Mercury’s Forensic Foray: Trippin’ to Washington D.C.

So Jed Clampett (read: Sheriff Paul) is locked up now, which means no one is addressing the rather glaring Pink Elephant in the room around these parts – er, body parts, that is.

I’ve spent months caring for Mother and her tipsy entourage, watching pitchers of g-and-t’s go down and servants pony up their wages over her blackjack table … she’s back in the house, and it’s about time she got back into action … and for me to get out. That gala gave her a whole other skin! It’s like someone administered a B-12 shot with a beer back. The book club at the Riverside is back – it’s actually grown a bit – and she’s flitting around half-torked like a school girl at prom. My work there, dear friends, is complete.

Lindy wasn’t thrilled when I mentioned my intent to pick up this case as he’s grown to enjoy the slow lane that is, indeed, life on River Road, but he didn’t try to stop me. He knows I’m bored. And since the Mick thing, he’s taken up a bromance of sorts with Carson. They are looking at starting a company together, maybe a magazine. Because that’s all this town needs – more naval-gazing. I don’t love this alliance, but if it entertains him for a bit, so be it. Carson seems relatively innocuous, but so do brussel sprouts at the end of the day, and we know how gassy one gets after brussel sprouts.

When I approached the Mayor about taking on the project, she was tepid. I guess the word would be non-chalant. “Go ahead,” she said. “But I’m not going to pay you.” (Thankfully, I wasn’t asking to be paid.) She was barely interested, far more concerned about the gala and raising money to build Mick’s statue. I mean, I know she was elected after several of the body parts came to light, but you figure you want to solve crime before promoting a ridiculous memorial to a dead rock star, particularly one with ties to a prominent business owner in town.

I needed this drive down the highway, all five hours down to Quantico, where my former colleague, Jim, works and whose random email instigated this trip. He’d heard of the discoveries taking place around Middle Valley in the past year or so in the national media and reached out knowing I was from here. (Apparently real people do see Susan’s national broadcasts.) In any event, with some help from John (and after hearing his harrowing account of a very strange afternoon in the car with Sheriff Paul), I had Cornell University send the specimens to Jim for him to consider and so we could chat.