Who Killed the Easter Bunny

By Charles Schwarz

Ms. Bunny Easter, a sweet, elderly, caring woman attending a university course is murdered by one of her 7 fellow graduate classmates or their professor during a celebratory Easter Luncheon.

Finding Bunny Easter head first in a salad bowl, Detectives Ed Blackburn and May Trubody are confronted by a bizarre group of graduate students possessing ridiculous ideas to solve current social problems. Hiding behind false personalities they all possess motives to kill Ms. Bunny. It’s only through weeding out the lies and pretenses the detectives are finally able to uncover the murderer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Schwarz
• Release date: Feb 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463677681

Book preview

The Smashwords Edition

Who Killed the

EASTER BUNNY?

Charles E. Schwarz

Copyright © 2019 Charles E. Schwarz

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

Smashwords License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. It may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you want to share it. If you're reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

* * * * *

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction, a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance or similarity to any actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Formatting by Debora Lewis / [e-mail]

To my wife Emily for her inspiration.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. My Best Friend Hears My Nasty Confession

Chapter 2. The Assignment, the Warming, the Murder

Chapter 3. The Crime Scene and Detective May Trubody

Chapter 4. Professor Tom A. Hawk and Champagne

Chapter 5. A Visit to Bunny’s Hutch

Chapter 6. Sinikul’s Quivering Lips and His Inner Self

Chapter 7. Bunny’s Memorial and the Students

Chapter 8. The Memorial Continues

Chapter 9. A Veggie Dinner at Dante’s

Chapter 10. The Twice Removed, and the Poison Cabinet

Chapter 11. Chastity

Chapter 12. Jack Hunter Reveals Himself

Chapter 13. Ernestine Reads Her Spiral

Chapter 14. Trisha Dumps on Bloe’s Diversity

Chapter 15. Breaking Eggs with Trubody

Chapter 16. Discrimination: It’s Here, It’s There, It’s Everywhere

Chapter 17. The Pool of Knowledge’s Deep End

Chapter 18. The Chief is Bare-Ass Nake.

Chapter 19. Partying With Trubody

Chapter 20. Clint Saves the World

Chapter 21. Can You Hurt a Man Who’s Wonderful in his Own Mind?

Chapter 22. Winston and I Go for a Walk

Chapter 23. Day of Surprises

Chapter 24. Where is Guilt? Where is Justice? Nowhere

Chapter 25. The Universal Salve

About the Author

Chapter 1

My Best Friend Hears My Nasty Confession

"Well Winston, I’m glad you finally decided to join me; sitting alone in our library at twilight is depressing. Appreciate your company, you’re a great listener: never interrupting the flow of my thoughts; never putting forth foolish, irritating counter arguments; never ridiculing; never failing to understand nor appreciate what I have to say; never mocking or revealing to others my most intimate thoughts and feelings, allowing others to burlesque them. In fact, Winston, you’re a great pal.

"Before beginning our conversation, let me confess I’m in a particularly petulant mood, bilious rather than sanguine, and I hope my choleric disposition is not contagious. Winston, I’ll tell you straight out, if my most pessimistic inner thoughts were publicly broadcasted, they would make me a social and intellectual pariah. Now, being painfully honest, let me confess: I’ve become a hater, not a lover; a cynic, not a believer; a taker, not a giver; a believer in man’s fall, not in his redemption; a believer in sinners, not saints; a believer in death’s finality, not in an after-life’s glory; a believer in war, not peace; a believer in irredeemable ignorance, not a believer in the efficaciousness of education; a believer in pain, not joy; a believer in sadness, not happiness; a believer in poverty and want, not in wealth and abundance; a believer in failure and disaster, not in success and triumph; a believer in yesterday’s lessons, not tomorrow’s promises; a believer in the end, not in the beginning; a believer in disappointment, not in fulfillment; a believer in your isolation, not in the community’s embrace; a believer in suckers are born every second, a wise man every generation; a believer in nature’s bloody tooth and claw, not in society’s hugs and kisses; a believer in words create false pleasant promises, reality creates real pain; a believer in hopelessness, not in hope; a believer in lies, not in truth; a believer in nothing, not in everything; a believer slavery is the norm, freedom is an aberration; a believer in wealth conquers all, poverty corrupts all;, a believer that cheaters flourish, honesty is ever victimized; a believer that the pessimistic are never disappointed, the optimistic always disappointed. I believe if it costs you something, you become a cynic; if it costs you nothing, you believe in everything. Successful people are my disciples, simpletons and failures fear my beliefs. Evil people think as I do, and their victims perpetually believe good will prevail.

"Winston flee do-gooders, and charity workers who constantly seek out misery, and always see pain. They cry over wretchedness, real or fictional they have laboriously worked to uncover, only to rob you of your money in the name of their doing good. These people are in love with misery and purposeless without it.

Honestly, tell me Winston, are these beliefs too harsh to be true, too pessimistic to be correct, too unsettling to be permitted, too negative to be tolerated, and therefore with a damning indictment you vigorously deny them out of hand. However, in expressing your outrage showing a nerve has been touched, aren’t you granting my beliefs a certain amount of credence?

Raising my hand as if to stop Winston from commenting, I continued, "I know you may wish to deliver ad hominine attacks: I am delusional, insane, can’t be serious, must be joking, have had an unsuccessful love affair or worse, none, to defend your Pollyanna delusions. Your mind lives in a society that never was and never will be; your body is here; your mind is in neverland.

"Winston! Am I boring you! You seem to be losing focus. Please stay with me. Now, like you I previously believed in the perfectibility of man and society ‘til I became involved in solving the damn Easter Bunny Murder. My new-found cynicism has its genesis in my solving the Easter Bunny Murder case. Investigating the murder forced me to face the hypocrisy and corruption that not only surrounds and permeates our society but contributed to the destruction of my childish ideals.

What Winston, you haven’t heard of the murder that has occupied TV news for the last few days? When a 68-year-old woman is murdered while attending a two-week graduate seminar at Harvard University with eight other students, with the murder occurring during an Easter Sunday brunch sponsored by their professor, Dr. Tom A. Hawk, the media goes ballistic. Don’t laugh, Tom A. Hawk is purported to be a hundred percent Dakota Indian. On the day of the murder, before the students were to eat lunch there was to be a champagne toast. What Winston! Champagne! Remember, this is Harvard. Anyway, with the glasses of champagne stored in the anteroom, someone slipped poison in one glass, the one Bunny Spring drank. Yes, her surname was Spring and being born during the Easter season her parents gave her the name Bunny, hence the cause of the publicity over the Easter Bunny Murder Case. An old broad, okay matronly woman, Bunny is killed over Easter. It became a celebrity murder. Of course, her being killed in a Harvard dining room didn’t hurt the publicity. No Winston, my newfound pessimism hadn’t originated from my failure to solve the Easter Bunny Murder. On the contrary. Because of my success I turned into a pessimist something so completely un-American.

"Alright Winston, I can see your interest in hearing how Bunny Spring was killed at Easter. Well buddy, it began when I was assigned Lead Detective to investigate the highly publicized Bunny Murder. I suspected the reason for my selection was motivated by my superior, Captain Smiley’s fear, the murder of such an innocent elderly woman at a prestigious university and at such an inauspicious time, may not be solved despite the media’s demand and the public’s expectations. If I, as the investigator failed, I would be pillared as incompetent; if successful my endeavors could be easily absorbed by Smiley as his own.

"Winston, did you just yawn. Your mouth’s gap was wide enough for me to see your lower intestines. Please, I beg of you, stay with me.

Anyway, let me give you the background to Bunny Spring’s murder, or as the media popularized her death labeling it the Easter Bunny Murder.

Chapter 2

The Assignment, the Warning, the Murder

Despite being a 68-year-old widow, Bunny Spring had subscribed to the cliché ‘you’re never too old to learn.’ Her childish belief in how grandmothers should be chafing at the bit to learn Calculus, or Swahili, had propelled her to register for a two-week seminar course running the week before and after Easter, titled Leading America Into the Future. In the middle of the two-week course at an Easter Sunday student brunch, Bunny Spring was poisoned. She went into an anti-room to get everyone’s obligatory champagne filled glass to toast the seminar’s midpoint’s success. Before returning to the dining room with the glasses she sampled a glass, and immediately on entering the dining room announced in a gurgling voice, something wasn’t right with the champagne. Foaming at the mouth, she proceeded to fall across the dining table, and die.

Now Winston, note, right at the start of my investigation I was warned by Captain Smiley, chief of detectives, to tread with circumspect when questioning the seminar participants. I was to bear in mind the suspects in Bunny’s murder being graduate students at Harvard University would require sensitive handling. Harvard students are automatically given cachet by society for special consideration, and certainly in their own minds consider themselves very special indeed. Captain Smiley specifically told me to be very careful in dealing with Dr. Tom A. Hawk, the professor teaching the seminar. To my quizzical expression, Captain Smiley casting a nervous glance down at the desk’s blotter mumbled, Professor Tom A. Hawk is a native American. Hearing the professor’s Native American heritage, neither I nor the blotter were in awe. Not hearing the expected ‘oh gee, ain’t that great,’ from me forced Captain Smiley to go into more detail. The professor has many friends in the university community, not only at Harvard but in other elite universities. In addition, as a Native American he has the staunch support in the media. Smiley heavily dropped the ‘media’ on me as if expecting a reflexive genuflection. I gave him a ‘yeah’ instead of a ‘so what’ but it sounded the same. Not unexpectedly, my lazy ‘yeah’ brought forth further clarification. Detective Blackburn, the professor is held in high regard by numerous north American tribes, who at the slightest hint of discrimination could and would launch vigorous colorful demonstrations replete with elaborate headdresses, native dancing, loud drum banging. All of this seen on the nightly news would do no one’s career any good. Are you hearing me!"

I gave him a ‘yeah’ with the same ‘so what’ meaning. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know, what everyone knew with the possible exception of great-grandmothers who watch the Hollywood channel.

In the ensuing silence, to get him a, So what else is new? which echoed my ‘yeah.’

Believing me either dense or perverse, he gave his last PC warning, Don’t push too hard on the graduate seminar students. With university students feeling the police are Fascists, out of moral outrage, will cut classes, and if the weather permits, demonstrate against police brutality. Remember, from their privileged backgrounds, police are servants, not protectors, and there is nothing TV news likes better than angry students doing some colorful acting out for politically correct causes.

To put a period to his lecture and make my escape, I told him I understood the need to conduct my investigation with the care and egg juggler would use.

Fearing he went too far down the powder-puff road, a now stern Captain Smiley commanded, "Be thorough, show no favoritism, and go wherever the evidence takes you. Remember, the department, the city, and the public expect a speedy resolution to the hideous murder of Bunny Spring.

Suddenly he expressed an honest thought, Damn it Blackburn, why did she have to be named Bunny, and be murdered on Easter Sunday. Damn it, the papers and TV will never let go of a crime they labeled the Easter Bunny Murder, and remember, it happened on the Harvard campus. Shit Blackburn, you must solve this one as soon as tomorrow. I, – er, that is the Department and the City, expect quick results. Captain Smiley paused feeling, having gone too far needed to reel in his last instruction said, In your investigation, keep an open mind, cast a wide net, but definitely go where the evidence takes you. Finally, with a deep inhale he asked if I had any questions.

My ‘nah’ was a ‘yeah’ only shorter. As I started to slide towards his office door, he gave me his last bit of BS. Remember Blackburn, my office door is always open. If you need any help from the department, you just need to ask. If you run into any problems, I’m here for you.

He got my usual ‘yeah’ which he didn’t think expressed appropriate gratitude. With my hand on the door knob, annoyed by my ingratitude, Smiley told me my assistant was Detective May Trubody. To show where his mind sometime wandered, he added, "A recent Vassar graduate in Criminal Justice. Ed, she’s 24 and a fantastic looker.

To tickle his political correctness with exaggerated hope in my voice, nastily I asked, Is she African American? He took me literally, She’s white. I couldn’t get you a woman of color. They’re in great demand. In his politically correct mind, somehow being deprived of a colored assistant and stuck with a white one for future TV news presentations was a punishment to be lamented.

Feeling sufficiently deprived for both of us, Smiley decided to give me his advice as if it was golden. Look Blackburn, I don’t want to tell you what to do, and then he proceeded to tell me what to do, you'd best get over to Harvard University’s private dining room where this Bunny was killed. Detective May Trubody is already there, securing the crime scene. Best talk to her and familiarize yourself with the crime site before interviewing the student attendees at the Easter brunch. Best you encourage May. She’s young and may be sensitive to any criticism, overt or covert. Best remember, she’s a Vassar graduate which translates into being intelligent and from money. She’ll bring a lot to the investigation, best you listen to her.

I returned all his ‘bests’ with one of mine. "Captain, if you’ll excuse me, I best leave and get over