The Smirking Detective and the Case of the Bloody Opossum

Detective Woolbridge looked at the stage in bewilderment, still stumped after hours of investigating. “This case has me baffled, Danders.”

“I don’t blame you. I was never very good at theater murders, myself.”

They stood in the aisle of the Upstage Theater, where the lifeless body of renowned stage octogenarian Alastair Cummerbund had just been removed from the premises.

Earlier the previous evening, the actors had arrived at the small playhouse for a late rehearsal only to be shocked to discover Cummerbund’s body collapsed on stage, dead of stab wounds to the heart. Also on the stage at the time was the décor for Act One of the current production, The Stunted Countess, depicting the sitting room of socialite Lola Mantiss. But along with the usual stage properties, the police found a dark, cryptic note, four empty vodka bottles and a bloody, dead opossum.

“You’re sure the opossum isn’t a prop?” Woolbridge asked the theater manager, Hartley Dunbath for the third time.

“Absolutely not!” huffed Dunbath. He stood near the stage, still shocked at a murder occurring in his establishment. “This is a traditional production. There’s no room in this play for bloody mammals!”

“And this note means nothing to you?” Woolbridge held out the note again, which read: ‘Like a tattered liver he dragged me on the rocks’.

“I told you, Detective. My liver’s in perfectly good order.”

“Damn it. We’ve come up empty again.”

“What can we do Sergeant?” asked Officer Danders.

“The only thing we can do. Call on that damned, smug Smirking Detective.”

The Smirking Detective reclined on his armchair perusing the latest issue of Condescension Quarterly. He puffed on his pipe, filled with imported Parisian tobacco, and turned a page, when his butler came to the doorway. “Detective Woolbridge,” he announced.

“Ah, I’m expecting him,” said the Smirking Detective, with undisguised self-satisfaction. “Send him in.”

Woolbridge entered, wearing the uneasy expression he usually had when in the home territory of the Smirking Detective. Something about the man set Woolbridge on edge and just made him want to wipe that constant superior expression from his pompous face. Danders followed him in, audibly gasping at the huge collection of rare French fencing equipment mounted on one wall.

“Detective Woolbridge.” The Smirking Detective quickly smirked. “You look especially ill at ease this morning. Let me think. You have yet another inexplicable crime on your hands?”

“You’ve guessed it again,” said Woolbridge, sitting in a rattan chair with a maroon cushion. Behind him, the Smirking Detective’s pet mynah bird squawked. “It’s this nasty business at the Upstage Theater. Alastair Cummerbund died on stage.”

“I’m not surprised. He’s the dullest actor this side of Kurt Sharpless.” The Smirking Detective chuckled at his own wit.

“I’m not talking about dying in a performance. I’m talking about dying as in no longer being able to breathe or perform regular autonomous functions. The man was stabbed in the heart.”

“Then we can most likely rule out accidental death.” The Smirking Detective stood and paced before the large French window that looked out onto his outdoor display of French medieval armor. “Was Cummerbund having any affairs with other cast members?”

“Only three.” Woolbridge consulted his notebook. “With Letitia Alloway, heiress to the Alloway butterscotch toffee fortune.”

“’The only way’s an Alloway’.” Danders quoted the popular toffee commercials.

“Exactly. And Celeste Lowenstein-Howell, the disgraced British socialite infamous for explicit poultry videos. And finally with Ruth Scornbag, the abrasive stand-up comedian, activist and spokeswoman for Dingy Sponges.”

“Could this be case of a production gone haywire?” wondered the Smirking Detective. “A staged murder gone wrong?”

“The company’s performing The Stunted Countess,” replied Woolbridge. “I’m told there are no murders in it.”

“Yes, of course. I know the play well. Very trite third act.” The Smirking Detective stared for a moment at his aquamarine ottoman, the various angles of the case almost visibly rotating in his brain. “Very well, Detective. Despite your lackluster synopsis, the case intrigues me. I’ve always had a guilty fondness for the dramatic stage.”

“Hard to believe,” muttered Woolbridge, thinking of all the Smirking Detective’s preening speeches.

“I’m willing to investigate.” The Smirking Detective darted a wry look at Woolbridge with a meaningful smirk. “You know my fee?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Another erotic French sketch.”

As was his habit, Woolbridge laid out the most significant pieces of evidence on a large round table with a white tablecloth in the Evidence Room.

“What was this opossum’s relation to the deceased?” asked the Smirking Detective, pointing to the dead animal.

“We haven’t been able to find a connection,” said Woolbridge. “There were no opossums listed among Cummerbund’s valuables. We’re awaiting the results of the opossum’s DNA tests to see if there might be a clue there.”

“Did Cummerbund have an opossum allergy?”

Danders perked up at this. “Ah! Meaning maybe the killer brought the opossum to trigger a violent allergic reaction, distracting Cummerbund so the killer could stab him to death more easily!”

The Smirking Detective smiled faintly. “Yes, the old ‘opossum allergy victim distraction routine’.”

But Woolbridge dismissed this theory. “Cummerbund had no known mammal allergies. However, he was under doctor’s orders to avoid large shellfish and miniature Asian vegetables.”

The Smirking Detective flipped through Cummerbund’s wallet and stopped at a photo of an angry woman with ink-black hair cut in a military style. She wore dark red lipstick and black ear gauges. “Who’s this young femme fatale?”

Woolbridge glanced at the picture. “Levette Cummerbund, the dead man’s niece. She claims she was in Fresno at the time of the murder.”

“Does she stand to gain from her uncle’s death?”

“He bequeathed her his life-size wax diorama of the original cast of ‘Annie’.”

“Ah. I think it’s time we had a little chat with Levette Cummerbund.”

Levette Cummerbund stared at the ceiling with a look of extravagant boredom and snapped the rubber band in her fingers. “Are we done yet?”

“You don’t seem very upset by your Uncle’s murder,” observed the Smirking Detective.

“Why should I be? He was a lousy Uncle and a worse actor. I saw him in The Iceman Brings It as the Third Mannequin. He wasn’t even convincing as a wooden dummy.”

“Did you spend much time with your uncle growing up?”

“Only every third weekend in August. That’s when he took us kids to his cabin for the weekend. We had a fish fry by the lake and played Moby Dick: The Game.”

“Is that where you wrote this cryptic note?” The Smirking Detective dramatically threw down the note from the crime scene, although it wasn’t as dramatic as intended since it was a small strip of paper and made no slapping sound when it hit the tabletop.

Levette glanced at it and got red in the face. “How’d you know I wrote that?”

“Because you’re clearly a frustrated moper struggling through a dismal post—adolescence by writing pathetic poetry to cope with your romantic failures.”

“How’d you deduce that?” She was suddenly ashen-faced, gaping at the Smirking Detective’s deductive skills.

“Simple. That photo in your Uncle’s wallet was taken in an organic coffeehouse on open mic night and your locket has a photo of your ex-boyfriend with his face crossed out with a large red ‘x’.”

Levette clutched her chest. “When did you look at my private locket?”

“When you removed it for the security check. I was hiding in the scanner.”

“Very clever. But what if I did write that line of poetry? It doesn’t make me a killer.”

“I know you’re not the killer. We checked your alibi. On the night of the murder five failed poets saw you at a sonnet slam at Café Al Fresno. But we must pursue every clue until we find this bloody criminal.”

“Then you should talk to Letitia Alloway. She hated my uncle after he spu rned her in front of the entire cast.”

“We didn’t hear about any spurning,” said Danders, looking up from the ‘s’ section of his notebook.

“An egotistical actresses’ worst nightmare!” proclaimed the Smirking Detective. “Being rejected in front of other sniping, venomous actresses she desperately envies!”

“She never mentioned being spurned,” said Woolbridge. “It’s time we make another appointment with Ms. Alloway.”

Letitia Alloway sprawled on a long white divan in a pale yellow dress. A huge plastic replica of a tube-shaped Alloway Toffee hung on the wall behind her.

“Alastair Cummerbund only spurned me in his dreams,” she said disdainfully. “That old lech was after me ever since we co-starred in ‘The Richard Dawson Story’. Even then, he was old enough to be my grandfather twice over.”

Danders started doing the math for this relationship on his fingers.

The Smirking Detective smirked subtly, resting his left ankle on his right knee. “Is that so, Ms. Alloway? Because we have documentary evidence that you had a short-lived, tempestuous affair with Cummerbund.”

Letitia raised an eyebrow. “What sort of documentary evidence?”

“This documentary short.” Woolbridge held up a tablet, its screen showing an ad for ‘A Short-Lived Tempestuous Affair: A Documentary Short’ featuring a vivid shot of Cummerbund and Letitia Alloway grappling romantically in the back seat of a Cadillac.

The image got Letitia’s attention. “Who’d dare make such a video?”

Danders referred to his notebook. “It was directed by Dexter ‘Snickers’ Garson, a stagehand at the Upstage Theater.”

“That blasted Snickers!” Lettia burst out. “He’s always been a meddlesome scamp!”

“Very resourceful young fellow,” said Woolbridge admiringly. “He took advantage of breaks in his stagehand duties to shoot some remarkable footage. An insightful and revealing look at an illicit affair, if I say so myself.”

“How can you say such things about an invasion of my privacy!” cried Letitia.

“Well, I’ve seen it six times, so I think I’m entitled to an opinion.”

“There’s no use denying the affair,” said the Smirking Detective. “It’s all on video. Except for the break-up part. Now’s your chance to give us the real story.”

“Very well,” Letitia replied hesitantly. “There was a public scene. Alastair pestered me for days to stay at his bungalow at Desert Bordello Very Hot Springs. I told him I couldn’t be seen in public with a shriveled up human toothpaste tube like him. He got angry with me while the rest of the cast rehearsed the Stunted Countess’s big death scene. I couldn’t take it anymore and burst on stage, just to get away from him.”

“Revealing your affair to the others and potentially igniting their professional and romantic jealousies!” snapped the Smirking Detective.

“What are you getting at S.D.?” asked Woolbridge.

“I presume the other actresses knew nothing about the affair until Letitia’s outburst. She could have ignited a storm of jealousy in the breast of…Celesta…Celeste…who’s that other actress?”

“Celeste Lowenstein-Howell,” said Danders, glancing at his cheat sheet of suspect’s names.

“The very one! It’s time she reveals her view on this night of horror!”

Celeste Lowenstein-Howell sat in her booth at The Lost Martini nursing a very large Multi-Melon Martini. She wore a dark gray sweater and an extensive amount of black eyeliner, staring at Woolbridge and the Smirking Detective from under thick eyebrows.

“Jealous of Letitia Alloway?” she asked in a slurred British accent. “You must be joking. Everyone knows Alastair and I had an open relationship.” She bit into a chunk of melon garnishing her drink.

“How open was it?” asked Woolbridge.

“It was so open that he spent a week in Romania with an unemployed Greek chanteuse lolling around a hotel penthouse. He sent me daily updates on their dinners, including the amount of plum brandy consumed.”

“That’s pretty open,” admitted Woolbridge.

“So you had no flashes of anger when Letitia Alloway revealed their affair?” asked the Smirking Detective in a suggestive undertone. He’d ordered a mug of Newcastle ale which he often used to keep a suspect on edge by constantly reaching for it but never taking a drink.

“The only angry flash I had was at Letita for wrecking a perfectly good rehearsal. I’d finally mastered the Stunted Countess’s tricky death scene.”

“How does she die?”

“No spoilers!” insisted Danders, standing at the bar with a Diet Coke.

“She inhales a rare poisonous gas only fatal to members of the lower nobility. It’s a very difficult scene to pull off. Just as I’m collapsing in death, I have to whisper endearments to my blind Andalusian hound.”

The Smirking Detective lifted his mug. Celeste darted an anticipatory glance at him and he immediately sat it back on the table. “You expect us to believe that your affair with Alastair Cummerbund was entirely without passion?”

“Our relationship wasn’t based on passion.”

“What was it based on?” asked Woolbridge.

“Large quantities of small-batch artisanal vodka.” Celeste’s eyes took on a faraway look. “I never knew a man with my passion for vodka until I met Alastair. On our first night together we drank almost enough to make up the gross alcoholic product of Kamchatka.”

“That explains the four bottles of vodka on stage the night of the murder!” cried Woolbridge.

“Don’t be absurd detective,” responded Celeste. “I never drink before a stabbing. Those bottles were planted there, by a woman desperate to frame me!”

The Smirking Detective once again lifted his mug from the table, but slammed it back down with enough force to send a small quantity of ale over its side. “What woman?”

“Ruth Scornbag!” cried Celeste. “She’s the jealous one. She’s been starved for affection ever since her domestic partner walked out and opened a crocodile farm in Tallahassee.”

“Tallahassee’s a good city for crocodiles,” noted Danders.

“She pursued Alaistair,” Celeste went on. “Literally. Following him home every night after rehearsals. It wasn’t fair, because Alastair walked, but Ruth used an electric scooter. She took endless pictures of him with the zoom function…eating doughnut holes, playing cribbage, picking up his dry cleaning at Mort’s High and Dry…Anything to feed her passion.”

“How did pictures of Alastair Cummerbund’s dry cleaning feed her passion?” asked the Smirking Detective, with a skeptical smirk.

“She’s a sick woman. One night when we were drinking, Alastair found her in his closet trying on his fishing boots.”

The Smirking Detective again lifted his mug, this time nearly to his lips, but quickly put it down without taking a sip. “This case is getting sicker by the minute. And the only cure is a long, straight talk with Ruth Scornbag.”

Ruth Scornbag cast a scornful look at the Smirking Detective from under her large head of brown hair piled up in swooping curls. She sat at her kitchen table sipping a large cup of bitter espresso and taking an occasional hit from a lemon-flavored vape pen. “So I was fascinated with Alastair Cummerbund? What’s wrong with that? He’s a fascinating actor. Did you see him as Senator Whitepath in ‘The Mustache Connection’?”

“I missed that one,” replied the Smirking Detective.

“How about his portrayal of Meager Bear in ‘The River Keeps Drifting’?”

“I’m not familiar with it,” said Woolbridge.

“Or his revelatory turn as a deaf barista in ‘The Cry of the Mocha’? “

“We can’t pretend to your vast theatrical knowledge,” admitted the Smirking Detective with a self-deprecatory smirk.

“I should have known as much.” Ruth Scornbag stood up and cast a dismissive look at the squat buildings of the city below. “You know nothing of the thespian life but would presume to judge my interest in Alastair Cummerbund. His training alone is legendary. Did you know his teacher was only two generations removed from Hopalong Cassidy?”

“You’ll have to forgive our ignorance,” said the Smirking Detective. “But how does your interest in Cummerbund’s acting technique explain taking picture of him eating chocolate éclairs?”

“Everything the man did had a technique. Every step on a sidewalk, every cough in mid-sentence, every bite of a pastry…every action encapsulated an entire history.” Ruth gazed out her plate glass window as though imagining Alastair Cummerbund eating a plate of fettucine.

The Smirking Detective pounced with his next question. “So you deny planting those vodka bottles to frame Celeste Lowenstein-Howell?”

“Celeste doesn’t need any help from me finding vodka bottles,” the actress replied cattily. She puffed on her vape pen and sauntered across a large fur carpet stretched before her hearth.

The Smirking Detective noted the carpet. “That’s a very attractive rug.”

“Yes, it was stitched together with the fur of fifty opossums by a guild of Nepalese rug merchants.”

“From opossums?” asked Woolbridge. “You have a special interest in them?”

“What woman doesn’t like to let go of everything once in a while and roll on a lush carpet of opossum fur?” asked Ruth Scornbag.

The Smirking Detective pointed to a large black-and-white photographic portrait over the hearth depicting a statuesque blonde in an elegant opossum coat. “In fact, I’ve done some thespian research and discovered your idol, 40’s star Henka Holdridge, was obsessed with opossums.”

“Yes, she kept a family of them under large rhododendron shrubs in her backyard.” Ruth took on a dreamy expression. “You don’t see that kind of glamor in Hollywood nowadays.”

“Nor do you see dead opossums turn up often on the theatrical stage.” The Smirking Detective pointed at Danders. The policeman instantly opened a burlap sack and yanked out the bloody corpse of the Upstage Theater opossum.

Ruth Scornbag screamed and lurched toward the motionless animal. “Pottles!”

“Yes, Ms. Scornbag. Your beloved Pottles was another victim of the murder wave that swept over the Upstage Theater.”

“How’s that possible!” she cried, a small tear creeping down her cheek. “I’d never hurt Pottles! Never!”

“Unfortunately for you, Letitia Alloway saw you kill Alastair Cummerbund. She was sitting in the theater balcony rereading her lines when you had your fatal struggle with Cummerbund. You accused him of ignoring your demands for private acting lessons. He replied that you gave him the creeps. Angry words turned to angry actions. The next thing you knew, you were furiously stabbing Alastair Cummerbund to death!”

“It’s not true! She must be mistaken! It must’ve been one of my many imitators!”

“I don’t think so, Ms. Scornbag,” said the Smirking Detective, dismissively shaking his head. “Letitia gave us the whole story this morning. I knew there was something she wasn’t telling us, because she left numerous voice messages on the police department phone saying, ‘Never mind, I’ll call back later.’ When she saw you kill Cummerbund, Letitia was filled with rage. After the killing, she stormed to your dressing room. She knew you kept your pet opossum there for good luck. She grabbed the closest knife and stabbed Pottles multiple times, then threw his bloody corpse on the stage.” The Smirking Detective acted out the last part with jerking stab motions and a recreated casual opossum toss.

Ruth Scornbag was on the verge of a breakdown, moving her hands in quick circling motions and darting her eyes in all directions. “I’d never do that. It must be a mistake! I might injure Alastair, or stab him lightly, but kill him? Never! Never!”

“You can scream those ‘nevers’ in the lock-up, Ms. Scornbag,” the Smirking Detective said dismissively. “This case is closed.”