Whack A Mole: A John Ceepak Mystery (The John Ceepak Mysteries)

  “Awesome,” says Olivia. “So Danny, Becca's been trying to text you for like two hours.”

  Becca Adkinson is another one of our mutual friends. She and her family run the Mussel Beach Motel over, as the name suggests, near the beach.

  “What's up?”

  “You and Aubrey Hamilton. She's willing to give you a second chance.”

  Aubrey is the girl Olivia and my buddy Jess tried to fix me up with last night.

  “Becca set it all up. Tonight. Nine-thirty. The Sand Bar. Be there. On time, this time!”

  Olivia shoots me a wink and bustles away with her clattering tray.

  “Have I met this girl Aubrey?” Ceepak asks.

  “Maybe. Waitress. Rusty Scupper.” When I'm nervous, I tend to speak in quick, incoherent bursts.

  “Nice girl?”

  “Oh, yeah. Very, you know, nice. Real nice.”

  “You know, Danny, I suspect your friends think it's time you moved on. Tested the romantic waters.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “When one door closes, another door opens.”

  “Yeah,” I crack, “but it's hell in the hallway.”

  “You still miss Katie?”

  I'm about to say, “Nah,” when I remember Ceepak's Code. Not only won't he lie, cheat, or steal, he also won't tolerate anybody who does. I am, therefore, once again compelled to tell him the truth.

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  He nods his head like the big brother I never had.

  “Understandable. Katie is a wonderful woman.”

  “Yeah. Must be why she moved all the way across the country to get away from me.”

  Now Ceepak shakes his head. “Not you, Danny. The memories. Her secret sadness. I believe Springsteen says it best….”

  Of course he does.

  “‘Some day they just cut it loose, cut it loose or let it drag 'em down.’”

  He's quoting “Darkness on the Edge of Town” again.

  “Danny, Katie had to cut herself free from Sea Haven and what happened here or it would have dragged her down for the rest of her life.”

  As usual, The Boss and Ceepak are correct, but it doesn't really make me feel any better. So, I tear open another cracker wrapper.

  Ceepak tilts his wrist, checks his watch.

  “You should definitely meet up with this young lady. Aubrey. It's only twenty-fifteen. Finish your soup and we'll swing by the house so you can pick up your Jeep.”

  “Don't you want to go talk to Trumble like Gus suggested? He's right, you know. A lot of the teenage runaways eventually end up there.”

  “10-4. However, I feel it might be best if we pay the Reverend a visit first thing tomorrow morning while he's serving breakfast. I find people are often most forthcoming when they're too busy to play games or plot deceptions. Who knows—maybe our redheaded friend will be there as well.”

  The thief from the beach. I had forgotten all about her.

  Ceepak leans back in the booth and stares off into space, his face softening. I swivel in my seat to see what he sees, what he's smiling at.

  Of course. It's Rita. She's over by the bar with her soft blonde hair backlit by the golden glow of a neon Corona Beer sign. She beams back at him and waves something in our general direction.

  “Wonder what that might be….” As if she heard him, Rita does a quick scan of her crowded tables to make sure everybody has everything they need for the next two seconds, and then darts across the dining room to join us.

  “Look you guys—T. J. went to the top of the Empire State Building!”

  She puts a postcard down on our table.

  “That's wonderful,” says Ceepak.

  “John, he's having such a great time….”

  Ceepak sort of blushes. He doesn't want the whole world knowing he paid for Rita's sixteen-year-old kid to go see King Kong's perch. Not that he's embarrassed about doing it. It's praise that usually makes Ceepak feel all squirmy. I think it's why he never talks about the ton of medals he earned in the Army.

  “Neither one of us can ever thank you enough,” says Rita. “He went to Greenwich Village and this free rock concert in Central Park….”

  Ceepak allows a slight smile to cross his lips.

  “I never could have afforded to send him up to my sister's … not on my own … I mean not with everything else … you know, back-to-school clothes and school supplies and….”

  “Rita, I'm very glad to hear that T. J.'s having fun,” Ceepak says softly. “He's a good kid.”

  Rita leans down because she can't resist giving him a quick peck on the cheek.

  Ceepak's grin grows so wide his wiggling dimples look like parentheses quivering on either side of his nose.

  Rita giggles when she finds a tear in her eye.

  “Look at me. I'm a mess.” She dabs it away with her thumb. “Thanks again, honey.”

  “You are very welcome.”

  Romance fills the air. Almost enough to cover up the smell of overcooked broccoli and lobster brine. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky. If not tonight, sometime soon. If not Aubrey, someone else.

  “He'll be home on Friday,” says Rita, composing herself, brushing invisible wrinkles out of her crisp white blouse. “They need him on the boardwalk. Apparently, they're expecting big crowds on account of the Sand Castle Competition.”

  T. J. works part-time at this game booth on the boardwalk, helping people lose their money by flinging rubber rings at two-liter Coke bottles in a frantic attempt to win their girlfriend some kind of cuddly stuffed monkey.

  “Miss?”

  A man three tables away, a huge man with a napkin tucked under his three chins and a glob of sour cream dotting the tip of his nose, is waving his arm like a little boy who needs permission to use the bathroom.

  “We need more butter, miss.”

  “Right away!” Rita says.

  She scoots into the kitchen. Ceepak watches her fly through the swinging double doors. I look down and check out T. J.'s postcard. Naturally it reminds me of the one Mary Guarneri sent her mother all those years back. The one she signed “Ruth,” for whatever reason. When I look up, I can tell Ceepak is thinking the exact same thing. He pushes his chowder bowl aside and reaches into a cargo pants pocket to pull out a stack of Polaroids.

  “Let's recap. What do we have thus far?” he asks rhetorically as he flips his evidence photographs down on the table like Uno cards. “The two jars left at the museum. The name Ruth written on the one label—the same name Mary Guarneri used on her postcard home to her mother. The Lisa earring.” He flips down another Polaroid. “We also have the museum guest book.”

  “We should check all those names—the people who came in before the Pepper family.”

  “Roger that.” He flips down two more pictures. “We have Cap'n Pete's treasure: the milk carton and Mary's charm bracelet.”

  “Yeah. Guess she lost it before she changed her name.”

  Ceepak agrees. Taps the “Mary” charm.

  “What's that?”

  Rita has come out of the kitchen with a big bowl of melted butter for the heart-attack-waiting-to-happen over at table fifteen. She's staring at the charm bracelet picture.

  Ceepak deftly flips over the more gruesome photos.

  “A charm bracelet Captain Pete found buried in the sand.”

  Rita looks surprised. “He actually found something?”

  Ceepak nods. “On Oak Beach. Close to where I found the high-school ring.”

  Rita leans down for a closer look.

  “Cool,” she says. She focuses on the tiny doodads strung along the chain. “I had a kitten charm like that….”

  “Miss?” Tubby at table fifteen must smell his butter.

  Rita taps the picture.

  “I had that one, too,” she says.

  “Which one?” asks Ceepak.

  “The church,” she says. “Reverend Billy gave it to me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  We wait while Rita serv
es the big man his butter.

  “Anything else?”

  The guy's mouth is a mush pit of half-chewed broccoli and bread. “I need more sour cream.” He says this while stuffing the crusty heel of a dinner roll into his face.

  “No problem.” Rita dashes back toward the kitchen.

  Now Ceepak's the one holding up his hand, trying to catch the waitress's attention by waggling his fingers.

  Rita sees him. Stops before she hits the doors.

  “You guys need more chowder? More crackers, Danny?”

  “Negative,” says Ceepak. He taps the charm bracelet photograph. “However, I would like to discuss….”

  “Sure. I'll be right back.”

  Boom. She hustles into the kitchen.

  “Actually, I could use a couple more crackers,” I say. Waverly Wafers. You can never have enough.

  Boom. Rita cannonballs out the double doors with a quart-sized mountain of sour cream scooped into a salad bowl.

  “Here you go, sir,” she says to Tubby, who has too much bread and meat in his mouth to even mumble anymore.

  “Miss?”

  A woman with a helmet of hard hair is tapping her lipstick-rimmed coffee cup with an index finger—the universal symbol for fill-'er-up.

  “Regular, right?” Rita's still smiling.

  “Right.”

  While she's on her way to the coffee pots, a woman at another table—with what looks like all her sisters and their husbands—holds up a half-full breadbasket.

  “Excuse me? Miss? We need more of the rolls with the salty tops … not the brown ones … no one likes the brown ones….”

  Rita, that smile permanently planted in place, grabs the basket.

  “No problem.”

  When she gets to the Bunn coffee warmer, this old guy nearby tugs on her skirt with one hand, slurps his coffee with the other.

  “I could use a little more decaf.”

  “Of course.”

  The guy holds out his cup like a beggar under the boardwalk.

  Suddenly, Ceepak slides out of our booth and marches toward the center of the dining room. As he walks, he unpins the badge on his shirt, holds the shiny shield in the palm of his right hand, raises it high above his head.

  This is so cool: Ceepak's going to tin the entire dining room.

  “Ladies? Gentlemen? May I have your attention please? I am Officer John Ceepak of the Sea Haven Police Department.”

  People turn. Forks lower. Chewing ceases. Even Tubby shuts his trap.

  “Because of an ongoing police investigation, your waitress will be temporarily unavailable to serve you. If you require anything, kindly wait until Ms. Lapczynski returns to the floor in approximately five minutes. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your dinners. Ms. Lapczynski?”

  Ceepak tilts his head, indicating that Rita should follow us outside. Immediately. She is trying very hard not to laugh. With a big grin on her face, she accompanies us out the front door and into the parking lot.

  • • •

  “He gave one to all the girls who came to the Life Under the Son Ministry. The church roof tilts back. And inside are these teeny little pews. I think I still have it somewhere….”

  Ceepak watches her closely.

  “When exactly did you go there first?”

  Rita drops her head. “1991. Sixteen years ago.” She waits a second. Then looks up. “When I was pregnant with T. J.”

  Ceepak nods. I see no judgment in his eyes. Neither does Rita, so she continues.

  “I was just a kid. I made a mistake.”

  “We all make mistakes.” Ceepak's voice is steady but soft. “That's …”

  “You're not going to tell me ‘that's why your pencil has an eraser’ again, are you?”

  In fact, Ceepak probably was going to tell her exactly that, because that's what he always says whenever somebody else goofs up.

  “No, ma'am.”

  “Good. Because T. J. isn't a mistake.”

  “Of course not.”

  “His father was long gone. I'd only known him for a few weeks. We were kids, John. Teenagers hanging out on the beach. He was just this cute boy, a summertime fling. He lived outside Philly, I think.”

  She pauses. Ceepak nods again, encouragingly.

  “Anyway, I stayed there at the Inn for a couple months. My parents wanted nothing to do with me. I'd come down here with a bunch of friends from high school, all of us looking for summer jobs. We rented a cheap apartment. Slept three to a room. My bed was an air mattress on the floor.”

  Been there. Done that.

  “When I told my mother I was pregnant, she said if I was grown up enough to get knocked up, I remember that's what she called it, knocked up….”

  Her lips curl into a sad, remembering smile.

  “She said if I thought I was mature enough to become a mother, then fine—I could fend for myself. She wouldn't help. Neither would my father.”

  “But Reverend Billy would?”

  Rita nods. “Hate the sin, love the sinner. That's his motto. He fed us. Gave us motel beds to sleep in. Even put us in touch with doctors and counselors and social workers. Of course he wanted me to confess my sins, accept Christ, and be born again.”

  “How so?”

  “He used to do these surf baptisms. Not as much as he did back in the ’80s, but every now and then. You'd walk out into the ocean at low tide, all the way out to where the waves were breaking. He'd say a few prayers, you'd ask Jesus for forgiveness, accept him as your personal savior, and then Reverend Billy would, you know, dunk you backward under the water three times.”

  “So, you were you baptized by Reverend Billy?”

  “No. I kept putting him off. Told him I wasn't ready. He told me to keep praying on it. And I did. But then I met this very nice woman who stopped by the motel one day to donate some food. She was a little older than me—not much, maybe five years. We started talking. She told me she had been in my ‘situation’ herself a few years back. Even spent time with Reverend Billy at the motel. Her own pregnancy ended badly.”

  “Abortion?”

  “Miscarriage. Anyway, I guess she took pity on me. The next thing I know, she's offering me a job in this store she just opened—plus free room and board in the small apartment above the shop. She even gave me paid maternity leave when T. J. was born, though I'd only been working for her a couple months.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Yes. A very good one. In fact, she's currently one of this town's most prominent and respected merchants. Nobody knows about her past and how she almost became an unwed mother at the age of eighteen. No one knows that she put in time at The Sonny Days Inn. She'd like to keep it that way. So would I.”

  I don't think that was the answer Ceepak was looking for when he asked, “Does she have a name.” I think a simple “Michele” or “Judy” would've sufficed.

  Ceepak stares at Rita.

  “She sounds like a wonderful woman,” he says.

  “She is.”

  “I'd like to meet her.”

  “And you will. If and when you really need to.”

  Ceepak considers his options. Makes his decision.

  “Thank you,” he says. “I appreciate that.”

  Rita looks down.

  “I'm sorry I never….”

  “It's all good. If we absolutely need to talk to this woman, I'm certain you will provide us with her name.”

  “I promise,” says Rita.

  “You don't have to. You already said you would do it. Your word is good enough for me.”

  Rita turns to face me.

  “Are you okay with this, Officer Boyle?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “Me, too. Your word's good to go.”

  “Thank you, Danny.”

  “No problem. Hey, like Ceepak says: ‘Everybody's got a secret, Sonny.’”

  Rita laughs. “That's not Ceepak. That's Springsteen.”

  I wink at her. “Same difference.”

 
One of the cell phones clipped to Ceepak's belt chirps. He wears two of them. I'm not exactly sure why.

  “Excuse me,” he says and flips open the silver clamshell. “This is Ceepak. Yes, Chief. Right. Roger that. Will do.”

  This can't be good. The chief doesn't work nights. He clocks out at five or five thirty. Then again, the poor guy has to wear a suit and tie every day. I'll stick with late nights, bad coffee, and hitting the streets. We get to wear shorts in the summer.

  Ceepak snaps his phone shut.

  “Danny? You may want to contact Ms. Aubrey Hamilton and postpone your date at The Sand Bar. We need to be at The Treasure Chest. ASAP.”

  “Everything okay?” asks Rita. “My tables must be going crazy.”

  “Something's come up.”

  “Something serious?”

  Ceepak nods.

  “Going to be a long night?”

  “Definite possibility.”

  “Okay. Uhm, do you need me to take the dog out for a walk later? After I'm done here?”

  “I'd appreciate it. So would Barkley.”

  “What's going on, John?”

  “I'd rather not say at this juncture.”

  When Ceepak starts using words like “juncture,” you know he's shifting back into supercop mode. Typically, you also stop asking him questions.

  “Okay.” Rita reaches out, squeezes Ceepak's left hand. “You be safe, you hear?”

  “Will do.”

  “Promise?”

  “I give you my word.”

  “Rita?” Olivia has found us. “They need us inside. Time to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ at the four-top up front.”

  “I really gotta run.”

  “Us, too.”

  “Okay.” Rita finally lets go of Ceepak's hand. As soon as she and Olivia are through the door, he turns to me.

  “An employee at The Treasure Chest souvenir shop at 105 Ocean Avenue just discovered a severed human nose floating in a jar of formaldehyde.”

  “A nose?”

  “Affirmative.”

  It's like we're playing Whack-A-Mole. Body parts keep popping up all over town.

  “Was there a label on the jar?”

  Ceepak nods.

  “Miriam. 1980.”