Murder in the Library (7 page)

“Cy, I’ve been meaning
to tell you. I had already planned to give you one of my bowls of pudding.”

It’s so sad to see
someone you care for go downhill, but Lou had turned into a shell of the man he
once was. I wondered if there was some kind of antidote for the Wii thing. But
how could I find out? I didn’t know about that stuff, and more than likely
anyone who knew had already turned into one of
them
.

As I contemplated what
to do to save Lou, he broke the silence. 

“Cy, I can see how
touched you’re that I am willing to share one of my bowls of pudding with you.”

Touched was the word I
was thinking of, but I wasn’t the one who was touched. What if I found out that
the whole world had been turned into Wii people, except for my next-door
neighbor? Would I be willing to turn to her in order to save my best friend?

My head cleared and I
looked at the problem before us. The longer we put off working on the Colonel’s
puzzle, the longer it would take us to solve it. Still, I was smart enough that
I would never agree with whoever said “beginning is half done.” We looked at
our written list;
Exodus, Leviticus, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles,
Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, 1 Corinthians,
Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 1 Peter,
and
1 John.
All of
the books contained only one card, except for
Obadiah.
Some of the books
listed were named for people. Some were not. There didn’t seem to be anything
there that identified one suspect over the others. The best idea we came up
with at the time was to split up. Lou copied down the page numbers. We hoped
there was some numerical code that would help us. Since we didn’t know whether
the Colonel meant the left- or right-hand page, he copied both numbers. I
decided to tackle it from a word perspective, which made more sense.

I looked at the written
list of books. There were a lot more consonants that vowels. As a matter of
fact, there were so few vowels there didn’t seem to be enough of them to make
words. Still, I persisted. Few would believe me if I told them that Lou and I
worked on the code for an hour before we tackled the first bowl of pudding.
But, we did.

I devoured my first bowl
in record time. Lou took a couple of bites before returning the bowl to the
refrigerator, planning to take another couple of bites later. If I wasn’t
afraid of catching Lou’s germs I would have finished his bowl. More than
likely, the creature he had turned into wouldn’t notice for at least a couple
of days.

Thirty seconds after I
wiped the last of the pudding from my mouth, we returned to the task at hand.
In order to look at things from a different perspective, we traded places. In a
matter of minutes, both of us realized that we were getting nowhere.

“Let’s open the Bible
again, Cy. Maybe it will give us a revelation.”

“I was thinking about
praying, instead. Both could help, and God knows that neither will hurt us.”

The numbers made no sense.
Neither did the letters, but I was still convinced the letters were the way to
go. The afternoon was wasting away and still we had no idea what the Colonel
was trying to tell us. It was only then that we really did open the Bible and
study the index cards. We turned the pages from one card to another, careful to
keep any other cards from falling from the Bible.

“Lou, if all the cards
that fell out were vowels, would that give us enough words to make letters?”

Lou’s “It could,” wasn’t
enough to inspire me, but his revelation did.

“Notice something, Cy.
The Colonel put some of these cards at the first of each book, but not all of
them. Still, the farthest into any book that any of them are is the fourth
chapter. Let’s  separate  them,  and  see what we come up with.  We did, and I
became excited, until we had separated them and written them down. They still
didn’t make any sense, only they made no sense in four words, rather than one.
Since some of them could’ve been in more than one word, because there were two
or three chapters on some pages, we wrote down those letters for all the words
they might belong to.

Our efforts gave us the
following hieroglyphics.

EAMC

LSKCCTTPJ

LRECT

LESL

We didn’t know where the
three Os went, and we had four other letters left over, as if that would help.

“Lou, you wouldn’t
happen to have Vanna White’s cell phone number, would you?”

“No, and I don’t have
Regis’s either, so you can’t phone a friend. It’s just you and me, unless you
want your next-door neighbor to take a look at this.”

“Bite your tongue.”

We looked at the four
lines. They made as much sense as the eye chart Andy Griffith looked at in
No
Time For Sergeants.
Four things immediately came to mind, none of which
made sense. If all the letters in the first word were there, they could spell
“mace” or “came.” The second word was missing a boatload of vowels, and the
third word seemed to be missing at least one. The fourth word could be “sell,”
provided it was intact. But “mace,” “came,” and “sell” made no sense. My best guess
was that the murderer used mace on the Colonel, but if so, the Colonel wouldn’t
have been able to provide this code for us, and the murderer wouldn’t have been
able to enter or exit the library, depending on where he or she committed the
crime. I felt we were a little closer to where we needed to be, but had a long
way to go.

We worked until we
needed another break. I scooped out two more bites of banana pudding for Lou
and returned his bowl to the refrigerator. Then I picked up my own bowl. I
smiled when I remembered I still had one bowl left. Maybe Lou’s newfound
lifestyle might not be so bad on me. I had taken only a couple of bites of my
pudding when the phone rang. I answered it as I swallowed the glob of pudding I
had in my mouth.

“You okay, Cy.”

“Yeah, Frank, you just
caught me in the middle of eating something.”

“So, you’re eating while
the rest of us are hard at work.”

“Lou and I are hard at
work too, trying to figure out this stupid puzzle the Colonel left us. Want to
change places?”

“Did you forget what I
do, Cy, which, incidentally, is why I called you?  I’ve the autopsy results.
The deceased was shot with a poisonous dart. Curare. As you might know, it’s
native to Central and South America. Curare is harmless if swallowed, but fatal
if someone is shot with it. Death was almost instantaneous.”

“That means the killer
had to have been in the room with him, but how was that possible? Could it have
been someone he knew and trusted who had turned against him? And if so, how did
he or she get out of the room?”

“And that is the reason
why I don’t want to trade places with you, Cy. Most of the time, I can finish
my job in a few hours.”

“Speaking of hours, do
you have any idea what time the murder took place?”

“As best I can diagnose it,
you found him not long after he died.”

“You mean like minutes?”

“Well, let’s leave a
two-hour window to be on the safe side. He definitely died after noon, and probably closer to 2:00 or 3:00.”

“He told his wife he’d
fix something for lunch. Did he eat that lunch?”

“No, his stomach showed
he’d eaten nothing since breakfast.”

“Thanks, Frank. I
appreciate all your help.”

“Say, Cy, back to the
food. What were you eating?”

“Still am. It’s banana
pudding.”

“You fixed instant
banana pudding, all by yourself.”

“No, but the one who
takes good care of Lou and me gave us four bowls when she learned that we would
be working too hard to make it back for lunch.”

“And who did you share
the other two bowls with?”

“Lou, but since he’s
gone through that change, he let me have one of his bowls.”

“Change? Oh, you mean
his Wii Fit workout. I’m getting one of those, just as soon as you quit
bringing me bodies to autopsy.”

Was there time to save
Frank? Evidently he hadn’t become one of them yet, but he was tempted.

“Cy, are you there?”

“Oh, sorry, Frank. I was
just thinking about something.”

“Well, I’ll let you get
back to what you were doing. Enjoy your pudding, and try to take it easy when
it comes to finding dead bodies.”

“I’ll do my best. I
wouldn’t want you to become overworked, like we are.”

I hung up the phone,
turned and shared the news with Lou. Not only did we have no idea who murdered
the Colonel, we had no idea how he or she did it. In the old days, a murderer
would leave the dart in the victim. These days, I guess people who murder
others using poisonous darts are afraid of getting caught by their DNA, or like to reuse their poisonous darts.

I was tempted to put a
bib on Lou and feed him his two bites of pudding, but I refrained. I finished
my second bowl of banana pudding and returned to work. Too bad we couldn’t make
quick work of our perplexing puzzle, like I had the pudding.

When we hadn’t gotten
anywhere in a reasonable period of time we agreed to adjourn to two more
comfortable chairs to discuss the case.

After a few minutes,
frustrated, and remembering the Colonel’s and the Chief’s words, we decided to
let things rest until morning. Lou, an avid worker of crossword puzzles, told
me of the many times he had put a baffling puzzle down, only to solve a new
part of it the next time he picked it up. We both hoped that the same would be
true in this case. Also, we realized that more than likely Sam Schumann would
have some information for us the next morning. Not everything, but enough for
us to know what avenues to explore and which ones to ignore.

+++

Lou and I had found out
that the type of mystery we preferred to read was called a cozy mystery. Cozy
mystery. That sounded good. Like curling up in front of the fireplace on a cold
winter’s night. The years had helped me block Eunice from my mind most of the
time, but there was something about curling up in front of a fireplace that
made me hunger for the wife who was taken from me much too soon. I wanted to
rid my mind of sad thoughts, so I asked Lou the question I contemplated just a
short time before.

“So, Lou, have you ever
thought about what fictional detective you’d be if you could be anyone you’ve
read about?”

“I think I’d like to
experience a little of all of them. Then I’d be better equipped to make that
decision. I’d love to walk the foggy streets of London like Sherlock Holmes,
and ride in a hansom cab.”

“I’d say by the time
February came, you’d want to be somewhere else.”

“Oh, there’s nothing
like a winter breeze to ignite the brain particles.”

“You mean those leetle
gray cells?”

“Well, you can say one
thing. Hercule Poirot always thought he had plenty of them. He never lacked
confidence.”

I couldn’t say as much
for myself. More than once since the Colonel died I wondered if this would be
our first case that we couldn’t solve.

We wanted to be
refreshed for the next day, so Lou and I called it a night. I dropped him at
his apartment and stampeded for home. God was with me, because my next-door
neighbor wasn’t.

I woke Wednesday morning
feeling refreshed. The extra hour of sleep did wonders for me. Well, not
wonders. I wandered to the mirror and found out I looked like I looked the day
before, but I felt better. I vowed to make it a point to get an extra hour of
sleep more often. I hoped the way I felt might translate to a break in the
case. I wouldn’t tell Lou, but I made a decision to take a bubble bath and mull
over the case. Then I realized that real men don’t take bubble baths, so I
settled for just a regular bath and settled myself down in the tub. My mind
wandered to what I’d find out, not what I already knew, so I got nowhere,
except for a few wrinkles for lounging too long in the tub. During my
contemplation, I wondered what information Sam had discovered for us, and what
clue God would give Lou for the day. After realizing that no one would deliver
my breakfast to me, and I wouldn’t want anyone to see me if someone did deliver
it, I partook of my morning exercise and pulled myself from the tub. I’m not
saying that it took me a while to do so, but my arms were dry before my feet
stepped from the tub.

I dressed, read my
morning devotional, prayed that my neighbor would find a new home far away, and
called Sam.

“This is Sam I Am dining
on green eggs and ham.”

“So Sam You are, what
have you gotten for me so far?”

“Well, Cy, let’s just
say that I’ve been unable to narrow your list of suspects.”

“And that means?”

   I located someone who
saw Mrs. Hardesty at the mall a little after 10:00, but that wouldn’t prevent her from returning home and murdering her husband. And the oldest
granddaughter, Jennifer, skipped her last class yesterday. Plus, I talked to
someone in the school library who said that Jennifer’s husband, Scott, wasn’t
in there during the afternoon, like he usually is. Now on to the youngest
granddaughter, Trish. Nothing suspicious about her, but her last class ended at
1:50, so she had time to get home, do away with her grandfather, and get away
before anyone discovered her. As for Hardesty’s friend Joe, he left home at 1:00 and didn’t return until late. You saw him before he returned home. Nothing suspicious
yet about any of the neighbors. All of the ones who have jobs were at those
jobs on the day of the murder. All of the ones who don’t have jobs have alibis,
except for one elderly woman who said she was home alone and saw nothing. All I
can tell you about Bob Downey is what I found out locally. He claims that for
most of his adult life he was an over-the-road trucker who hauled for many
different people. He said he has had no home since his mother died when he was
young, and he, his dad, and his uncle traveled all the time. That’s how he
became a trucker. He told someone he has saved his money all his life, finally
got tired of drifting and decided to settle down. The only reason he gave for
settling down in Hilldale is that this was the closest town when he decided he
had had enough. The only other people I’ve had time to check on so far are the
maid and handyman, Earl and Myra Hoskins. According to the woman they worked
for that day, Myra was there all day, but Earl went out in the afternoon with a
premise of getting a part so he could fix the lawn mower. He was gone a long
time, and so far I’ve located no one who saw him while he was out. So, that’s
what I’ve so far. I went ahead and tackled the locals first, because I realized
that they would be the easiest, and I wanted to give you something to get you
started. I will start on the others today, but it might take a while to find
out about some of them.”

It bothered me that none
of the Colonel’s family had an alibi. I didn’t want the killer to be one of
them.

“Oh, Sam, you forgot
one. What about Tom Brockman, the man at the university who rents a room from
the Hardestys?”

“Oh, sorry, Cy. I’ve
gotten a little on him, too. He wasn’t in class yesterday afternoon, nor was he
in his office. I’ve yet to find an alibi for him, either.”

“Well, keep checking,
Sam. I’ll see what I can find out on this end.”

+++

I hung up from talking
to Sam and called the funeral home to check on the time of visitation and the
funeral for the Colonel. Lou and I would be at both, and in two capacities. I
learned that visitation would be today at the funeral home, from 4:00-8:00. The funeral would be tomorrow morning at 11:00 at the church.

I didn’t want to
confront the family so soon after the murder, but I wouldn’t have been as
accommodating if I didn’t know the Colonel, so I followed normal procedure.
Besides, I wanted to get it over with, so I called Martha to tell her I needed
to stop by.

“Martha. Cy. Sorry to bother
you so early, but there are some early developments in the case, and I want to
eliminate all family members as soon as possible. Is everyone home this
morning?”

“Yes. Naturally Jennifer
and Trish are skipping classes today, and Tom didn’t feel like teaching his, so
he called and got someone to cover for him.”

“Well, I’d like to stop
by this morning with just a few questions. How does 10:00 sound?”

“I guess the earlier the
better.”

“Okay, Lou and I will
see you then.”

+++

Even with an extra hour
of sleep, my stomach told me it was time to pick up Lou and head to the Blue
Moon. I had never known my stomach to lie to me, so I followed its guidance.

My luck continued. My
neighbor was nowhere to be found. Maybe she wasn’t going to show her face again
until she found a friend for Lou, and she hadn’t made a friend yet. Who am I to
spit in the face of good luck? I merely thanked God and skedaddled to Lou. I
was surprised to see him waiting at the curb.

“What’s the matter, Lou?
A skunk get into your apartment?”

“No, I knew you’d be
hungry. I wanted to save us a few precious seconds.”

“Good, you can use those
seconds to let me know God’s message for the day.”

“You will not pass ‘Go.’
You will not collect $200.”

“So what are we doing
today? Playing Monopoly or going to jail?”

“My guess is neither
one.”

“Then what does the
message mean?”

“Maybe it means we won’t
get anywhere today.”

“Then why are we out
here?”

“I don’t know about you,
Cy, but I’m out here to get breakfast.”

We continued to go back
and forth until we arrived at the Blue Moon. We were no closer to identifying
what the clue meant, but at least we managed to keep our minds off of food
until we pulled up in front of our feeding troughs.

We must’ve gotten there
early, because there were still other patrons in the diner. The nerve of some
people, infiltrating our private domain. At least we wouldn’t have to get
rough. No one was sitting on our stools.

Rosie smiled at us. We
smiled back. It’s always a good idea  to  smile  at  those  who  are  mainly 
responsible  for your paycheck, and Rosie knew which side of the bread
contained her butter. Lou and I knew that we weren’t to bite the hand that
feeds us, but to smile upon the favor that God bestows upon us. I had a little
more energy than usual, so I sort of jumped up onto the stool. I wouldn’t call
my mount graceful, and I received a low score from the Ukrainian judge. I hadn’t
yet perfected the triple Salchow, and I wouldn’t try it again.

Lou, who looked like
he’d wasted away a little more each day, sidled up to his stool and mounted it
without using his hands. Poor guy! He no longer had enough strength in his arms
to lift himself up onto his stool. I wondered how long before he’d have to
check into a nursing home.