Well, Howdy everyone.

My name is Ranger Chase Ketchum and I’ve been cum’n up from Texas for a couple years to consult on this little problem of repeated February Murders.

I want to thank all you folks for try’n to help the Langley Police, and me, solve the 40^th case of a February Murder in this Small Town.

Now I kinda took a liking to ole CZ Cash. He was my kind of man, honest, hard-working, liked a good game of poker, and kept his word.

Unfortunately, his word to not let Coco Geaherdelli’s Estate be sold is what eventually got him killed.

After CZ’s body was found Friday morning right next to City Hall, the police noticed a large number of calls on their answering machine.  Seems a lot of people saw CZ on the stumbling walk he took between where he had dinner with Ray Lux and his final fall by City Hall. But it seems no one thought it was serious enough to call 911 until after he caught fire by the phone booth.

Luckily the police were able to trace CZ’s path from those answering machine reports and they eventually discovered the poor man had been attacked four times before he met his end.

With that many attempts on his life, it took the coroner a while to figure out what actually killed CZ.

So let’s begin our explanation with the Coroner’s Final Report which he submitted late Saturday evening. It was written in all sorts of medical jargon so he translated it to plain English for me and I’m sharing it with you.

Coroner Gus Gruesome says this was the most complex case he has had in 40 years as the Langley City Coroner.

The oldest injury on CZ’s body was a bloody cut and swollen bruise on his forehead caused by some sort of fall. That also caused a slight concussion. But a concussion was not the cause of death.

The blood work came back from CCSI showing very little alcohol in CZ’s blood but, due to his reported drunken behavior,  they did other tests and discovered a large amount of Whidbey Wonky Weed in his blood.

Now locals know Wonky Weed can cause a pleasant high in small doses but an overdose can be fatal. The dose given to CZ was very high but not quite high enough to kill a man of his size. So poison was not the cause of CZ’s death.

In spite of witness testimony that CZ was stabbed by an unknown assailant in the alley by the dentist's office, there was no knife wound on CZ’s body. That puzzle was solved when the police gave us the items collected from the reported attack and from the  “man on fire”  report on 2^nd Street.

A silver flask, which the victim was known to carry was among those items. It was punctured on one side but the blade had not gone through. However, the puncture did allow the Bourbonaide in the flask to leak out all over CZ’s shirt and overalls.

Now 49ers Blackberry Bourbonaide, when mixed with boiling water, produces 151 proof alcohol. That alcohol was briefly ignited into flames by the electricity in the tazer Sandy Francisco fired at CZ near the phone booth. But the tazer and the fire, were not the cause of death unless they caused a heart attack. But a heart attack did not kill CZ Cash.

The cause of his death was a blow to the back of the head caused by a heavy object which cracked his skull. This final injury might not have been fatal if he had been discovered quickly and rushed to surgery but since he was not found until the morning after he was last seen, he lost too much blood from that head wound and died around 2 am Friday morning.

This conclusion was further validated when a bloody hammer was discovered near the crime scene by Mayor Josh DeFax.

Now let's see... who had the opportunity, the means, and the motivation to kill CZ Cash with that fatal blow?

We can eliminate several people right away.

Little Joe Curr was asleep in bed according to his mother.

Frieda Frye, Perry Grisham, Brook Dammer, and Karen Nimby were all gathered at the Frieda’s house from dinner until after 2 am.

Captain John Smith and Terra Tesla have been up in the zeppelin testing the engines and navigational systems every night and most days for over a week.

And speaking of that science teacher, Terra Tessla... she wired her house with a state-of-the-art surveillance system and, when we checked it, we saw that Sandy Francisco, who was staying with Terra, came home right after the tazer incident and phoned Tony Esquire, who rushed in a few minutes later and stayed to comfort her all night.

Ann Bissious does have an unpredictable temper but that night she was teaching a class on star gazing to Holly Greensleeves, and Roman and Parker Forrest.

Bernardo DaVinci and Vinny Ricasso watched them out of the windows of the wine bar until they saw all the action on 1^st Street and offered to help in the search party.

After chasing off the person who attempted to stab CZ in the alley Arlo Muir invited Skylar Walker over to his house for some of his wife’s famous lasagna.

And though no one ever knows what the heck the Dufus Roofers are up to, they liked their old teacher CZ Cash as much as they hate Ray Lux, so I’m pretty sure we can eliminate all these folks because none of them had the opportunity to kill CZ Cash that night.

Someone who did have the opportunity was Elizabeth Howe since she was alone cleaning the museum on 2^nd Street and she might also have found the means among the old tools in the museum but Elizabeth had no motive.

Pirates Blacky Beardsley and Voldar Hoarabull certainly had the means and possibly the opportunity but they had very weak motives since all they wanted was the old gambling machines from the 49ers' basement.

The last two 49ers had several million dollars in motives as well as a tool shed worth of means to inflict the blow to the head but they spent so much time with CZ,  Al Betseroff and  Joe Curr had many opportunities to kill CZ and if they really wanted to, they would have done it long ago.

So we come down to Ray Lux and Natasha Boriskoff.

Ray Lux had already attempted to poison CZ that evening when he offered CZ some Wonky Weed tincture and gave CZ a much bigger dose of the powerful new extract than he should have. Ray was not only GREEDY for the estate for his LuxVille development but he wanted REVENGE on Langley for what he believed happened to his son,   the mime,    in 2024.

Natasha Boriskoff certainly had the MEANS in her handy dandy Russian spy kit AND the opportunity because she was seen downtown near the time of CZ’s death.  But Natasha also had a motive stronger than greed OR anger. Natasha FEARED for her life if she could not purchase the estate for her very powerful Russian “friend.”

It has been my experience that FEAR for your life trumps GREED or REVENGE as a motive for murder.

When we searched Natasha’s home we found a dark hooded wool parka like the one Arlo and Skylar said the attacker in the alley was wearing. But the final proof that Natasha succeeded in her second attempt at murder was her fingerprints on the hammer which killed CZ Cash!

 

Officer, please arrest this woman!