Murder Under the Boardwalk

[PinkGirl]

Agnes Beasley drove slowly and carefully, as always, towards
the city. She was heading back to work after having delivered the
missing pomeranian to her owner, the socialite, Mrs. Ellingfish.
Agnes' head was still whirling from receiving twice the offered
reward. Mrs. Ellingfish, to show her gratitiude and relief, had given
Agnes $1000 for returning her beloved Princess Pom-Pom.

Agnes was trying to think of a polite and appropriate way to ask
her boss, Jim Rockhead, if she could possibly keep some of the money
as she had not been paid since December 24th.

While driving to the Ellingfish mansion, Agnes had decided it was
time for her to have a meeting with Mr. Rockhead to be briefed
on the happenings of the last few days. She was confused and
made a mental note to have her estrogen levels checked at her
next doctor's appointment.

Agnes arrived at the office and immediately sat down on the
confusion couch in the waiting room. She still had to dust the
cheap coffee table, end table and lamp and also get rid of the trashy magazines and clean the bathroom. She was tired.

Agnes thought of her days working with Mr. Rockhead at
the spray cheese factory and was questioning which of the two jobs
was more stressful. For the time being, she would stay with Rockhead.
She was a loyal employee and took her responsibilities seriously.

Right now she was determined to wait for Mr. Rockhead and have
him explain the details of their new case.

[Colleens_Husband]

Where are the police? They should have burst in by now grilling me about the where-abouts of Valerie Vavoom. Something just isn't adding up here. I just have one question for Valerie Vavoom and then I need to visit the morgue, there was something awfully suspicious about the photo in the local newspaper of Danny under that pier.

"Operator, get me Fairfax 9-1524. Hello, Super 7 Motel. Get connect me to room 203. Yes, the room with the J CUZZ and the magic fingers that works. Valerie, I don't have much time, when was the last time anyone saw Danny alive. Friday June 13th? Hmmm ..... That can't be! No time to explain, I need to get to the morgue before the swingshift goes home. No, I'm all out of quarters and it isn't safe to use the Magic Fingers 225 times in a row."

Jim Rockhead grabbed his coat and his fedora hat and rushed out of his office went down stairs and headed to the parking lot. Damn! The Pacer was gone. Since no crook is desperate enough to steal an AMC Pacer, even one in which the hubcaps keep spinning even when the car has stopped, then that me he lent it to someone. Thats right, he lent it to Valerie, and by looking on the horizon for the blue cloud of smoke his favorite car emits, he could see where Valerie parked it. No time to loose, Jim took off running towards the city morgue.

At the morgue, Jim found his old friend Bones Bonderman packing up and ready to call it a day. "Bones, I'm glad I caught you!"

"Hey Jim, I can't talk to you. Your persona non grata with the police department today. If I even say a word to you, Detective O'Hare will have me retrieving bodies from the bay for the next six years."

"Bones, I'm not asking for any information, I just wanted to come by and share some dinner with you." Jim took out a bottle of Mogen Davids 20-20.
"Bones, I warmed it up for you, I know how you like it served tepid."

Bones began salivating and reached for the bottle. Jim pulled it away. "Bones, this bottle is yours, all I need is two minutes with the Danny Vavoom body."

"But I could lose my job!" complained Bones.

"TWO minutes, Bones. Just 120 ticks of a clock. C'mon Bones. No one will ever know. Have I ever ratted you out?"

"Well I suppose not" whimpered Bones, "you got your two minutes"

"Thanks Bones, and if I find what I'm looking for, I've got a second bottle for you."

Jim Rockhead went into the morgue and found a body with 'Danny Vavoom' written on the toe tag. After a quick inspection, Jim said to himself, "This isn't Danny Vavoom. Now I'm totally confused. If this isn't Danny, then who is it? And where is Danny?"

Jim went out of the morgue and dropped a second bottle of MD 20-20 to Bones.

"Where are you going so fast?" asked Bones.

"I need to talk to Agnes."

Whenever Jim was stumped, he talked out the case with Agnes. Sometimes Agnes would offer insight that he overlooked and sometimes it just helped to say what he was thinking out loud.

[Becky]

Valerie Vavoom was up on her feet immediately. In two blinks, she was all over Geoffrey and snatched away the phone. She wished she still had those 4" spiked heels on because when she stomped on his foot, it only made him wince instead of scream outright.

She trumped over to a corner booth and yelled hello into the phone over and over but the call was lost and somehow, there was no recorded number.

Valerie felt tired and dirty. She knew she looked unkempt and that bothered her. She always had every hair in place and had her makeup done just right - even when she was downright sick with the flu. Even this scuzzy place couldn't take that away from her. She felt itchy and greasy. And who was that jerk. At first she thought he was leaping to her aid but he picks up the phone and answers it? My Gawdddd. And he's an idiot too. Her wallet was laying right there and it contained over $50,000 cash...

[hutchibk]

Vivian was a ball of confusion... too much happening at once. A startling deja vu that was revealing itself to be very real, a strange man with a strangely familiar voice from her recent royal past answering her sister's cell phone, and a randy and drunken boy-toy trying to feel her up - all while speeding down the interstate at what felt like 150 mph. She had to make sense of it all and the first thing she knew she had to do was get out of the car. She pushed Tai away to cries of "oh, come on baby, don't be like that..." and frantically pushed the button to speak to the limo driver. Driver answered and Vivian screamed "Pull over, please, pull over now, I need to get out of here!" The driver exited the highway and pulled into a parking lot.

Vivian wrestled with Tai, telling him "Now is not the time, baby" gathered herself and stormed out of the car. She made her way to the front of the hotel they had pulled up to, and plopped on a bench with her head in her hands. Her mind was spinning. Her thoughts were like a ping pong ball on acid. Her heart was racing. She could not believe how insane her life had become. The spiral of events over the last year. And for Danny to now be missing. He was the one constant in her life. He was her anchor. He was her sympatico. Her secret soul-mate...

She knew she had to keep moving. She hated Boston and was only there at the invitation of the son of the owner of the Celtics. She didn't even want to go to the game at first fearing she might encounter Kobe Bryant again, and it had been years since she was able to put that fiasco behind her... the mess he created and how he ruined her ex-best friend's life. Or did he? She never could figure out the truth about all that, but none-the-less, she didn't want to run into him again.

"Are you all right Miss O'McIntyre?"

"Huh?" Vivian looked up to see who in the world could possibly know who she was?

"Your boyfriend is in the bar, and he asked me to check on you..."

Vivian then recognized the man speaking to her as Kenny, the valet at the Hotel Grande Regal where she was staying. Then suddenly it all became clearer. The limo driver had let them out in the parking lot at her hotel. What a stroke of luck... Tai was in the bar continuing his habitual party and had latched onto a group of 19 year old girls who were in town on their way to a summer graduation trip called "drinking our way across Europe."

Vivian scurried to the elevator and made her way to her room. Realizing that she might be able to catch a last minute red-eye flight to somewhere, she quickly packed her bags and called the front desk.

"I need a taxi to the airport, please tell Kenny I'll be right down, and tell him to keep it on the down low!"

"No problem Miss O'McIntyre. Where are you heading? Back to London? Is Prince Stuart alright? Is there something wrong?"

"Wherever a plane will take me at this hour, I just need to go... go somewhere... anywhere but here...anywhere but London... I think Saint Tropez...oh, I don't know, please, just a taxi..."

[PinkGirl]

Agnes rested on the couch in the waiting room. She knew that
her boss was in his office but she could not hear Valerie Vavoom's
voice. "She must have left already" thought Agnes. Never the one
to disturb Mr. Rockhead unless it was a dire emergency, Agnes
thought this would be a good time to clean the bathroom - she would
speak to Jim Rockhead when he came out of his office.

After scrubbing and disinfecting the entire room, Agnes emerged from
the washroom. She glanced at the office door and saw that it was now open. She peeked around the corner and saw that the office was empty.

"Darn" said Agnes aloud, "Mr. Rockhead must have left while I was cleaning the washroom". She decided to take this time to make a list of the questions she had for her boss. Agnes went into the office and sat at a small table in the corner; her table, her work area. Someday, she hoped, she would have her own office.

Agnes proceeded with her list of queries. She had overheard Valerie Vavoom say that she was being blackmailed. Had Mrs. Vavoom received phonecalls or had it been a black mail letter? Was her sister Vivian Vavoom still in London making trouble for the Royal Family with her relationship with Prince Stuart, the heir to the throne? Did Valerie Vavoom know who the mystery woman was who had collapsed in the waiting room? Did this mystery woman explain
why she had the Ellingfish pomeranian? Had Mr. Rockhead found time to visit with Daniel Vavoom Senior? Did Mr. Rockhead know anything about the police investigation of the body believed to be Danny Vavoom Jr.?

And lastly, Agnes would gather the courage to ask Mr. Rockhead if she could keep some of the $1000 payment from Mrs. Ellingfish. She would gently remind him that she had not had a pay cheque since Christmas.

Agnes decided to stretch out on the couch and close her eyes. Drifting off, she began thinking about the $1000. That is a huge amount of money to pay for a dog - unbelievable amount of money actually. Hmmmm, she thought, and why is the dog's chaise lounge chair tag ingraved "Princess" and not engraved "Pom-Pom" ???????

[Bill]

As the Santa Cruz PD squad car rolled to a stop outside of the Rockhead Detective Agency, O'Hare looked over to his driver, a green rookie, fresh out of the academy, and said, "Kid, you wait here." The rookie looked relieved, but then a stray courage cell coursed through his bloodstream and lodged itself into a testicle. "Sir, I'm going with you!". O'Hare rotated his head 90 degrees to the left and fixed a black-eyed stare straight into the eyes of the rookie. The stare entered the rookie's eyes, coursed through his bloodstream, located the stray courage cell lodged in the testicle, and choked it to death before it could take hold firmly. "I said, 'Kid, you wait here'", O'Hare repeated. "Better yet, run across the street and get us a couple of coffees and some jelly-filleds. I'll be right back" The kid looked nervous and relieved at the same time. "S-s-sir, I don't have any cash on me." O'Hare's blood pressure shot up 40 points and he glared at the boy again, "Listen, kid, I'm not gonna tell you again! You just walk across that GD street and go into that friggin' donut shop, wearing a badge and a gun and they'll think you're Jesus Christ hisself! They'll give you whatever you want for free!" The kid looked at his hands and as he picked at an imaginary hangnail, he mumbled, "Sir, you said that you weren't gonna tell me 'again', but I really don't think that the first thing you told me was the same thing as the second thing that you told me, so I think it's unfair that you yelled at me and said,'I'm not gonna tell you again'". O'Hare clenched his fists and then unclenched them , and yelled "Bobby, if you don't go get us some GD donuts, I'm gonna kick your ass six ways from Sunday. Now move!" The rookie, Bobby, scrambled out the door, and leaned back in, just a little, and said, "Sir, I'm going to get our donuts and coffee, but I noticed just now when you were yelling at me, you were clenching and unclenching your fists, but the left fist clenched and unclenched 8 times, but your right fist only 6 times, are you ok, Sir?" "Bobby, I swear to God, get outta here right now, you don't know what you're messin' with!!!" O'Hare lunged for Bobby at that point and Bobby scampered across the street, failing to look both ways. O'Hare reached for the handle to the squad car and just then his cell phone rang. "O'Hare" "O'Hare, this is Chief Murphy, just what the hell do you think your doing?" "Chief, I'm gettin' ready to go up and talk to Rockhead about this body washing up under the boardwalk." The Chief says, "Listen, Digger, I know you and Jimmy go back a ways, and you had troubles over the Milhouse case, but I think you need to back off a little bit here." "What???!! Chief? You tellin' me to leave and back off? The Vavoom girl was just seen here, and she might be up there now, for all I know!!" "Listen, Digger, I'm gettin' heat on this one from upstairs, if you know what I mean. This one's bigger than the both of us." Detective O'Hare huffed and puffed 2 times from his left lung and 3 times from his right, and then mumbled, "alright, Chief, I'll back off for now, but you know this ain't over"

[hutchibk]

Intermission - the character, Vivian, will return to the story soon, by August 18, if not sooner.

Carry on.