Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

I have been “partnered” with my daughter Sophia in the past, but this is a report of her unauthorized involvement in an active investigation.  Analyzing things in the office, fine for a fourteen-year-old.  Questioning a suspect while wearing a wire …  Well, Poached should have his head examined, regardless of the outcome.  I am thinking of building a little doghouse and putting a Poached name tag over the opening to give him a strong hint.

As I have cobbled the story together, here is what happened from Sophie’s point of view.  The first person is Sophie:

Margie had told me that we were meeting Josie at the ballfield.  Josie was Margie’s catcher this past softball season.  Josie had called and she asked Margie to have me come to the park too.  I asked Aunt Tensie for a half day vacation.  Aunt Tensie got a big laugh out of that.  Neither I or Blaise get paid an hourly wage or a salary with expected work hours.  All jobs that make a profit are split four ways.  We each share in the profits equally, but Blaise and I get money added to our college fund.  A third goes to Aunt Tensie, but since she has no need for money at the moment – Aunt Pink has Aunt Tensie staying at no charge because it means Blaise and I spend more time at Lily the Pink – Aunt Tensie gives us some cash for incidentals, like an energy bar and a large soft drink for my snack during a softball workout.  The fourth portion goes to “Design by Tensie” in case we have a project on “speculation,” speculation that we might invent something useful and people might buy it.

Margie said, “This is the field, but I don’t see Josie.  She said to bring you and both of us needed to be dressed for a softball workout.  I think she wanted you to stand in the batter’s box and try to hit my pitches.

I suggested, “The sun is beating down and it’s getting hot, maybe she is cooling off in the dugout.”

We found Josie in the dugout, wearing a sun dress, and crying.

“Why are you not dressed for practice?” Margie asked.

Josie said, “I just wanted you two to look like you were about to practice.  That way nobody thinks anything strange is going on.  I want some time to talk to both of you in private.”

I suggested, “Aunt Tensie has a soundproof room in her lab.  That is very private.  Good thing it only locks from the inside.  No one would hear you outside the room.”

Josie put her chin on her chest and stared at the dust on the dugout floor.  “I don’t want anyone to know about this except you two.”

Margie slid in next to Josie and took her hand.  Josie was about to be a senior at Flintheart High School, Margie a sophomore and I would be an incoming freshman.  Margie asked, “What’s wrong?  We’ll help.  We need to stick together.  You are my battery mate.”

Josie shook her head, “Not this next season.  I don’t think so.”

Margie leaned down to catch Josie’s gaze, “But you and I work well together.  We are a team.  You and I won a lot of games this year.  Why would you not be my catcher?”

Josie burst into fresh tears.  “Because I’m pregnant, Margie.”

Margie leaned back against the wall, “But you aren’t part of the ‘club.’  As far as I know, you don’t have a boyfriend.  How?”

Josie said, “I have been getting math tutoring from Brandon Stanton.  He just graduated.  We have been seeing each other for three years.  My Mom thought I was Valedictorian material and my freshman Algebra grade was about “C” material.  She asked around and Brandon, although just a year older was recommended.  He had two or three clients already.  Brandon taught me Algebra in a way that made sense.  Math came alive as he described it.  At the end of my freshman year, he handed me this note.”  She handed me the note.  It was a code and then an Algebra problem that solved the code for A, B, C, D.  Since I had not taken Algebra, I simply studied the code for a couple of minutes.

She continued, “He said that if I could solve the difficult problem, I could ace the test on anything the teacher might ask in Algebra 1, then if I solved the code, he would give me a surprise.”

I asked, “Well?  Did you kiss him?”

Josie looked confused, “You don’t know Algebra do you, you just finished eighth grade.”

I gave her back the message, “But I have been solving coded messages since I could read.  My great GrandPa and I used to communicate that way.  The message reads, ‘If you ace the test, I think I deserve a kiss.’  Was it more than a kiss?”

Josie looked embarrassed, but she was a little angry with me also.  “No, that was the end of my freshman year.  We started kissing, and that is all we did through my sophomore year.  But this year, he demanded something more if our ‘relationship’ was to have meaning.  But I did not want to have sex until after high school.  My sister was born when my mother was fourteen.  My sister was part of the ‘club’ as you call it.  They have never given it a name.  I guess ‘club’ is okay.  She got pregnant at fourteen, but the ‘club’ insists on abortions if you screw up.  A year later, my sister said she came to the realization that she had killed the baby.  She became suicidal.  It took a lot of counseling, but she just got married and Mom might be a grandmother with both daughters having a baby when our mother is 35.  But I wanted to spare my mother of that.  And I will not get an abortion.  I do not want to go through what my sister went through.”

I asked, “Do you go to church?”

“No, why?”

I said, “Our church has a good support program for expectant single mothers.  They have free counseling, a diaper bank that acts like a food bank, all kinds of things, even group counseling so you can find other Moms that may share babysitting and that kind of thing when the time comes.  You don’t have to be a church member either.”

Josie nodded, “I’ll look into it when the time comes, but that is not why I asked you to come here.”

Margie asked, “You stopped your story.  You were not willing to have a physical relationship beyond kissing, but now you are pregnant.  What did this creep Brandon do to you?  We have a bat here.  We can rearrange his thinking.”

Josie looked shocked, “I thought you two were goody two-shoes Christians!”

Margie shrugged, “Okay, maybe we just threaten him.”

Josie started crying again.  “There’s no need.  Brandon is dead and as far as I know, my dad killed him.”

I said, “Woah, what brought on that response, and we still don’t know what Brandon did.”

“Okay,” Josie shrugged, “I thought if I let him let his fingers do the walking and we kept our clothes on, I couldn’t get pregnant.”  Margie and I groaned.  “But after an away game, Brandon picked me up and told the coach he had a permission slip to take me home.  I think he forged it.  He drove to the Hoity Toity Club where there is a make out spot.  I was in uniform, so what we normally did became clunky, and I thought, just this once, he could take my clothes off.  After all, he could still be fully dressed, and I was safe.  When he had me moaning in ecstasy, … sorry, too graphic?  … Anyway I felt something other than his hand.  I said, “No, but I was really enjoying what he was doing.  He always knew exactly what to do to make my blood boil.  I said “No” a few times, but I was only saying that because I did not want to get pregnant.  I was enjoying it otherwise.  Then, I remembered that my sister had unprotected sex a lot before she got pregnant, but not me.  The first and only time and I am expecting a baby early next year.  I may not be in good shape by softball season, and I don’t know if I could find babysitting anyway.  I told my Mom that I refused to go away for my senior year.  She and Dad demanded an abortion, but I refused.  Then Dad said that he was going to have a talk with Brandon and if he did not cooperate, he was dead.”

I shrugged, “A lot of people say things like that, and they don’t mean it literally.”

“But Dad called and said Brandon was dead!”

Margie asked, “But did he say he did it?”

Josie shook her head.  “He said he was dead when he got there.”

I suggested, “If your Dad can prove his timeline, he might be able to prove he was somewhere else at the time.  Let’s not jump to any conclusions.”

Josie looked me in the eye and said, “That’s why I asked you to be here.  I heard you solve murders.  I want this one not solved.  If the case points to Dad, I need someone else to take the blame.”

“Woah,” I said, “My Dad is in charge of homicide.  He won’t just focus on your Dad.  He’ll follow every lead. And manufacturing another suspect is something I will not do.  Not even to save your Dad from prison.  But I will investigate.  Dad’s the lieutenant these days, so I can ask my cousin Poached for help.  He and Jim Wednesday will be the guys at the scene.  Poached will know who they suspect.  He’ll also have a timeline for the time of death.  It will be a window, so it may not help your Dad.  That’s the best I can do, Josie.”

Josie repeated, “Just make sure you find someone else.”  She got up crying and walked out of the dugout.

Margie sighed, “That was a bombshell.  What do we do?”

“What do you mean ‘WE’?  I’m the teenaged detective.”

“Haven’t you ever heard about a sidekick?  I bet I can kick you in the side easily.  Besides, it gives me more time to go kissy-face all over your brother.”

“Ugh!  Don’t remind me!”

In the meantime, Poached and Jim had got a fairly loose time of death.  It was outdoors with varying climate factors, but fairly recent.  The only real suspect was Josie’s Dad, but he called 911, trying to make it anonymous, but the phone identified it as his phone.  He said he had found the body.  He then fled the scene, which does not look good for him.  Jim found a grocery receipt near the body and the credit card used ended with the same last four as one of Josie’s father’s cards.  We had no other suspect.  And Josie’s father had not gone home either.  His credit card was pinged at a hotel in Stout County, and Tuesday Wednesday was asked to check it out. Stout County had Josie’s Dad in custody awaiting us to pick him up.

Back with Sophie, and her first job as an unlicensed private eye, with her kick in the side friend who wanted to go kissy-face all over our youngest son:

“Okay, boss,” Margie said, “We had our second interview with Josie, and we have talked to a few others.  Have we found someone else to take the fall for killing Brandon Stanton.”

I sat at the picnic table in the park where we sat after Josie left.  I had my hands folded, like I was praying, but I put my elbows on the table, rested my chin on my thumbs, and then I extended my index fingers and tapped them together in front of my nose.  I had to digest everything she just said, and then combine that with what others had said.

“Okay,” I said, “Let me see if I have a true side kick or if you are just someone who might kick me in the side when I’m not looking.  As we asked Josie for the excruciatingly painful details, how did she describe Brandon?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did she say, over and over again.  She even said it in the first interview.”

Margie said, “She said that Brandon knew what he was doing.  He knew how to make her feel wonderful and lose control.  His hands knew exactly what they were doing.”

I unfolded my hands and smiled, “I think I’ll keep you around, side kick.  And what, in your experience or that of friends and family, do you know about someone who is young and just trying to obtain that first kiss?”

“Well, when your brother kissed me the first …”

“No, Yuck!  Margie, you are talking about my kid brother.  I am just getting to like him a little bit.  You have actually kissed him on the lips!  Do you have any idea where those lips have been?!  Yuck, Margie!  If you have to use an example, make up a couple of names and say it’s a friend of yours, please!  PLEASE!!”

“Gee, Soap, he’s the only boy, ummm.  You’re the only friend, ummm.  Okay, when Fred first kissed Wilma…”

“The Flintstones?  Really?!”

Margie huffed, “Soap, you are making this hard.  Let’s see. ‘Meet George Jetson, his boy Elroy, daughter Judy,’  yeah, yeah, ‘Jane, his wife!!’  The first time George kissed Jane, he missed her lips, bounced off her nose and caught her jaw.”

I asked, “My brother is that bad of a kisser?”

Margie shook her head, “I wasn’t talking about your brother.  The Jetsons, season three, episode 5, A look back at when we first met.  It was George and Jane Jetson.  I would place money on it.”

I shook my head, “Wow, when you commit to something, you commit!  As far as you kissing my stinking little brother, I think you should be committed to an asylum, but you make a point.  Brandon was experienced at love making before Josie came along.  Maybe an old flame got a little miffed when he started branching out.  After all, how much effort did Jane have to go through, how many missed lips kisses, before George got good at it?  No, no, no!  Forget I asked that, even with changing the names to George and Jane, it’s just too much to handle on a full stomach.  I’m starting to get sick!”

Margie just giggled, but she hinted that the extra practice was fun.

And maybe in a couple of days, we might see where this story ends up.

Credits

When I ran Cub Scout Day Camp for three years in our scouting district, I had a hard time finding volunteers to take a week of vacation.  I loved it when schoolteachers volunteered since the camp was in the summer when the boys were out of school.  One year, I had a spunky woman that I found out two things that were shocking: 1) She was roughly the same age as my wife, and we had two boys 11 and 8 at the time.  Our eight-year-old was in this woman’s den during that camp session.  I was the camp director, and my wife was the program director (basically the administrative person who set everything in motion and got all the necessary supplies each day), while I was the emcee and the discipline person (think literally hugging a tree while the rest of the den was playing a game).  And 2) She was a grandmother of one of the boys in her den, an eight-year-old.  That meant that she and her daughter had to have given birth near their fourteenth birthday.  This woman had straightened her life out, and she was the best den leader that I had that summer, and frankly the best over the three years of running camps.

And before you pull out your full collection of Jetsons cartoons, Margie was just making up the season and episode.