Boughs Unholy: A Mike Dodge Mystery

We looked like a depressing Whatever The Eff Happened to the Brady Bunch? documentary. Evan, our moderator – pleasant-looking middle-aged sort - was in the Alice position, in a sweet pine-paneled den against a mouth-watering backdrop of floor-to-ceiling books.

All mysteries – Evan was group administrator, and had edited or introduced a few dozen collections of “lost” Golden Age/pulp/slick magazine crime stories and novellas, most of which were now on my Kindle. Sarah had thrown a flag on basement library expansion a few years back.

Eclectically clockwise from upper left were blue-haired millennial pop-culture ‘50s hardboiled paperback aficionado Beth; Touji, whose primary obsessions were Ellery Queen and that father of the Japanese classic mystery Edogawa Rampo; Etienne, quite naturally a Woolrich devotee and general noir buff; Mike, me, the tubby schmo who also favored Queen as well as Chandler and a variety of modern PI writers beyond the group’s chartered scope; Evelynn, a Brit with an uncanny resemblance to Dame Agatha and a bent toward the early Golden Age culminating in Christie and Van Dine; Harlan, a New Englander encyclopedic in mid-century modern detective fiction; and Timothy, a genial Carr scholar whose Edgar-winning Edwardian academician/actor Jeremy Wraithe tipped a bowler to both Gervase Fen and Gideon Fell.

Rounding out our Friday evening convo were Isidro, who had remained virtually silent during the conference call, but whose shelves were lined with spy novels by Amble and Greene and Follett, crime and mainstream works by Joyce Carol Oates, the oddball German playwright/crime writer Friedrich Durrenmatt, and the late Steig Larsson’s wildly popular “Girl Who…” books. In halting English, the aged Barcelonan stressed he was attending the video roundtable on “The Resurgence of the Classic Mystery” “purely for self-edification.”

He’s the only member of the Vintage Bibliobuffs Facebook group who really matters here. And me.

Disappointing, I know – put this cast on a cross-continental train, in a snowbound manor on Christmas, or in the next Knives Out sequel, and the fun and mayhem would ensue. But we were on some free Zoom-ish app, and those who weren’t fortunate enough to be in or adjacent to Evan’s time-zone had work or church or the clubs or simply slumber to get to. Sarah was upstairs bingeing Property Brothers, and I had promised her the new Clooney/Roberts movie after this nerd summit.

Wasn’t sure what time it was in Spain, or what Isidro might be planning after adjournment. Definitely not church or eggnog with the crew: He wore a red T-shirt that proclaimed “Dios nos bendiga a todos! y Dios nos salve de Dios!” over a cartoon rendering of Santa’s sleigh crashing into a nativity, scattering wise men and livestock and presumably Joseph and Mary and their new kid. Strange considering the only art besides a surreal print on the wall above the bookshelf behind his shoulder was an ancient framed photo of a Frasier-looking dude with wire-rimmed old-timey specs and what looked like a priest’s collar.

As the discussion wound down amid spirited debate over the parameters of “noir” fiction, I pondered Freudian and spiritually dispiriting theories about the cleric on Scrooge’s wall. As my attention rallied, the gang was bidding farewell in several languages and blinking out one by one. I called out a belated and questionably relevant Happy Holiday and fumbled for the switch to the light ring I’d purchased a few months ago at the FiveBelow near Outback so I wouldn’t look like I was bunking in Buffalo Bill’s staging well. The ensemble crashed to the tile “office”/guestroom floor, yanking the USB cord out of the laptop.

By the time I came up with the possibly defunct apparatus, I found myself alone online with Isidro, who because it was a cheapo conferencing app had likely not realized the show was still going. Or maybe hadn’t had the chance to properly sign off. The old man was flailing in his office chair, gawping like a landed bonito, a red, dripping line across his throat. The red shirt was already dark with blood.

“Holy shit!” I yelped. “What happened?”

Brilliant question, followed by the obvious revelation that even beyond any language barrier, Isidro wasn’t verbalizing anything.

“Did somebody do this to you?” I demanded, losing Mensa points by the second. I reverted to our shared language. “Murder?” Isidro nodded frantically, causing a new gout of blood. I waved for him to stop moving, which is actually a tougher gesture than you might think He stopped on his own, eyes clearing, and he held up a finger and leaned to the left (his left) of his own PC and waggled a green blob too close to the video lens.

“What is that?” I squeaked. “Can you --?” I waved my hands toward my chest as if I were guiding an airliner into the terminal. Isidro burbled blood in comprehension as he pulled back and waved the white-berried sprig.

“Mistletoe?” I demanded. On cue, Isidro’s bald head slumped onto his narrow shoulder as he kissed his life goodbye.

I murmured several non-constructive things as I pondered my next course of action. What was Spanish for 9-1-1, and what the hell good would that do now? And then I almost fell out of my already precarious OfficeMax chair as a woman darted into the frame and started screaming. I was left alone with Isidro again as her clattering footsteps and wailing dopplered out into the presumed hall.

“Your thing over yet?” Sarah, at the base of the stairs.

“I don’t think so!” I called, somewhat frantically.

**

And that’s how I made the acquaintance of Inspector Cervera of the Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona, roughly 40 minutes later.

“Muerdago,” Cervera muttered after we sorted out the seeming idiocy that had brought me and Isidro Ribera together, who I was, and the ignominious details of how I’d managed to miss witnessing Isidro being garroted or slashed and his killer take flight through the den’s open courtyard window.

“Certainly doesn’t look like an accident.”

Cervera paused and squinted at Isidro’s screen. “Mistletoe. Muerdago is mistletoe. This is all the victim did or said before he expired?”

“Yes. I mean, he couldn’t speak with, you know,” I drew a finger across my Adam’s apple. The burly, bearded policeman furrowed his thick brows. “Soooo, I guess he was trying to, I don’t know, identify his killer?”

“It is Nochebuena, Christmas Eve. Romance under el muerdago. Don’t you Americans hang mistletoe during the holiday to, ah, solicit the opposite sex? Here, it is used for luck, for the health of the household, the family.”

“While I was waiting for you, I did a little research on mistletoe. Yeah, it represents romance and fertility, but in a homicidal context, the Norse god Baldur was allegedly murdered with a mistletoe spear, by his blind brother.”

“Ribera’s carotid artery was sliced with what appeared to be a sharpened wire or thin blade drawn across his throat from behind. And Ribera’s housekeeper, whom you met briefly before our arrival, assures me Ribera has no siblings, indeed no family currently in Spain. Would you suggest a blind assassin entered the window, crept up upon the victim, and managed to cut his throat?”

“I won’t now. Well, mistletoe berries are used to make a glue poachers use to trap small birds, and some species of the plant are fatal if eaten. That’s all kind of esoteric, I guess, and like you said, that carotid-slicing...”

“Senor Dodge…” 

“Then there are the medical applications. Folks in Nepal use mistletoe to help heal bones, and in the early 1900s, it was used as a cancer treatment. They still market European mistletoe extract by prescription or as a dietary supplement, though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has never approved it for cancer or any other medical condition. Wonder if there’s any chance Isidro has been diagnosed with cancer, maybe sold some kind of quack mistletoe-based cancer cure…”

“You have been of great service, Senor Dodge, but I know you have probably been traumatized by witnessing such violence...” 

“Remember, I was crawling around on the floor while the violence was going on. Hey, maybe Isidro was being literal. Mistletoe equals love. This housekeeper of his…”

“As I said, you met her only briefly,” Cervera stated.

“Here’s my problem, Inspector. Did you check out Isidro’s T-shirt? ‘Dios nos bendiga a todos! y Dios nos salve de Dios!’” The detective’s stoic features wrinkled slightly in distaste. “Dios, that was pretty obvious. Salve — salvation, right? God save, what, us? But, then, ‘de’ means ‘from,’ correct? So, what, ‘God save us from God?’ Sorry, I’m babbling.”

“I did not wish to be rude. Yes, you are correct. In its entirety, it reads, ‘God bless us everyone, and God save us from God.’” Cervera’s nostrils flared as if Satan himself had ripped one at the crime scene. “This obviously is a reference to Senor Dickens, to Ebenezer Scrooge.”

“Tiny Tim,” I clarified. “Uh, Pequeno Tim—“

“The child with the, how you probably would say it, bum leg. I have heard the story. If you would forgive me, we are rather busy with our investigation. Why do you find this camiseta blasfemo — this shirt — so fascinating?” The tone translated to, do it in 100 words or less.

“I used to have lunch with my minister every once in a while, and sometimes we’d get into some pretty deep territory — philosophically, politically, even theologically. Jim can get pretty academic, kind of esoteric. Over my head, you know?”

Cervera did not seem surprised.

“Soooo, That painting on the wall behind you. That’s a Picasso, right? I think I saw it somewhere once.”

“Guernica. You likely saw it in a gallery, perhaps in your Chicago?”

“Chicago, yeah! In my room at the Palmer House! I recognized the style cause of, you know, the big Picasso horse in front of Daley Center. You know, The Blues Brothers?”

“I have not seen this film.”

“May lose a bit in the translation. Look at the books behind you. Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Ken Follett, Steig Larsson, Joyce Carol Oates. Crime writers. My wife and I hit a lot of garage sales on the weekends. You know what a garage sale is?”

“It’s rather self-explanatory.”

“I like to try to analyze what books tell me about the people selling them. Sociology texts next to paperback romances; motivational bestsellers and coach biographies…”

“And this tells you what?” The deadpan prompt was more an expedient than inquiry.

“The people on this conference call were all mystery fans — I’ve been a mystery lover since grade school. Not a spy guy, but one thing I recalled was that Ambler and Greene were self-avowed atheists — you can especially see it between the lines of Greene’s novels. The shirt kinda suggests it, but then again, Christmas ain’t a holly jolly time for everybody.”

“An opinion.”

“The shirt kinda implies it, but it turns out Durrenmatt, Follett, Larsson, and Oates also are atheists, non-believers, whatever. As was Picasso. If you find Philip Pullman or Luis Bunuel on his living room shelf, I won’t be surprised. It may not even be a conscious thing — Isidro may simply have been drawn to writers who reflected his sensibilities and philosophy.

“Now, just because Isidro may not embrace the sacred or from that graphic on his shirt the secular significance of Christmas doesn’t mean he might not slap up a blue spruce or watch the Grinch or whatever you guys have with the grandkids. But my guess is, Isidro wouldn’t murder a spruce for some yuletide thrills. You see any tinsel or holly or turtledoves up in there?”

Sighing, the inspector called out in Spanish, and detectives and techs rushed about behind him. A series of negative responses rang from off-screen, and Isidro simply shook his head.

“What I’m betting you do find are a lot of scientific books and journals.”

“Why wouldn’t you mention that while my people were searching?” He snapped another series of commands, and within minutes, a hairy arm entered the frame with a stack of plain-wrappered periodicals. “Anales del Jardín Botánico de Madrid, American Journal of Botany, Biologia Plantarum. And next to his computer is a volume on ‘ethnobotany,’ with more than a dozen passages marked with the sticky notes. To save some precious time, we have confirmed the deceased was a professor of botany at the University. At the risk of losing precious time, how did you determine this?”

“Junior high school science. The priest-looking guy in the other frame is Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics. I wondered why an apparent atheist had a picture of a clergyman on his wall any more than a sprig of mistletoe for a holiday he seemingly despised. Then I remembered Mr. Kelly’s biology class, the diagrams with the smooth and the wrinkled peas, and Mendel, the monk who IDed and mapped hereditary traits. And the mistletoe fell into context. The ethnobotany book tells me WHY Isidro had it — he’s probably doing a paper on rituals and folklore related to plants.

“Why he picked mistletoe as a dying gesture leads me to ask you: Does Isidro have any houseguests, probably long-term? Is there a friend or long-lost relative who’s constantly asked him for financial help? Any university colleague who’s rested on Isidro’s laurels, pardon the pun. Laurels, botany?”

“Yes, I understood.” the detective frowned. “The housekeeper tells us Ribera had no remaining family, at least on the continent, and he refuses to loan money to anyone — she asked when her son needed a major surgery.”

“Bah, humbug.”

He waited a beat. “But there is an assistant from the University here right now — a former student of Ribera’s who is intolerably poor at feigning grief or affection. He does not appear unduly intelligent.”

“That’s your guy,” I snapped. “Bet he’s either planning to cash in on Isidro’s research or maybe steal his seat in the Biology Department. Or maybe if he’s as stupid and as bad an actor as you suggest, maybe he was simply saving his job. To be indelicate, Isidro had a, well, rather robust neck, and you might get lucky and find some friction burns on his hands or gloves, if he kept them.”

“The mistletoe,” Inspector Cervera prompted.

**

“Remember when your buddy Trina forced us to go on that hike at Tortilla Flats and I got that cactus infection?” I asked.

Sarah pulled the last of the Corel from the washer. “You tripped like a clod and fell on a cholla.”

“We have quite different memories of that day. Remember when Nature Girl pointed out the desert mistletoe hanging on the mesquite? That’s how mistletoe exists, you know — it attaches itself to another plant and sucks its water and nutrients until somebody harvests it for a sexual harassment hall pass. Does do its own photosynthesis, like that’s any excuse.

“So if mistletoe had no religious or ritual significance for Isidro, what was he trying to tell me ? He was a botanist, so he was pointing us to the species’ and his killer’s common, defining characteristic. Both were parasites.”

“What did Inspector Cerveza think about that?”

“Cervera. Not sure,” I said, scrounging in the fridge for the last of the lactose-free eggnog. “We lost our connection about halfway through my explanation.”

“Lost, huh?” Sarah echoed. “C’mon — you said we’d finally watch that Hallmark Christmas movie tonight.”

“God bless us, everyone,” I muttered.