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.

Poached was back from the Everglades and he said he has an all-over tan.  There is no way any of us are going to demand he prove it.  Besides, Callie said they wore swimsuits almost the entire time.  They were trying to make a baby for part of the time.  Poached and Georges had a full day to get used to each other being in the same precinct.  They were both partners on patrol before Poached moved to homicide due to being a dead body magnet – finding several of them while on patrol, and Georges not finding them – curious.  But then Georges got his due reward and his move to Organized Crime.  Georges was an excellent interviewer.  But now, since they are back in the precinct together and Georges has a private office (until we need a fourth interview room), Georges has the private office due to being in Organized Crime duty while Jim and Poached are still in the squad room.

But once Poached saw the video of Georges making love to Jazz Apple, there was a new conversation to which I had to put a stop.  Disgusting, but then again, they had been friends for a while.

I was dragging.  I had a strange dream in the middle of the night, and I could not go back to sleep.  Lucky, it was a light workday.  At least it started slow.

At the morning meeting, I suggested that Jim and Poached split the Cold Cases.

Poached whined, “Ah, lieutenant, Sophie has already cherry-picked the ones that had a ghost of a chance of being solved.  All that is left are the ones with no discernable evidence.”

I growled, “Poached, the ones that Sophia solved are the ones that you, Jim, and I thought had no more discernible evidence and nothing tied with anything else.  Having a little teenaged code breaker in the family is not a bad thing.  Now, put your code breaking cap on and get to work.”

Gisele came in over the intercom, since she controlled the mute button on her end, “Now, Poached is officially back.  It has been about seven weeks since I heard that whine.  Welcome back, Poached.  Love you.  And don’t hit the speaker box.  That does not turn me off, but if you break it, you pay for it.  Orders of my hubby, the Captain.”

For those that do not know, Gisele was the widow of an officer that was killed in the line of duty a long time ago, but she had been the precinct’s secretary from before then, back before the captain made the promotion to lieutenant.  In the meantime, Captain Al Hart had a wife who was dying of an incurable disease that took a long time to finally take her life.  Capt. Hart was a grumpy bear and tyrant at work with the double duty of being the precinct captain and full-time caregiver.  When his wife passed, Gisele helped the transition, but the two had worked together for so many years, there was already an odd relationship.  So, they got married once they worked out a deal that she would not lose her survivor pension when she married Al.  Actually, she cashed it in, and they paid some bills with enough left over to go to Thailand on their honeymoon.  That is where Gisele got her purple hair, and she liked it so much, her hair is still purple, just with dyes that are not so damaging to the hair itself.  With her daughter from the first marriage going purple also, my wife, Glyce (or Naomi to some) going blue, and Pink Lady going pink, the four became the Purple Four singing group, but then a little teenager with red hair joined them, Menzie MacDougall, who often sings solo at the Snazzy Taz Jazz club in Tracy.  The Purple Four plus Menzie usually just sing weddings, and usually only when Gisele’s daughter Lilith is in town (a full-time student at Liberty U. where she married her partner in songwriting).

I turned to Georges, “And Georges, maybe the two of us can figure out what is going on with Organized Crime after our successful raid soon after Lt. Tagliolini’s demise.  I know you have enough evidence to bring in the small guys at the bottom, but we need to get to the higher ups.  Empire had an excuse, and we had no concrete evidence to hold him during the raid.”

Georges shrugged, “Really, you are pretty much read into what I have, a lot of loose ends.  I am staying away from Jazz for a while.  For one, I must stay away until Jochebed’s potion wears off.  I do not wish to have a repeat of what I did to get the last information.  But I met with the drummer, sitting in adjacent stalls at the Snazzy Taz restroom in the dressing room area, with someone guarding the door so we were the only ones in there.  We do not know if Empire Apple has someone watching the little drummer boy.  He has relayed very little from Jazz.  I think Empire is distancing himself from those he does not trust.  At least, that’s better than killing them.”

Poached moaned, “But killing them gives Jim and me something to do instead of Cold Cases.”

I ignored Poached wanting someone to get murdered to solve his boredom, but I grunted, “Something to do.  Can I tell you about a dream that I had last night?”

All three were willing to do anything other than Cold Cases and trying to tie loose ends together.

I huffed, “I dreamed that I ate something that caused me to either die and go to a strange kind of Heaven or go into a parallel universe.  But it was weird.”

Jim asked, “How so?”

I replied, “For one thing, it is like the very little we know about Heaven.  No pain, no death, no sin, no crying.  But I had to have a job.  But since I was a homicide detective and there was no sin, no pain, no death, what was I qualified to do?”

Jim said, “You teach three Sunday school classes in your limited spare time.”

I sighed, “With Jesus right there to answer everyone’s questions, there is no need for Sunday school.  And what is Sunday when there is no day and night?”

Georges said, “But you started this mission project to feed the homeless.”

I shrugged, “Everyone in Heaven has a mansion.  There is no homeless there.  There is no hunger there.  That might relate to a pain, you know.  It’s kind of like dying worked me out of a job.”

Poached asked, “You turned the Christmas breakfast into a fulltime mission project?”

Jim groaned, “Read the reports every now and then, Poached!”

Poached shrugged, “I was in Florida getting a tan, Jim!”

Georges asked, “Is Callie expecting?”

Poached made a gesture that indicated that he had no idea.

I said, “Poached, Callie being pregnant is something that takes less investigative skill than a Cold Murder Case.”

Poached nodded, “But we were really unable to do a lot while observing the birds.  We made it back to the keys to the beachside resort, and that period of getting reacquainted hasn’t been the required time since then for the test to be accurate.”

I nodded, “I’ll buy that excuse, for now.”

Gisele got the subject back on my mission work.  “But Dev, what is going on with the mission to feed the homeless?”

I sighed, “We are moving toward a weekly food distribution, but for now we are focusing on the second and fourth Thursdays.  For those that get some kind of government check, they are fine for the first couple of weeks.  We don’t have enough data on how much food to cook, but we are gearing up for maybe two different locations eventually.  Dorothy Cahn, umm, Dot Com is halting her apartment construction in the building across the street from the mission.  She has the first floor renovated into family dwellings, and she was starting on the second floor, but since this can be considered an extension to her mission work, reaching people she has been unable to reach, she is having the designers design some food warehouse space that might be two-stories tall within the building and an industrial sized kitchen.  Our biggest find was Thomas ver Waarloosd who is technically a mission resident, but he works at Lily the Pink fulltime, going to school fulltime, and he is involved in everything from helping with the cooking, supplying all the baking since he works in the bakery, and he tracks how many people are fed, so once we have enough data, we will know how much food to prepare.  He is making a list of known food allergies, so we can have some ingredients on the side that could be added.  Right now, the cooking is all at Lily the Pink.  Pink Lady says that the only thing that is getting thin on the normal business side are the shift relief people who are working more for the mission and not available part of the time to pull someone’s shift, but she says it is not crippling the organization yet.  She has a new mission person who is looking into her human resources issues.  And as far as police presence, they handle the food serving and making sure everybody is welcomed.  The pastors around town were the ones who suggested Thursday afternoon late.  Not as many church activities and they are setting up a rotation for the message.  Amy G. Dala bought us a food truck, but so far, we have used the caterer style warmers for the food cooked at Lily the Pink.  We have used the food truck for hot dogs, burgers, and that kind of thing.  And Amy talked to Emmett Dalton and the Snazzy Taz band.  She purchased the right sized sound system.  The preacher does not have to yell.  The singers have microphones.  And the band has a keyboard, drums, and a couple of guitars, but a lot of the time, we only need the keyboard.  And for now, we have parked the food truck at Lily the Pink, storing most of the sound equipment in a maintenance bay that Jim Kaiser had reserved for changing oil for the Lily the Pink fleet.  My head is swimming with the details, but it is God at work to know that the volunteering and donations have not overlapped.  We get what we need when we need it.  Of course, Amy and Pink provide matching funds for donations, and we have gotten airtime with all the radio and television stations in Tracy.  Central Baptist, Diet Smith and Vitamin Flintheart high schools are all giving bonus points for community service to help out, and we’ve mostly used them to spread the word around the communities.”

I looked at my three detectives that were sitting there while I talked to Gisele.  I said, “Now, you three, go do some detecting.”  They filed out of the office laughing and joking with one another.

Gisele then said over the voice box, “Dev, you are a good man.  Do not let the evil one trick you with a weird dream.  The real Heaven is going to be wonderful, and you will have plenty to do that is within your skill set.  You love people.  You care about them.  I think we will have a lot of that when we get there.  No pity party my friend.  And definitely, no dreading going to Heaven.  Those people in Florida have the wrong idea, the happiest place anywhere in the universe is going to be in Heaven, or the New Earth, once that thing gets here.”

I had to ask, “Is this God giving me a pep talk or the crazy purple-haired secretary that runs the precinct?”

Gisele answered, “I might hear a rumble of thunder, but does it matter when I’m right?!”

A booming deep voice said, “Don’t worry about what Heaven will be like.  Keep doing good works here.  You only have an assigned amount of time here on earth, lieutenant.”

There was a long pause.  The silence was getting uncomfortable.

I asked, “Gisele, did you hear that?”

“Yes.”

“Gisele, was that you with a voice altering device.”

“Nope!”  Gisele said.  “While you do your usual detecting work, I am going to call in the electrician to see if we have someone tapped into our system.”

I suggested, “Maybe it was the Man Upstairs?  You did say you thought you heard some thunder.”

“But, I didn’t think He did things like that, Dev.  You would have a better idea.  You are the one that teaches three Bible studies each week.” And Gisele was off.  I could tell when she mutes me, the pitch of the buzz in the speaker changes.

Credits

A reminder: Dr. Callie Johnson Yeggs, wife of Poached, is an ornithologist who researches changes in bird migrations as sea levels change.  Thus, Scarlett Ibis Yeggs, their daughter, stays with Pink Lady while Callie does her data collection in the Everglades and Poached goes along to wrestle alligators and such, pretending to provide protection for his wife.  Callie swears that the alligator wrestling actually happened.

When Mark Lowry interviewed Candy Christmas, he was given a tour of their “Under the Bridge” ministry in Nashville.  They have a lot of warehouse space and a huge kitchen to handle up to and beyond one thousand having one meal each week.  So, I patterned the discussion about their setup after what I learned from that video tour.

In the Candy Christmas – Mark Lowry and Matthew Greer interview, the idea of growing crowds later in the month came from that interview.  The crowd grows bigger as the money from the government check runs out.

And the idea of what Heaven is like came to me.  We mustn’t identify ourselves too much with our job here on earth.  Our main job in Heaven will be praising and glorifying God.  After all, He paid the price, and we did nothing to deserve His Grace and Mercy.