Murder at Breakfast (7 page)

I
needed to turn Lou’s mind to something that the two of us still felt the same
about, so I asked him if he felt up to a trip to the Scene of the Crime Mystery
Bookstore.

He
said something like, “Sure. Never felt better.”

I
knew he was in denial. I believe God still performs miracles today, so I’m
still praying for my friend. I wondered how long before people will start to
ask me how long Lou has had cancer.

I
pulled up in front of the Scene of the Crime, got out, rushed past the crime
scene tape and up the steps into the bookstore. I recognized a few people in
the store. Many smiled, including the owner, Myrtle Evans, who must be able to
afford a whole lot more now that Lou and I frequent her place. At least we will
continue to do so as long as Lou feels up to it, and doesn’t feel that he needs
to spend the rest of his days on top of his precious Wii Fit board. When Lou
met Thelma Lou I wondered if I would some day lose my friend to a woman, but,
until recently, I never felt I would lose him to something you lay on the
floor, something that looks like an elongated version of bathroom scales. But
when
they
take over your brain, in no way do you resemble the person you
used to be. I know. I’ve seen the 1956 version of
Invasion of the Body
Snatchers
many times. Recently, I had begun to know what the Kevin McCarthy
character felt like. How long will be it before I  can  trust  no  one?  Is 
it  possible  that  one day there will be someone who looks just like me, only
skinnier? I shook my head to dismiss the thought.

Unlike
many people today, I read a fair amount of both classic and contemporary
mysteries. I prefer ones that aren’t graphic and provide me with a list of
suspects and allow me to solve the murder, just like I do in real life. I’d
come to love our visits to the mystery bookstore. I wasn’t in a hurry to leave.
Neither was Lou, as far as I knew. We perused the shelves, sought out
suggestions from those who had tastes similar to ours. Lou and I still read the
same books at the same time, so we looked for two copies of each book. The
store has an extensive collection. It’s located in a two-story white-frame
house, and the entire house is devoted to mysteries. Each room houses a
different type of mystery, and Lou and I spend most of our time in the room
with the sign above the door that reads, “Traditional and Cozy Mysteries.”
There’s nothing wrong with psychological thrillers, police procedurals,
hard-boiled mysteries, historical mysteries, or any other type, but Lou and I
prefer a puzzle to solve, not blood and guts all over the place and a psycho
wielding a chainsaw.

We
made our selections and headed to the register. We chose
The Christie Caper
and
Sandal In Fair Haven
from two of Carolyn Hart’s series,
The Alpine
Christmas
by Mary Daheim,
The Man With A Load Of Mischief
by Martha
Grimes,
Puzzled To Death
by Parnell Hall,
The A.B.C. Murders
by
Agatha Christie,
Danger In The Dark
by Mignon Eberhart
,
and
The
Case of the Lucky Legs
by Erle Stanley Gardner. Lou and I had found that
many authors write more than one series, but Agatha Christie and Carolyn Hart
are the only two authors we’ve found so far who write two series that we enjoy
almost equally. I love most anything Christie wrote, especially those featuring
Hercule Poirot, and I like both Hart’s Death on Demand series and her Henrie O.
series. While the differences between Lou and me are increasing, we still feel
the same about almost every author and almost every book. I hope the similarity
continues, although it would be good sometime to sit down with someone who
likes a different type of mystery than we do, just to see how the other half
live.

+++

We
left Scene of the Crime and I dropped Lou at his place. After deciding which
book we would read first, we talked about asking the girls to dinner for that
night or the next. We planned to eat together, whether the girls joined us for
dinner, or not. Other than eat, and attend church together the next day, both
of us would spend the rest of our weekend reading. If all went well, I wouldn’t
read about a Wii in any of the books I’d purchased. I felt certain that
Christie, Gardner, and Eberhart didn’t write about them, because they were
safely in their graves before some man with too much time on his hands invented
the Wii, and I hoped that none of the current authors wrote about that
three-letter word, either.

+++

When
I picked up Lou for dinner on Saturday night, he informed me that he had spent
an hour and a half Wiiing. I spent the same hour and a half exercising. I
exercised my eyes, my fingers, and my brain as I looked through the books I had
purchased. Then, to make sure that I’d not overdone it, I walked to the bed,
lay down, and closed my eyes. This time, when Lou used the “W” word, it didn’t
hurt me as much as it usually did, because I knew why Lou did a longer workout.
We were going to Antonio’s for their all-you-can-eat buffet. While I discovered
that all that Lou could eat was now down to one plateful and one dessert, at
least he ate real food, for a change. I wondered if I should consider that a
breakthrough.

+++

After
I dropped Lou off after dinner, I came home and decided to have some fun with
the computer. I clicked in several similar searches, like fiction, best novels,
and mystery novels. Somewhere during the search, I happened upon a wonderful
website. I doubt if I will ever find another website that will tell me as much
about what I want to know about my reading interests. Before I lost it forever,
I added
www.fantasticfiction.co.uk
to my favorites list. My favorites list
had grown to two websites.

The
website contained a listing for almost every fiction author I had heard of, and
thousands of names that were unfamiliar to me. True, it didn’t list Bill Noel
and his Folly mystery series that takes place on Folly Island, SC, or Tim
Callahan, who writes the Kentucky Summers series about a young boy who visits
his grandparents in Kentucky every summer during the late 1950s and early
1960s, but it includes most fiction authors who are known from Anaheim to
Augusta and Seattle to Sarasota, and it lists all the books they have written.
It even lists the books they have written that are to come out soon. That way,
if I want to collect every book written by a certain author, all I have to do
is wait until it’s released and then pick it up at the Scene of the Crime.

+++

From
time to time, when I am in the midst of a case and working too hard, I have
nightmares. All the criteria were in place, which might have something to do
with the nightmare I had that night. It started out okay. I arrived at the
Parkway Arms. Lou went to check with one of the other officers while I walked
over to take the elevator to the second floor. I stepped into the elevator,
pushed the number "2", and stepped back to wait. As soon as the
elevator door closed, someone lunged for me. I was unprepared and ended up on
the floor, with Heloise Humphert on top of me and her mutt doing the best she
could to tie my shoelaces together. If that wasn’t bad enough, the elevator
came to a halt, between floors. The lights went out, but I knew my latest
misfortune had caused the battleaxe to smile. She started running her fingers
through my hair, and I felt her hot breath zeroing in on me. Her breath would
have melted candle wax and would have sent a skunk scurrying for cover. I was
saved from having to have rabies shots when suddenly the elevator door opened a
few inches. Someone was trying to save me. I looked up and saw the linebacker
maid push the door open as if there were nothing to it. She looked down at me,
called me a two-timer, and started kicking me in the ribs. From the way my ribs
felt, I deduced that she was also the punter and place kicker on the Parkway
Arms football team. Quickly the hot breath upon my body retreated, and Miss
Humphert sprang toward the maid. A forearm shiver sent the ugly woman toward
the back wall of the elevator. As she hit, she made a noise similar to the one
I made when I was kicked in the ribs, and then she bounced off the back wall
toward the linebacker maid. Next, the varmint entered the foray. Before I could
move, the mutt jumped up on top of me and landed upon my chest. I should have
been pleased that the dog didn’t weigh as much as the linebacker maid, but that
thought never crossed my mind. A varmint licking my nose prevented me from
seeing how the wrestling match was going. I guessed that I would need the
rabies shots after all. The fur ball yelped and flew off me when her owner
landed upon my chest, after having been thrown from the ring by the
professional. Suddenly, I no longer trusted the manager, since she was the one
who first told me that the maids needed to call the handyman if they wanted to
move anything.

I
continued lying there in pain, praying that the linebacker maid would take the
ugly woman and her mutt away, so that I could lie there until I recovered or
died. A few moments later, my forehead began to hurt, as if someone was beating
me in the head. I woke up and realized who that someone was. Me. A few minutes
later, I had managed to pull myself out from under my  bed.  That  wasn’t  the 
first  time  I vowed to get a bed that wouldn’t enable me to slide underneath
it in my sleep. Two or three days later, when I was able to walk again, I
helped myself to my feet and stumbled to the bathroom to access the damage. I
found no evidence that anything had kicked or licked me, but there were dust
bunnies in my hair. I vowed never to tell Lou about my latest nightmare, but
planned to let my own maid know that I don’t tolerate dust bunnies. Should I
let her start cleaning my house twice a week, instead of once? I planned to
check with Betty McElroy to see what she thought.

A
few minutes later, I stumbled back to the bed, but it was forever before I
managed to get back to sleep. I have no idea how they do it, but I was sure my
nightmare would soon be found on YouTube. I promised myself that if I saw
George coming toward me with a phone in his hand I would shoot the phone from
his hand and buy him a new one. One like mine, that plugs into the wall, has a
rotary dial, and no way to take pictures or take anyone on a journey to the
Internet. George Orwell was right. It is just that Big Brother was a little
late. Of course I wouldn’t shoot my friend in the hand. But I might confiscate
his phone.

+++

I
awoke Sunday morning, grateful for the opportunity to trade the murder
investigation for one of my pastor’s sermons. Church was a little harder on Lou
since he had become a new person. It wasn’t that Lou didn’t want to attend
church anymore. It was that he didn’t match me éclair for éclair before church.
He still fed the kitty when we went downstairs before church, but he refrained
from the chocolate-covered éclairs filled with custard, and the pecan-covered
éclairs with caramel inside. I guess Lou preferred reading instead of working
out two hours on his Wii Fit board to get rid of the delicious pastries God had
provided. Lou’s version of the Bible might have told him he could eat from any
table in the church except for the  pastry table.  I, on the other hand,
remembered Noah’s ark, and decided that the éclairs should enter my mouth two
by two.  While I wanted to eat all those delicacies that Lou refused, I ate
only one additional éclair that morning. I figured I could work it off the next
day walking from the Parkway Arms elevator to wherever I had to go.

+++

I
enjoyed a good lunch with Lou, which means that I stuck my fingers in my ears
while he ordered and never bothered to look at his food after it arrived. That
allowed me to enjoy mine, including my two desserts.

I
took Lou back to his place then headed to mine to take a nap. There’s something
about a Sunday afternoon after church that requires any normal human being to
take a nap instead of discombobulating God’s peaceful creation.

I
woke from my nap refreshed, smiled when I realized that I didn’t have anything
I had to do. I was beginning to enjoy early retirement, even though I would be
retired only that one day. I got up from the bed, plucked a book from my
rapidly growing collection, and ambled over to the recliner to enjoy myself.
Unless my next-door neighbor had stolen my keys, I had the rest of the
afternoon to read. I hoped to navigate one hundred pages or so before the
dinner bell rang. More than likely, I would be alerted to another murder, this
time one of fiction, and I would form my list of suspects and alibis. Reading while I was working on a case was something new to me. In the past, neither Lou
nor I took time for reading while we worked on a case. We never knew when a
case would require long hours and cause us to forget what we had read. 

+++

As
is customary whenever we take the girls somewhere, Lou drove on Sunday night.
That meant we got to ride in Lou’s 1957 red-and-white Chevy, and the four of us
were the envy of anyone we passed. I call our lady friends “the girls” because
I was born before political correctness. Besides, they always refer to us as
“the boys.” I also prefer first names, but for some reason I’d never gotten
past calling Dan Davis Officer Davis, yet I call Lieutenant Michaelson George.
More than likely, it’s because George and I have been friends for a long time.