Ticked Off!

By Gaila Ozaki Perran

It looks like a murder that
couldnt have happened. Frank Caponelli
(a/k/a Monsieur Francois), owner of a downtown beauty salon in fashionable
Westport, Connecticut, is found dead in his apartment, with a knife wound in
his back. The knife, wiped clean, is on
the table beside him. Every door and
window is locked from the inside and there are no fingerprints anywhere.

Baffled, police Lieutenant Phelan
turns to Professor Sanford, head of the psychology department at Fairfield
University. The professor and David
Trent, his young assistant, agree to aid in the investigation.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> David, who has a definite weakness for female
charm, is not at all reluctant, for it develops that many beautiful women have
figured in the life of Frank Caponelli.
Charcoal sketches of them line the walls of his apartment, all nudes,
and all drawn by Frank, who had been an amorous esthete with a taste and talent
for art. The investigation reveals that
his affairs had been numerous as well as overlapping and most of them with
patrons of his salon.

Professor Sanford feels that all
of these women are suspects and David is given the not unwelcome assignment of
tracing and interviewing them. The manner
in which he accomplishes this, and the tangled chain of events he uncovers,
provides an amusing and exciting background for the plot.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> There are other murders, and conflicting
clues, but finally the evidence gathered by David enables the professor to
arrive at the solution through clever psychological deduction.

TICKED OFF!, by Gaila
Ozaki Perran, is based on the book THE CUCKOO CLOCK, written by her
father Milton K. Ozaki, in 1946.

The murder and consequential activity
surrounding this creative mystery story, has been modernized and injected into Westports
downtown business area. Ms. Perran has
used the names of actual people and places of business wherever permitted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 28, 2003
• ISBN: 9781410784780

Gaila Ozaki Perran

Ms. Perran, reared in Chicago, Illinois and Kenosha, Wisconsin and Littleton, Colorado, now resides in Westport, Connecticut.  She graduated from Littleton Senior High School, briefly attended Loyola University in Chicago, and has attended many seminars relevant to her various interests and business endeavors.  Ms. Perran has been a travel agent, a real estate salesperson, an administrative assistant for several large corporations in southwestern Fairfield County, and has pursued entrepreneurial ventures of her own creation in Sarasota, Florida and in Wilton, Connecticut.  Ms. Perran is now enjoying the writing process of bringing her father’s many stories into our current time for new generations of readers.  Ms. Perran has one daughter and two grandchildren.

Book preview

One

I LISTENED TO the clock tick. Someone had sent it to Professor Sanford and he had tacked it on the wall directly across from my desk. It was an innocent brown box, about six inches square, fashioned to look like a gabled cottage-but with a malicious arrangement of cogs and springs which caused a blob of feathers to burst through a door every hour and screech cuckoo! It sounded more to me like cuckold than cuckoo, but since Professor Sanford and I were not married men, I suppose that was just the effect of my dirty mind. Also, the clock ticked. It ticked louder, more regularly, more monotonously, than I had ever heard any clock tick. Its pendulum swung giddily from side to side-click-tick….click-tick… .click-tick…. Maybe I’m neurotic.

I sat there staring at the pendulum and listening to the click-tick. I’d decided to toss a small paperweight at the bird the next time it stuck its crazy head out, when I looked toward the window and saw the bulky, blue-clad figure of Lieutenant Michael Phelan, major domo of the Westport Homicide Squad, turn into our walk.

I glanced at my boss, Professor Don Sanford, and grinned. He sat in what seemed an oddly comfortable position-elbows planted on the edge of his desk, posterior poised on the edge of his chair, his spare shoulders hunched forward, twisting the jacket of his tweed suit into a pattern of wrinkles. His collar pressed into the back of his neck like a headrest. His short silvery hair dropped in an unruly lock toward his

forehead. He brushed it impatiently back from time to time, unsuccessfully.

He picked up each card of notes which I’d compiled for the Syllabus of Wifery, his opus on the history and psychology of marriage, in an even, mechanical rhythm-selecting, reading, discarding in monotonous tempo. His eyes, narrowed to a squint by intense concentration, moved from left to right, left to right, following the lines of typing. Occasionally he paused briefly, half unconsciously, to relight his pipe, puff thoughtfully, or rub his hand reflectively across his chin.

I hadn’t dared disturb him.

Phelan’s arrival satisfied a sadistic urge within me. I knew the doorbell would ring like mad in a moment. The lieutenant weighed two-seventy-five if he weighed an ounce and was the sort of guy who likes to express himself, especially on doorbells. I watched Sanford, who was about to be knocked from the lofty pinnacle of intellectual contemplation by the very raucous, very insensitive buzzing of the doorbell, and I grinned in anticipation of what his reaction would be.

The lieutenant leaned on the bell-twice. Sanford shifted his shoulders irritably. I lit a cigarette and drew a leisurely draught of smoke into my lungs. Lieutenant Phelan leaned on the bell again. I puffed casually on my cigarette, flicked its ash carelessly to the floor. Sanford’s eyes stopped their left-right, left-right progression, and remained fixed at a point approximately in the middle of a reference card. I waited, expecting action with the next ring. Phelan leaned on the bell, hard. Sanford’s reaction was a disappointment. He merely muttered, half to me and half to himself: Not in! and his eyes resumed their left-right, left-right motion.

I’ve never cared much for cops myself-not even the bright, college-educated variety like Lieutenant Phelan. Without answering the door, I knew what Phelan wanted. Ever since Professor Sanford had, by application of elementary psychological principles, suggested the correct solution of the Hopewell murder case a year ago, he’d been pestered by the Homicide Squad for help on every tricky case they encountered. There was the Dainworth case, Riley-Cutting case, and, just a few months ago, the Dross poisoning case. Sanford, with the air of a pedagogical prestidigitator, had put the finger on the murderers, and with such flattering publicity that, on recommendation of the Fairfield County Crime Commission, he had been invited to give a series of weekly lectures to officers of the Detective Bureau on the relation of psychology to crime detection.

I knew when Phelan’s uniformed figure turned up our walk that he was stymied on another case and was going to ask Sanford for advice. Personally, I’ve never approved of Sanford’s dabbling in the game of cops and robbers. It isn’t dignified. It isn’t a suitable activity for a man of Professor Sanford’s academic distinction and, if I hadn’t been so bored, I’d have let Lieutenant Phelan ring himself down to an ounce in the hope that Sanford would get mad and throw a few pointed polysyllables into Phelan’s face. But, no such luck.

I sighed, shrugged my shoulders, stubbed my cigarette out and, with a defiant glance toward Sanford, went to the door.

Well, Lieutenant Phelan! I said, simulating surprise. What brings the brute arm of the Law to the doorstep of Learning?

Is Professor Sanford in? He stood on the porch with his beefy shoulders back, his belly protruding, and his bulky arms swinging. His small black eyes peered stolidly from beneath bushy brows which grew untidily across the bridge of his flat pudgy nose.

Professor Sanford is busy, I said.

Tell Professor Sanford I’d like to see him for a minute. His face tightened into what he thought was an expression of dignity. The dignity of the Westport Police Department Homicide Squad.

Sorry, I told him. Professor Sanford is engaged in important research. He cannot be disturbed. I am Mr. Trent, his secretary, both confidential and otherwise, as you may recall. If you have anything to convey to Professor Sanford, you may with the greatest confidence convey same to me. I bowed slightly.

Actually, I’m more of a co-worker than a secretary. I’m twenty-three years old, stand five-eight, weigh one-seventy, have dark, nondescript hair and features, and am a member of the graduate school. The Prof and I have a working agreement whereby I help him accumulate data for his books and take care of minor secretarial chores in exchange for his leading me down the academic path toward my Master’s degree in psychology. I manage to chisel my room, board, and a small salary, too, but that’s neither here nor there.

Lieutenant Phelan bent toward me. I backed up two inches.

Listen, he said in a tense voice, this is important, and I haven’t got all day. Tell Sanford I’ve got a puzzle for him to figure out.

Puzzle? What kind? Jig-saw, crossword, charade, conundrum…?

I’m serious, I tell you. He opened and closed his hands nervously and started to shuffle his big feet. A guy who positively could not have been killed by anyone else stabbed himself in the back, wiped off the knife, laid it on a table without getting any fingerprints on it, and then fell dead, right on his face.

Stabbed himself in the back?

That’s right.

Then pulled the knife out and wiped it off?

And laid it on a table. That’s what I said!

No fingerprints on the knife?

You’re getting the idea.

You don’t need to see Professor Sanford. I’ll answer it right now. Whoever the guy was, it’s a sure thing he didn’t kill himself.

Oh, yes, he did. Phelan’s brows scowled darkly. His voice rose with thick impatience. "He was locked in his room from the inside. No one else could possibly have killed him."

Impossible! I retorted. People not only don’t stab themselves in the back, but….

That’s the idea. That’s the idea. Now be a good boy and tell the Prof about it.

I thought it over. Anything would be more interesting than sitting around watching Sanford fiddle with his notes. I enjoy my work with Sanford, but half the fun is doing things with him, seeing his brilliant, versatile mind in action. I’m used to his browsing and

don’t mind his mania for research so long as I’m working with him, but his occasional periods of moody contemplation-like today’s-bored me to death. I decided to take a chance.

Okay, I told Phelan, wait in there. I motioned toward the living room. I’ll see what I can do.

I went back to the study and found everything pretty much as it was when I left except that Sanford had seen fit to leave the seventh century long enough to avail himself of modern illumination by turning on his desk lamp. I walked up to his desk. I stood there. Waiting.

No! he said at last.

No what? I asked.

Don’t want any.

Don’t want any what? I asked patiently, wondering to what lengths I could carry on that sort of dialogue.

Whatever you are proposing by way of interrupting me.

Lieutenant Phelan is waiting in the living room. A man was killed this morning…

Sanford shook his head impatiently. Men are killed every morning. Tell him I’m busy. You know I’m busy. Tell him.

But this man couldn’t have been killed, I went on in a dreamy sort of voice, because nobody could get in. So the poor guy, with his mind all made up to get himself killed, got himself a knife and stabbed himself in the back. And then, being a tidy soul, he polished the knife all spick and span and…

Sanford’s head jerked. He lowered his shoulders and looked straight at me, his eyes narrow and bright

with irritation. What tommyrot are you babbling, David? His voice snapped his resentment at being disturbed. You are intelligent enough to know that no one would commit suicide by stabbing himself in the back, and that, even if through some peculiar chain of circumstances such an occurrence were to happen, the possibility of his removing the knife and polishing it… He stopped suddenly and glared.

Yes, sir, I said.

Hmmmph!

Yes, sir, I agreed. His eyes wandered to the door, back to the notes, then over to the door again. I knew what was going through his mind. He hated like hell to have anyone interrupt him when he was poring through research material, but he loved to pit his knowledge and intelligence against other people’s. Therefore, the eye business. He was oscillating between the notes and Phelan’s problem.

Hmmmph! he said again.

Shall I bring him in, sir? I asked.

He sighed and pushed the note cards aside.

Yes, David. Bring him in.

I trotted down the hall and into the living room.

This way…. It’s your lucky day, I told the lieutenant, who had been walking up and down the room with his hands clasped behind his back. He brightened a bit and followed me down the hallway and into the study. He entered the room ponderously, like a liner moving into a harbor, and hesitated in front of the desk.

Good afternoon, Professor Sanford, he said in a respectful tone of voice.

I had to chuckle. Sanford is just a little guy. He’s about five-five, if that, and weighs maybe a hundred-twenty. He appears fifty years old; actually he’s sixty-something. To look at him, you’d think he was a bookkeeper in some small shop down near the train station, and didn’t make enough money to dress decently. His suit usually needs a going over. The points of his collar are always awry. His well-worn, carelessly knotted tie is forever lumped off to one side. And his short silver hair always looks like the remnant of an old, not-so-good clothes brush. People meeting him casually for the first time usually give him a quick glance-and relax. They notice his pipe and his perpetually aimless search for his tobacco pouch, and they smile to themselves at the apparent inefficiency and disorganization of a professor of Fairfield University. Then they notice his eyes. That makes them sit up.

Don’t misunderstand me. Sanford’s eyes aren’t fierce, or alarming. They’re warm and blue and wonderfully alive. You can’t look at them without knowing that they’re seeing things. You know immediately that he’s a hard man to fool. And, after a while, you learn to respect him for the tremendous amount of knowledge and mental agility which he commands.

That’s why I had to chuckle. The Prof’s former students, no matter what big-shots they got to be, reverted to their little-shot personalities in his presence. Phelan, in spite of his prominence in the Detective Bureau, was just another kid student in Professor Phelan’s study.

Hello, Lieutenant. How are you? Sanford responded without rising.

Fine, thank you, sir, he answered.

Sit down, Sanford directed abruptly. Phelan sank obediently into the old Morris chair beside Sanford’s desk. Dave says you have a problem.

Yes, sir. Lieutenant Phelan swallowed uncomfortably and moved to the edge of his chair. I don’t know whether you can help me much or not-Sanford’s brows flicked up and down skeptically-but I’m completely stumped on a case. I heard your lecture last week on the psychology of the individual, and, as I understand it, you said that a psychologist can tell what a man is by the sort of things with which he surrounds himself. Is that right?

Sanford eyed Lieutenant Phelan thoughtfully and nodded. In essence, that is correct.

Could you go further, Professor, and say that a psychologist can predict how other individuals would be affected by a person?

Sanford pressed his lips together in a firm, thoughtful line before answering.

Granting that the psychologist was adequately familiar with the origins and environmental matrix of stimuli surrounding the other individuals, I would say that their reactions could be predicted to a considerable extent.

Ah! Lieutenant Phelan moved to the very edge of his chair. Then we should be able to tell whether any given individual possessed homicidal or suicidal tendencies, shouldn’t we?

Sanford’s eyes wrinkled in a sort of smile. Not exactly. Phelan sank back, deflated. It’s not quite as simple as that. All men possess homicidal potentialities. All men possess suicidal potentialities. Some in greater degree than others, of course, but, nevertheless, that potentiality exists in everyone.

Phelan interrupted: You mean that, psychologically speaking, every man is a murderer at heart?

No, not exactly. Suppose I put it this way: All men respond in a definite manner to stimuli. Not all men respond in the same manner to the same stimuli, of course, for what causes one to laugh may promote indignation or intense anger in another. But, theoretically, an individual subjected to stimuli previously experienced, provided that the circumstances are identical, will duplicate his previous reactions. Within the human machine exists a delicate balance: application of a specific pressure always results in the same registration or reaction.

Professor Sanford threw one leg over the other and, with his lecture-room look in his eyes, continued.

Except for a few fairly recent discoveries in mathematical physics, for all practical purposes virtually every action in life, every process in nature, is part of a continuous sequence of cause and effect.

Lieutenant Phelan nodded thoughtfully.

It seems apparent and understandable, then, that a man does not and would not kill a fellow creature simply for the sake of the act alone. Civilized man is endowed with a respect for the peaceful and contented living of others. Deeply engraved upon his mind is the belief that the murder of a fellow creature is unfair, unwarranted, taboo. And it is this belief, rather than statutory acts of legislatures, which deters one man from murdering another. Considering these facts, it is apparent that the taking of life is usually the effect of unusual emotional stimuli or strain.

Yes, sir, I understand that, Professor, Phelan interrupted. That’s having a motive, as we call it. What I want to know is, how can we tell what particular stimuli would be necessary to get a particular person to murder someone else?

The necessary stimuli would vary in kind and quantity with the individual. Man is simply a machine dominated by emotions. Murder is almost never the result of normal intellectual processes. Reason plays little part in the act. In order to tell whether a man would react sufficiently under any given set of stimuli to commit murder, we would have to possess a great mass of data concerning the origins and environment of the man.

"And is the same true of determining suicidal tendencies?

Suicide is murder. It is the murder of one’s self.

Sanford felt the bowl of his pipe, laid it down, and started to feel around in his upper right-hand desk drawer. So I, having been born with two cowls over my head, got up and got another briar pipe from an ash tray on the other side of the room and put it in front of him. He took it and started to tamp tobacco into it, keeping his eyes on Lieutenant Phelan all the while.

Lieutenant Phelan digested what Sanford had told him. His brow wriggled with the intensity of his concentration. The big lug. Bet he didn’t understand half of it. Lieutenant Phelan was one of the bright, college-educated boys that had been assigned to the police department several years ago by the commissioner’s office in an effort to revitalize the department. In a way, Phelan was all right. He was better than most cops. He took his job seriously in a stolid, determined way. He wasn’t just a whiskey-drinking, doughnut-dunking flat-foot. I’ll give him credit for that. He was a good executive cop. But still a cop. There wasn’t a spark of originality in him, and when dealing with the intangible-like thoughts and potential emotions and pseudo-reactions-he was like a small boy in a big sea.

He sighed heavily, finally, and slapped his knees disgustedly. I guess that isn’t going to help me much.

Why don’t you tell me what your problem is? Sanford suggested.

Well, as you may have surmised, Professor, Phelan began, the only reason I’m here asking you for information is because I’m stalemated by an absolutely incredible situation. I’ve always regarded psychology as an inexact science that was not too sure of itself in a lot of ways, but your work on the Dross poisoning case impressed me and I’m willing to try anything that’ll give me a working idea of how to go about solving a murder, or possibly a suicide, which absolutely couldn’t have happened. Absolutely couldn’t have happened! By God, the more I think about it, the more I think I’m crazy!

Perhaps you have been thinking about it too much. Sanford smiled the you-and-I-are-just-pals-together smile that he uses to worm his way into a person’s confidence. "Frequently one looks at a problem with such concentration that the obvious becomes obscure. Details which a fresh mind would

grasp immediately lose their value and fade away, principally because the mind becomes used to them."

I think you’re right. I’ve tossed the facts of the case around in my mind so much that I can’t make a damned bit of sense out of them. I came here in the hope you’d be able to give me a new approach. Perhaps…

I had been sitting there listening to the lieutenant stew around with his problem, hoping he’d make up his mind to break down and give us the gory details, when smack! I saw the idea hit him as plain as anything.

Perhaps, Professor Sanford, he continued quickly, you’d do me a great favor. If you have a few minutes, I’d appreciate your riding over with me and giving me your opinion of what happened. I know you’re very busy, sir, but…

Sanford waved airily, unwound his legs, and stood up.

Not at all, Lieutenant. I need some fresh air. I’ll be glad to come along with you.

So that’s why you were so damned chummy, I thought to myself. Looking for somebody else’s business to poke your nose into!

Nobody asked me to go along, but I got to my feet and followed just the same. The case Phelan had on his hands sounded anything but ordinary, and I could see that Sanford thought so too.

There was, however, one dissenting vote-as I closed the study door, I heard the clock on the wall screech: Cuckoo!

Two

PROFESSOR SANFORD and I climbed into the back of the car, a nice, navy blue sedan with a big white Westport Police Department emblem stenciled onto its side doors. Phelan slammed the door for us and climbed into the front seat beside the driver.

Kings Highway North and Main Street again, Phelan directed.

"Is that the locus operandi, or something?" I asked.

Yeah. Second building from the corner there. I’ll give you the details when we get there. Phelan wasn’t talkative. He seemed buried in thought. The Prof puffed his pipe. I wondered what Maria would make for our dinner.

I leaned forward after awhile and tapped Phelan on the shoulder.

Say, Lieutenant, I said, aren’t you forgetting to sound the siren, or isn’t this Rent-A-Wreck important enough to rate one?

Phelan glanced wordlessly toward the driver, who reached for the electronic toggle switch and turned it to the middle setting for a continuous siren. A loud wailing sound ascended piercingly in waves from the police car.

Beautiful! Simply beautiful! I applauded. I felt as if