Bold and Simful

Robert Bettencourt fell asleep. In his head, he heard voices running over each other.

“What do I have to do to get in the column?” his daughter Veronica whining slightly.
“How could someone be so mean?” his wife’s innate curiosity
“Monica’s really upset.” Randal, full of concern
“Who is the Voice?” the collective cry of all Bay residents
“How can they know so much?” His own deep timber.

The voices ran together, getting faster and faster until the final words became a mantra “know so much, know so much” that lulled him into dreamland…

Bob Betts, elite SCIA operative and sharp dressed jasper of independent means, hopped in the shiny red tin can and grumbled at the day ahead. This was a tough case with no lack of suspects, in fact, there were as many suspects as there were grains of sand on the beach. Well, not exactly. If we’re talking exact numbers, there were 26 adult suspects, 3 toddlers, 3 babies and 1 nun. Bob never discounted anyone.

“Step on it, Sam,” he ordered the driver, “I gotta get a bead on this Abercrombie.”

The gal’s gums were bumpin’ and Bob hung on every word, he needed to since the boss had put the kibosh on using department resources to track down the identity of the canary with the column. He would have to use gossip to catch gossip. ‘What poetic irony,’ he thought to himself and returned his attention to his own gaggle of gossipers.

“I think it’s Elizabeth Mendenhall,” Monica offered, “She can be really nasty.”

“No way, not after all the things the Voice said about her family,” Maleena pointed out the obvious, then offered her own suggestion, “It’s probably Talia Cwik, she has reason to be vindictive.”

“Talia?!” Maxine said with some thought, “She was at both parties…”

“Then why didn’t she mention either of my dresses?” Veronica was still miffed, “No, it has to be a man. Only a man would miss fashion.”

The hypothesizing continued, Bob mentally logged each accusation and it’s pros and cons for future research.

Left without department resources, Bob would have to work this one the old fashioned way. “Start at the beginning,” Old Patty used to say. The trouble was Maxine was a stickler for recycling so all he had to go on was the second column and there wasn’t much there.

There was the Mendenhall-Cwik wedding, Bob had been there himself and he mentally ran down the guest list. He immediately discounted Paul, the balloon bomber, ‘just a grifter running a game on a lonely old lady‘ he thought then wondered if he should warn Talia of his gut instinct.

The rest of the column left him wondering too. The Voice was in the know about the birth of the Winfield twins and about his own granddaughter’s birthday, “They have a finger in every pie! or someone’s dropping a dollar’s worth of dimes!”

Thankfully doing things the old fashioned way didn’t mean avoiding technology, or so Bob figured. He hit the streets with his new listening device, hoping to pick up conversations from 200 yards away as the ad had claimed he would.

“Damn! All I hear is powder hitting the ground,” Bob cursed the new gadget and the falling snow.

He was about to bag the device when a woman’s voice crackled into his ear, “found these in …*sputter*… desk, thought you might …*screech*”. He yanked the ear piece away and rubbed his ear.

“Damn! Too much interference!” he adjusted the knobs and tentatively put the piece back up to his still ringing ear, but was able to pick up nothing more other than what sounded like a gasp.

Bob wasn’t about to give up on technology just yet. He punched up the Current Dispatch’s website and found their archive of Voice articles. He backed up to when he and Maxine had first arrived in Orion Bay and read the not-so-nice words that sent his wife running to etiquette classes. He chuckled at the memory, “she was a bit of a bruiser back then, a little rough around the edges.”

He read on, the Voice blabbed about everything. Vernon Cwik’s trial, the tragic deaths of Randal’s parents, Veronica’s sneaking out to be with Xavier, Catherine’s drinking, Elizabeth’s suspected romance with a townie, the robbery at their house…the Voice had been around a while.

Then he noticed something that caused him to just about blow his wig. Instead of “That’s all for now, dear readers, but keep your ears open.”, the older articles signed off with “You ain’t heard nothing yet!”

“It’s not the same person!” Bob sat staring at the screen. He had assumed, like everyone else, that the Voice had always been the same catty old biddy, but this spun the dial in a different direction.

Bob knew that Randal had already tried, but Randal wasn’t an elite SCIA operative. He dialed the digits and got the Current Dispatch editor on the line. Like Randal, he got no where. The man claimed to not know the identity of the Voice, claimed that the column was emailed in.

“Emailed in?” Bob questioned, realizing that this too was another clue. “Thanks, pal. I’m hitting on all eight now.”

Old Patty had been partially right, nothing beat old fashioned detective work but technology gave the gumshoe a leg up. Now that he was armed with the info, he was ready to begin interrogations.

He hit up his own family first, testing out the right method to convince a bird to sing. They weren’t too appreciative but they played along. Then he moved out to the Heights, beginning with Jay Gibson and worked his way back through the residents of Orion Bay.

Ending up at home once again, he was pleased to find that the thinking cap he had order had finally arrived. Maxine was not so pleased.

“Eureka!” he yelled upon placing the light bulb on his head, “I should have seen it earlier. Motive, means, opportunity and a petty vindictive nature, that’s all it takes!”

“It was you, Mendenhall, in the study with the laptop and a deep-seeded hatred of the society that turned you into a drunk!”

“Are you out of your pea pickin’ mind? Why would I rag on my daughter-in-law and out my husband’s infidelity? You are insane!” damn Catherine was incensed.

But Bob was not to be intimidated, “It was you. The Why I’ve already accounted for, its how to get you to stop that I need to deal with.”

“There’s nothing to stop, you maniac,” Catherine screamed, “I don’t even own a laptop.”

“PC, Mac, whatever! There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Bob persisted.

“You need help,” Catherine turned on her heel and stormed out, slamming the front door hard enough to wake the dead.

Bob was more sure than ever that the Mendenhall moll was his mole, but he needed hard evidence so when Arcadia Santander, daily to all Orion Bay families therefore the perfect insider, refused to do his dirty work and spy for him, he was annoyed.

“I can’t, I almost got fired last time I did you a favor,” Arcadia started to walk away but paused, “You know, Catherine is telling the truth. Xavier took his computer when he left and they haven’t replaced it yet.”

“Well that would have been handy to know,” Bob grumbled.

That evening, after another day of pounding the pavement turned up less than nothing, Bob realized that his time was running short, “Maxine, tomorrow I’ll be an old man slumped over dozing in an easy chair and the case will never get solved.”

——–

Notes: Maxine and Robert both aged. Veronica enjoyed a date with a handsome dark-haired townie and Maxine apologized to Maleena for yelling at her about the Gibson situation, Maxine claimed that she was just stressing about her pending birthday and took it out on the wrong person.

 

Posted on August 20th, 2008 under Bettencourt, Orion Bay. Tags: Bettencourt, maxine, robert, the voice. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.