The Margaritaville Murders

The Hedendorfs were playing Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett on their dock at 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. George and Helen were drinking peach margaritas made in the outdoor blender beneath their themed tiki hut, while their high-school-aged kids, Bill and Raven, splashed and screamed in the lake. Russ, the eldest, just back from NYU for the summer, sat on the tree swing reading Anthony Horowitz’s Marble Hall Murders and minding his own business. True to form, the Hedendorfs displayed a ZFG attitude while effortlessly disturbing everyone on the Stokes side of Lake 1 before most of us had even finished breakfast.

Just when I thought the Hedendorfs’ disregard for their fellow Lakers could go no further, Russ abandoned his book and carried a container of berries, kale, and almonds, along with a small travel vial of protein powder, to the tiki hut. He loaded everything into the outdoor blender and ran it at maximum speed, creating a noise roughly equivalent to a small aircraft experiencing mechanical failure. After pouring the resulting sludge into a shaker bottle, he left the blender on the counter.

“Don’t you dare leave it like that,” Helen barked. “Take it inside and wash it.”

Russ retreated toward the kitchen carrying the blender and his fluorescent-pink breakfast.

I dug into my soggy cornflakes, chewing maliciously as I watched their escapades. One of these ne’er-do-wells had tossed an entire six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon over the fence into my yard the night before. Another had launched a beanbag from their cornhole game with enough force to shatter GnomeHeart the Garden Gnome, permanently disrupting the sanctity of my serene Highland Meadow. As an honorary Scotsman by virtue of my registered membership in Clan MacJames, it was an insult to my national identity as well as the sanctity of my home.

After Russ returned the clean blender, Helen poured peach mix into it for a second round. Bill and Raven began shouting for virgin margaritas, which apparently meant peach slushies served in glassware that allowed teenagers to feel included in their parents’ alcoholism. Helen filled four plastic cups from the same peach-colored batch, adding tequila only to hers and George’s. And the commotion kicked up once again.

The Hedendorfs had a talent for aggravation. But unlike pests in the animal kingdom who know their presence is unwanted and who live by a code of strict self-preservation, the Hedendorfs lived in a state of willful blindness. I, for one, had just about had enough. I was ready to do whatever it took to restore our once peaceful lakeside community.

Don’t get me wrong, I am no goody two-shoes. Back in my heyday, I was the reigning beer-pong champion not only at The College of New Jersey, but across our entire athletic conference. Megan and I have been known to get “turnt up,” as the kids say, and there have been one or two regrettable misunderstandings involving law enforcement. But we confine our disorderly behavior to appropriate hours and, more importantly, to our own property.

I abandoned my surveillance post at the kitchen window and crossed to the dining room, where I had an unobstructed view of Stokes Road. Darlene Weller was already walking Peeps, her miniature toy poodle, whose fur she had dyed a shade of pink found nowhere in the natural world. As she passed the Hedendorf property, Darlene removed one of her orange stickers from her handbag and pressed it onto the windshield of Russ’s Tesla.

Darlene had no official authority to place stickers on anyone’s car, even if it had violated the Borough’s seventy-two-hour curb-parking ordinance. She considered that a defect in the law, not a defect in Darlene. Any citizen could report an ordinance violation, serve as a witness, and appear at the resulting municipal hearing. Darlene saw no reason why a citizen displaying that level of civic commitment should not also go one step further and enforce the law herself.

She called them Community Parking Notices and marked each one with an orange symbol of her own invention: a car imprisoned inside a circle with a slash through it. She had added a tiny trademark symbol, although no one knew whether the federal government had recognized her intellectual property or Darlene had simply granted the protection to herself. Those stickers were the reason we all kept razor blades in our glove compartments.

The stickers had no legal force, but they usually arrived alongside one of Darlene’s formal e-mail complaints with the entire Borough parking enforcement staff and our four local tow operators all on copy.

Twenty minutes later, just as Darlene was about to pass by on her return journey, Russ finally noticed the sticker. He came out carrying his detective novel. He had worked one corner loose with his thumbnail when George appeared from the side yard. George was holding his peach margarita, wearing his Kenny Flowers polo and the expression of a man who had discovered that the universe had delivered him something to ridicule. Just then, Darlene stopped beside the Tesla and pointed at the sticker.

“He drove the car yesterday. Nice try, Darlene,” George said.

“He parked it back in the same space,” Darlene said.

“That is not the same as leaving it for three days.”

“Returning to the point of origin does not constitute meaningful relocation.”

Overhearing Darlene’s conclusion and being a certified master of bullshit myself, I immediately recognized she used some official-sounding words but hadn’t made an actual point. In short, she was full of shit.

George peeled the notice from the Tesla and pressed it onto Darlene’s clipboard. Bill and Raven shouted their approval from the lake. Helen raised her glass and discovered it was empty again. She announced a third round, then went inside for ice. I had to give it to ’em: the Hedendorfs sure could drink. And I’m Scottish. I should know.

“Enjoy the weekend,” he said. “After Monday, the Borough might finally take one of you off the street.”

Three weeks earlier, Raven had accused Peeps of biting her during another of the Hedendorfs’ dock parties. Darlene claimed Raven had stepped on the dog, then edited the security footage. George filed a complaint seeking to have Peeps declared dangerous. The municipal court hearing on whether Peeps would be put down was scheduled for Monday. Pending the hearing, the Colony had suspended Darlene from its Safety Committee, a position that carried no actual authority but supplied most of her public identity. I wondered if the town had the authority to exile all parties involved.

Darlene looked down at Peeps.

Bill and Raven laughed from the lake.

I opened the dining-room window. “Careful, Darlene. That clipboard has not moved in at least seventy-two hours.”

The laughter that followed was excessive, even by Hedendorf standards. Darlene looked toward my window and then at George, holding the clipboard against her chest. She did not say anything. Darlene, lost for words. This really was a historic day!

On her way back toward the street, she noticed the beanbag lying beside the remains of GnomeHeart. Without asking permission, Darlene entered my yard, picked it up, and announced that she was returning the Hedendorfs’ property before I attempted to manufacture another complaint.

She marched through their open side gate to return the beanbag. Peeps’s leash wrapped itself around one of the bamboo stools, and Darlene bent over the tiki counter for a few moments to free it before placing the beanbag beside the blender and continuing toward Stokes Road. As she left, looking over her shoulder, she placed a new parking sticker notice back exactly where the other one had been pulled off.

Helen returned with the ice, blended another pitcher from the remaining peach base, and refilled all four cups.

I returned to the previous night’s SmackDown, satisfied that the forces of order had accomplished all they reasonably could before lunch.

About forty-five minutes later, I received a cryptic message in an envelope bearing one of Darlene’s stickers. It read: “A VEHICLE MAY BE RELOCATED. EVIDENCE SHOULD NOT BE.” Was she trying to convince me she got the better of the argument? It was weird. But then, so was Darlene.

I went out to check Russ’s Tesla. Beneath the Tesla, beside the remnants of the new sticker Russ had scraped from the windshield, I found a red Solo cup containing peach-colored residue and a small vial wrapped inside another orange Community Parking Notice. I assumed Darlene’s reference to “evidence” meant the sticker remnants. The cup, vial, and folded notice were merely litter, which I deposited in the kitchen trash.

Big Helen arrived approximately twenty minutes later. Big Helen was not just George’s mother-in-law. She was, well, big. In addition to that, she had a hairdo that can only be described as Big Bird plumage. She was big in every way. But the biggest thing of all was the volume of her voice.

At first, I assumed the screaming represented another championship-caliber Hedendorf family dispute. Then the sound changed. Ordinary Hedendorf screaming rose and fell according to who believed they were winning. This scream rose into one high-pitched shriek and stayed there.

I reached the kitchen window and saw George and Helen facedown beside the tiki hut, their margaritas bleeding peach-colored slush into the grass. Helen had fallen across George so that their bodies formed an X. Big Helen stood over them pulling at her Big Bird hair and stomping one foot, making her look like she was a meme stuck in a loop.

Bill and Raven’s inflatable tube had drifted into the small inlet beside the dock. Neither child was sitting upright anymore. Bill, who had fallen sideways, was drooling onto the frills in the back of Raven’s pink polka dot bikini ensemble. Their arms floated in the water, and Raven’s face dipped beneath the surface each time the tube shifted.

Russ stood beneath the tree with his detective novel lying open at his feet.

“911. What is your emergency?”

“The Hedendorfs are dead.”

“How many people?”

“Possibly four. The parents are on the lawn and the children are unconscious in the lake.”

“What is the address?”

“Their address or mine?”

“The people who are dying.”

“Right. Of course.”

***

I charged into the Hedendorf yard trying to remember everything I had learned about water rescues from Baywatch. This knowledge consisted primarily of running in slow motion and maintaining excellent posture, neither of which proved useful when I dove headfirst into two feet of lake water and plowed my chest through six inches of Medford Lakes muck.

By the time I regained my footing, Megan had reached the dock and pulled Raven’s tube toward the ladder. I seized Raven beneath the arms and attempted to lift her with the smooth authority of a trained lifeguard. She weighed considerably more than television had led me to believe unconscious people weighed. On television, lifeguards hoisted bodies twice their size as if they had been constructed from pool noodles.

“Her face, Ryan.”

Raven was breathing, but her eyes would not focus. Megan rolled her onto her side while I dragged Bill’s half of the tube against the dock.

“What about him?”

“I was getting to him.”

“You emerged from the water and announced victory.”

“That was an intermediate victory… like yayy… now back to it… like that.”

Megan nodded her head toward the boy.

Bill was also breathing, although neither of them responded when Megan shouted their names. On the lawn, George and Helen had not moved.

“Something happened to all four of them,” I said.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

On my way back from the dock, my hip struck the blender. I caught it by the pitcher before it fell and shoved it toward the back of the counter without breaking stride.

The ambulances arrived in unceremonious fashion. Bill and Raven, who were breathing, but unresponsive, were taken to Virtua.

After the ambulances left, and before anyone had successfully convinced Big Helen to stop accusing Russ of murdering his family, a woman suddenly appeared in the yard as if she had teleported down from an alien ship.

She was wearing a white button-down, black slacks, and a badge gleaming on her hip. She stood in the yard, arms folded, forehead creased, with her hair back in a tight bun.

Detective Mara Keene carried a notebook small enough to suggest she did not expect anyone in Medford Lakes to say anything important or noteworthy.

Paramedics stopped working on George and Helen, who remained beneath sheets awaiting the medical examiner. The peach mixture, the glasses, and the blender were collected while uniformed officers stretched yellow tape between the tiki hut and the dock.

By late afternoon, Detective Keene had gathered all of us inside the police line. Preliminary testing at the hospital had identified a powerful veterinary sedative in Bill’s and Raven’s systems, and the same substance had been detected in the remaining peach mixture. Residue recovered from the earlier cups tested clean; the sedative appeared only in the final pitcher. The alcohol in George’s and Helen’s drinks had intensified its effects. Bill and Raven had received treatment before the drug stopped their breathing.

“He didn’t drink it,” Big Helen said, pointing at Russ.

“I hate peaches.”

“You hated your father too.”

“Mom-mom.”

“A poisoning mystery,” Big Helen said, holding up Russ’s book as though it were a signed confession. “Tell her about NYU.”

Detective Keene crossed her arms even more tightly and looked at Russ, forehead double-creased, awaiting a confession.

Russ looked down.

That was how Detective Keene learned about the suspension, the tuition argument, and George’s threat to sell the lake house Russ loved and move to Florida, leaving him on his own. It was also how the rest of us learned about these lovely family dynamics.

Keene turned toward me. “What did you touch?”

“The children.”

Megan looked at me.

“And possibly the tube,” I added.

I did not mention the blender.

“Uh huh,” Detective Keene said.

Just then, Darlene appeared at the edge of the yard carrying Peeps under one arm and a three-ring binder under the other. No police barrier had yet been designed to withstand that combination.

“And who would you be?” Detective Keene asked.

“A concerned neighbor,” Darlene said, and then added, “Russ put that dog medicine in the third batch. Everyone saw him wash the blender first.”

Keene’s pen stopped.

“I never told you what the substance was.”

Darlene’s face changed.

“And I never told you that only the third batch was contaminated.”

“I saw Helen go inside for ice,” Darlene said. “Then she made another pitcher. As for the medicine, Russ had been carrying that little vial around all morning. What else could it have been?”

“You could see the vial from Stokes Road?”

“I am observant.”

Keene studied Darlene for several seconds, then underlined something in her notebook.

Megan nudged my arm. “Tell her about the envelope.”

“What envelope?” Detective Keene asked.

“I found a note about how evidence should not be tampered with and then I found a plastic margarita cup and a vial under Russ’s car.”

“Where are they now?” she asked.

“In the trash in my kitchen,” I said.

Detective Keene pointed, and an evidence technician carrying several bags approached me. “Keys,” he said. I handed over my house key and he disappeared. He returned ten minutes later carrying three evidence bags. Keene examined the vial, stepped aside to make a call, and then looked from one of us to the other as if double-checking a conclusion she had already reached.

“Half this neighborhood had a reason to resent the Hedendorfs,” Detective Keene said. “But only one person had a reason to carry out the murders this way and the means to do so.”

Keene held up the orange notice inside an evidence bag.

“The damaged corner identifies this as the notice Russ tried to scrape from his windshield. George peeled it away and pressed it onto your clipboard.”

Darlene said nothing.

“After that, you, Darlene, were the only person who possessed it. You wrapped the vial inside it and planted both beneath Russ’s car.”

“That proves nothing.”

“I know what you did,” Keene said. “You removed the pharmacy label, but you left the prescription number. The sedative was dispensed for Peeps after her veterinary procedure three weeks ago.”

Darlene looked down at Peeps.

“Then you sent Mr. James to find it because you knew the warning would guarantee that he moved everything. The notice came from your clipboard. The sedative came from Peeps’s prescription. And you knew both the substance and the contaminated batch before either fact was disclosed.” Keene closed her notebook. “You can explain that here or at the station.”

“They lied about Peeps. They edited the video. They filed false statements. The Colony suspended me without even watching the whole recording. Every rule mattered when they could use it against me, but none of the rules mattered when I asked anyone to enforce them.”

“So, you killed them?” Megan asked.

“They were going to put Peeps down! She was falsely accused. Those murderers.”

“Bill and Raven too?”

“They signed the statements.”

“So, you poisoned an entire family?”

“Not Russ. He wasn’t involved.”

“Then why frame him?” Keene asked.

Darlene tightened her grip on Peeps. “Someone had to be held accountable.”

“You tried to send an innocent man to prison,” Keene said.

“He would still have been alive. I did what they were going to do to Peeps to them instead.”

As Detective Keene placed Darlene in handcuffs, I pinched Megan.

“Oww.”

“We are free to go?” I asked.

“Free to go,” Detective Keene confirmed.

As soon as we were back in the kitchen, I said, “Meg, this may be the greatest day of our lives. Darlene is gone, George and Helen are gone, and there will never be another Hedendorf dock party.”

Megan looked through the window toward the house next door.

“Russ inherits it.”

The following Saturday at 9:30 a.m., “Margaritaville” started again.