Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Editor’s Note: The topic last week was a little too graphic, and it has been removed. It was not the quality I expect for this site If anyone was offended, I apologize. As for this week, the author was going for a “cute” story about a boy uncomfortably coming of age, sort of, since he is only ten. And I know Deviled and Glyce Yeggs. They will be having some serious discussions with him, far earlier than anticipated.

I’m the wife of Detective Staff Sergeant Deviled Yeggs, Trinity Naomi Tesla, that’s TNT, Yeggs, but most people call me Glyce, pronounced “Gliss” since it is short for Nitroglycerin.  I explode when shaken.  My husband works homicide in the big city of Tracy.  His partner is Jim Wednesday.  Poached Yeggs works with him, too, and is currently working as Jim Wednesday’s partner since my husband, Deviled Yeggs, has gone missing.

I was in my office at the house, sitting on the loveseat, reading.  Blaise entered the room.  “Mother?  Where is Father?”

I sighed, “We don’t know, dear.”

Blaise persisted, “That’s the answer for other people, but I really want to know where Father is.”

I huffed, “Honey, we must maintain that answer, or we will betray your father.  That might put him in danger.  We just do not know where he is.  We do not know if he is working on a case.  He simply grabbed a small bag of clothing and left.”

Blaise did not like that answer. “But you know more than that.  Is he coming back?  When will he be back?  Is he in trouble?  Mom, I need to know that Dad is coming home soon.”

There!  Right then and there!  Blaise called me Mom.  Okay, he called his father Dad, but Dev was not around to hear it.  He called me MOM!!!!  What do I do?  What do I say?  Should I make a fuss?  I am Nitroglycerin and I have just been shaken.  No!  NO!!!  Wrong response.  Calm down, Trinity Naomi Tesla Yeggs, calm down.  You need a hug.  The only one here is Blaise.  Not a good choice.  You have not said anything for far too long and Blaise is giving you this weird look.  Say something, Glyce, or you will certainly explode!!

“Come over here, honey, and give your Mom a big bear hug.  We can hug each other.  That way we can use that as a substitute until Dad returns.”

Blaise hugged her as best he could.  He was only ten-years-old.  He did not have the arm span or the strength to equal his father’s bear hugs, but he tried.  He said, “This does not work on so many levels.”

I agreed, but it was better than nothing.

Blaise continued to hug, and he said, “Mom, has Dad done this before?  You know, disappeared?”

He pulled away and sat next to me on the loveseat.  His question brought me back to when we had been married less than a year.  But I decided to start earlier in my story telling.

I started with our honeymoon. “Blaise, when your father and I first married, he was a patrolman here in Tracy.  He and I were both taking classes as freshmen at T.R.U.S.T.  So, it was natural that we had classes together.  I would go to his apartment to do homework.  I would get amorous, and he would work on the homework.  He would tell me that we were betrothed, but Jesus’ mother Mary kept her clothes on until after they were married.  With that in mind, we married during the Christmas break of our freshman year.  We went for a week to a cabin near Fish Creek, Florida, in the Big Bend area of Florida on the Gulf Coast.  We had gone down to a secluded area of the beach.  We had gone early to, umm, do what newlyweds do …”

Blaise interrupted, “You had sex on the beach?  Out where people could watch?!  Were you in the water or up on the sand?”

“Blaise!  Behave yourself!  We were just holding hands and kissing as we walked. Yes, I know that you know what sex is, but we must be delicate when we talk of such things.  Besides, it was high tide, in the dark, with no cabins nearby and no early morning fishermen.”  I hope he bought that. I could tell that I was turning red, and I felt a different type of explosion looming, but I suppressed it.  “The point is that on our way back to the cabin, I was picking up some great seashells as the tide was going out and your father found a dead body.  He ran back to the nearest phone, before we had cellphones, and he directed the police to the crime scene.  He had enlisted me to watch the body until his return.”

Blaise gave me a disgusted look.  “That probably changed the romantic mood in a hurry.”

“Absolutely!  I found that I could tell him that I was not in the mood after we got back to the cabin, but I learned something about your father.  He became a bloodhound or bulldog, whatever, when it came to dead bodies.  He was just a patrolman, but he noticed things that the local detective did not catch.  By the end of the week, the murderer was apprehended, mostly on the evidence that your father pointed out.  The Taylor County sheriff’s office wrote a recommendation to the Tracy Police Department, and there happened to be an opening in homicide.  I went on my honeymoon, married to a freshman in college and a patrolman in the police force, but I essentially returned from our honeymoon as a homicide detective’s wife.  It was a great promotion, but a rude awakening for both of us.  He was young and if undercover work was needed, he was recruited.”

As the tears started to flow, “Often, I would go to my parent’s house to spend a few days.  I asked my Dad to hug me, but he could not perfect the bear hugs that your father gives.  I often went to my old bedroom to ‘explode.’”

“Why didn’t you find someone else?”

“Blaise!  How dare you!  I loved your father, and I knew what he was doing was necessary, just like this time.  Your father could have given the assignment to Poached, but Poached is going to be a father soon and he needs to prepare for that.  Jim has four small children at home.  Your Dad decided he would do this with only Captain Hart knowing what he was doing, and even Captain Hart has no idea where he is.  All he told me was that the perpetrator had done nothing violent.  He said that the perpetrator had done nothing for several years as far as he knew, but in figuring out who he was and getting enough evidence for an arrest, it would solve over a half dozen cases that Sophie had pulled out of the Cold Case files.”

“Sophia?!”

“Yes, Blaise, your sister is a smart cookie.  She is smart in the same way that your Dad is smart.  She can see something that looks like a jumble of unrelated facts, and she can find how the pieces fit together.  Your Dad said that she found seven or eight cases where the suspected scene of the crime was extremely clean, cleaner than is natural, but the dead body was dumped elsewhere.  One or two might be a coincidence, but that many was suspicious.  She plotted them on a map and found that they were all on the southeast corner of Tracy.  So, we as a family have to stay away from that corner of Tracy.  Accidentally bumping into your father would be a bad thing.”

“Oh, I was hoping. …”

“Let me put on my best impersonation of your Dad,” I suggested. “Blaise, it seems like you have a problem that you want to talk to your Dad about.  Tell me.”

“It wouldn’t work.  It’s about guy stuff.”

Now, I was curious.  He was only ten.  A couple of days before, he had gone to the high school to get registration counselling and get set up for his freshmen year of high school.  What kind of guy problems could he have?

“Blaise, I am all you have right now.  You have to trust me.”

“Okay, Mom, I went to the high school the other day and I met a girl.  Just in our brief encounter, it seems that I have a girlfriend and we have already gotten to second base.”

“What?!?!?!”

“You said that I could trust you, Mom, and then you nearly explode with the first statement.”

“Yeah, Blaise, and you have not learned how to ease into things and be delicate.  Let’s slow down.  What girl?”

“She skipped a couple of grades. Not like me, but she is thirteen.  I will be eleven soon, so she is just a little over two years older.  While we were waiting to see our counselors, she said that she knew me through my reputation and that she wanted to be boyfriend / girlfriend on social media.  Mom, please, I need to get those set up.”

“Sorry, Blaise, we had been thinking about age, but now that you are in high school, I can see the need.  We will set those up this afternoon.  Now back to this mystery woman.”

“She asked me to shake on the deal of us being romantic friends.  When I reached out my hand to shake hers, she shoved my hand onto her bosom.  Then she said we had already gotten to second base.”

I shook my head, “Blaise, an accidental brush of the hand does not constitute second base.  At least I don’t think so.  It was accidental, right?”  He nodded.  “And you immediately pulled your hand away?”  He stared.  “Blaise, did you immediately pull your hand away?”  He stared.  “Blaise!!”

He whined, “But it felt good to have my hand there.  It was soft.  I had never really noticed girls before.  I had mixed feelings.  What I did was not scientific, but I was learning about something that I had never studied.”

“How long, Blaise?”

“Maybe five seconds, ten tops.”

“Who is she, Blaise?”

“Margarite Justice.  Her father is a professor of Philosophy at T.R.U.S.T.”

“I know them.  Margie was on Sophie’s softball team last summer.  Margie was the star pitcher, but they lost in the state finals.  I will give them a call.”

“No, Mom.  You’ll ruin it!”

“Sweetie, trust me.  I know her father.  He is a good man.  I want no mention of ‘second base’ on her social media accounts or yours, but if you are to be boyfriend and girlfriend, you need to have at least gone on a supervised date.  I will approach it like this.  The two of you met at school registration and found an interest.  If she wants to come over for a movie night, all available adults are invited to come and supervise.  Sounds good?”

“Okay, Mom.  I hope Dad is home by then, so he can meet her.”

I smiled and said nothing.  I wanted Dev home right now for so many new reasons.  What was next?  Sophie finding a boyfriend?  Please, doing this alone is a nightmare.

“And Blaise, absolutely no experimentation between you two at any level, ‘scientific’ or otherwise.  Understand?!”

He nodded and left, but he never said out loud that he wasn’t going to apply any ‘science’ to their relationship.  This was going to become something strange.  I said to the ceiling, “Dev, come home soon.”

Credits

Margarite Justice is named for Margarite St. Just, the wife of Sir Percy in one of my favorite novels, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.