Whack A Mole jc-3 Read online

  “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 serves 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.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Kitsch.

  That's what my mom would call the souvenirs and stuff they sell at The Treasure Chest. Crappy kitsch.

  Spoon rests, jumping dolphin paper weights, rubber sharks, salt and pepper shakers shaped like lighthouses, ceramic coffee mugs where the coffee comes out of a fish mouth so you're basically kissing a fish first thing every morning.

  I think people's brains must go on vacation when their bodies do. It's the only answer. Vacationers buy things they wouldn't normally buy. If they'll pay thirty dollars for a sand-dollar wall clock to hang in the rumpus room, it must be because their mental faculties have taken the week off.

  I think the main purpose of the Sea Haven souvenir shops is to keep New Jersey's Goodwill and Salvation Army thrift stores stocked for the remainder of the year. And garage sales. Jersey is the capital of Garage Sale Nation.

  The Treasure Chest is right across the street from The Bagel Lagoon and Ceepak's apartment on Ocean Avenue. It's a squat, block-long building with pirate flags fluttering every ten feet along the mansard roof. With curb-to-ceiling plate-glass windows painted with slogans like DOCK HERE FOR BIG $AVING$, it kind of looks like a giant furniture showroom, only the floors are cluttered with T-shirt racks and beach ball bins instead of Barcaloungers.

  We arrive without lights or siren, since Officers Adam Kiger and Dylan Murray had radioed in to say they'd already secured the scene. The parking lot is empty except for their cruiser and a small Honda.

  Our headlights sweep across the two cops as we pull in. I notice they're with a young woman in a purple polo shirt. I look closer and see that it's my old friend from high school, Amy Decosimo. She used to work over at Pudgy's Fudgery, where she was in charge of slicing quarter-pound slabs off the big bricks and making up the assorted-flavor two-pound boxes for people to take home to cat-sitters.

  I now recall hearing that Amy has moved up to a management position here at The Treasure Chest. I have a hunch she's the one who found the item that wasn't listed in the store's inventory: one souvenir nose. She looks terrified.

  “What've we got?” Ceepak asks Kiger.

  “You talk to the chief?”

  “Roger that.”

  “This is Ms. Decosimo,” says Kiger. “She's the one who found the object in question.”

  Amy looks at me. “Hey, Danny.”

  I remember the last time I saw her-at the start of the whole Tilt-A-Whirl thing. She helped me clean up the bloody little girl I hauled inside the fudge shop.

  Don't get me started. It's a long story.

  “How you doin’, Amy?” I ask.

  “I … I'm….”

  I forgot: Amy Decosimo doesn't deal with crisis situations all that well. Her first instinct is to panic and say, “Ohmygod”-a lot.

  “Ohmygod, Danny! It's horrible….”

  There she goes.

  “Ohmygod!”

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  Her frozen doe eyes become gigantic.

  “Have you locked down the area?” Ceepak asks Kiger.

  “We left everything just the way Ms. Decosimo found it.”

  “I … I … “ Amy sputters a little more.

  “Ms. Decosimo?” says Ceepak.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Were you alone in the store when you made your discovery?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Were you alone?”

  “When?”

  “When you found the jar.”

  “Oh. Yes. Ohmygod. I was all alone!”

  “Was the front door locked?”

  “Yes. I always lock it at eight. Maybe five past, if we have a straggler … none tonight … no stragglers.”

  “Did you notice any unusual customers?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have security cameras in the store?”

  “Uhm-hmmm. Yeah.”

  “Good. That might help us find whoever….”

  “They don't work.”

  “Come again?”

  “The video cameras don't work. Mr. Mazz
illi just put up these fake ones to scare off shoplifters. The actual cameras and recorders and stuff cost way too much money….”

  Mr. Mazzilli is Bruno “The Boardwalk King” Mazzilli. He owns The Treasure Chest and half the junk shops and lemonade stands up and down the boardwalk. He is also notoriously cheap, even though he charges six bucks for a twenty-cent corked glass bottle filled with free seashells and equally free sand.

  Now Ceepak turns to me.

  “Danny?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Do you have the digital camera?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We're going in.”

  We make our way up the center aisle of the store. Usually, the place is packed with families in flip-flops and shorts milling about, mesmerized by brightly colored plastic bathed in fluorescent light. Usually, this place gives me a splitting headache.

  We pass the cardboard displays for Party Poppers and Pinwheels.

  We squeeze through a maze of circular clothes racks jammed with Sea Haven sweatshirts, most of which have the same SH logo silk-screened on the front. It's like we're telling the rest of the world to be quiet.

  “There it is.” Ceepak uses his Maglite flashlight like a laser pointer. “Next to the snow globes.”

  I see it, too.

  Another small jar. Glass with a metal screw-on lid.

  It's on the top shelf. On either side of it are dozens of “snow” globes all depicting the same diorama: an open pirate chest, a skull, and two palm trees stranded on a plastic desert island. If you grab one and give it a good shake, the water becomes filled with a swirling flurry of gold sparkle flakes and the skull's jawbone yaps up and down. I know this because The Treasure Chest has been selling their signature Pirate Globe to boys like me for nearly twenty years.

  “Danny? Focus.”

  Ceepak can usually tell when my mind is drifting off to someplace other than where it should be.

  “Take a picture before I spray the jar.”

  “Right.”

  I power up the Canon and press off a few images. The one with the flash is a mistake: the jar's glass reflects back and my picture looks like a big white blob. I trash that one. Check the others.