Sunday, June 29, 2008

White Board Heat

Hear the story read by author Douglas Eboch

In the town of Normal, Pennsylvania, there’s a little church at the corner of Wilson and Elm. It’s a quiet little church…or so it seemed until she walked into his office one drizzly gray Monday morning. She looked like trouble with her white-gold curls and her floral print dress. “We’ve got a problem,” she said, confirming his fears. She was Tammy Billings, church secretary, and she was about to drop a family size can of worms in his lap. Who was he? O’Donnell. Pastor O’Donnell.

“The white board in the choir room is missing,” Tammy told him. “And we need it for the Finance Committee meeting tonight.”

O’Donnell supposed the white board could have miraculously grown legs and decided to relocate to nicer digs on its own. Only problem was, O’Donnell didn’t believe in miracles. Okay, actually he did, but not when it came to ambulatory furniture. No, he was fairly certain this inanimate object had flesh and blood help vacating its premises.

The solitaire program on O’Donnell’s computer would have to wait. He had a more dangerous game to play.

O’Donnell’s first call was to the choir director, Shane Reed. The kid had a voice like an angel but that didn’t mean there was a halo over his head. O’Donnell wanted to see what kind of song he’d sing.

“The white board was there after the service yesterday,” Shane told him.

“Was the door locked when you left?” O’Donnell asked.

“No,” Shane said. “Walter’s stuff was in there. He said he had a few chores to take care of and he’d lock up after he was done.”

Walter was Walter Tibble, the church organist. During the week, he made his nut by teaching piano to squirrelly kids. O’Donnell reached him at home where one of the animals was murdering a long dead composer in the background. That particular tune was not music to O’Donnell’s ears.

Walter said he couldn’t remember if the white board was still in the choir room when he locked the door. “Did you see anyone unusual at the church when you left?” O’Donnell asked.

“The only people I saw were the women’s group. They were having their monthly tea.”

A few members of the women’s group definitely qualified as unusual. O’Donnell also suspected he knew what Walter’s “chores” were.

“What kind of cookies did they serve,” O’Donnell asked.

“Chocolate chip and peanut butter,” Walter said without thinking. Suspicions confirmed.

Tammy was a member of the women’s group and would have remembered if they borrowed the white board for their meeting. He asked her who else attended. As she went down the list, one name jumped out at him like a cat in a horror movie: Jill Boyer.

“Were her girls with her,” O’Donnell asked.

“No. I think Kevin was watching them downstairs,” Tammy said.

Jill and her husband Kevin had two little girls, Susie, age two and Mary, age four. Mary and O’Donnell went way back. At least as far back as you could go with a four-year-old. She had the face of a cherub and the personality of a sociopathic anarchist. They say good things come in small packages. Mary was proof that chaos comes in a pretty small package as well.

O’Donnell placed a call to Kevin. Kevin told him that he let Mary and Susie play in their Sunday school classroom during the Women’s Group meeting.

“Were you watching them the whole time,” O’Donnell asked?

“Of course,” Kevin said.

It had been quite a while since O’Donnell took a tumble from a truck of turnips. “Are you sure,” he pressed.

Kevin cracked like a glass trampoline. “Well, I was in the room right across the hall. There was a baseball game on the radio and the girls were being really loud. They didn’t break anything too valuable, did they?”

“Not that we’ve discovered yet,” O’Donnell told him and hung up.

The classroom was just two doors down from the choir room. Even Mary’s short legs could make that journey in less time than it took a professional ball player to round four bases. O’Donnell went to investigate.

The classroom looked like a couple bombs had gone off in it. O’Donnell guessed these bombs were named Mary and Susie. They’d constructed some kind of fort in the middle of the room out of desks, chairs and blankets. Apparently, the defenses were good enough to repel anyone who had asked them to clean up after themselves.

O’Donnell grabbed one of the blankets and pulled. Just as he suspected – the central support for the construction was the choir room white board.

O’Donnell returned the white board and went back to his office. He put his feet up on his desk and poured himself a shot of herbal tea. He doubted this would be the last time he’d be cleaning up after one of Mary’s messes. But that’s just the way the sugar cookie crumbled in the mean halls of the little church. He drank his tea. Case closed.

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