Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Read online

  “You’re supposed to have fish three times a week – I have it once but eat three times as much,” he said.

  “Very efficient,” Mary said. “So why the luxurious offer to this swanky place?”

  “I just wanted to check out your body again close up,” he said.

  “Very sensitive, Jake,” Mary said. “A woman barely survives an assault and you immediately start leering at her. I hope you’re not the department’s grief counselor.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “I’m surprised any of those old bastards survived. I can’t believe you only shot one. You must be getting old.”

  “It’s sort of hard to be menacing when you’re buck naked. Except for your girlfriend, Davies.”

  The waitress brought Mary’s beer and Jake’s sake.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Jake said, after the waitress had left.

  “So what it is it you wanted to tell me?” Mary said. She didn’t want to get into this again. Maybe it was Chris McAllister, or maybe it was something that needed to be talked about seriously, and she wasn’t ready for it. Not just yet.

  “I’m dying of curiosity,” Mary said. She stuffed a piece of spider roll into her mouth and studied the poster on the wall describing all the different kinds of sushi.

  “We have a confession in the murder of your uncle,” Jake said.

  He glanced up at Mary, a curious expression on his face.

  She looked down from the poster at him.

  “Was it some loony homeless guy who wandered in to the station from Ocean Avenue and gave a confession for a free meal and a warm bed?” Mary said.

  Jake shook his head again.

  “Mark Reihm,” he said.

  Mary remembered him immediately – he had been one of the crew at Aunt Alice’s house whom she’d questioned. He’d been the one with the acne scars and the buzz cut.

  “So, what, his guilty conscience drove him to confess?” she said.

  “Actually, it drove him to suicide. He confessed in a note.”

  Mary rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “He’s dead and he confessed in a note? And you believe it?”

  Jake shrugged. “We’re checking it out.”

  Mary started to tell him not to bother, that whoever was behind these killings wasn’t the kind to be plagued by a guilty conscience. But she stopped herself. She sort of liked the idea of Jake and the Shark running around, following up silly leads that would go nowhere. That would give her time to find out the real killer.

  “Wow, that’s great,” Mary said. “Maybe they’ll put you on the cover of Police Weekly. Or, even better, Playgirl,” she said. “Detective Jacob Cornell. He fights crime! He protects society! He talks on the phone naked!”

  “Oh, I bet you could picture me naked,” Jake said. He smiled a sly smile at her.

  She could picture him naked and on top of her gazing down into her eyes. Actually he looked incredibly hot right now, with that stupid little grin on his face. Like a boy peeking through a peephole at the girly show.

  “If I want an image of you naked, I’ll order the river eel,” she said, pointing with her chin toward the sushi bar.

  He rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m not apologizing yet again for what happened. You dumped me. I got shit faced and made a mistake. Get over it. In fact, I think you’re already over it, but you’re pretending not to be so you don't have to admit to yourself just how much you still love me.”

  She made a face at him, smeared a big dab of wasabi on her salmon and popped it into her mouth. The wasabi’s heat made her eyes water and her face flush. Which is what she’d hoped for, because she knew she was blushing. Jake was right, but she didn’t want to admit it. Mary felt embarrassed and a little ashamed of herself, which had probably been Jake’s intention.

  He watched her with that stupid grin on his face. It was getting wider.

  He glanced up at the waitress and got her attention. “More sake, please,” he said. “Lots more.”

  Sixty

  Mary snapped her eyes open, saw her bedroom wall, and realized she’d been having a nightmare. A nightmare where a bunch of old men hyped up on Viagra had their way with her over and over again.

  “And I thought I’d seen it all,” she said, as she swung out of bed.

  She showered and drove to Aunt Alice’s house. The owner of the house was parked on the couch, watching Animal Planet.

  “What do you know about Mark Reihm?” Mary asked.

  “Limp-dicked wussy,” Alice said, without taking her eyes from the television.

  “Nice,” Mary said. “Very colorful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So could he kill someone?”

  “With his breath, yes.”

  Mary took a deep breath. Dealing with a Cooper was never an easy proposition.

  “Mark Reihm couldn’t kill anyone,” Alice said. “The man was a useless pile of flesh with bad breath and the occasional good punch line.”

  “Your memories are so heartfelt,” Mary said.

  “He was a wimp,” Alice said. “Sorry, but it’s true. He didn’t have the balls to kill anyone. His nuts were probably like mini brussel sprouts. They should make those, you know, like those mini corn cobs in Asian stir-fry…”

  Mary took yet another deep breath. “You’re absolutely sure,” she said. “Well, I don’t plan to pursue it, and hope I’ll gain a lot of ground on the cops. If I’m wrong, I’ll blame you.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Alice said. “I’m positive. I know psychopaths are always the guys who the neighbors thought were nice, but quiet. But I knew this Reihm guy pretty well. Maybe fooled around with him a little bit.”

  Mary raised her eyebrow.

  Alice’s face took on a slightly naughty expression. “Well,” she said. “His last name was Reihm.”

  “Too much information,” Mary said.

  “Oh, yeah, who’d you have sex with?”

  “What?” Mary said.

  “I can tell. You don’t seem so manly. I figured you must’ve gotten laid. About time. Was it Braggs?”

  Mary headed for the door.

  “It was Milton Berle,” Mary said.

  “He’s dead!” Alice called out.

  Just before the door closed, Mary got in the last word.

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  Sixty-One

  The next day, Mary was arrested outside her office by a pair of young patrolmen.

  “Exactly what are the charges?” she said when they placed her in the back of the squad car headed for downtown.

  The young cop in the passenger seat answered her. “You’re under arrest for sexual battery.”

  She pondered that for a moment.

  “Sexual battery?” Mary said. “That’s what runs my vibrator.”

  The cops ignored her and before she knew it, she was in a holding cell by herself.

  She paced the small room. The metal bed frame attached to the wall. The stainless steel toilet. This was the second time in a matter of days she’d found herself in jail. This wasn’t a good thing. Not the kind of career trajectory she’d envisioned.

  “I thought you told us you were a chubby chaser,” a voice said behind her. “Now you’re into old guys, too?”

  Mary turned and saw Sergeant Davies leaning casually against the door to her cell. Jake was behind her.

  “I prefer the phrase fully ripened,” Mary said. “Old is too pejorative.”

  “Come on, Mary, don’t you get tired of this?” Jake asked.

  “No, as I recall, you had a penchant for getting tired,” Mary said. “Is that still true, Sergeant?”

  Jake turned and walked away.

  “Ronald Clarey,” the Shark said.

  “Never heard of him,” Mary responded.

  “Claims he met you at a senior citizens center and you portrayed yourself as a financial planner,” she said, reading from a sheet of paper in her hand. “Says he invited you to his apartment where he says yo
u forced yourself on him. He has submitted his clothes as evidence.”

  “You sent his Depends to the lab for DNA tests?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Davies said.

  “This is bullshit,” Mary said. “He was probably one of the Nixons – one of the old guys who attacked me. They couldn’t kill me so now they’re trying to keep me in jail.”

  “We’re looking at the two cases as unrelated, for now,” Davies said.

  Mary was about to answer when she heard the voice of Visa.

  “Well, well, well,” it said. Mary looked and saw over Davies’ shoulder the tanned countenance of Whitney Braggs and the bright orange curls of attorney Joan Hessburg.

  “Ms. Cooper, you’re free to come with me.” The attorney handed Davies a piece of paper.

  “If you continue to harass my client by throwing her in jail every chance you get, you may find yourself locked up before too long,” the attorney said. “Consider it a fair warning.”

  Davies didn’t flinch.

  “Go to hell, Curly,” she said.

  Sixty-Two

  “Until this case is resolved, you have been granted temporary status as a registered sex offender,” Hessburg said to Mary once they’d gotten out of the jail building.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your…ah…offbeat proclivities?” Braggs said. “And more importantly how come I wasn’t one of your conquests?”

  “I didn’t think you could handle it,” Mary said. This day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  Hessburg had a small folder in her hands, and read from the sheet on top of it. “Ms. Cooper, according to this, you are to not go within 100 feet of nursing homes, physical therapy offices, and other centers of the elderly,” said Hessburg.

  “You forgot bingo parlors,” Braggs said.

  “I’m not hearing this,” Mary said.

  “My office will be in contact with you regarding your court date,” Hessburg said. “I’ll have an assistant gather the necessary information and paperwork so it should go smoothly. I believe this is a ridiculous charge designed to provide pressure to you in some manner. I’m confident it will be dropped quite quickly.”

  “Did you say I couldn’t handle it?” Braggs said, his voice incredulous. “Let me tell you…”

  Mary held up her hand.

  “Lunch is moving from my stomach up toward my esophagus, Braggs,” Mary said. “I suggest you stop.”

  He complied.

  Sixty-Three

  The names ran through Mary’s head like old news headlines of tragic stories. Ready Betty. Martin Gulinski. David Kenum. All eliminated, some of them quite literally, from the picture.

  Only one name remained from the list she’d generated with the help of Brent’s old gang.

  Marie Stevens. The old guys had said that she was buried at Forest Hills. And that Harvey Mitchell had paid for her burial. But Mitchell had said she was crazy and never mentioned where she was buried or if he had in fact paid for it.

  The drive to Forest Hills didn’t take long, nor did finding the manager of the cemetery to the stars.

  “I called a while back about a Marie Stevens,” Mary said to the manager, a highly effeminate older man wearing a conservative suit and sporting smokers’ teeth. “I recall you said there were two.”

  “Yes, I recall that,” the man said, not offering anything more.

  “Can you tell me where I can find their final resting places?”

  Mr. Tidy whipped out a walking map of Forest Hills and a slim black pencil. He clicked on a desktop computer, typed in a few words, then circled two plots on opposite ends of the cemetery.

  “This is where they are in repose,” he said. His eyebrows lifted on the word ‘repose.’

  Mary took the map and walked to the farthest one first. It was a classic L.A. day – warm and sunny with a sense of foulness in the air.

  She still couldn’t believe she’d been labeled a sexual predator – and that her prey was elderly men. She shook her head. What a low point in her life. And now here she was surrounded by dead people. Old men and dead people. That was the kind of company she’d been keeping lately.

  It only took a brief glance at the first headstone of Marie Stevens to cross one off the list. Born in 1909, died in 1961. Her husband had followed her three years later. No way. Brent’s gang was in its heyday at the time, and long after she was dead, when the real Marie Stevens was partying with them.

  A two minute walk to the second Marie Stevens also created a black checkmark on Mary’s suspect list.

  Born in 1966. Died in 2001.

  Too bad, Mary thought. Young.

  On the way back to her car, Mary thought about her next steps. She could swing by a V.F.W. Hall and pick out a couple 80-year-old hotties and screw their brains out.

  Or she could go back to her office and ransack her Internet resources for this Marie Stevens. Being a sexual predator and all, her first instinct was to go for the old guys. But her sense of duty to Uncle Brent and Aunt Alice led her to the right, and just, decision. Go back to her office and find out what happened to Marie Stevens.

  Then go to the V.F.W. and invite some old men to her place for an orgy.

  Sixty-Four

  As much as she hated it, she excelled at meeting the organizational demands of her private investigation firm. Scheduling, filing, accounts payable, expenses. They were all nicely filed and collated.

  So it took her no time to assemble the stacks of research she’d done this far on Brent’s case.

  Mary brewed some coffee and turned on her office stereo, putting Prince’s CD Musicology on to play. As the stuttering rhythms filled the office, she dove back into the history of Brent Cooper and his supporting cast of cuckoos.

  What came to her after nearly an hour of intense reading was that it seemed like Brent and Harvey Mitchell were really the founding fathers of the dysfunctional group. Whitney Braggs played a significant role, as well, but not quite as expansive as the other two.

  It was those two who had the big house in Malibu that essentially became party headquarters. They had the first paying gigs – as writers on some long defunct variety show. And it was those two who had progressed the farthest and the fastest in terms of success; with Mitchell obviously eclipsing all of them by a huge margin.

  But despite her best efforts, she could find no further mention of Marie Stevens. Nor any pictures. Not any illuminating mentions of a Marie, or an attractive young brunette who had a wicked sense of humor and a penchant for booze and drugs.

  By the time she hit the bottom of her material and found the top of her desk, it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. Mary did some rapid calculations in her mind and decided that she had just enough time to try one last-ditch effort to find Marie Stevens.

  She flew out of the office and into the Accord and fifteen minutes later she was at a run-down neighborhood in Venice.

  The Southern California Comedy Museum looked less like a public space and more like a St. Vincent DePaul gone to seed. Mary had just read about its grand opening in the local paper. Well, it had actually been their non-grand opening, because it had been cancelled and postponed to an undetermined date.

  She parked the Accord and went to the door. Inside, she could see two men standing next to a kiosk. One wore a tattered sport coat with filthy khakis, the other had on blue jeans, a denim shirt, and a tool belt.

  Mary opened the door and stepped inside.

  “We’re not open,” the guy in the mangy sport coat said.

  Mary flashed her badge. He saw it, and turned to the guy in the tool belt.

  “I’m not upgrading my service – just do it so I can turn on the lights without blowing a fuse, please.”

  He walked over to Mary.

  “What can I do for you, Officer?” the guy asked. Mary didn’t correct him.

  “I need to do some research on a woman who lived here in L.A. back in the fifties and sixties,” she said. “Her name was Marie Stevens and she
was tight with a group of guys. Brent Cooper was one of them, and Harvey Mitchell was another.”

  “Look, man,” the guy said to her. “This ain’t a frickin’ research center. It’s a comedy museum. One without much electricity,” the guy raised his volume so the guy in the tool belt would hear. “And I still haven’t seen your badge.”

  “Look, Brent Cooper was my uncle,” Mary offered. “He was murdered a week ago and I’m trying to help find his killer. Can you help me out here?”

  Just then, the worker flipped a switch and the lights went on inside the room.

  “That’s a sign from God, friend,” Mary said. “Ignore it at your own peril.”

  The guy turned and walked toward a door in the back. “Well come on,” he said. “You might want to look through this stuff fast. The way things have been going, there’s probably an electrical fire starting somewhere. This place will be toast in a half hour.”

  Sixty-Five

  “You got a name, there, Dapper Don?” Mary said.

  The guy let out a small smile. “Dapper. I like that.” He looked down at his tattered khakis and grungy sport coat. “Dressed for success,” he said. He held out his hand. “Carl Michaletz.”

  “Mary Cooper.” They shook. Mary looked around the room. It was piled with boxes of all shapes, sizes, colors, and branding.

  Michaletz pointed to a small group of boxes on the left side. “All of my stuff on the comedy writers and variety show writers from that period are here,” he said, leading her over to the section. “It’s hard to categorize a lot of people from back then, but I did my best.”

  He pulled some boxes out and opened the lids to all of them.

  “How did you wind up here?” Mary asked. She sat down cross-legged on the concrete floor and pulled up the nearest box. Michaletz pulled a floor lamp over nearer to them and sat down as well.

  “I did a lot of coke and booze in the eighties while trying to become a comedian,” he said. “By the time I cleaned up and was sober, I realized I wasn’t very funny.”