than a herd of hyenas.”
“With manners, charm, and looks to match,” added Miss Edna Arbuckle, who waddled into the room. “My, my,” she said, seeing Bullett’s flopped face and the deadly knife. “So someone finally punched the old boy’s ticket?”
“And who are you?” asked Segway.
“Miss Edna Arbuckle,” she chuckled, “third and final ex-wife of your dead spuds snorkeler.” She was short and fat with a bottom that sagged like a broken car bumper.
“You don’t seem surprised he’s dead?” asked Scooter. “He’s been murdered.”
“The big knife in his neck was a clue,” smiled Miss Arbuckle. “I came down to sing happy birthday to him. It’s good he never got around to lighting the one hundred candles on his birthday cake or we’d all be dead. Would have sucked the oxygen out of this room faster than flying spitballs in a grammar school.”
Miss Arbuckle, a retired teacher, often sprinkled her sentences with stupid anecdotes.
Miss Peach suffered from thinning gray hair, varicose veins, gout, ankle-dragging breasts, loose dentures and uncontrollable bowels. Glue and duct tape kept her choppers in place. Her noisy bowels often erupted unexpectedly with the intensity of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser. In 1936 she won the U.S. title, “Queen of Irritable Bowels,” but came in second in Olympic competition behind a prune-eating Tanzanian water buffalo.
“Do all three of you former spouses live here?” asked Scooter.
“Yes,” they replied.
“This place is officially named the Golden Age Gracious Home for Retirees,” grinned Miss Arbuckle, “but we residents call it GAG for short, because the food is awful and served in such small portions.”
A sideboard was covered with GAG’s usual dining room condiments: Metamucil, aspirin, Tylenol, Alka-Seltzer, Kaopectate, bicarbonate of soda, and a stomach pump and bucket.
“It’s a shame,” declared Miss Peach, “that old Bullett was murdered before he could enjoy his centennial birthday party.
“‘Tis a pity,” continued Miss Peach, “he kicked off before eating his cake layered with fresh strawberries and sprinkled with coconut.” She dragged an arthritic finger through the whipped cream topping and licked it. “Ahhh,” she said, “it’s sugar free!”
“That’s disgusting, unhealthy and disrespectful to the departed,” snarled Miss Arbuckle.
“Oh, what the hey?” responded Miss Peach. “The old sky pilot’s dead, so he can’t complain. When I was married to the pulpit pounder, I never trusted him around my purse, bank book or French maid,” she coyly admitted.
“Same for me when I was Mrs. Bullett,” acknowledged Miss Lilywhite.
“I only shared his bed for a fortnight as his bride,” revealed Miss Arbuckle, “until he stole my two gold teeth, and ran off with a pole-dancing blond bimbo in a Buick.” However, a revealing tear cut though her makeup, makeup thick enough to re-plaster the Taj Mahal.
After shifting his eye patch to his right eye, Scooter again used his magnifying glass to re-examine the red-soaked spuds and knife stuck in the reverend’s neck. “Hmmm,” he muttered with the authority of a mail-order gendarme.
“I thought you were blind in your left eye,” quizzed Miss Arbuckle.
“Not so,” replied the investigator. “Have twenty-twenty vision in both eyes. The eye patch makes me look distinguished, plus I’ve always admired the man in the old Hathaway shirt ads.
“I’m certain that’s real blood on the spuds,” re-confirmed Scooter. “It’s not cranberries.”
“Hmmm. Maybe that’s why the cranberries tasted so awful,” said Miss Peach. Then she added: “I usually don’t eat cranberries because they…bog me down.”
Then she laughed like a male politician caught with a female intern.
“Miss Peach, this is no time for sick humor,” replied Miss Lilywhite, “especially with our murdered ex-husband only inches away.”
“If he had to go,” said Miss Arbuckle, “a Thanksgiving dinner is a great time to do it. He departed on a wonderful holiday surrounded by plenty of good food: turkey, green beans, rice, creamy corn, succotash, mashed potatoes, hot biscuits, gravy, cranberry sauce, olives, two kinds of pickles, and delicious sweet potatoes covered with pecans and those tiny little marshmallows. But it’s sad he died before cutting his birthday cake.”
“Maybe that’s why they say, ‘Eat dessert first!’” chuckled Miss Peach.
“You three,” confirmed Scooter, “are my number one suspects since you don’t seem unhappy your former husband’s been murdered.”
“Not unhappy at all,” agreed Miss Peach.
“A perfect assumption,” added Miss Lilywhite.
“Bingo!” claimed Miss Arbuckle.
“But,” added Miss Peach, “there’s one thing we former wives all agree on: our husband was one hell of a lover.”
“His romantic techniques made Casanova look like a cub scout,” added Miss Arbuckle, with a waddle and wink.
“A stud among studs,” dreamily recalled Miss Lilywhite. “His burial site deserves a tall monument and simple eternal flame.”
They coyly giggled as only old women do about sex.
“So which one of you murdered the Reverend Blister B. Bullett of the famous Bullett family?” demanded Segway.
“Not I,” said Miss Peach.
“I couldn’t have done it,” insisted Miss Arbuckle, “because I’m too short and fat to stab anyone.”
“And it wasn’t me,” huffed Miss Lilywhite, “because I’m from Boston where we don’t do such things.”
Segway suddenly snapped to his full five-feet-two-inches in his Otis Elevator shoes and, with a flourish, said: “I know who the real killer is!”
“Who?” “Who?” “Who?” asked the three women, sounding like a trio of owls.
Segway switched his patch back to his left eye and revealed:
“It’s…It’s—”
Suddenly the lights went out.
When they came ba
ck on, super sleuth Police Detective Sedgwick Segway was slumped across the dining room table, his face ear-deep in a bowl of creamy corn, a long kitchen knife stuck in the back of his neck.
The women screamed.
“Oh my God,” yelled Miss Peach. “Segway’s been murdered!”
Then they screamed again when…
The Reverend Blister B. Bullet slowly raised his submerged face from his mound of potatoes, snorted, yawned and stretched.
“You’re supposed to be dead!” declared Miss Peach.
“Ah, so you noticed,” proclaimed the ex-cadaver. He smiled and carefully wiped potatoes and the red whatever-it-was from his face. He pulled the knife from his neck.
“Ladies,” he chuckled, licking his red-stained fingers, “this is real cranberry sauce…not blood. Detective Segway was too dumb to taste it, or discover the knife is a fake…made of rubber…attached to my neck by a plastic ring!”
He smiled at the three gawkers. “Gotcha again, girls!” he laughed. “You thought I was dead. I was only resting.
“Segway thought he graduated first in my Barstow Undercover & Murder (BUM) evil-doers, crime-fighters correspondence course,” continued the reverend. “He was my only student in that mail-order scam school. Made buckets of money off that wannabe Dick Tracy. When he discovered I’d bilked him, and his badge and diploma weren’t real, he threatened to blackmail me. So I faked my death, lured him here and killed him before he exposed me.”
Bullett slapped a party hat on Scooter’s slouched head.
“Leave him on the table, ladies,” he ordered. “We’ll eat around him. He makes a nice Thanksgiving centerpiece, especially if we put an apple in his mouth.”
Bullett added a party hat to his own bald head as the women bellowed “Happy Birthday” with the exuberance of bawling cattle.
Miss Peach’s bowels suddenly exploded, a blast equal to World War II’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
GAG residents later honored her with a plaque.
“I’ll have some birthday cake and ice cream later,” exclaimed the cleric. “But now I’m hungry, so pass the mashed potatoes and turkey.”
The Killer Wore Cranberry Page 8
