Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (30 page)

“Yep. That’s him. So, what’s the big deal here? Did he run off with her or what?”

“She’s dead,” I said. “She was murdered.”

Cochran dropped the wrench he had been holding. “No shit. Oh, man … So what’s up? Did this guy do it? Did he kill her?”

I was shaking my head. “He was already dead.”

I
was one of Santa’s helpers once, one of his elves. I know what a rotten gig it can be. My time came in the second grade. Having lost the popular vote to appear as the Big Guy Himself in the school’s Christmas pageant, I was relegated to the role of the head elf. Head elf my ass. In the second grade especially, there’s either the Big Guy Himself or there’s nothing. I really thought I had a lock on the role too. Both of my parents were appearing regularly on local TV at the time as cohosts of various programs as well as doing a slew of commercials and voice-overs. My father was the official voice for Hamburger Junction. It was an extremely popular place with kids, that delivered your burgers to you on an electric train set that ran around the restaurant’s oval counter. I figured I’d ride my parents’ coattails right to the North Pole. But I lost out to a new kid in school. His parents had been missionaries in Korea. I had no idea where in the hell Korea even was or, for that matter, what a missionary was supposed to do. But the kid got the part—I’ve blocked his name from my memory—and I was named his second in command, his head elf. Brownie. That was what they named me. Based on the ridiculous costume they whipped up for me to wear. Brown tights and a little brown vest over a dyed brown T-shirt. It was humiliating. I begged my parents not to attend, but of course they did. My job onstage, besides feeding setup lines to the Big Guy Himself, was to fill in, with white paint, a presketched design along the front of a refrigerator box that had been cut in half and decorated to look like a gigantic jack-in-the-box. There was a coat hanger and cloth handle attached to one side of the box, and on the back of the box, the side not facing the audience, was a large hole that had been cut out. This was the way I was supposed to communicate with Beth Garrison, who was inside the box costumed to look about as much like a jack-in-the-box as I did an elf. The idea was that I would slip to the backside of the box and cue Beth that I was about to start cranking the coat hanger handle. She could see my arm turning, and, after several turns of the handle, she was supposed to
pop
out of the box and flop around as if she were attached to a spring. The son of the missionaries from Korea would then give off a hearty “ho, ho, ho,” wag his finger at me and say, “Now, Brownie, this is no time to play. There’s work to be done.” It had been decided that we would go through this little routine three times during the run of the play. Two of the times were set, I had a cue that I was to listen for. The third time was at my discretion; though, of course, I was too young to understand what the word “discretion” actually meant.

On the big night, I was miserable. Not only was I in shock about the ridiculous getup I was being forced to wear in front of the entire auditorium, but just fifteen minutes prior to curtain I had gotten into a fight with Beth, my jack-in-the-box. Actually, I had kissed her. She had come out of the girls room—looking a little like a court jester, a little like a clown—just as I was getting a drink of water from the water fountain, and with no premeditation whatsoever I had stepped over to her and kissed her on her big, red polka-dot cheek. She shrieked—it was impossible for me to tell if it was a shriek of delight or dismay—and ran off. The next thing I knew, every single elf in the cast was aware that I had kissed Beth Garrison. The news spread like wildfire. They were all making puckery faces at me and giggling. I was convinced that the people in the audience had picked up on the scandal as well.
Hey, the elf in the brown tights? Have you heard? He just kissed the jack-in-the-box. Can you believe the gall?
I thought maybe they had mimeographed an announcement to include with the program.
Please Note: Brownie has just kissed the jack-in-the-box
. I was as mortified as a three-and-a-half-foot person can be mortified. Which is plenty, believe me.

The play began. A snowfall of confetti kicked things off, then jolly old St. Nick took the stage to an explosion of applause from the audience. I even spotted my own parents clapping. Traitors. I made a mental note to run away from home just as soon as I got out of the damn tights. I slapped a few strokes of paint onto the box. But my heart wasn’t in it. My first cue to release the jack-in-the-box was five minutes off. But suddenly inspiration hit and I put down the paintbrush and moseyed around to the rear of the box. “I’m cranking,” I informed the painted Jezebel inside. I saw the girl’s look of confusion, but I paid it no heed. This was at my discretion. I took hold of the coat hanger handle and gave it a few cranks. Beth and I had decided on three as the number of cranks on which she would pop up out of the box and waggle like she was on a spring. I cranked: One-Two-
Three
… and up she popped. The son of the Korean missionaries was in the middle of some business with a broken toy halfway across the stage. But at the sight of the jack-in-the-box bobbing over there above its box—bobbing with verve, I might add—he dropped whatever he was saying and let out his hearty “ho, ho, ho,” followed by his admonishment to me about a time to work and a time to play. The fact that I had cued Beth five minutes early didn’t throw him all that much. He found his place and continued on with his business about the broken toy. Several minutes later came the actual cue, and I cranked the handle again and again Beth came popping out. The son of the missionaries again chanted his “ho, ho, ho,” and the admonishment was again delivered. And the play continued.

I can’t say for certain how many more minutes went by. I recall working the paintbrush around the presketched design and then realizing suddenly that I was accidentally painting
outside
the design instead of
inside
the design. I was screwing up! If I continued on in this fashion, the design on the oversized jack-in-the-box would look like shit. But what could I do? I had started wrong and simply had to commit to the course I was on. Frustrated over this screwup, I suddenly strode around to the back of the box and muttered, “Pop!” I cranked the handle three times and the first girl I had ever kissed came popping out of the box again. This time the missionaries’ kid was thrown. He tried to go on with his lines, then decided he had better run through the “ho, ho, ho” and the time to work, time to play routine once again, just to be on the safe side. The look on his face was priceless. To me, anyway. The look on Beth’s face was priceless as well. And that was it. I might not have been cast as the Big Guy Himself, but I had figured out a way to steal the focus for the rest of the night. I cranked that handle like there was no tomorrow. Willy-nilly. For some reason, the son of the missionaries never found the nerve to simply ignore the bobbing jack-in-the-box. Instead, each time she popped up he plowed on ahead with his “ho, ho, ho” and his increasingly tedious warning. Likewise, it never occurred to Beth to simply stop popping out of the box. I cranked that damn handle all night long, interrupting the flow of the play again and again. Every few minutes, it was “ho, ho, ho. Now, Brownie, this is no time to play. There’s work to be done.” The hell. That’s what
he
thought. It had been decided to run the silly play without an intermission, so there was no opportunity for our director—our second grade teacher—to halt my shenanigans. It appeared to me that the crowd loved it. They were sure as hell laughing up a storm by the time the thing finally ended. I’m not so sure about the missionaries from Korea. But I know that my parents laughed like crazy the entire drive home. We swung by Hamburger Junction to celebrate my disruptive triumph. My father even stood up at the counter and gave a basso-profundo recitation of the Hamburger Junction commercial. It was a big hit with the other diners. Never once did my parents chide me for fouling up the Christmas play. For the brief time that I had them, they supported me in every single thing I did. No matter what way I ended up doing it.

The Christmas pageant at Vickie Waggoner’s school was pretty tame by comparison. No class clown emerged to send the play reeling sideways. I found Vickie sitting in an aisle seat near the rear of the auditorium. She had Bo with her. He was on her lap. I managed to get her attention and signaled that I would wait for her in the back of the auditorium. I stationed myself against the rear wall. The kids onstage blurred as my attention wandered. I already knew how their little play ended.

What I didn’t know—what I
still
didn’t know—was exactly how Helen Waggoner’s life had ended. I didn’t know who shot her or why. What I did know was that the person she had been seeing, the mystery fellow who had been so generous with his wallet, wasn’t the person who had killed her. Theory One: down the tubes. He couldn’t be the killer. Richard Kingman had the best alibi in the house; he had been laid out in an Ambassador model coffin in Parlor One at Sewell & Sons Family Funeral Home at the same approximate time that Helen Waggoner was getting called out of Sinbad’s Cave for her final few moments on Earth. The celebrated heart surgeon might have been having an affair with Helen Waggoner and buying her all sorts of goodies, but he sure as hell didn’t kill her. Why in the world it hadn’t occurred to me—or to Vickie for that matter—to question Bo about his birthday visit to the zoo I couldn’t say. We see our own noses every day of our lives … but do we notice?

I had to wait a few minutes after the show while Vickie told the children what a wonderful job they had done. I passed the time in the hallway, marveling at some of the things that kids will come up with when you hand them a piece of paper and a paint kit. The walls were lined with the stuff of dreams and psychiatry. When Vickie finally emerged from the auditorium—Bo in tow—she spoke first.

“I have some information.”

“So do I.”

“Let’s talk in here.”

She led me into one of the classrooms. Say what you will about this old world of ours changing faster and faster these days, elementary school classrooms pretty much remain the same. Granted, there was a row of computers on a table along the far wall, but other than that technological intrusion, the room looked pretty much like the one in which I had learned my reading and writing when I was a young Hitch. Maps, the alphabet running in a banner atop the chalkboard, miniature desks, the whole thing. The windows at the rear of the classroom had been decorated for Christmas, with paper cutouts of all the Yuletide celebrities: Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and some cartoony figure I didn’t recognize. There were paper snowflakes taped all over the windows as well. Bo tottered off to a corner filled with wooden animals.

“Is this your homeroom?” I asked Vickie.

She nodded. “My kingdom.”

I leaned up against the front of Vickie’s teacher’s desk. She squeezed onto one of the miniature chairs.

“You first,” she said.

“No. You.”

“Okay.” She shifted in her chair. Like a child about to deliver a speech. “I found out the name of the obstetrician Helen was seeing.”

“You did? How?”

“Bo. He came to me last night saying something about glass.”

“Glass?”

“Yes. I didn’t know what he was talking about at first. He said he wanted his glass. And then he handed me this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a prescription container. “Childproof lid,” she said, twisting off the cap. She emptied the container onto the desk. It was glass. About a half dozen bits of colored glass.

“Apparently Helen and Bo ran across this stuff somewhere and he liked it. Obviously you wouldn’t let a child play with something like this. Helen must have decided to keep them for him in this container. There’s no way Bo could get the lid off. Bo had a big duffel bag filled with his toys. It must have been in there all along.”

“And there’s a doctor’s name on the container?”

“Yes, there is.”

She scooped the glass bits back into the container, twisted the cap back into place and tossed it to me. There it was, in the lower left-hand corner of the label.

“I checked it out,” Vickie said. “I looked the name up in the book and called. He’s definitely an obstetrician.”

I looked up at her. “That’s not all he is. Let’s go.”

•••

I stood in the doorway while Vickie put Bo to bed. I’ve always been under the impression that kids are a terror to get to sleep. But Bo put up no fight at all. I wondered if this might be a result of good mothering on Helen’s part, or whether it was simply a matter of temperament.

Vickie left the bedroom door cracked open.

“Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night.” She added grimly, “He calls for his mama.”

We went into the living room. Vickie sat on the couch, underneath the lousy, framed pastoral. I sat as far away as possible, in one of the plaid armchairs. Up until that moment, the fact of our intimate shenanigan two nights before had been effortlessly forgotten in lieu of the information I had uncovered. Suddenly the fact was back. We both felt it. Even so, with a little boy sleeping in the next room, I was certain that we would find a way to push it aside once more.

“What do you make of all this?” Vickie asked. “Are you positive that it was this Kingman that my sister was seeing?”

“The mechanic who looked over her car described the guy perfectly, then he identified him from a picture.” I pulled the picture from my pocket. I stepped over to her and handed it to her, then retreated to the armchair. “It’s an old photo,” I said. “Something like fifteen years old. But he still pretty much looked like that.”

“She was seeing an older man.”

“An older man with money. Did Helen have a thing about older men? I mean, that you would know about?”

Vickie looked up from the photograph. “Let’s put it this way. Helen came out of the gate early. I told you, remember, that she was picked up for solicitation when she was fourteen? When you start that young, practically everyone is an older man.”