Chris Grabenstein - Tilt-a-Whirl

Ceepak's staring out his window and rubbing the top of his head, thinking. His hand makes a raspy sound when it scrapes over the short stuff on the back of his neck. He lets go with a big, gaping-mouth yawn. I don't think he's had any sleep in days.

Too bad. I have more questions.

“Why the Tilt-A-Whirl?” I ask when we hit a red light.

“I suspect Betty told Ashley to take her father there. Gave her precise time coordinates. That would explain why Ashley was rushing everyone out of the house on Saturday morning.”

“Did Ashley know what her mother was up to?”

“I hope not. I think Ashley did whatever her mother, the ‘stern disciplinarian,’ told her to do.”

“And mom went to the ATM because?”

“She'd seen enough television news coverage of fugitives on the lam to know that ATMs photograph and time-stamp every user. Giving her a rock-solid alibi for 7 A.M.”

261

“So,” I say, putting three and three together this time, “you're hoping Dr. McDaniels does her eye-jelly magic and pegs the time of death closer to 7:20?”

“Well done, Danny. We need to account for that stroll from the bank to the beach.”

“Gotcha.” This is pretty cool. Like working a math problem or jigsaw puzzle or the Jumble in the morning paper, which I only do if somebody else starts it for me. I mean, it's cool if you forget you saw Reginald Hart's body with all those bullet holes in it. If you remember that? The coolness sort of goes all lukewarm on you.

“As Dr. McDaniels indicated, we need more hard evidence. I'm basing too much on conjecture….”

“So we ask at the bookstore? We flash the clerk Betty's mug shot?”

“Roger that.”

“When do we tell the chief what we know?”

Ceepak turns to look at me.

“The chief?” he says. “That big galoot?”

Oh, Jesus.

Time to put four and four together.

“How much would you estimate Chief Cosgrove weighs, Danny?”

My mouth goes kind of dry.

“Oh, I dunno,” I croak. “273 pounds?”

“Yeah. That's what I'd figure, give or take a pound. 273.”

I used to go to Boardwalk Books when I was a kid, to buy comics and sneak a peek at the artsy-fartsy photography books that usually have a picture or two of naked women sprawled across their glossy pages.

I'm hoping they have a fresh batch of nudie books for me to flip through today. Might help take my mind off the fact that my boss, the chief of police for Sea Haven Township, is probably moonlighting as a co-conspirator in a grisly murder/kidnap scheme.

The bulk of the books for sale in the small shop are paperbacks-fiction of the airport variety, my favorite genre. I learned that word from a college girl I took to the movies. “Genre.” It means you're watching a film, not a movie. I prefer movies. We only went on that one date. It was a film. An old one in black and white about a foreign guy playing chess with Death, a guy who wore a creepy black robe and spoke Swedish.

Boardwalk Books also sells a lot of road maps and navigational charts, which are like road maps for the ocean because they tell you how deep the water is, which way the current flows, where you might bonk into a buoy, stuff like that. I never knew the ocean had maps until one day, on my lunch break, the chief showed me on a chart where he was going fishing that weekend.

In his boat.

Suddenly, I'm feeling queasy again and, this time, beer has nothing to do with it.

The boat that pirated Ashley away from her mansion? I have a funny feeling Chief Cosgrove was the skipper.

I'd tell Ceepak what I think but I believe he is, at least, two or three pages ahead of me.

“Has she ever been in here?”

Ceepak places a photograph of Betty Bell Hart on the glass counter in front of the droopy-eyed clerk. The guy looks like he reads too much. I know when I read, I always get sleepy. He's wearing a T-shirt showing Shakespeare in swim trunks holding a small beach ball in one hand, rubbing his chin with the other. It's the Boardwalk Books logo.

The clerk rubs his chin and studies the snapshot.

“Yeah … the old weather girl … she's in here all the time.”

The clerk sips coffee from a mug with a different Boardwalk Books logo printed on it. This time, I think it's Charles Dickens in the swim trunks. He's building two sand castles.

“She lives in that glass McMansion down on the south beach? Right?”

“Right,” Ceepak says. “She come in here often?”

“Sure. She loves books. You wouldn't think it to look at her, would you? I mean she's still pretty hot and all.”

“What kind of material does she read?” Ceepak asks.

“Harlequin romances. True crime. Those Motley Fool investment guides.”

“Was she here on Sunday?”

“Sorry, I didn't work this weekend. Duane did. You want me to call Duane? He's the manager.”

“She ever use the fax machine?”

The guy thinks about it for a second, tilting his head sideways.

“Nope.”

Ceepak looks disappointed.

“Wait a minute….”

Bingo.

“She did use it this one time. I had to help her. This was a couple weeks ago. Yeah. I remember thinking she was acting so totally blonde, you know what I mean?”

Ceepak nods.

“I mean, it's pretty simple. Just like a copy machine. You lay your paper down, lower the lid, punch a few buttons on the keypad, and bam-you're done. It's why it's totally self-serve. But she kept asking questions. Made me show her how to do it, over and over, like a hundred times.”

“Guess she wanted to make sure she got it right.”

“Yeah,” the guy chuckles. “In case she ever had like, you know, a fax emergency.”

Or if she was ever in a hurry to fax a note spelling out the details of where to deliver ten million dollars in ransom money.

“Where to next?”

We're sitting in the Explorer out front of Boardwalk Books. I can tell Ceepak has a list of spots he wants to hit before he busts the bad guys. He checks his watch.

“Remember that tricycle theft?’

“No.”

“Saturday morning? Adam Kiger caught the call?”

“Yeah. Okay….”

“We never did solve that crime, did we?”

“No. We've been kind of busy.”

Ceepak nods.

“Still,” he says, “that trike owner is a tax-paying citizen. Well, his parents probably are. They're entitled to a full and proper criminal investigation.”

“They are?”

“It's our sworn duty, Danny.”

“Oh-kay….”

“Besides-it was the first crime of the day.”

Solve the first crime, solve the second.

Advice from Dr. McDaniels. Okay. Got it.

Maybe it was no coincidence Officer Kiger wasn't on the beach Saturday morning to give Squeegee his wakeup call, wasn't there to see folks crawling in and out under the fence, shooting people on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Maybe he was taken out of the game a half hour before kickoff.

They sent him to answer a call on Rosewood Street.

The mayor's sister's house. The kind of summons you usually can't refuse, especially if you want to keep your job.

We're in the bushes near the front porch steps. Rose bushes. Thorns, wild tangles. I guess if your street is called “Rosewood,” you're officially obligated to grow the prickly buggers.

Ceepak has his magnifying glass out, looking for fibers, I bet. The trike thief could have snagged his shorts on the thorns. I know I just did.

“Excuse me. What are you gentlemen doing in my bushes?”

I think it's the mayor's sister. She's very tan. And very stacked.

“Good morning, ma'am.” Ceepak is, of course, friendly, courteous, and kind. “We're investigating your report of a stolen vehicle.”