Morelville Men's Club Read online

  Opera House Ops

  Episode 2 – Morelville Men’s Club

  A Morelville Cozies Serial Mystery

  Anne Hagan

  To Mrs. Rotunno for words of praise that sparked a lifelong passion for writing

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Jug Run Press, USA

  Copyright © 2016

  https://annehaganauthor.com/

  All rights reserved: No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without prior written consent of the author or the publisher except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages for review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are actual places used in an entirely fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1 – Men’s Club

  Friday Evening, June 12th

  Morelville Opera House

  “This meeting of the Morelville Men’s Club will come to order!” Ryan Fuller banged his hand down on a music stand and then snickered at his attempt to sound official.

  “Shaddup!” Timothy Locke, hollered over at him as he jostled with his best friend, Jerry Carr. “No one died and put no junior in charge.”

  Cole Roberts gulped and smiled uneasily as he stood a little to the side of the group of the others. He wanted to fit in and be one of the guys but he was nervous about them all being in the old opera house where he knew they shouldn’t be. He cringed inwardly as Tim, their school quarterback and a star wrestler on the high school team, and Jerry scuffled, trying to take each other down.

  The two overgrown boys bumped into rows of old theater style chairs that had all been pushed toward the front of the room and to one side as they grappled their way down behind the last row of them, toward the windows. Cole stuffed his hand in the pocket of his Levi’s and crossed his fingers, hoping they wouldn’t go crashing through one of the windows and end up getting them all in trouble.

  Both boys continued their struggle for physical dominance while Cole, Ryan and Mike Waite looked on. Ryan and Mike jeered at them both but Cole remained silent.

  His silence didn’t go unnoticed for long. Tim got Jerry in a chokehold of sorts from which he struggled to escape and then he pinned him to the floor. Staggering up, the victor puffed out his chest and strutted in front of the other three boys, calling out, “Who wants a piece of this now?” He stopped in front of Cole. “What’s a matter, Roberts? Scared?”

  “No.” Cole tried to plaster his face with a scowl.

  His attention was diverted from Locke by Carr trying to rise from the floor and only making it as far as his knees. Even in the dim light still coming from the windows, Cole could see that his shirt and pants were coated in a thin film of dust. He looked at the tracks the two had made all over the floor as they’d scuffled around and wrestled and, so lost was he in contemplation of that, he’d all but forgotten Locke staring him down.

  Tim Locke didn’t forget his goal. As Jerry lunged for him, he grabbed onto Cole’s arm and jerked him around until he was holding him from behind. Jerry nearly crashed into them, only just saving himself from being kicked by Cole’s flailing feet.

  “It’s initiation time!” Locke crowed. “Little Cole Roberts wants to join our club so now it’s time to make sure he’s good and scared.”

  “Initiation? I thought I was already a member by helping you get in here?” Cole stopped struggling against his captor’s grip and pleaded his case.

  “You think squeezing through a window and unlocking a door was your initiation? Oh, no, no! Right boys?”

  “Let him go,” Jerry said as he stood. “You know there’s no initiation.”

  “I make the rules here, not you,” Tim shot back at him. “Maybe you just want another beat down!”

  “Look, whatever,” Jerry said. “What would you have him do? Wrestle you?”

  “Naw; something better than that.”

  “Like what?” Mike asked.

  Locke let go of Cole and spun in a quick circle and then again a little slower. “Ain’t much in here we could get him to do.” He tipped his chin toward the stage. “What’s up there?”

  None of the boys answered.

  “What the hell is that; a stage?”

  “What’s it look like, dumbass?” Jerry asked him. “Of course it’s a stage. This is an old the-a-ter.”

  Cole winced internally. He knew it was what folks in town called an opera house because he’d heard his grandparents and his Aunt Mel talking about it but he knew better than to say that to this group.

  Locke turned on his booted heel and sauntered toward the stage. He stopped in front of the orchestra pit out in front of it and looked up. “Can’t see nothin’ from here. Too dark up there.” Looking back over his shoulder he asked, “Are you afraid of the dark, Roberts?”

  “Um, no,” Cole answered back in a small voice…too small.

  “Bet you are,” Ryan needled him. “Bet if we asked your sister, she’d say different.”

  “Leave my sister alone,” Cole defended Beth. “She’s only 14 and not interested in you.” He clenched a fist at his side but then released it.

  Mike snickered. “He wouldn’t even have to fight you Ryan. I’ll bet little ol’ Beth can take you.”

  Cole ignored him and looked back toward the stage. Tim had skirted around the orchestra pit and had climbed the stairs to the platform. He and the other three boys watched him as he looked around the stage and kicked at some boxes back in the shadows.

  “What’s up there?” Ryan called out.

  “Ain’t much…” Tim Locke paused as he looked up. “Pretty dark up top but looks like there’s a kind of walkway up there like a…like a skywalk kind of thing.”

  “Huh?” Jerry had a confused look plastered across his face.

  Locke, still looking up, walked to the side of the stage. He tugged at a heavy curtain that lined a sidewall and looked behind it at the wall. From where the other boys were standing, they couldn’t see what he was looking at.

  “Roberts, get up here! I just figured out what you’re gonna’ do. Hope you ain’t afraid of heights!”

  Chapter 2 – The Pits

  Cole gulped as bile rose in his throat and tried to shake off the feeling of dread washing over him. He wanted to be accepted by this group. When he’d gone out for football his sophomore year, they were the ones on the team everyone else wanted to be like. They ignored him like the plague except when it was time to haul gear back and forth from the field house. Then, he was treated just like the freshmen, everybody’s whipping boy.

  Now that he was a junior, or almost, and working on getting his driver’s license with the cool pickup his aunts had helped his mom get him, they wanted to be his pals. He didn’t care. He just wanted friends.

  He started toward the stage slowly.

  “Shake a leg Roberts; we ain’t got all night!” Tim called out from his position now near the curtained wall on the side where he’d gone up the stairs.

  Cole picked up the pace, climbed the stairs himself and stopped a couple feet from Tim on the stage.

  Locke called to the others, “Toss that ball up here. Robert’s here is going to play a little game with us.”

  Ryan threw the ball just as Cole turned. He barely caught the wobbly pass. Tim moved the curtain aside and revealed to Cole an old wooden ladder that was fastened to the wall running from nearly the stage floor up to a small platform 15 feet or so over his head. His eyes traveled from the little platform to the catwalk that ran along the len
gth of the stage, up over it to what he expected was a similar platform on the other side. From what little detail he could make out in the murkiness overhead, the wood looked old and dry and not at all safe.

  “Load up Roberts. You’re going to get up there and we’re going to play catch.”

  “I don’t know if the ladder or those…those planks up there will hold me. They look pretty old.”

  Tim jumped on the first rung of the ladder and bounced, testing it with his weight. “Solid as a rock,” he pronounced it. “If you want to be part of this club, you best get going.”

  Cole shot a glance at the other three boys now standing just a few feet from the stage. They stood, to a man, cross armed, staring him down. Resolute, he tucked the football tight under his left arm, gripped the ladder with his right hand and started his climb.

  The rungs were set deep apart. He stretched carefully to reach from one to the next and pull his trailing leg up while clutching the ball. He counted ten rungs before he came to the step of the last couple of inches to get onto the platform. He leaned in and tested the strength of the base with his left elbow while still hanging tight to the ball before he committed to stepping up on it and letting his viselike grip off the side of the ladder with his right hand. It seemed sturdy and secure. Cole looked at the guys below, waiting, swallowed hard, and got on the platform.

  “Get out there on that thing about the middle,” Tim called up, pointing at the catwalk.

  Cole drew in a deep breath and then took a tentative step onto the hanging walkway. He watched his feet and gripped the old wooden railing about waist high on his right side tight with each step. When he got to the first support post, he reached around it and latched onto the handrail again and continued forward.

  When he got to the spot he judged was the middle he turned sideways and looked down. Tim had moved to a spot near the edge of the stage and was now standing about 15 feet down and maybe thirty feet or so out. Cole’s head spun and his stomach churned.

  “Toss me the ball Roberts and make it a good throw.”

  Cole flipped the football into his right hand and gripped the other handrail with is left. He raised the ball, aimed toward Locke, pumped once, then twice, then threw it as hard as he dared from his precarious position.

  He missed Locke by about four feet, the ball nearly sailing off the stage toward the other teens who he could barely make out given the angle and the growing darkness right before Locke got an arm out and managed to knock it down. It skittered out in front of him toward the back of the stage.

  “That sucked Roberts!” Locke declared. The guys down on the floor all laughed. After Tim retrieved the ball, he moved under the catwalk and whipped it upwards, commanding, “Catch!”

  Caught off guard, Cole didn’t catch it until it was making its descent and only managed a fingertip snag over the rail. The catwalk jostled and swayed a little as he jerked forward to make the grab and then move back to relative safety.

  Tim turned to the other three. “You guys go long. We’re gonna see if ol’ Cole can go deep.”

  “I can’t hardly see them in the dark now,” Cole complained. If they go out too much further, that curtain hanging down at the front will completely block them.”

  “Just throw the damn ball Roberts,” Mike said. “If it’s half decent, one of us will catch it.”

  Ryan and Mike jogged mostly out of his view but Jerry stayed put. Cole sucked in a deep breath, hollered “Here it comes!” and let it fly. The cat walk shook from his effort but held. To his relief the ball sailed past Tim who was still standing on the stage and out over the orchestra pit into the murkiness beyond. He was more concerned about looking good by that point than his own safety.

  Mike hollered and Ryan cussed. Cole assumed Mike had caught the ball or nearly so. He tried to stoop a little so he could see.

  Both boys were standing should to shoulder and neither one of them appeared to have the football.

  “Who got it?” he shouted.

  “That ass blocked me,” Ryan said. “It bounced off him somewhere.”

  “Where?” Cole asked.

  “Down in that thing.”

  Cole, nearly on his knees now to see, saw Ryan wave a hand toward the pit area in front of the stage.

  “Someone go down there and get it,” Tim ordered from the stage.

  “That’s his job,” Jerry said. “Let him come down off of there. You’ve had your fun.”

  Cole didn’t move a muscle until Locke said he could come down. He turned and went back the way he’d gotten up to the catwalk, putting his trust in a platform and ladder he’d already tested.

  Tim ambled off the stage and he and Jerry moved toward the other boys as Cole descended. He heard Mike say, “There’s no light to do much of anything in here now, what say we go get a pizza at the shop?”

  While they argued about what to do, Cole descended the three shallow steps into the orchestra pit to retrieve the ball. He could make out some folding chairs and music stands since they were all pushed to the side closest to him and he could see a few boxes stacked along the back edge toward where the audience would be too but he didn’t see the ball.

  He shuffled forward slowly, his eyes scanning the floor out toward the front for it. The thing was only, maybe 20 or 25 feet wide, he figured but he didn’t find it. He looked to his right along the length.

  The pit was only about half as long as the stage and centered on it. There wasn’t room for much in it but he couldn’t see the ball over there.

  He turned all the way around and walked back toward the stage and that’s when he saw it. Not the ball; a man’s body.

  Chapter 3 – Unknown

  “Arrrrgh!” Cole screamed.

  The other four boys stopped chattering at the sound and watched as he scrambled for the steps and up out of the pit.

  “What the hell, Roberts?” Locke questioned him.

  “There’s…there’s a body over there.”

  “What? You’re crazy.”

  “No; I’m serious. There’s uh, uh a man in there.”

  Mike moved to the edge of the pit and looked toward the stage where Cole was pointing. “Holy crap!” he yelled. He looked at Ryan with fear in his eyes.

  “What do we do?” Ryan asked.

  “We have to get out of here,” Tim said. “Now!”

  Jerry shot his friend a look. “We can’t just leave! We have to…I don’t know…to report this.”

  “And what are we gonna’ say? We broke into this building and we found a body?” Tim turned to Mike and Ryan. “Let’s go. We’ll all go out that back door and lock it behind us.”

  Tim, Mike and Ryan started picking their way past the mass of chairs toward the side of the stage where a narrow hallway led around behind it. Each stole glances at the pit as Jerry stood and watched and Cole stood shaking, tears welling up in his eyes.

  Tim Locke looked back at the two of them. “Are you guys coming or what?”

  “You’re nuts,” Jerry said. “We can’t just leave!”

  “Watch me! And, if you ain’t coming, you best figure out your story and leave me out of it. I can’t afford to be in no kind of trouble if I want to get a scholarship.” With that, he left and Fuller and Waite followed.

  “If my aunt doesn’t kill me, my grandpa will,” Cole said to Jerry while they waited outside in the back of a Sheriff’s Deputy’s cruiser she made them go and sit in that her deputy had parked across the road from the building.

  Carr scratched at the back of his head. “You’ll be okay Roberts. We both will. We did the right thing.”

  Cole wasn’t so sure. Still, he leaned left and right and craned his neck, trying to see around the cruiser a deputy had parked right in front of the building after Mel had cut the lock off and slid the big metal arm that was holding it closed back. They were using the headlights of that cruiser to throw light into the old structure.

  “Look there,” Jerry elbowed him with one arm as he waived the other toward
the left, out the windshield.

  Cole watched as a hearse rolled toward the building. The driver turned off the road and ran slowly down the window side of the opera house toward the back. “Why do you suppose he’s here?”

  Jerry shrugged. “I dunno’ Come to get him I guess. Can’t see your aunt havin’ him taken out of there in one of these things. Probably got to take him somewhere, figure out how he died.”

  Nodding, Cole swallowed hard.

  Chapter 4 - ID

  10:30 PM, Friday, June 12th

  Muskingum County Coroner’s Office

  “The decedent resembles the photo on his driver’s license. We’re running his prints to see if we can get a hit that way but, it’s likely this is Gregory Sellers of Port St. Lucie, Florida.”

  “Florida?” Lucas Kreskie, the county coroner, asked Mel. “What in heaven’s name was he doing in Morelville, Ohio?” He shrugged. “From the area?”

  “I don’t know him. Your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, we found a rental car parked half a block away in the pizza shop lot. Turns out, it was leased by Sellers according to the paperwork we found inside. That would seem to indicate he’s from Florida and up here for some other reason.”

  “Huh. Well, keep me posted on that. I’d say he’s about 37, give or take.”

  “You never cease to amaze me, doc. That jives with his license; says he was born in ’79.”

  “Been doing this a lot of years Sheriff.” He bent to the body on the table. “My on-site temperature reading earlier put his body temperature at the ambient temperature and rigor has mostly set in. I’d say he’s been dead about a day and a half.”

  “So some time yesterday?”

  “Probably late morning or early afternoon. Beyond that, I can only speculate as to cause. He appears to have fallen or been pushed given the damage to his face but the distance there was less than five feet so there may be a medical factor that lead to his ultimate fall and his death.”

  Mel nodded. “You’re sure he hasn’t been there any longer than since yesterday?” She thought of Doug Moody and wondered to herself if he really had been just a passer through the previous week, after all.

  “Positive.”