Pilgrim's Egress: A Mike Dodge Holiday Mystery

“Yeah, I don’t mind that so much,” Cousin Greg replied in an octave that suggested the contrary. “It’s when they have to shove it in your face all the time.”

I nudged my chair gently back, an inch or two to allow graceful egress. Load-bearing plastic against composite garage flooring does not permit such a thing, especially at Thanksgiving, and Sarah glanced toward my end of the table. Rainbow Greg was in full dudgeon, and he gave me merely a flickering side-eye as I rose. Brother-in-law Jake soon would rally as well against rampant face-shoving, and Greg soon would wring in his other major grievance against the Hollywood establishment – multiculturally blended families in cereal ads.

Jake was also a homophobe, but not an overall racist, and however diverting an interfamilial dispute might be, my very last nerve was perilously frayed. I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass whether my fictional firefighter was gay, and I was just dandy with tow-headed tots pushing the heart-healthy benefits of Cheerios on Dad or Stepdad, whether or not Grandma or Grandpa had approved of the union. I’d found Jake’s 15-minute direct eye contact discourse on sump pumps and sump pump-related products less than compelling, and Sarah’s sister Cheryl already had critiqued three of our sides before discovering the Bob Evans people were responsible, then poured passive aggression all over the catered grub.

Our girl Melanie sat back stoically to enjoy the fun, and my darling Ella with fifth-grade obliviousness misread every conversational cue and silence and fired off enough follow-up questions to make Dennis Spicer storm out of the White House Press Room or Jake expand exponentially on everything.

So, hoping Sarah hadn’t been keeping a log of my toilet breaks, I mouthed “Bathroom,” and made for the door. Several years ago, in the wake of an incident involving Sarah’s incontinent but no longer breathing uncle, we’d had a high-capacity space heater installed and aforementioned fancy garage floor poured and glamped up Thanksgiving in the two-bay Banquet Hall.

Once ensconced in the basement john, I realized I’d left the phone at the feast, so I pondered on something to think about. Nothing came, so I crept soundlessly upstairs and gobbled a covert chunk of dark meat and a second sliver of pecan pie over the sink. As I re-hinged my jaw and pivoted for a napkin, my eyes locked with Ella’s, who grinned crookedly, shrugged, and snagged a brownie. I was pleased that at 10, she’d learned to bank leverage over the immediate gratification of ratting out Grandpa. I brushed the trace from my T-shirt and patted her on the head as I returned to the melee.   

“…just swarming in like locusts, getting free health care and stealing everything that’s not nailed down. When we’ve got thousands of homeless vets on the street...”

I’d once seen Greg brave 30 feet of icy pavement and an obstacle course of abandoned carts to avoid the Salvation Army kettle.

“I lock the car?” I inquired.

Sarah turned. “Don’t you remember?”

“Well, for sure after I got the pies, but then I had to re-park…”

“Sorry,” Cousin Gwen piped, breaking my flow. I waved her off, and recovered quickly with a gambit guaranteed to win Sarah’s support.

“Not like anybody’s going to jack the Honda in our own driveway…”

“Go. Check. Now.”

**

The first light snow had arrived overnight, so I’d been up at 6 shoveling all guest service and access areas as my cardiac monitor watched from the bay window preparing for whatever lifesaving measures we’d never bothered learning for free in our combined 120-plus years. It was already just above freezing, and I’d rolled up my balaclava before I’d done the porch.

The only other human presence at that ungodly or I suppose unhuman hour was some heavily bundled dude about a half-block down who disappeared behind Ray’s supersized SUV next door. Some sort of delivery, I assumed -- as I was finishing up on the driveway lip, he trundled back to his car and moved back into the hazy dawn. 

By 8, a fresh fall had arrived, and by 9:30, I was back in my outdoorsies questioning the futility of most human effort. By 11:30, I was haggling with the Bob Evans gang for the cranberries, potatoes, gravy, and dressing they’d doubtlessly forgotten the second after Sarah had hung up the week previous, offering an early Pilgrims Day invocation that the dismembered Hyvee turkey would stay warm in the passenger’s seat. By 11:55, I found Greg and Gwen’s burgundy Expedition occupying my spot, and after nearly making Thanksgiving at the Dodge’s a vegan bacchanal and the crows happy, cheerfully hauled Greg’s newly arrived ass back into the wonderland.

**

“You hear that?”

I jumped before spotting Ray leaning on the vinyl fence that bordered our drive. He clocked in somewhere between Delroy Lindo and Shaq, and the plastic creaked as the middle-aged IT guy shifted and shivered in his sweats and windbreaker. Then, I registered the muted car alarm.

“Geez, that’s still going? It was going full guns when I scraped the second layer of snow.”

“Just started up, again,” Ray informed me. Laughter erupted from inside my neighbor’s house, and he glanced sadly up at the bilevel’s living room window. His drive was now full, and Ray’s Escalade was at the curb two houses down. “I been out here 20 minutes, and the thing’s been going on and off the whole time.”

I shivered back. “Where’s it coming from?”

Ray’s forehead furrowed back to where a scalp line logically would have been. “Dunno. Sounds like it’s inside somewhere, like in a garage maybe. Shit, maybe Robson’s.”

Ray’s wary profanity was well-founded. We simultaneously peered over at the yard beyond the Perrys’ property, past the election sign planted a year ahead of schedule, past the lawn figure that I thought had been cancelled somewhere around Selma, to Gil Robson’s chipped and dented garage door. I strained to identify the blaring klaxon, hope against hope.

Gil Robson was the guy only a mother could love if you subscribed to maternal stereotypes. His shrill diatribes and creative misogyny had disappeared along with any remaining holiday guests after the equally pleasant Mrs. Robson had passed, and my guess is the door-to-door evangelicals and the kids scamming magazines and candy bars could sense the bad mojo rising off Old Robson’s ranch. His son, Gilbert Jr., was seemingly his sole connection with the world since Mrs. Robson Jr. took the kids as far as possible away from her father-in-law, who, I assume, also groused about cereal commercials. Before Mrs. Robson Sr. had departed for hell, I’d recalled the grandkids constantly chasing and hollering and splashing on the front lawn under Old Gil’s sour watch. Or I remembered Sarah griping about the amplified sounds of childlike glee. In the couple times I’d chatted him up since the divorce, Junior seemed a haunted man perpetually chained to his bombastic, bigoted demon.

“Fuck,” Ray whispered, then turned away from the fence. I followed him to the sidewalk and to the lip of Robson’s blanketed, untrodden driveway. “Man’s got pretty bad diabetes, and he told me he can barely afford the insulin. Well, it was more like he told me the Democrats were keeping insulin prices high just because.”

The car alarm stopped.

“Jeez, I hate to say, but you think maybe we should possibly check on him?”

“Fuck,” Ray repeated.

A feminine voice shattered the chilled autumn air. “Raymond!”

Genise was perched just inside the Perrys’ open front door. “Hey, we’re about to start the cards, and your uncle messed up the remote trying to get the game.”

“Let’s go,” Ray declared, crunching up the drive. There was no stoop next to the drive – what do misanthropic old hermits need with a stoop? I pressed the bell until my chapped finger turned purple. We clearly were ambivalent about the silence that followed.

Ray took a breath, and tried the storm door. It opened, and we looked at each other like the first and second victims after the credits.

The inside door was locked. Ray pounded for five minutes before he slumped back and I reached for my iPhone. “Lemme call 9—“

And Ray’s size 13 came up, and my neighbor drove his right leg into the vinyl and steel and wood. And his left leg slipped on the snow, knocking him to the drive. Fortunately, buffered by 210 pounds of me.

When we confirmed none of us were going to the ER and climbed to our feet, the door stood open to a darkened interior and the faint babble of FOX News in the living room. In the bathroom, we completed our welfare check with a failing grade.

The medicine cabinet was opened, and orange bottles and a hemorrhoid tube had spilled into the basin. Robson’s eyes were open and empty, and a ring of keys and a Dodge fob were splayed a couple of inches beyond his clawed hand.

I said it this time, before fumbling for the iPhone.

**

The Millington Police response time was phenomenal – just as I hung up on the Millington Police.

“What do you guys think you’re doing?” the patrolman demanded from his open car door. A gaunt middle-aged guy I recognized as Gilbert Jr. was standing at the bottom of his father’s drive, his pickup slanted into the curb behind the MPD cruiser.

“Mr. Dodge,” Junior muttered. “Ray.”

“We thought your dad might be in trouble,” Ray stammered. “I’m sorry, Bro – he’s dead.”

The cop sprinted up the drive. “Shit, you two stick with me. Nobody’s going anywhere.” The officer plunged into the house, and I looked back at Gilbert on the sidewalk, wringing gloved hands as he watched anxiously.  

When we emerged, the cop shook his head at Junior, who slumped back against the squad car.

“Hey,” I said. “Wait.”

**

“My guess is, he’d been contemplating something like this for a while,” I told Det. Curtis Mead about an hour later, as Ella plopped a slice of pecan pie at his new place. Curtis nodded with a curt smile – the one he no doubt reserved for those who discharged their duties without lip.

“Lucky -- we were almost out,” Ella beamed angelically at me. Obstreperous child. 

“Probably didn’t imagine anybody would be out at six on Thanksgiving,” I continued hastily, “and lucky for him Ray and Genise left their SUV out, blocking my view. The street was empty, and I should have wondered why he parked so far away. Or, really, what he was delivering so early to Robson.”

“What was it?” Sarah’s sister inquired. I hadn’t planned a drawing room reveal, but before I could drag Curtis to the sunroom or maybe escape out the patio door to the Denny’s, Sarah had decided to be a gracious host, damn her, and so here I was Poiroting it up.

“Remember the noise Robson’s grandkids used to make during the summer, splashing around in the front yard?” I asked Sarah. “I believe you commented on it from time to time, quite vociferously, in fact.” There’s your gracious hospitality. I turned to Ella, who was watching some nattering YouTube video with two Australian girls rating Barbies. The doll kind. “Remember how you wanted us to drag out the Slip N Slide every time you came down?”

Ella previewed her adolescent eyeroll. She’d been such a child at two years ago.

“Robson Jr. dragged out the old Slip N Slide this morning. Whatever divorced dad reason he’d kept it I don’t know, but it came in handy here. Starting at the bottom of Robson’s drive, he unrolled it as he worked toward the door. Keeping the scene pristine was the major objective, and only a couple of inches total were predicted. Even if the continued fall covered his shoeprints, they’d likely have left some kind of impression. A tarp would distribute Junior’s weight enough to prevent any deep, compressed prints that might have remained even after a mild thaw.

“Robson was an early riser, so he probably wasn’t surprised his son popped by at that hour. He’d have had coffee on, and it was easy enough for Junior to dose his dad’s cup, deflect whatever abusive crap Senior had to dish out, and wait for the added insulin to kick in. Junior follows the Slip N Slide, and when he reaches the curb, carefully rolls it up like a hose. Further smoothing the snow and obscuring any shallow impression Junior might have made. Half the neighborhood’s gone out of town for Thanksgiving, and nobody who remotely knows Robson would take it on themselves to shovel his drive or even do a holiday welfare check on the old…” Melanie’s brow rose and Ella waited eagerly. “The old man. The next inch of snow managed to cover any trace that Junior had even been there.”

“What you say, might have been a week until anybody found the old…man,” Curtis suggested as he lifted a forkful of pecans, emulsified sugar, and crust to his lips.

“Well, after Junior left, Senior comes around, but he’s weak, he can’t get up, his phone’s out of reach in the kitchen. But his keys and key fob are in his pocket, and he presses the car alarm button as an alert. Thing is, car alarms going off on Thanksgiving aren’t that unusual, with people hauling food and re-parking (I waved Gwen off again) and dealing with the stress — the exuberant fellowship – of family Thanksgiving. Like I said, half the neighborhood’s gone for the day and most of the rest surrounded by the happy chaos of the holiday, and a car alarm becomes white noise after a while when you’re distracted by…the joy of family and fellowship. When nobody came to rescue him, Robson decides to sound the alarm intermittently, in the hope somebody would pick up on the oddity. Ray and I only picked up on it when we realized the noise was coming from inside Robson’s garage instead of the street.

“Even so, it wouldn’t have been a week. Junior wouldn’t have taken that chance – his whole alibi scheme depended on finding the body before the snow melted. So he shows up with the police after claiming to have tried to raise Dad several times. Only to find the two neighborhood idiots mucking up his perfect murder. Now he had a problem. How could he verify he didn’t leave prints before he’d returned to the scene amid the mess Ray and I’d left? Anybody? What would you do if you arrived at your parents’ house and found out they’d been murdered? Even if you hated them?” Know-it-all Jake began to propound, and I pivoted to rhetorical. “I wouldn’t just stand at the curb while two relative strangers and the police stormed the manor.”

“That was it?” Greg gawped. “That’s what tipped you off? That’s kinda iffy.”

I forced a smile – I should have been doing this mano-a-mano over a Turkey Slam. “Well, that and Junior being so bundled up this morning when the temps were already in the 30s. And when it hit me that he left the house with the same bundle he’d come to ‘deliver,’ when Robson was almost certainly awake.”

“Thought it was kinda lame myself,” Det. Mead told Greg as he washed the rest of the pie I’d so generously offered him with the coffee I’d so generously offered him. Well, Sarah had so generously offered him. “Then I realized if this whole thing was a setup, there was a pretty good shot Robson the Second hadn’t even tried to call his dad. So I checked his phone, which took him by surprise. What was he gonna do, commit the perfect crime and then lawyer up? Thanks for the pie, Mrs. Dodge, but I suspect I still have a houseful of, uh, people waiting for me.”

There was a tinge of regret in Curtis’ voice. Despite muting my thunder, at that moment I would gladly have killed another neighbor for him.

“Did you lock the car?” Cheryl finally asked.

“No,” I announced happily, reaching for my hoodie.