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.

After our early morning trip to a cabin in the woods, Poached, Jim, and I were back in my office.  We invited the head of Robbery / Burglary, Sgt. Nick the Pick Poquette to my office for a little chat.

I started, “Nick, great that you could join us.  We’ve spent most of the night at a cabin in the woods.  Would you know anything about a cabin in the woods?”

Nick seemed guarded, “There are a lot of cabins in the woods, Lieutenant.  Where abouts?”

I shrugged, “In the big city of Tracy.  Homicide would not have an all-hands-on-deck investigation anywhere else.  Would we?”

Nick was getting agitated, “You are making me a bit nervous.  I have no idea why you called me in.  You are starting this like a criminal investigation, an interrogation of a suspect.  You aren’t even giving me a quadrant of the city.”

I said, “The northwest quadrant.  Most of that quadrant, at least near the county line is the Orchard.”  Nick flinched, but he said nothing. I continued, “Maybe just south of the Orchard, on an unmarked trail, no mailbox, no sign of life, except there is no life now, and only a few blades of grass disturbed where a vehicle had driven in and then back out.  It practically took a seeing eye dog to find the place.”

Nick broke, “Tell me, Lieutenant, which of the ladies is dead.  I know where one is, but what about the other two?  No, a third might have visited.  You have to tell me!”

I said, “You know how interrogations work.  I tell you enough to get you to talk and I answer none of your questions.  Here’s a question for you.  Why were your fingerprints on everything in that house?  Fingerprints do not last forever, or have you forgotten about that.  You were there recently.”

Nick nodded, “Sure, I checked up on her.  I always check up on her.  My only way to do that is to visit.  No phone, and Aunt Edith is the only way to get mail to her.  That takes too long.  Please, you are ripping my heart apart.  Who is dead?  Which one of three women?  If it took all three of you, how many women?”

I said, “No, Nick, it works better if you tell me who is supposed to live there and who else knows who lives there.  Maybe tell me first how you know where the cabin is.  Like I said, we had instructions from an anonymous caller, and I still nearly missed the place.  It was after dark, but there was no heat signature.  Nothing!  We spread out and Poached nearly tripped over the front porch.  I think he saw a shadow in the moonlight.”  Poached nodded.

Nick said, “I know where the place is because I lived there from the time I was born until I went to the police academy.”

Captain Al Hart said over the speaker, “What the <BLEEP>!  Do not say a word, former detective sergeant who is now suspended until a formal investigation can be made.  I’m coming in!”  A few seconds later, he was pulling a chair in from the squad room.

Captain Hart said, “I am letting Lt. Yeggs lead this interrogation, but this is going to go straight to internal affairs.  That cabin is not the address that you listed on your application for the police academy.  If you lived there, what is the address you used?”

Nick took a deep breath, “That is an easy enough answer.  The cabin is not on the books with the postal service, 911 system, and the topographical maps do not show a box there.  Our official address was always care of Edith Clancy on Kiss Andtel Boulevard in Tracy.  All correspondence for us was taken to the cabin within a day or two of Aunt Edith getting it, but she wasn’t my aunt, really.  She was Mom’s college roommate, but then Mom wasn’t my Mom either.”

I asked, “How can your Mom not be your Mom?”

Nick was shaking.  He had no idea where to place his hands.  He looked for a place where there was not a face staring at him in irritation, anger, or were we just exhausted after pulling an all-nighter?

I growled, “You have had enough time to figure out a nice lie, now tell me the truth.  Your job depends on it if Captain Hart follows through.”

Nick said, “Mom is the only Mom I have ever known.  My birth mother, I have never met her.  I thought my goose was cooked when Jim over here was mumbling that he would find out who Ambrosia’s other love child…”

Gisele, over the speaker, “What the <BLEEP>!  Do not say a word until I get in there.  I have to see your face!”  She was faster than Captain Hart.  Her flowing purple locks took a while to catch up with her.  She nearly slammed the office door on her hair.  But then the door opened again, and Georges came in.

Georges said, “Did I hear something about Ambrosia’s other love child?  You have just involved Organized Crime.  Don’t leave me out.”

Gisele said, “Continue Lieutenant Yeggs.  This interrogation just got interesting.  I would not think Ambrosia to be young enough when Nick was born.”

I just stared at Nick, then Nick said, “Until I was fifteen, I knew none of this.  Mollie Orlowski raised me as her middle child.  We lived in the cabin.  We had water from a well that was on the Orchard side of the road.  We had no electricity, but we had running water, only cold water, but that was it.  We were home schooled, we had no idea what electricity or indoor plumbing were until we graduated high school.  Mom had a library that rivaled a school library.  We read by sunlight in the day, and we read by candlelight at night.  After Delia came into the family when I was about two, we were instructed to hide if we heard any footsteps on the front porch.  Other than a glimpse of a man, a couple of times, I was the only male in our life since I can remember.  Aunt Edith visited often, but never a man.  If a man visited, Mom made him stay on the front porch and they talked through a bolted door.  And I think those times were probably the lawyer for Red Delicious.”

Captain Hart said, “You may not be fired.  You may be dead.  How did someone connected to the mob become a police officer?”

Nick said, “I personally was never connected to the mob, Captain.  I was not connected to the Rotten Apple Gang, to Red Delicious, or to my birth mother, Ambrosia, once she weaned me and returned home.  Red Delicious owns the property.”  I nodded.  We had already checked that.  “He built the home as a hunting cabin before Mom had been hired, and he added to it for Mom when she got pregnant with Celia.”

Gisele asked, “Wait.  Your Mom was Mollie Orlowski.  I’m thinking that was not her real name.  Her roommate in college was Edith Clancy.  We can get the real name soon enough.  But if Mollie had two daughters, Celia and Delia, and you were the middle child, born of a different mother, Ambrosia, you are thinking that either Mollie, Celia, or Edith, or a combination of those is the murder victim.  Delia is your wife who was probably in bed asleep when you left for work this morning.”

Nick said, “That was a good summary.”

Poached said, “You married your sister?  You are one sick dude!”

Nick said, “Everything changed when I was fifteen and Celia was seventeen and she started having the hots for me, since I was the only male that she had ever met.  Her father was Red Delicious.  He visited often when Celia was a baby, but according to Mom, he said Gala was getting jealous, so he quit visiting once he came for Ambrosia after she had delivered and weaned me.”

I groaned, “I have not had a wink of sleep and what you just said made my head hurt.  Start with who was Mollie Orlowski?”

Nick nodded, “Her real name was Virginia Orlowski.  She went to Tracy College, before it became T.R.U.S.T.  She was halfway through a double major of history and English when she thought she would never get a job except a teaching job.  She wanted something more, so she switched majors to get her nursing degree.  Her roommate, Edith Clancy, never married and became an electrical engineer before women did that kind of thing.  They were both brainiacs.  Mom didn’t want a night shift job at the hospital, and she finally saw a Want Ad for a private nurse.  With no experience except recently getting her RN, she applied.  The job was to act as nurse to the mother of Red Delicious.  Red was married to Gala, but there was no love there.  He trusted Gala with business matters.  Gala was more ruthless than Red was.  Gala was a distant cousin, but both Gala and Red had lovers on the side.  When Red Delicious first saw Virginia Orlowski, he was in love with her.  Mom had three things.  She had brains and a very liberal education, from a very conservative school, if you catch my meaning.  She had the nursing skills that the job required.  And she was the most beautiful woman Red Delicious had ever met.  All other liaisons stopped.  She was the love of his life.  He started calling her Moll, his official crime boss girlfriend, and she, as his moll, accepted Mollie as her name most of the time.  Red Delicious used her as the mob’s nurse, even pulling bullets out of people with the help of a doctor.  But about the time Red’s mother died, Mom got pregnant with Celia.  Gala threw a fit.  Mom moved to the cabin that Red Delicious had for a hunting cabin and a means to meet his other girlfriends, until Mom came along.  But Mom was the nurse, Red’s moll, and a tutor for Red McIntosh.  When she moved to the cabin, one room was turned into a library, shelves and shelves of books, walls lined with books and self-standing shelves just like at a library.  Like I said, Mom and Aunt Edith were brainiacs.”

I said, “We found the library, very impressive, but move it on a bit.  She had a daughter named Celia.  How much older is Celia to you?”

Nick nodded, “Two years.  According to Mom, Red Delicious visited Mom and Celia and then one day, he brought Ambrosia in.  She stayed in one of the bedrooms.  Ambrosia had visited a faith healer, a charlatan.  She wanted to be cured of her man craziness.  When the charlatan heard that, he convinced her that he could only heal her by sleeping with her to work it out of her system.  Since she was willing to sleep with anybody who had a pulse, from what Mom said, she willingly slept with the ‘faith healer.’  She had Ashmead when she was a teenager.  She had me, the son of the faith healer, in her late forties.  I guess I’m lucky to not have birth defects.  She stayed in the cabin until I was weaned.  That whole time, according to Mom, Red Delicious would visit, but when he came with a few guys to move Ambrosia out, he said he would not return.  It was one thing having meaningless relations with a pretty girl here or there, but since Red Delicious was head over heels in love with Mom, Gala had to put a stop to it.  About a month later, a lawyer came by to have Mom sign some papers.  He raped her.  Delia came into the world nine months later.  I have no idea how Mom did it with no way of letting someone know she was ready to deliver.  I’m thinking Aunt Edith was visiting every day during that time.  My earliest recollection, Aunt Edith visited once each week with groceries.  We had a makeshift refrigerator using the cold tap water.  Red Delicious made sure the line was well maintained.  But since the rape by the lawyer, no man was allowed in the cabin, except when I returned after joining the police force.  Mom’s getting up there in years.  I check up a couple times each week.  Edith comes once each week.  Celia, not so often.  Now, is she alive?  Who is dead?”

I nodded, “Besides your fingerprints being everywhere, the only dead body was that of a lawyer who was on the Rotten Apple Gang payroll, probably the Red Delicious private lawyer.  No one in the house.  It was probably Aunt Edith that called the hotline with an anonymous tip.  A note was on the body that read, ‘Nick, we found him like this.  We did not do it.  Please help us.’  I’m thinking it was Delia’s birth father, but if she never let a male into the cabin, how did he get in the cabin, where were Mollie and Edith at the time if they did not do it and found him there, and who killed him?  Mollie Orlowski has to be our prime suspect, at least prime person of interest, especially if we prove that he is the guy who raped her.”

Nick moaned, “No, no, no.  She means everything to me, Lieutenant.  Like I said, I never met Ambrosia, not even when you’ve had her in the precinct for questioning.  Mollie Orlowski is the only Mom I ever knew.”

I asked, “You said everything changed when you turned fifteen.  Tell us about that.”

Nick said, “If Poached will refrain from saying that I am sick, we were brought up as brother and sisters.  We kept reading the classics in the library.  We read the anatomy textbooks.  We knew there was something different between men and women, but the only women that we ever met were Mom and Aunt Edith.  I was the only male, and I was only fifteen.  Mom had no books on sex that we could find in the library, although there were some love scenes in some of the old books, the classics and only a few murder mysteries.  We never left the cabin, so we never saw a movie or a television show.  Now they have that stuff on your phone.  At fifteen, I was starting to get erections, especially in the morning.  And Celia was starting to get desires.  She proposed to Mom that she wanted to take me as her husband, since I was the only man that she had ever met.  No love there, only the desire to be with a man.  She had recurring nightmares remembering the lawyer and Mom, but since she was about three and a half years old when it happened those were fuzzy memories.  Until Celia came up with that idea out of the blue, Mom had never thought of the hermit-style life having a bad side.  Red Delicious set up an account and made Edith the manager of the account since Mom was virtually unreachable.  We did the home schooling through the postal service and Edith answered questions if they called.  It never dawned on Mom that we would grow up.  Mom sat us down and explained how we really were related.  Celia and Delia were both her daughters.  Red Delicious was Celia’s father, and Ambrosia, a cousin or aunt of Red Delicious, was my mother.  The fathers of Delia and me were not related to the Apple family.  While she had rules about romance within the family, she announced that we were really not family.  But instead of Celia and me going into the bedroom together, Mom insisted on teaching us about that kind of thing.  After the three weeks of classes, Celia decided that she physically wanted me, but she was not in love with me.  Besides, even as distant cousins, she was shy about it.  The problem is that Delia wanted me badly.  If Celia did not want me, she did.  Mom thought Delia was too young.  A year later, Celia got her diploma.  Mom gave her the option to move in with Edith or stay.  She moved in with Edith, and within a year she met a nice older man, and they got married.  They have had a couple of children.  Celia is married to Dave Martin.  He may be the only other person who knows where the cabin is, that is except the people at the Orchard, but whenever Mom met Dave Martin, Edith would bring Mom to her house.  But with Celia out of the house, Delia and I became close.  I was a patrolman when she turned eighteen, and we married.  So, Poached, I grew up with her, like a sister, but we were not related at all.”

“Thanks, Nick,” I said, “You have finally given us a lot to work with, but really a large goose egg to go on.  Maybe crime scene will have something soon.”

Georges said, “I’ll ask Juici and Jazz if they know anything about a moll that Red Delicious had or about rumors that a love child of Red Delicious might be in line to inherit.  I know how to play them without letting them know what we have.”

Poached said, “I heard that you ‘played’ Jazz while I was in Florida.  Have you ‘played’ Juici too?”

Georges grumbled, “Not like that, Poached.  I know how to work a conversation to get those two to talk without letting them know why I am asking.”

Poached laughed, “Yeah, right!”

I said that I would like to visit with the orchardists now.  Nick said that it was about time for him to meet his birth mother, whether he was suspended or not, and Georges said that he would be part of the initial meeting and then splinter off with the younger ladies.

Honeycrisp and Ambrosia met with us in the den where Gala, a horticulturist, the butler, and the maid had been skewered by the Pear brothers from Stout County.

Ambrosia recognized Nick, but she said nothing.

Honeycrisp broke the silence.  “One of our drivers said there was an M.E. van parked on the edge of the road.  Since the road was narrow, he barely got by.  I wonder which smells worse, a dead body or a truck hauling manure.  We use the manure to fertilize the trees in the Spring and to provide a bit of mulch to reduce the growth of weeds.  Our pruning crew is working feverishly.  They thought they saw action across the road too.”

I smiled, “Can we interview them?  They may have seen something.  What do the two of you know about the hunting cabin in the woods?  I know neither of you have been over there since Ambrosia moved out.”

Ambrosia groaned, “You know about that?  Then, you know enough.  Nick, darling, I am your birth mother.  I left you with Mollie so that you would not grow up to be a criminal.  I am so sorry.  I do not deserve being called your mother, but can I get a hug?”  Ambrosia walked over and they embraced, wordlessly.

Honeycrisp asked, “Who has been killed?  My brother’s lawyer went over yesterday to have Mollie and Celia sign new paperwork.  Now that Celia has been an adult for a while, even having children, yes, we keep up with such things, my brother wanted changes made to the agreement.  Gala is gone.  The jealous feud is over.  Red Delicious wants Mollie to have a bigger chunk of the estate.  And she wants Celia to have a large portion herself.  Neither is to be tainted by the criminal activity.  But if they are dead, the lawyer will then have extra paperwork for the next of kin.  I suppose that would include Dave Martin and the children, but it might include Delia Poquette.  I am not sure how the legal business works with such things.  Red’s lawyer wanted Delia listed as a primary, but Red did not include her.”

Georges asked, “Who gets the money if this change does not go through?”

Ambrosia shrugged, “Empire and his Rotten Apples simply have more operating capital.  Listen, gentlemen, we will cooperate with you, but we know nothing.  We run a legitimate orchard here.  We pay our taxes.  We have reformed our workers and none of them are involved in criminal activity.  If your investigation proves differently, they will be looking for new work whether you convict them or not.  We cannot afford the bad press.  We have our two younger ladies who help here.  Juici and Jazz keep out of Empire’s business, although they socialize some.  Our plans for the orchard are that Juici and Jazz get a controlling portion with Shingo, Ashmead, and Nick getting an annual share of the profits.  We were going to start dividing the profits that way this year.  It would not make anyone rich, but we have shown a profit ever since we took over.  This operation never needed to be a money laundering venture.  The Orchard does a good job of boosting the economy in the big city of Tracy.”

I snickered, “I would hope so.  As for single owner acreage, you have the second most acres to T.R.U.S.T., now that they have added the PLAYhouse and PLAYground properties.”

Honeycrisp smiled, “I know your wife is not pleased with the possibility of a longer commute, but she will be in her own building, and it is thought she might be the head of the PLAYhouse campus.  The last I heard, they were toying between a title of deputy vice-chancellor or faculty dean of the PLAYhouse.”

I bowed, “You have me at a disadvantage.  I sleep with her each night, and she has said nothing about that.  If she knew, she would have told me.  I have a feeling that it would mean more meetings, more responsibilities, and the same pay.  She would rather deflect such an honor in lieu of cementing her form of therapy in universities nationwide.  More meetings means less time to do what she has been driven to do.”

When Georges met with Juici, she said that Jonathan Apple had been by the day before asking about the lawyer.  Jazz said nothing, probably thinking about the last beating she had received.  When Jim and Poached interviewed the pruning staff, they thought they saw someone meeting Jonathan’s description walking down the road, but they weren’t sure.  They were afraid that Honeycrisp was thinking they might be goofing off by watching pedestrian traffic.  I think they were afraid of being killed as potential witnesses.  But the crime scene guys called.  We had Jonathan’s DNA on file from previous investigations, and some hairs pulled by the lawyer and in his hand matched the DNA of Jonathan Apple, who had a scratch on his face in his beard when we pulled him in for questioning.

No one was giving us a clear motive or a link to Empire, but Empire was willing to have Jonathan take the fall for the murder.  It made no sense, but Georges got wind of Empire being angry at Jonathan for killing the lawyer in the hopes that Mollie Orlowski would be framed for the murder since the lawyer had defiled her.  The lawyer had a partner that provided the paperwork for Virginia “Mollie”, Celia, and Delia to sign.  Ambrosia told Red Delicious that her son, Nick, was a wonderful man and a good police officer, and Delia would not be getting an inheritance from the shyster lawyer who had raped Red’s moll, emphasizing Mollie was Red’s moll.  Odd, that a crime boss would see the justice in adding someone that was not in his bloodline.

Credits

In Dick Tracy lore, Kiss Andtel was a singer and girlfriend of Mumbles until she found out he was a thief.  She was the mother of another singer, Kissme Quick.

I wanted a Molly for Nick’s Mom, since she was the moll of Red Delicious.  My mother-in-law was nicknamed Molly, and I mean no disrespect.  I spelled it Mollie to differentiate.  Mollie Orshansky (1915-2006) was an economist and statistician.  She was nicknamed Ms. Poverty, since she created the Orshansky Poverty Levels, the household income that must not be exceeded to be considered poor, thus eligible for various government social assistance programs.  Making her given name as Virginia, she could be patterned after Virginia Oldoini (1837-1899), a.k.a. La Castiglione, the mistress of Napoleon III.

Her old roommate, Edith Clancy, was patterned after Edith Clarke (1883-1959), a woman educated as an electrical engineer, but it took her many years to convince the world that a woman could be an expert in the field.  She graduated from Vassar in 1908.  She studied as a civil engineer at Wisconsin – Madison, but then worked for AT&T as a “computer”.  Before the days of computers, they had a job title of computer, those people who could work mathematics in their head faster than most people could calculate the problem with pen and paper.  She went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1918, and finally was recognized as the first professional electrical engineer in 1922.  She is the first woman to ever be honored as a member of Tau Beta Pi (the second oldest scholastic honorary society, reserved for engineers only, and of which I am a member), and she was the first woman to ever write a paper for the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.  This tribute runs a little long, but as an engineer, going to school with women who were considered trailblazers even in the 1970s, I felt Edith Clarke’s biography was personally impressive.

And the concept of the cabin in the woods is in honor of an uncle, one of my Dad’s mother’s brothers.  He had lived his entire working life as a missionary in Alaska.  He and his wife built a school in Alaska.  They taught the Inuit people of the area reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Odd how only one of the three “R” begins with “R”.  But he also taught them about God and once each week, he preached in the school room.  When they retired, he moved to a wooded area and cleared about an acre in the middle, building a log cabin from the trees that he had cut down.  He had a smoke house that he built and an outhouse.  No electricity.  No running water. In his youth, they did not have those things in northern Mississippi.  He had lived his entire working life in Alaska without those things.  Why have running water and electricity when he retired?  Not having a roommate with a car, he walked about two miles, at first through the woods with no discernible trail (hardly any markings, no driveway, you had to know, or you’d never find him), and then up the road (mostly uphill) to a country store, his only connection to groceries and his mailbox, etc.  And then, loaded down with groceries and mail, he walked the two miles back to his cabin in the woods.  They had enough space on their acre of cleared land to grow some vegetables.  They canned and stored their vegetables, cooking on a wood fire.  They lived a self-sufficient life into their eighties, and his mental capacity was amazing.  He had a sharp wit.  I remember one time after his wife had died when we picked him up and brought him to the house where he was born and raised.  He turned to my wife and pointed, “Right there!  When I was a little boy, your aunt [whatever her name had been] passed away, right on the spot where you are sitting.”  My wife gasped.  Then, he said, “Don’t worry about it.  There were over a dozen of us kids.  A disease would blow in with the wind, and there were fewer of us when the disease blew over to the next hill.  My sister, who died right there, had barely learned how to walk.”  He was 82 years old, and he told us tales of my grandparents and my aunts and uncles that I had never heard.  Maybe some of them were true.  He had a way of making the stories sound a lot more interesting, vibrant, alive – even though only one brother of his out of the more than a dozen was still alive.  To him, the stories would live on.