I walked back to my apartment bone tired, but, on the upside, I only got called “Smelly skank” once. My record was five times in three minutes. I was going to beat that no question. When I got to my apartment building, I had a choice to make. Choices suck when it comes to me. They’re all bad and they were that day, too. Coming down the street was a gardening service truck with three dudes stuffed into the cab. In my experience, lawn care guys have definite opinions on me, combined with excellent lungs and a complete lack of give-a-crap. There would be yelling. I could beat the record right then. Or I could dart into the alley and go around to the parking lot entrance where the construction guys were. My only hope was that they were still on lunch.
I decided to chance it and went into the alley. Wrong choice. So wrong I couldn’t get any wronger. I don’t think that’s a word, but it should be, just for me.
“There you are.” Agent Gordon leaned on the back door of my building, wearing standard issue sunglasses and a Bluetooth in his ear. “I got her. See if you can get the nun alone.”
“Did you do Rock, Paper, Scissors?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“How did Gansa get Sister Miriam?”
He smiled and a tiny dimple formed on his cheek. It was almost charming, but I hated him, so no. “We cut cards.”
“Good luck to him. She’s not going to do it.”
“You tried?”
“I did and it’s not happening. I, on the other hand, have to go to a gyno appointment with her on Thursday. Thanks. You’re awesome.”
“Nuns go to the gynecologist?” he asked.
“They’re women.”
He frowned. I guess that was debatable in his opinion.
“Hey, Skanky whore!” yelled a voice from above. Hint: it was not God.
“What the?” Gordon whipped off his sunglasses and squinted up.
“Ignore it,” I said. “And get out of my way.”
“Why don’t you come up here and smell me up?” yelled an additional voice.
A barrage of sexual innuendos—if you want to make it sound fancy, which it wasn’t—and scent-related insults rained down on me. Gordon’s mouth fell open and for the first time he wasn’t bland. He was shocked.
“I guess they’re not at lunch,” I said. “I should’ve known.”
“Is this…do they…”
“Yep. Every chance they get.” I took a breath that I hoped would pass for dignity and attempted to push him out of the way.
“This is ridiculous.”
“I know.”
Gordon took me by the shoulders. “This can’t go on.”
“And yet, here we are.”
“Stop touching my smelly slut, you bland motherfucker!”
“I’m going to take care of this,” said Gordon. “You’re with us and this is not happening.”
I got teary-eyed. I swear to God, I did. I knew he couldn’t do anything, but it was nice all the same.
Gordon put me inside and flashed his badge at the building, which only got him spit at and I think there was some urine involved. He knocked and I let him in the building, which I wouldn’t normally do, but he was trying to help me, for once.
He used his scarf to wipe off his face and Bluetooth before taking out his phone. “Gansa, I need to pull the permits on the building behind Mercy’s.”
“Can you do that?” I asked.
“You’re on the No Fly List, what do you think?”
“I think I’m starting to like you.”
He gave Gansa the address and a rundown on what was happening. I gathered that Gansa was pissed. I showed Gordon to the front and he left without asking any more favors, which was likely to get him one. That’s how I roll.
Before going all the way up to my floor, I took a good sniff. No lingering kielbasa. But there was something else. Something good. I jogged up and burst into my apartment, expecting to find Aaron, cooking up a storm and being weird. He was. That was the good news. The bad news was Uncle Morty was still there and by Uncle Morty, I mean all of him.
“What the heck is happening?” I said as Aaron put a mug of luscious hot chocolate in my hand.
“What’d ya mean?” Uncle Morty had blubbed onto my sofa and set up shop.
I waved my cast at him. “This. Why are you here with all these laptops?”
“I’m staying.”
“For what?”
“To make sure you stay on friggin’ task,” he growled.
I sipped the hot chocolate. Ah, yes. That was what I needed. Chocolate, creme de menthe and plenty of whipped cream. Aaron bobbed up and down in front of me and I impulsively gave him a hug that he didn’t acknowledge in the slightest.
“It’s good. Exactly what I needed. You threw away that sausage, right?”
“Yeah, he did,” bellowed Uncle Morty. “Perfectly good sausage.”
“Perfectly gross.”
“You know what he’s making? Do you?”
I sniffed and felt my body relax. My new favorite. “Moussaka?”
“Yeah, he is.” Morty wiped his eyes. “Like a knife in my gut. Nikki’s moussaka. And I’ve been his dungeon master for twenty years. No loyalty.”
“You hungry?” asked Aaron.
I didn’t get the word “yes” out and he was running into the kitchen to finish up Nikki’s moussaka and her sliced zucchini that had the thinnest batter on it that you’ve ever seen. I don’t know why it was incredibly delicious. It’s zucchini, not bacon.
I squished onto the sofa next to Uncle Morty and took a peek at one of his laptops. “Oh, my God. Nikki sent you a picture. That’s a good sign. She looks fantastic.”
Uncle Morty sorta collapsed down into himself and his lower lip poked out.
“What?” I looked closer. Nikki did look great. She was on the beach with her sister and a hot guy wearing cutoffs and an electric smile. Nikki managed to get a tan in November, wore zero makeup and looked better than ever.
“You see that?” he asked.
“I see it. It’s a great picture.”
“She’s with that guy.”
I laughed and he glared at me. “She’s not with him. They’re standing there. He’s probably a waiter or a cousin.”
“I’ve seen every cousin. Nikki has pictures. He’s not a cousin.”
“He’s not her date. He’s half her age, less than half her age.”
“She’s happy.”
There was no good answer to that one.
“I gotta get over there. Now. Pronto,” said Uncle Morty.
I looked him over. He didn’t stink, but it was a low point. Nose hairs. Ear hairs. Hadn’t shaved in three days. If Uncle Morty thought he could stop the Greek god by standing next to him, freaking forget it.
“Go,” I said. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
He looked up, suddenly sharp-eyed. “You didn’t fix it.”
“You thought I got off the No Fly List today? Dude, come on.” I stood up and kicked off Mr. Cervantes’ shoes. “I’m taking a shower. I have got to wash off this day. Expect me back in an hour or two.”
“Hell, no,” yelled Uncle Morty and I froze. He wasn’t typically a yeller. Bellowing, crabbing, and the occasional snarl were as far as he went.
“Are you saying I can’t take a shower in my own house?” I asked as Aaron came out and stood beside me, spatula in hand. I know that doesn’t sound like support, but the little guy was supporting me. He had a spatula and the will to use it.
Uncle Morty saw it, too. He took a breath and said, “No, I ain’t. You can do what you want.”
“Glad to hear it. And on that note.” I turned to go for the bathroom, but Aaron grabbed my arm. He didn’t say anything, naturally, or even look at me, but I knew he wanted me to listen. So I turned back around and looked at a once-again deflated Uncle Morty. “Let’s hear it.”
He grumbled.
“I’m not standing here all day, Aaron or no Aaron.”
“You gotta get off that list.”
“Yeah.”
“Now. ASAP.”
I crossed my arms. “You don’t need me for Greece. Just go. Win her back. Sweep her off her feet.”
He mumbled something that I could barely catch a word of. Something about being alone and overseas.
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
He flushed and balled up his hands. “I don’t go alone.”
“Er…what?”
“I don’t fly alone. I ain’t good at travel and overseas…I’m not good with people. Nikki won’t talk to me. You got to go and get her to talk to me.”
I glanced at Aaron, who was staring somewhere to the left of Uncle Morty’s head. Not helpful. He probably heard though. “What do you think?”
“Feta ice cream,” he said. “You like feta ice cream?”
“What the—no. We’re talking about me going to Greece, not food.”
“I’m making feta ice cream.” Aaron almost looked at me. Actually, he did, if you counted my ear. “You like ice cream.”
“Focus, Aaron. Greece.”
The little weirdo dashed back into the kitchen and started rummaging around through cabinets.
“You can’t make ice cream,” I said. “I don’t have an ice cream maker.”
Then he came out of the kitchen and set a large silver rectangle on the breakfast bar.
“What the hell is that?”
“Ice cream maker.”
Dammit, Chuck!
“Where was it?” I asked.
“Under the sink.”
“I thought that was another coffee maker.” That’s a testimony to how many coffee makers I had. Five at last count. I’d completely given up on stopping my nutty boyfriend from buying stuff I didn’t want.
“No.” Aaron plugged the thing in and got a bunch of cheerful beeps in response.
“I hope that didn’t come from a bloody crime scene,” I said.
He shrugged. Not a good sign.
“You’re not helping.”
The little weirdo didn’t care. There was bizarre ice cream to be made.
“Alrighty then.” I turned back to Uncle Morty, who was waiting with patience. That alone was enough to give me pause. “What?”
“I want you to go. What do I gotta do?” he asked.
“For starters, say you need me to go.”
“Don’t make no difference.”
“You’re a writer. Words mean stuff. You need my help. That means it’s not optional.”
He gritted his teeth and muttered, “Yeah. I need you.”
“Okay. Good,” I said. “We’ve got a problem then, because those rookies want something from me that I can’t give them.”
Uncle Morty perked up and his hands went to his keyboard, ready for action. “We can beat those rookies at every fucking game there is.”
“Maybe, but they want information. I can’t get it.”
“Bet I can.”
“Nope.”
He got smug, and, for good reason, Uncle Morty could get information. It was his thing, not just a side business. He did it for the challenge, to win against anyone that dared to imply he couldn’t. It was disturbing how much info he could get. “What do we need?”
“You can’t get this. It’s not on the internet,” I said.
“Every God damn thing is on the internet.”
“Not this. It’s somewhere else. Totally inaccessible and the defenses can’t be breached by any known method.”
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Aunt Miriam’s brain.”
His mouth dropped open. So satisfying.
I took my sweet time, boiling myself into lobster condition. There’s nothing like a burning hot shower when you want to relax and avoid unpleasantness. Eventually you have to come out, but it’s great while it lasts.
When I stepped out into the thick haze I’d created, I nearly squashed Skanky, who was barfing up an oddly blue hairball on the bathmat.
“What the crap!”
He continued his barfing and Uncle Morty banged on the door. “Are you done yet? Ya used up all the water in Michigan.”
That’s random.
“We’re in Missouri.”
“You know what I mean.”
Not really.
“I’m done.”
“Well, get your butt out here. We got work to do.”
“Swell.”
“Damn right.”
I did not hurry. I buffed myself dry, did a full-body lotion, tweezed my eyebrows, and checked my rear for cellulite. No comment on the last one. Then I cleaned up Skanky’s hairball, which made him angry. He attacked my hand multiple times. That meant he was planning on eating it. Gross. And bad for him, more than usual even. He’d eaten a blue crayon. Where in the world my indoor cat found a blue crayon will forever remain a mystery as would why he ate it.
“Come on, Skanky.” I picked up my furball and took him into the bedroom, plopping him on the bed, where he gagged a few times before settling down to purr. “There’s something seriously wrong with you.”
Purr.
“You eat cat food. That’s what you eat. Period. End of discussion.”
He yawned and proceeded to clean his rear. Message not received.
“Are you done?” Uncle Morty pounded on my bedroom door.
“I told you I was,” I said.
“You’re still in there.”
“I’m getting dressed.”
“It’s taking too long.”
I pointed out that it famously took Nikki an hour to get dressed and that didn’t include hair and makeup. Unfortunately, that didn’t drive him away or make him reconsider his quest.
“God, I miss her,” he said. “Put on some of them ugly yoga pants chicks dig and get out here.”
I didn’t do as I was told. I put on sweats, Chuck’s from high school, the kind with cuffs at the bottom that made my butt look humongous. They were so comfortable in their ugliness. To top it off, I put on a Seaweed face mask from LUSH.
“Holy crap,” said Uncle Morty. “I didn’t want you to be ugly.”
“Thanks, I guess.” I settled into the sofa, displacing a laptop.
“Hey. I need that.”
“You’ve got two other ones.” I crisscrossed my legs and began filing my nails. “So did you hack your way into Aunt Miriam’s brain?”
He sat down next to me and gulped down half a beer. Not a good sign.
“I take it you didn’t,” I said.
“This is crap.”
“Agreed.”
“You wanna hear what I got or not?” he asked.
I raised a shoulder. “Eh.”
“You’re a pain in my ass.”
“And yet…”
Uncle Morty got down to business. He really did “need” me to go to Greece with him. There wasn’t a single mention of money. That was a first, but I wasn’t holding my breath. If there was a way to monetize my situation, he’d find it. What he didn’t find was a whole lot of information. I got about the same amount from the rookies.
“That’s it?” I asked, astonished.
“Yeah.” He scratched at his five o’clock shadow so hard I thought he’d get bloody. “Something stinks and I don’t mean maybe. Check out this article.”
I read through an article on the murder in the Post-Dispatch written three days after Sister Maggie’s body was discovered in the woods outside of St. Sebastian. If you weren’t in the know, you might think her death was an accident. It was that light on details. No cause of death. No particulars at all. It did cover her and how wonderful she was, but even that was generalized. She was a registered nurse, worked at St. Vincent’s, many good works with orphans and the mentally ill, etc. No mention of her family or friends. Buried at the bottom was a short statement that her death was under investigation, but I was willing to bet the average reader wasn’t going to make it that far.
“There must be other articles,” I said.
He brought up another one from a week after. It announced her funeral and which church officials and local dignitaries would be attending. Aunt Miriam wasn’t mentioned. That didn’t surprise me. But The Girls weren’t mentioned either. Bled connections were big news. Any reporter would want to include that. Beloved Bled family friend murdered or Intriguing mystery behind Bled family friend’s murder. That should’ve happened. Sensationalism didn’t start with the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
“That’s it? What about St. Seb?” I asked. “They must have a newspaper.”
“Yeah. The Saint Sebastian Sentinel.”
“So?”
“Nothing digital before thirty years ago.”
“They have to have a record of the papers they put out.”
“They do. Microfiche.”
I’d heard the word, but I didn’t really know what it was. Slides. God, I hoped not. “Microfiche? You can’t access it from here?”
“Hell, no. You got to go down to the paper and look. Manually.”
“Oh my God.”
He chuckled and then grimaced. “It was the dark ages.”
“So this is the only reporting? Two articles?”
“Pretty much.”
“Who investigated it?” I asked.
“Not St. Louis. I’m guessing it stayed with St. Seb.”
“And they’ve got no files you can access?”
Uncle Morty put his nose in the air. “I can access everything they got. They ain’t got shit. This is fifty years ago.”
I looked back through the Post-Dispatch articles in case I missed something, but I didn’t. “No suspects?”
“Not that anyone mentions. I checked Jeff City and Kansas City, too. Everybody reported the same thing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yeah.”
St. Sebastian. Great. I could smell a road trip in my future and I was pretty sure they weren’t fans. I’d discovered a kidnapped girl’s body in the dry lake bed in that little town and while everyone said “good job” I made the locals look like they’d been on snooze patrol. It wasn’t their fault. I found that girl through a bizarre set of circumstances that were best left unexamined.
“So St. Seb. Do they get a lot of murders?” I asked.
Uncle Morty began typing furiously. “No.”
“How many in 1965?”
He typed for a minute more and then said, “There were about three hundred murders in the whole freaking state, so not a lot.”
“What was their population?”
“Eight thousand. It’s fourteen thousand now.”
“Would they know how to investigate a murder?”
“In 1965, nobody did. You got fingerprints and eyewitnesses. Maybe blood, but you could only type it.”
“And if you don’t have that…”
“You ain’t got squat. No DNA. No video surveillance. Credit cards. Bubkiss.”
“Can you find how many murders they had?”
“Who friggin’ cares? They had one. For a podunk town like them, that’s a lot.”
“I want to know if they had a clue. How many cops?”
He grumbled but went to work. “Five. A chief, two full-time deputies, and two part-time.”
“That’s pretty small,” I said.
“Little farming town. Not much going on.”
“Any other murders around that time?”
“One in ’62, but it wasn’t exactly a head scratcher,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Farmer poisoned his wife and put her in the compost heap. After the family started asking questions, Chief William (Woody) Lucas went out and he confessed. Said she annoyed him.”
“How do you know all that, if the papers are on microfiche?”
“Reported in the Post. Big write-up. I guess farmers who kill are big news.” He brought up the article for me. They certainly weren’t shy about the killer farmer. Grisly details galore, grieving family listed, even local reaction got reported. I got that farmers killing their wives wasn’t exactly an every day thing, but a murdered nun…come on. That was huge and Maggie got no interest.
“Well, I officially don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Give them rookies what they want,” said Uncle Morty.
“How? Aunt Miriam is not going to crack. She’s never cracked in her life.”
He gritted his teeth and grumbled, “You got to do something.”
I did not want to go down to St. Seb on some wild goose chase. If two FBI agents couldn’t crack it open, how was I supposed to do it? “What are you expecting? Nobody gives a crap about a fifty-year-old solved case.”
“Make ‘em fucking care. Make ‘em reopen it. That’s what the rookies want.”
“Am I talking to myself? I don’t know how. I doubt there’s any evidence left and those cops are probably dead.”
“Probably.”
“Well…”
Uncle Morty polished off his beer, belched, and said, “Figure it out. What else you got to do?”
Heal. Get yelled at. Eat weird ice cream.
“Since we’re not going to Greece anytime soon, I’ve got to get a job,” I said, although the prospect was depressing as hell. Going outside was depressing as hell.
“You got a job,” he said, handing me his computer and heaving himself off the sofa.
“I do not and it’s not looking good. I’m going to have to do telemarketing or something.”
He stretched and I got a full view of a bulbous, hairy belly. One more thing I would never get out of my memory. Gag.
“I’ll pay ya to do it,” he said.
“Pay me to…”
“Get whatever the hell you gotta get to open this case and get off that No Fly List.” He put on his ancient Members Only jacket and tried to zip it up. Not happening.
“By pay…”
“Tommy’s rate. No discount. Get cracking.”
I couldn’t speak. Dad’s rate. Holy crap.
“We got a deal?” asked Uncle Morty.
“I will figure it out.”
“Good. Familiarize yourself with St. Seb then and now.” He pointed at the laptop next to me. “I got a map in there and I marked some possibilities for the crime scene.”
He went for the door and I said, “Are you leaving?”
“I’m going to the gym.”
What now?
“Did you just—”
“Shut up,” he said.
I tossed my nail file on the coffee table and picked up the laptop. “Did you really join a gym?”
“I might’ve.”
This is serious. Paying and exercise.
“May I suggest that you hire a trainer?”
He put on a pair of gym shoes that were so old the leather was cracked. “I ain’t paying some douchebag to tell me to run on a treadmill.”
“First of all, do not run,” I said.
“You think I look like shit,” said Uncle Morty, somehow both defiant and sad at the same time.
“I did not say that. Please don’t run. Walk. Walking is good.”
“I got to lose weight.”
“Running’s a recipe for a heart attack.”
Uncle Morty stopped as he reached for the doorknob and I got a bad, bad feeling. “What are you thinking?” I asked.
“She’d probably come back if I had a heart attack.”
I tossed aside the laptop. “No. Nope. Nuh-uh. I won’t do it.”
“You need the money.”
“I do, but you aren’t giving yourself a heart attack.”
“It’s a solid plan,” he said.
“It’s a death wish. You could die. You probably would die.”
He crossed his arms over his huge belly. “‘Cause I’m fat, right?”
Duh?
“‘Cause you’re out of shape. Have you considered therapy?”
“Massage therapy?” he asked. “Does that help ya lose weight?”
“No, ya dingus. Actually therapy with a counselor,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Uncle Morty was not down. He thought therapy was for wusses and said so several times.
“I’ll be sure to tell Chuck that,” I said.
“That’s different. He saw disgusting shit with kids. I just got to lose weight.”
“And not lie about stuff that you don’t need to lie about.”
“Whatever. Get out.”
I picked up the laptop. “I live here.”
He cursed up a storm and opened the door.
“Maybe clean your apartment and stop eating food that says you’re trying to kill yourself through fat, sugar, and carbs,” I said. As my mom would say, in for a dime, in for a dollar, although I’ve never really understood what it meant.
Uncle Morty flushed and sweat beads popped out on his forehead. “I ain’t trying to kill myself. I like it. It’s fucking fine.”
“You’re sweating right now. It’s November and you’ve turned down my thermostat. It’s like sixty-two degrees in here.”
“Shut up.”
“Seek professional help.”
“Get me to Greece. All I need is Nikki.”
I swept an arm up and down in his direction. “If I were you, I’d think about what she’d be coming back to. She’s pretty awesome and you are…I don’t know what.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
I frowned, not convinced.
“I am. Just get me to Greece. That ain’t so much to ask.”
I clicked on the map tab. Wow. There was a whole lot of woods around St. Seb. “As a matter of fact it is.”
“Do it and you’ll make bank,” he said.
“Clean up your act or Greece won’t do you any good.”
Morty started out the door with a funny look on his face.
I pushed the laptop off my lap. “Are you thinking about having a heart attack again?”
“No.”
“You are. Stop it. You could die.”
He scratched his chin. “I’m thinking I won’t die.”
“Have you seen you? It’s a wonder that you haven’t had one already.”
“Then it won’t be hard.” Uncle Morty slipped out before I could protest and I didn’t have the wherewithal to chase him down. Besides, what could I do? Somehow force him to listen? Only my mom could do that.
Now that was an option. I could call Mom and get her after him. Then I pictured my mother down at Cairngorms Castle, creepy as hell, but also luxe to the max, getting pampered and Dad being like a regular guy. If I called, that would come to an abrupt stop. No. Uncle Morty was my problem.
“You ready?” asked Aaron.
“Bring it on,” I said and he did, on a platter, literally. I ate myself into a food coma that lasted well into the next day and I didn’t regret it.