Free The Traveling Corpse by Double Edge Press

have!” Annie
said. “Besides hanging the Valentine decorations, I’d like to take
everything out of that tenth drawer to see what’s what. Somehow, I
was rudely interrupted when I tried to do it last night at
Bingo!”
    They all laughed nervous little laughs at
Annie’s joke on herself.
    â€œNow that we have that settled, I have
another question. Have any of you heard any scuttlebutt about a
missing person, a missing woman?”
    Barb answered, “People were talking about the
deputies coming to Bingo and looking in the trolley drawers, but
nobody seems to know what it was all about, but I didn’t hear any
talk about a missing person.”
    â€œNothing?”
    â€œNot a word.”
    â€œThat’s good, and that’s bad,” Annie said.
“It’s good that they don’t know why the law showed up at Bingo, but
it’s not so good for our mystery if nobody is reported missing.”
She turned to Brad, “Will you let me know if anything comes up at
your meeting that might help us with our secret problem?”
    â€œWill do. You’d think there would be a
missing person alert by now. Wouldn’t you?”
    Von asked, “Don’t you have to wait
twenty-four hours before reporting a missing person? It hasn’t been
quite that long yet, has it?”
    â€œNo, a whole day hasn’t passed yet. I found
the body just before six o’clock last evening,” Annie said. “Of
course, we don’t know just what time the—let’s call it an accident—
happened. After all the excitement yesterday, I had a very hard
time getting to sleep last night. At two a.m., for no particular
reason, I started wondering if the missing woman was a WASP or a
WEC?
    The four men looked at each other, wondering
what she was talking about. Brad questioned Art, “What do those
initials stand for?”
    Art shrugged his shoulders, “Annie, what in
the world are you asking a question like that for?
    â€œOh,” she explained, “Last week after we gals
finished playing bridge, we started philosophizing about what kind
of people choose to retire in BradLee. You know, demographics. And
Verna said that most people describe those of us who live in
BradLee as WASPs—White Anglo Saxon Protestants. Do you want to
explain your idea, Verna?”
    â€œI’ll try. The majority of people who live in
BradLee are Protestants, but there are a lot of us who aren’t.
We’re Roman Catholic; so WASP doesn’t describe us. I think we need
a new set of initials that fits our demographics; so I made one
up.”
    Von teased his wife, “You do like that big
word, demographics, don’t you?”
    Verna pushed her glasses up on her nose and
ignored her husband’s teasing.
    Barb continued the story, “I asked Verna for
her suggestion, and she said she thought WECs would do.”
    DeeDee joined in, “An’ I asked, ‘Jest exactly
what does WEC stand fer?’”
    Verna answered, “It stands for: White
European Christians. Or, even bettah, we could put a “Mc” in front
of that.”
    DeeDee asked, “An’ jest what would that make
it?”
    With a smile, Verna said, “McWECs stands for
Middle-class White European Christians.”
    DeeDee was enjoying the word play. Her eyes
twinkled as she said, “I can make that even better. If ya add an
‘O’ in front of those letters, you’ll have a perfect description of
all of us here in BradLee.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll bite,” Brad said. “What do all
those letters stand for?”
    â€œO’McWEC stands for Old Middle-Class White
European Christians!”
    The eight friends burst out laughing. O’McWEC
was a fit description for their homogenous adult retirement
community.
    Then Annie became more serious, “I’m still
thinking about our disappearing victim. Do you think that our
unknown corpse is a WASP or a