Author's notes:
Thank you to two great writers and friends, make-mine-a-kiaora and Sue Shay, for their help. Be sure to check out their stories - I have favorited them in my profile for easy access.
I do not own the TV show The Mentalist and get no compensation from it. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes only.
Chapter 9 - "I'll Be Hard To Handle"
Kimball Cho stood speechless as his career and Jane's freedom flashed in front of his eyes.
What the hell is going on here? How did this woman know?
Kimball looked over at Jane, whose shrug of his shoulders gave him scant comfort.
"Ma'am, what did you say?"
The bony finger shook at Jane again.
"I want you to arrest Archibald Marbray. Take him away. Let him rot in a jail cell for all I care. Just haul him off, away from Deverell College."
"Why? I need some specifics."
Totty heaved out a big sigh, resignation etched across her face.
"Because he and all of his ilk are imposters."
"All of his ilk, ma'am?" Confusion seized Kimball. Did she associate Jane with psychics? With his old carny cronies?
"Yes. All of these so-called social scientists. Pearl Swanlund, Fremont Rivas, Gunilla Voss. Every last one of them. None of them deserve a place in academe. But most of all Archie Marbray."
When Totty said the word "academe," the "ac" part sounded like she was gargling her throat.
"Social scientists, ma'am?"
He saw Jane screw up his face in a close approximate of the woman's pinched expression. Then he mouthed out verbatim the next words that came from Totty.
"The social sciences are no part of academe. They're the last refuge of third-rate entertainers."
"Ahh, Isadore, you still know how to deliver that line with elan. Don't you ever change on us." Jane shifted his gaze from Totty to Kimball. "Swanlund, Rivas, and Voss, my fellow miscreants, are other professors here at Deverell who don't pass muster for Isadore."
Jane's grin made her bony finger arise yet again. It trembled with rage.
"Look, I know you can't arrest all of them, Agent Cho, but please at least start with this charlatan here. He's the worst."
Kimball breathed a silent sigh of relief. Isadore Totty was merely crazy, and for that he was thankful.
"I take it you're not enamored of Professor Marbray."
"That would be an understatement. This knave is egregious."
"Egregious! Oh, Isadore, you've been reading your dictionary again, haven't you?"
Totty's facial muscles twitched as her lips formed into a sneer.
"That's more than I can say for you, Marbray. Some of your ilk at least make a passing attempt at scholarship, no matter how ephemeral the result. You on the other hand get your lecture notes from Wikipedia three minutes before the start of class. Then you show up in class to drivel out meaningless pellets of pop culture trivia like a soda machine spews out an empty stream of flavor-tinged water."
"Isadore, I resent that." Instead of a sneer, Jane responded with a smirk. "You know good and well I spend at least five minutes before class on Wikipedia. Give credit where credit's due, woman."
Isadore grabbed the bust of a composer off her credenza. She stretched her arm into a throwing stance that made Jane duck.
Kimball decided he'd had enough of this b.s. He reached over and took the composer from her hands. Inscribed across the base was the name "Schubert."
"Ma'am, I have to ask you to calm down." Totty glanced from him over to Jane and back to him. She raised her eyebrows for Kimball to respond. "…And I ask Professor Marbray to control his tongue."
"You don't understand, Agent Cho. This man is an ass."
"You'd be surprised how much sympathy I have with you, ma'am, but…"
Totty switched her gaze from Kimball to Jane and a barrage of hate erupted again.
"I deserved that Leithead Foundation Award. You didn't."
"It's funny that the selection committee didn't feel the same way."
"My work on Beethoven's Grand Fugue in B-flat Major for String Quartet was a ground-breaking look at his greatest achievement."
"Well the Grand Fugue is good, but I thought the pinnacle of his work was the Second Movement of his Seventh Symphony."
Totty's jaw dropped. Clearly she hadn't expected that to come out of Jane's mouth. After a moment, her haughtiness returned to her eyes.
"Second Movement of the Seventh Symphony. Humph! Well that's the obvious answer, isn't it? What the unschooled rabble would say."
Totty let herself relax. In a few moments, Kimball handed Schubert back to her.
"As you can see, Agent Cho, I'm passionate about academe." Her gargling noise sounded again on "academe."
"Yes, ma'am. We're here, um, I'm here on behalf of Police Chief Teresa Lisbon to ask you a few questions about an investigation. It concerns the River Manor Apartments…"
Totty's face brightened.
"Oh, Teresa Lisbon. Why didn't you say so? I think the world of her."
"That's good to know, ma'am. Anyway, Chief Lisbon is investigating…"
"The only thing I can't figure out about Teresa is why she would ever marry someone like this mountebank." The wagging finger reappeared, shaking at Jane. "She's a saint to put up with him."
That got a reaction from Jane. Not a sneer, not a smirk, but a smile.
"Isadore, I'm glad to hear you say that. That's something you and I do agree on. Teresa is a saint, and I count my blessings every day that she's in my life."
"You almost sound like a human being, Marbray."
"Coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment."
Totty motioned for the two men to take a seat in the guest chairs in her office before she replied.
"My only problem with your wife is that she kept you on the city payroll after you married. That smacks of cronyism."
"Isadore…"
"My name is 'Professor Totty' to you if you persist in trying to speak to me."
"As I was saying, Isadore, you'll be pleased to know that when Teresa and I married I switched to working pro bono for the police department."
"Pro bono?"
"Yes, pro bono means 'for the public good,' so there'll be no more of your local tax dollars going to fund my nefarious shenanigans."
"I know what pro bono means, you dolt."
"Well then why did you ask?"
"I didn't ask."
"Yes, you did."
Totty reached back towards her row of statues, picked one up, and stretched her arm into throwing position again.
Kimball whistled to get their attention.
"You two knock it off. J-ur-Marbray, shut up. Professor Totty, please set down Tchaikovsky."
Her hand wavered a minute. With a deep breath, Totty lowered the statue back down to the credenza.
"Agent Cho, you said you had some questions about an investigation that Teresa was doing?"
"Yes, ma'am. It has to do with the River Manor Apartments. I understand that the builder, Fitzgerald Cummings, was your father. Is that correct?"
"Yes, he was my Daddy."
"And he built the apartment complex?" Kimball asked.
"Yes, he did. Built it and owned it. Daddy also lived there until he died last year." Totty's face drooped when she said that. Kimball didn't need Jane's powers of observation to see the sorrow in eyes.
"About your father dying. Was that unexpected?" asked Jane.
Totty turned and glared at Jane. She started to reach back for a statue.
"Stop it! J-ur-Marbray asked a legitimate question. Ma'am, I can see your father's passing hurt you very much."
"It did. Oh, it did, Agent Cho." She shook her head. "Daddy was in his eighties of course, and he'd had a heart condition. But the last year of his life he had rebounded so much. His health had improved. He'd become more active. In fact, he passed away while he was at a convention in New York City."
Kimball saw Jane crook his eyebrow, and his own instinct perked up as well.
"What caused Mr. Cummings' death, ma'am?"
"The coroner in New York City told the family that he had a heart attack."
"And you said he had suffered from a heart ailment."
"Yes, he had. But he'd made so much headway in the year before he died. In fact, his doctor here had cleared him to go to New York. He told Daddy that he wished he himself was in that good a shape."
"Did you tell the coroner in New York that?"
"Yes, I did. But he said that with my father's health history and age, that wasn't unexpected."
"What was the convention he went to, Isadore?" asked Jane.
While talking about her father, Totty forgot about her distaste for talking with Jane, if only for a moment.
"It was a collector's convention. Old vinyl records. They were his passion."
"Vinyl records?"
Now Isadore Totty got to smirk at Jane.
"Yes, Marbray. Vinyl records. They're thin, circular objects. They spin round-and-round on a turntable. People have put music recordings on them for over a hundred years. Sometime when you're getting ready for class on Wikipedia you should look it up."
Kimball could see Totty trying to bait Jane, but he ignored the insult.
"Your father collected records, Isadore?"
"He did and played them all his life. He had all kinds of vinyls - 33 rpm, 45 rpm, and 78 rpm. The 78s were his favorites though."
"78s?" asked Kimball.
"Yes, Agent Cho. They were an older media than the 33 rpms we still see today. Of course, they revolved at 78 revolutions per minute on the turntable instead of 33 revolutions." She reached into a desk drawer to pull out a small-sized vinyl disc. "Here's one. You can see it's smaller than the 33s."
Holding the disc by its edges, she handed it over to Kimball. He and Jane looked at it closely.
"If it's smaller than a 33rpm and revolves faster, it doesn't hold as much music on it, does it?" asked Jane.
"No shi…nola, Sherlock." Totty caught herself. "78s had room enough for only one song on a side."
"How long were they used?"
"The commercial market for 78s went from the 1920s up through the 1950s. When 33s and 45s came along, they quickly replaced 78s."
"People wanted more music on a disc."
"Precisely. Although record companies had gotten creative with how they used 78s." Isadore swiveled to her left and reached back in her desk drawer to produce a small stack of 78rpm records. They were sheathed in paper sleeves. "All of these 78s together contain one Mozart symphony on them."
Kimball lifted up the disc on top and studied it.
"How did that work?"
"To hear a whole symphony like that meant constantly changing from one disc to the next. Not like with our downloads and CDs today."
Kimball glanced at Jane, and he could see him ponder the situation. The expression on Jane's face reminded him of when they had worked together at CBI so long ago.
"Did your father have a lot of these?"
"Yes, he did. He played them all the time. About three years ago he gave me all his classical 78s because he knew I studied them."
"You kept them?"
"Yes, here in the office."
Totty swiveled around in her chair. Sitting next to her credenza on the floor was a vault. She lifted up the door on the front. Kimball noted how its hinges sat atop the door frame, not along the side like a normal door. Totty pushed the door up until it rested wide open.
Inside the vault Totty had stacked scores of discs. All were 78s like the ones she had shown Kimball and Jane. Out of the corner of his eye, Kimball saw Jane rise from his seat to look closer at Totty's trove. As he stuck out his hand to toward the vault, Totty reached over to slap it.
"No! Get away from my 78s."
"But Isadore, I just wanted to…"
"I should have just kept my mouth shut and let you try to get in the vault," she said.
That got Kimball's attention.
"What do you mean by that, ma'am?"
He noted that Jane had wisely retracted his hand. For once he'd actually shown some restraint.
Totty swiveled around to face Kimball.
"My Daddy was an engineer by training. He designed this vault for me. It keeps out unwanted fingers."
"How's that?"
"Allow me to demonstrate. By the way, the only reason I didn't let Marbray go ahead and try is that I wanted to avoid a lawsuit. Well, that and I respect his wife too. I know she has enough trouble dealing with him as is."
"Thanks, I guess," said Jane.
Totty swiveled to face Jane.
"Yes, you should thank me." She swiveled back to face the vault again. Kimball began to wonder if all this swiveling in her chair had something to do with Totty's volatile nature.
"If you don't approach the vault the right way, this happens."
Totty stuck her hand through the doorway of the vault at an odd angle but jerked it back out. In a flash, the door whipped around on its hinges. It slammed shut with a thunderclap of noise. Kimball and Jane both recoiled by reflex. Totty swiveled around to the men with a look of triumph.
"That's quite impressive, Isadore," said Jane.
"Daddy did that especially for me. No one's ever taken anything from it."
"I can understand, ma'am. Now as I was saying…" Kimball didn't get to complete his sentence. Jane interrupted. Some things never changed.
"Isadore, did you say your father only gave you part of his collection?"
"Yes. Daddy kept the bulk of the 78s. He loved playing them - jazz, early country music, and especially pop standards. Over the years they became quite valuable. Daddy told the family that he wanted to donate them to Deverell College when he died."
"Did he?" asked Jane.
"He wrote that into his will. However, we never found them. Either he had sold them off over the years or he kept them someplace out of sight."
"You said they had become valuable."
"They had. That makes me think he hadn't sold them off. If he had, he would have told us."
"Were you familiar with any of the titles he had?"
"Some but not all. He was tight-lipped about them, even with his own family. On occasion though I heard him playing the records and saw them on the turntable when I visited him. I knew enough to know they were worth a lot."
"What did you see?"
"Like I say, a wide variety of music. Fred Astaire, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong. Once I even heard him playing a Perk Perez record. It was 'This Can't Be Love,' a Rogers and Hart song. He told me he had other 78s of her as well."
"Perk Perez? I've heard of the other people you named but not her."
"Look her up on Wikipedia sometime, Marbray. Daddy wrote most of the entry for her."
"I will. In the meantime, why don't you fill in Agent Cho and myself on her."
"So you're open to learning something? Something worthwhile?"
Had some of Jane rubbed off on Kimball over the years? He felt that same sense that Jane obviously had that something was amiss about Cummings and the records. He motioned for Jane to continue with his line of questions as long as Totty stayed under control.
"I am, Isadore. Please continue."
"Perk Perez was a young singer in the 1930s. She sang with a number of big band orchestras of the era, and she was on the verge of becoming a big star like Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra."
"What happened?"
"Sadly, she died far too young in a train wreck in Iowa. She was on the way to perform a concert in Des Moines."
"What makes her records so valuable?"
"Scarcity and talent. Because she was just starting out, her record label didn't produce as many 78s for her as they did for established acts. If she'd lived, that would have changed. Newspapers of the era said she had 'the voice of a nightingale.'"
"So your father had some of her records."
"Yes. How many I don't know. And I always wondered if he had her recording of 'Cheerful Little Earful.' Other people wondered too."
"Why that one?"
Totty swiveled to her computer. With a few mouse clicks, she brought up a website of news articles on the screen. The title that grabbed Kimball's attention was in the largest font size - "Does the Perez 'Cheerful Little Earful' still exist?"
"Collectors regard her recording of 'Cheerful Little Earful' as the Holy Grail of 78s. If one still existed, it could fetch upward of six figures at auction."
"What makes it so valuable?"
Totty scowled at Jane before she replied.
"Three reasons. First, like I said they didn't press many copies of any of her records. Second, 'Cheerful Little Earful' was an obscure song, even in the 1930's. Third, the lyricist on the song was Ira Gershwin."
"Ira Gershwin?"
"Yes. George Gershwin, his brother, is better known. Yet Ira served as his lyricist for his most famous pop standards. Songs like 'They Can't Take That Away From Me' and 'Fascinating Rhythm'."
"So George composed 'Cheerful Little Earful' with Ira?"
"No, but that's what adds novelty to the recording. Ira didn't work with his brother on that song. Instead he wrote it with Harry Warren and Billy Rose."
"So, lots of collectors would be interested in that 78 if any still existed."
"Precisely. And they're a ferocious breed, let me tell you. Some of them will gladly slit your throat for an early Louis Armstrong or Benny Goodman 78." Totty stopped a moment to regard Jane. "Too bad you're not in among those vermin."
"You can't have everything you wish for, Isadore."
Totty turned her scrunched-up gaze from Jane back to Kimball, something that made Kimball's skin crawl.
"Agent Cho, do you think Chief Lisbon can find out what happened?"
"We'll tell her what you've told us." Kimball desperately wanted her to refocus on Jane and off him. "By the way, ma'am, the reason we even came to talk to you today is because Professor Marbray here made the connection between your father and a current case that Chief Lisbon is working on."
That was the wrong thing to say. Totty's face knotted into a snarl like a grizzly bear ready to swipe its paw at a hiker.
"This scoundrel is incapable of anything except causing trouble. Do you know what happened at the faculty meeting this week?"
"No, ma'am, but…"
"I'll tell you what happened. I unveiled, all modestly aside for a moment, my groundbreaking proposal to reconceptualize intructional work load dynamics across academe. Yes, I know what you're thinking. How did she have time to do that? What with my groundbreaking work on Beethoven string quartets. The answer is simple - some of us are gifted. What I propose is nothing less than the wholesale reconsideration of the role a faculty member plays in…"
As Totty talked, Cho felt his eyelids weigh down.
"…of course it is vital to recognize the subtle conceptual distinctions between the reference points during the calendar year that create an interplay of…"
Cho was having a hard time focusing.
"…among the factors that I covered then rejected as irrelevant were accumulated enrollments, the ratio of 400-level to 100-level course listings, the percentage of repeat…"
Cho couldn't even stay awake by biting down on his lip.
"…and then boom!"
Cho roused himself when Totty clapped her hands together. He noted that Jane shifted awake in his chair too.
"Ma'am?"
"Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. I was just getting to the heart of my proposal when that infernal chiming sounded."
"Chiming, ma'am?"
"A wind-up alarm clock that this human hyena sitting next to you slipped in my briefcase. It was set to ring 73 minutes after I started talking. What does that sound like to you?"
"It sounds like Professor Marbray set it 72 minutes too late."
When the words left Cho's mouth, he froze. Jane froze. Totty froze.
The bony finger rose like a serpent out of the murky depths. This time it didn't point at Jane. Instead it shook in a frenzy at Cho himself.
"You're no better than him."
"No, I am better than Marbray. I don't have to hear you drone on every week."
Where did that come from?
Cho glanced at Jane. His mouth agape, he beamed broadly at Cho.
"That was incredible!" said Jane.
A scuffing noise got Cho's attention. Turning back to Totty, he saw her reaching back to her credenza to pick up a statue. By reflex, Cho ducked but Jane held up his hands to stop Totty.
"Isadore! Wait! Don't throw Beethoven."
Isadore nodded, swiveled, and set Beethoven down to grab another statue. Jane clasped Cho's arm and dragged him out the door. A biege-colored blur whizzed over their heads.
Crash.
The statue slammed against the far wall in the hallway. The composer's left ear flew off and bounced against Cho's elbow. What was left of the statue minus its right eye brow rolled across the floor until Jane stopped it face-up with his foot.
Jane looked from the statue to Cho. "Poor Schubert. He didn't deserve that." Then he leaned over to the doorway. "Always a pleasure to see you, Isadore." He turned back to Cho and tugged his sleeve. "Let's skeddadle before she reloads with Bartok."
The two men ran down the hall until they stopped in front of the office of "Associate Professor Archibald Marbray." Before taking out his key to open the door, Jane patted Cho on the shoulder.
"Kimball Cho, you're my hero."
"Shut up and open the door, Jane, before she hunts us down."
Kimball Cho had never been much for self-reflection, but what happened down the hallway baffled him. Why had he said what he did to Totty? In the past, he'd always been the master of his tongue, no matter what he really wanted to say. Yet he had insulted Isadore Totty to the point where she attacked him.
I just couldn't put up with all her b.s. I rather be spending time with Capp instead of listening to some blowhard like that.
And that was it. All of a sudden he didn't have the patience to put up with the Isadores of the world. His thoughts resided with a pair of bright blue eyes he'd missed since the night they parted.
"You're thinking about Capp Grainger, aren't you?"
Kimball focused on Jane, who was sitting behind the desk in his office playing Youtube videos - and looking up entries on Wikipedia.
"No shinola, Sherlock." Kimball didn't want Jane to interrogate him about Capp; it was bad enough that Wayne and Grace were going to torture him for details. Time to change the subject. "What have you found out?"
"Well, thanks to Isadore, I've gotten an education on pop standards, crooners, and the market for old vinyl records. His fellow enthusiasts regarded Isadore's father as a leading collector. He was even rumored to have a copy of the Perk Perez 'Cheerful Little Earful'."
"Do you think Cummings and his records have anything to do with the drone?"
"I don't know. What do you think, Kimball?"
"Something doesn't smell right."
"I agree. Let's check in with Teresa."
Jane dialed Teresa's office phone, put her on speaker phone, and briefed her on what they found. She put her phone on speaker as well. While they were talking, Teresa sent Henry over to the courthouse to get Cummings' real estate records. When Jane finished his report, Teresa directed a question to Kimball.
"How did Jane do with Isadore?"
"He survived. We both survived. Let's leave it at that, Teresa."
Kimball heard Lisbon chuckling in the background. Then he heard rustling on the other end of the line followed by two familiar voices.
"Our undercover team is back, gentlemen," said Teresa.
"Hey, Jim-Bob. What did you and Bodette find out?"
"That Pontiac GTO is one sweet ride, Kimball. Maybe Teresa will let you and me take it for a test run when this is all wrapped up," said Wayne.
"Focus, Wayne, focus," said Grace.
"Uh, yeah. That Owen Myer guy has to be the least sales-oriented apartment manager I've ever seen. It was like we were an inconvenience."
Grace took over the conversation at that point.
"Wayne's right. Myer couldn't have cared less about us. That's different from any apartment manager I've ever dealt with. If they have anything below full occupancy, they hound you to sign a lease. Something was distracting him."
"Maybe it was the mullet," Kimball said.
"Shut up, Cho," said Wayne.
"What was your impression about the building, Wayne?" asked Jane.
Kimball recalled that Wayne knew a lot about buildings from his time as an arson investigator.
"That place was built like a fortress on top of a rock."
The five of them continued to trade information and ideas back-and-forth, just like in the old days at CBI. After a few minutes, Teresa summed things up for them.
"We need to get that drone to move things forward."
"What reason will you give to capture it?" asked Kimball.
"Henry and Annabelle aren't the only residents of the River Manor Apartments to complain about it. I interviewed four others this afternoon who said they found it outside their windows. Two said they saw it on multiple occasions," said Teresa. "They claim it's invading their privacy."
"Like a stalker?" asked Jane.
"Exactly. After we get off the phone, I'm calling the mayor to make sure he's on board with the idea."
"Good plan, Teresa," said Jane.
After bidding everyone on the phone goodbye, Kimball and Jane snuck back into the hallway, checking to see if Isadore had gone home. She had. As they made their way to the building entrance, Jane stopped them both. Beside them was a door with the sign "Drama Department Storage Room."
"Let's stop in here a minute, Kimball."
Inside the cramped room Kimball saw everything from costumes to power tools to stage props. Jane busied himself in one corner, sifting through a box with a cowboy hat, a chef's apron, and a rubber sword in a scabbard. A look of triumph appeared across Jane's face as he pulled the last object out of the box. He swished it around.
"Success! I thought I remembered that they had one of these."
Kimball stared at what Jane held.
"Did the Drama Department stage Moby Dick?"
"Close. The Old Man and the Sea."
Wayne and Grace had gone home, and Teresa finished putting her plan of action in place. As she gathered her equipment together, she smiled as an idea formed in her mind. Dialing her phone, a now-familiar voice greeted her with "Hello."
"Hey, Capp. This is Teresa. How would you like to go drone-hunting tonight?"
To be continued.
Author's notes:
Jerome Kern and Bernard Dougall wrote "I'll Be Hard To Handle" in 1932, and my favorite version is Ella Fitzgerald's on her album, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Songbook.
"Perk Perez" is a fictional character.
"Shinola" actually exists. The things you can learn from a Dolly Parton album, Backwoods Barbie to be specific!
Next up: "Under A Blanket Of Blue"
