What The Critics Are Saying
"Laugh-out-loud funny." Crimespree
"For fans of Janet Evanovich, imagine Granma Mazur with orange hair and a shotgun." Green Bay Press Gazette
"A hoot with a heart." Cozy Library
"A wonderful story of the love of family and friends.” Mysterious Review
"One of the most memorable heroines in recent crime fiction." Lansing State Journal
GERTIE JOHNSON MURDER MYSTERIES BOXED SET (BOOKS 1-4)
by
Deb Baker
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SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Deb Baker at Smashwords
Gertie Johnson Murder Mystery Boxed Set (Books 1-4)
Copyright © 2011 by Deb Baker
Discover other titles by Deb Baker at http://smashwords.com/profile/DebBaker
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Recipes From Cooking Can Be Murder
Deb Baker
Chapter 1
Word For The Day
INCHOATE (in KOH it) adj.
Not yet clearly or completely formed;
in the early stages.
IF MY GRANDSON LITTLE Donny hadn’t taken so long getting out of bed this morning, I would have been at Chester’s hunting blind in time to see them haul Chester out. I’ve never seen a bullet hole smack in the middle of someone’s head before.
Instead, I sat in the passenger seat of Barney’s white Ford pickup truck with my twelve-gauge shotgun at my feet and a box of buckshot in my lap. I laid on the horn until all two hundred and fifty pounds of six-foot-four Little Donny shuffled out and stuffed himself into the driver’s seat. He was clutching a chicken salad sandwich in one hand and tucking his shirt in with the other.
It’s times like these I wish I’d learned to drive. Up until Barney passed on, I didn’t need to. He took me wherever I wanted to go. Now I’m at the mercy of slugs, and I don’t mean the bullet kind.
Little Donny is nineteen-years-old, and he really appreciates the backwoods. He came to the Michigan Upper Peninsula, the U.P., as we call it, from his home in Milwaukee the day before yesterday for the opening of deer-hunting season, which is today, November fifteenth. At the first gray streak of daylight you could hear rifles going off all over the woods, and that’s when Chester got it right between the eyes.
“I suppose I missed the whole thing,” I called out the window when we pulled up outside of Chester’s blind.
My son, Blaze, leaned against his rust-bucket yellow pickup with SHERIFF printed on the side, filling out paperwork. No one else was around. Either we’d beat the ambulance or it had already transported its patient.
“Just finishing up,” he muttered, still writing in his notebook, not noticing my disappointment. “Chester’s body is at the morgue in Escanaba by now. How did you find out about it?”
“Heard it on the scanner.”
Last year when Barney died, I cold-packed my dreams in a canning jar and placed them high on a dusty shelf in my pantry. A few months after I buried him I turned sixty-six and Cora Mae bought me a police scanner for my birthday. It sat in my closet until three days ago when I mentioned to someone that I’m a recent widow and Cora Mae let me have it. “Gertie Johnson, I know you loved Barney, but it’s time to start living again. Let’s go over to your house and listen to that scanner I gave you. Maybe something will pop up.”
Something had popped up, and that something had popped Chester.
I jumped down from the cab and the box of buckshot fell to the ground.
“That thing better not be loaded,” Blaze said, after heaving himself off the truck and glancing at the shotgun on the floor. “You know it’s against the law to transport a loaded weapon in a vehicle. We’ve been through this before.”
“Of course it’s not loaded,” I lied, picking up the box of buckshot and jamming it under the seat.
Little Donny crawled out of the driver’s seat, and I couldn’t help noticing a glob of mustard stuck on his chin. And I couldn’t help noticing that Blaze couldn’t button the bottom of his sheriff’s uniform shirt anymore.
I sighed thinking of Chester’s family and how they’d feel when they heard the bad news, and for a few minutes Little Donny’s sloppiness and Blaze’s escalating weight gain didn’t seem important at all.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“Nothing much to it,” Blaze said, shaking his head. “Stray bullet whomped into the blind and caught poor unlucky Chester right between the eyes. We have at least one shooting accident every single hunting season.”
The air was clean and crisp, and Blaze’s breath steamed around his head while he talked. I could smell cheap cologne hanging in the air. Blaze always wore too much.
“Remember last year,” he continued, “that guy in Trenary was shot in the stomach sleeping in bed. Remember that, Little Donny?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Let me get this straight,” I blurted, in disbelief. “You’re writing this off as an accident?
Blaze looked surprised that I would even suggest anything else. “It was an accident and don’t go saying anything different.”
Ever since Blaze turned forty-four all he thinks about is retirement, even though he still has a few years left if he wants a full pension. He’s already retired in his mind and that’s the scary part. He doesn’t care anymore and is just putting in his time. Maybe he needs me to watch out for him, make him walk the straight and narrow. Maybe I have to be tougher with him.
“What if someone murdered Chester and you’re letting a killer get away with it?” I pulled off my Blue Blocker sunglasses so he could see my glare. “I bet that’s what happened, and you’re too lazy to follow through with a proper investigation.”
“Ma, quit. I really hate to disappoint you, but nobody ever gets murdered in Stonely. You’ve been watching too many soap operas again.”
“I’ve never watched a soap opera in my life. But I have some inchoate ideas about this.”
“Inchoate ideas?”
“It’s my word for the day.”
Last week I decided it was time for some self-improvement. I’m expanding my vocabulary by learning one new word every day and I have to use it in normal conversation so it sticks with me. I’ve found it’s best to try out my new word first thing in the morning or else I forget to use it.
“Who found Chester?” I wanted to know.
“Floy…” Blaze paused and shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m not telling you right now. You’ll just go over and bother the poor man. He’s upset enough as it is.”
“Well, stop by on your way home later and let me know what’s happening.”
Blaze lives in a mobile home on the east forty. Barney and I—well, just me now—own three forties, meaning I own one hundred and twenty acres. The properties in Tamarack Township are sectioned in blocks of forty acres so when someone asks how much land you own, you say two forties, or five forties, or whatever.
The terrain in the Upper Peninsula is as rugged and as difficult to categorize as the people who settled here—miles and miles of swampy lowlands, then miles of even country with every type of pine tree you can imagine, and when you think you have it all figured out, the elevation soars and you find yourself high on a wind-blown ridge overlooking one of the Great Lakes, watching waves slam against enormous rocks.
Most of us own a lot of land and we’re proud of it even though it comes cheap. It’s all we have.
Blaze lives on the east forty with his wife, Mary. His two girls are off at college. My youngest daughter Star lives in a log cabin on the west forty. Her kids are grown and gone and her no-good husband left her for a blonde bimbo, so she’s there alone. But her kids visit often.
Heather is Little Donny’s mother. She, her husband, Big Donny, and Little Donny, my favorite grandson and current chauffeur, live in Milwaukee.
I like the fact that two of my kids stayed in Stonely and decided to live on the family property. I like the fact that they have to drive right past my house coming and going. Sometimes it’s stressful having family right on top of me, but in the final analysis, it’s worth it.
“Let’s go hunting later, Blaze,” Little Donny said.
“Stop calling me Blaze,” Blaze said, glaring at me while prying open the door of his rust-bucket truck. “I legally changed my name to Brian. I keep telling everyone in town over and over, and no one can seem to get it straight.”
“Brian?” Little Donny was confused, which isn’t anything new for him.
“You weren’t born a Brian,” I huffed, “And you don’t look like a Brian. Whose going to call you that? It’s not your real name.”
“Your Granny, here,” Blaze said to Little Donny, ignoring me except for an accusing finger pointed in my direction, “named me after a horse.”
Which was true.
__________
I wanted to look around the crime scene, but Blaze wouldn’t let me. He waited in his dump truck—as in what-a-dump truck—until we pulled out ahead of him. At my direction, Little Donny turned right on Highway M35. I knew Blaze would turn left and head toward town, and I didn’t want him following us, because we weren’t going back.
He had a family to inform of their loss. I had a crime scene to investigate.
“Nice and slow,” I cautioned Little Donny. I wore a blaze orange hunting jacket, since those crazy hunters will shoot at anything moving. I had my hair pulled up under an orange hunting cap with the earflaps folded up. Two trucks passed us going the opposite way, the drivers also wearing hunter’s orange. I waved and they waved back.
As soon as Blaze turned left, I slapped Little Donny’s knee. “Turn around and head back to Chester’s.”
“Blaze is going to be hot, and anyway, I want to go hunting,” Little Donny crabbed.
I gave him a stern look, and he swung around at the first crossroad.
Chester’s hunting blind stood on the edge of a small clearing, butting up against a grove of tamarack trees. It wasn’t wrapped in yellow tape to mark it as a crime scene, confirming my suspicions that Blaze wouldn’t even do a cursory investigation.
I carefully opened the blind door with the sleeve of my jacket so I wouldn’t leave prints, in spite of my belief that this was one case where it wouldn’t matter. I suspected there weren’t any prints to find. This was a long-distance murder.
Granted, I had no evidence that Chester’s death actually was a murder, but every time a stray bullet from a high-powered rifle took a life, I thought about whether it was an accident or not. In the Michigan U.P., it would be the perfect crime.
Opening the door, I wondered who or what Chester might have seen before he died.
The shack was built on a movable platform so it could be towed around on the back of a tractor. We all did that. One reason is that it’s nice and easy to move next season if we find a better hunting spot, and another reason is so the federal government can’t slap a tax on us for building a permanent structure. They try to get you coming and going.
Inside, I could feel the leftover warmth of the propane heater as I looked around.
Chester’s blind was pretty ordinary, built for comfort, warmth, and an unobstructed shot when Big Buck strolled out into the clearing. It had an insulated wood frame and windows on each side, the same as a house. Metal fasteners on the sides of the windows could be turned, and the window would silently swing out. The floor was covered with worn brown shag carpet. A can of WD40 was in the corner along with a cooler full of beer, a can of peanuts, and a pair of binoculars.
Even though I considered Chester a neighbor, I didn’t know him real well. He kept to himself out on Parker Road, nodding his head when we met, then moving on. Not a chit-chatter. His wife died a few years back, before Barney died. Everyone thought she went plumb loco until the doctors discovered the brain tumor. Then it was too late.
When I left his blind, I knew a little more about him. I knew he drank the cheapest beer he could buy, and that he drank it early in the day. He must have slammed down a few cans before he was slammed down himself by a deadly bullet. I saw several empty cans tossed in a pile on the floor. An open can on a small table had spilled and beer had run in a stream with the blood from his head.
I also learned that a hole in the head makes quite a bloody mess, and that Chester liked smut magazines. Since I never saw one before, I paged through the stack by the window.
“Granny, this isn’t a good idea. Come out of there or I’m telling Blaze.”
Little Donny’s large bulk blocked out the light though the door. I wanted to search for clues between the shack and the creek running through Chester’s property, but I’d have to get rid of Whiney first.
“Okay, let’s hit it,” I said, climbing into the cab.
__________
Floyd Tatrow was hard of hearing, so when I stuck my head in his kitchen door, I called out nice and loud. He didn’t answer. The kitchen smelled like freshly fried bacon, and the sink was full of dirty dishes soaking in sudsy water—the water was still warm to my touch.
“Floyd,” I hollered. “It’s Gertie Johnson. Where are you?”
I checked every room and found them all empty. Floyd kept the place spic-and-span clean even though his wife, Eva, had a stroke a year ago and was in a private nursing home in Escanaba. He still had hopes that she would come home some day, but the rest of us knew she was there for life.
Eva was a little too church-like for my taste. Her favorite phrase was The Lord will provide. I always thought you had to provide for yourself. No one else is going to do it for you, not even the Lord, but you couldn’t reason with Eva.
Years ago when Floyd lost everything but the shirt on his back at the Indian casino, I cooked up a large roast with carrots and onions, mashed ten pounds of homegrown potatoes, and dropped the meal off at their home.
“I told you the Lord would provide,” Eva said to Floyd, putting the pans down on the counter top.
“That wasn’t the Lord providing,” I said, tapping my thumb on my chest. “That was me.”
The Tatrow house was decorated in frilly yellow curtains and embroidered religious pictures. Crocheted blankets covered the upholstery and lace doilies were draped on the tables. Eva liked her arts and crafts, before the Lord provided her with a stroke that paralyzed her entire right side.
That private nursing home must be costing Floyd a pretty penny, I thought, eying a television set as big as my entire dining room wall. He better learn to cut back on his spending.
I let myself out and stood on the porch, scanning the property. I avoided looking at the truck where Little Donny sat fuming. Big cities squeeze the ability to be patient right out of people. Life becomes too frantic and rushed. It’s a sad thing. He needed to spend more time in the woods with me learning the art of slow and simple.
I strolled over to the sauna and yanked the door open.
There sat Floyd, naked as a blue jay and not half as pretty. He had the largest head I ever saw on a man, and was wearing a Ford baseball cap that was three sizes too small. Men around these parts don’t take off their hats unless they absolutely have to.
“Gertie Johnson,” Floyd exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
The difference between men and women is this—if you catch a woman butt-naked, she tries to cover the private parts with her hands. A man will sit there just like you found him even if he doesn’t have much to be proud of.
Floyd sat like that, not moving.
“Put your drawers on,” I said, looking away too late. “I’ll wait outside.”
Floyd took his sweet time coming out. I sat in the truck with Grumpy until Floyd opened the sauna door and walked toward the truck.
The Finns like their saunas. They usually build them around the back of the house for privacy because they roll in the snow when they’re done sweating it out. Afternoon is their favorite time. It takes all morning to fire the sauna up and get it steaming hot. Sometimes a Finn will invite his friends over for a sauna, and if it’s mixed company, the men go together then the women go together, and everyone tries to peek when the snow rolling begins. Especially if the moonshine has been going around.
Floyd has six or seven old geezers who share the sauna with him, and I was grateful that they weren’t over today. One naked old guy is enough for any woman. I shook my head to clear the image and rolled down the truck window.
“You found Chester this morning,” I said. When Blaze let it slip that Floyd found Chester, I was pretty certain he meant Floyd Tatrow. There weren’t any other Floyds around Stonely.
“What?”
I remembered that Floyd couldn’t hear well and repeated the question, loudly.
“It was an awful shock,” he said.
“What happened?” I shouted.
“What’s that?”
I looked over at Little Donny wedged into the driver’s seat and our eyes met. Little Donny, who can’t stay mad long, grinned at me.
“Is that thing turned on?” I leaned out the window and pointed at Floyd’s hearing aid.
Floyd dug the hearing aid out of his ear and made an adjustment. “Sorry,” he said, screwing it back in. “Blasted thing was turned off.”
“What happened to Chester?”
“Shot in the head’s what happened to Chester. I walked up to the blind, calling out so he wouldn’t accidentally shoot me. I was going to tell him to stop over for a sauna, you see. I could tell he was past saving, but I ran back to his house and called for an ambulance anyway. Then I called the sheriff.”
“What do you think happened?” I said. “In your own opinion.”
Floyd leaned against the truck. “I already told you. Chester was shot in the head. That’s what happened to him.” He said it loud and clear like he thought I was the deaf one.
“No, I mean, do you think he was murdered?”
“Murdered! Lord, no! This is a Christian, law-abiding community, and if Chester’s dead it’s because God called him. When Eva could still talk she used to say ‘The Lord will provide’ and that’s it in a nutshell, you see. God’s bullet took Chester and He must have had a good reason.”
Okay.
__________
Cora Mae, my all-time best friend, was waiting for us at my house with a fresh pot of coffee and a plate of sweet rolls. In all the excitement, I forgot she was giving me a hair rinse today.
Cora Mae has been my friend since I moved to Stonely. I remember Barney calling Stonely “God’s Country” and I’d thought he meant a paradise, like the Garden of Eden. Then we arrived and I found out it was God’s Country because nobody else wanted it. No jobs worth mentioning, cracker-box houses clumped together in towns so small you missed them even though you knew you hadn’t blinked, and bugs the size of pumpkins.
Cora Mae saved me. She’s three years younger, making her sixty-three, and she’s buried three husbands. Cora Mae never could stay away from men; they’re in her blood--she’s always on the lookout in spite of her bad luck in the past.
“Onni Maki’s hot with the widows around here. I hear he’s taking Viagra to keep up, or rather to keep it up,” Cora Mae said, pouring two cups of coffee. “Sure would like to give him a whirl.”
“You’ll have to take a number and stand in line,” I said, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down to tug off my hunting boots. I used to be able to take my boots off leaning against the wall, but it’s been a few years now. I can do it only if I absolutely have to, using all my concentration.
I hung my hunting jacket on a peg by the door and pulled off the hunting cap, running my fingers through my bob-length gray hair. Only mine wouldn’t behave like a bob. It sprang in any directions it pleased.
Little Donny took his rifle down from the gun rack, shoved a box of ammo into his jacket, and headed for the door. “Onni Maki is the only available male within fifty miles, especially since Chester’s dead,” he said to Cora Mae.
“What about George,” I reminded him. “George is available.” I chewed my lip after realizing my mistake. Cora Mae stalks any single man who breathes air and I don’t want her rushing off after George, who is a good friend and doesn’t deserve to be worked over by Cora Mae.
Glancing sideways, I saw her reading the directions on the hair product box, paying no attention to me.
“Well, good luck,” Little Donny said to Cora Mae.
She peered over the top of the box and fluffed her hair with one hand. “I don’t need luck, honey. I got sex appeal.”
Cora Mae did look good for her age. She was wearing black stretch pants, a black long-sleeved tee, and pointy boots with two-inch heels. Her man-hunting outfit, she calls it. Last year Cora Mae discovered Wonderbras and now her boobs are always in the lead. They’re the first things you notice about Cora Mae.
I must look pretty drab and nondescript next to her. Cora Mae has style. Here I am—barely five feet, a hundred and twenty pounds, with a head of gray hair and a roll of fat starting around my middle.
I saw Little Donny heading for the door. “Where you going with my car keys?”
“Hunting with Carl. Remember? I already asked you if I could take the truck.”
“Oh. Ah… I remember now,” I said, not remembering at all.
“See you later.” Little Donny slammed the door shut behind him.
“He’ll be back in a minute or two,” I said, chuckling. “He forgot something important.”
Thirty seconds later, Donny stomped through the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and grabbed a pile of sandwiches I’d made earlier. He had to use both pockets to stuff them all in.
“Let’s get started,” I said to Cora Mae after Little Donny was loaded up and gone. I clipped a towel around my neck.
Normally, I have a rinse to take the yellow out of my gray hair. Gray hair doesn’t scare me. Neither do flabby muscles, or liver spots, or strange little wart-like bumps. All of which are cropping up here and there on my body like clumps of weeds. I’m slowly losing my hearing, my eyesight, and yesterday I noticed I’m losing my eyelashes. I’ve stopped being afraid of age since it doesn’t do any good anyway. You can’t stop the march of time and the sooner you accept it, the sooner you can focus on the important things in life.
Cora Mae likes to play the role of hairdresser, and although I know how to take care of my own hair, I humor her. She waved the box containing my rinse in front of my face. “You’re full of surprises, Gertie.”
I looked at the box and screeched. “Strawberry blonde? Oh, no. I must have picked up the wrong box.”
“I think it’s time for a new look,” Cora Mae of the black-as-tar hair said when I attempted to grab it away. After a brief struggle, she won.
I filled her in while she worked. She knew about Chester’s death because I’d called her earlier while I was waiting for Little Donny. Now I went through the graphic details.
Two hours later I stared into the mirror in disbelief and horror. My head was covered in a brassy orange mess. I grabbed the box and read the directions.
“Cora Mae, I told you it was on my head too long. It says fifteen minutes, not fifty. Now what am I going to do?”
“The clown show’s coming to Escanaba. Maybe you can apply for a job.” Cora Mae was holding her left side from laughing so hard, while tears streaked with mascara slid down her face. “I never saw hair take color like that before.”
“Well, at least I won’t need to wear my orange hunting cap.” I checked my watch. “I wanted to search Chester’s property but it’s starting to get dark. It’ll have to wait until morning.”
Cora Mae had that look in her eye. The here-she-goes-again look, and I knew I was going to hear it whether I wanted to or not.
“Gertie, every time someone dies doesn’t mean it’s murder. Remember when Martha fell in the tub, hit her head, and drowned. You said that was murder.”
“Might have been. It was poorly investigated.”
“And when Ted Hakanen drove his car into the tree on the side of Peter Road, dead drunk. You said that his car had been tampered with.”
“Probably was.”
“Blaze sent that old Buick to Escanaba, mechanics went over it, and the only thing they found was an empty bottle of Jim Beam.”
“That’s what a smart killer would want you to believe. Maybe Martha and Ted died in accidents but it’s a numbers game, Cora Mae. One of these days it really will be murder.”
We cleaned up the kitchen and polished off the bag of sweet rolls. Since I’d missed lunch, I shared a liver sausage sandwich with Cora Mae.
The thought of investigating Chester’s death appealed to me. The more time I spent listening to my police scanner, the more I thought I’d make a pretty good investigator. After all, I had three kids to practice on while they were growing up. If nothing came of my efforts and it was a stray bullet that killed Chester like Blaze and Cora Mae thought, I’d chalk it up to on-the-job training.
At the moment, I knew three things. One: based on television shows I’ve watched, the person who finds the body sometimes turns out to be the killer. He should be the first name on a suspect list. Two: a detective has to move fast. As the murder ages, it gets harder and harder to solve. Three: Floyd Tatrow’s phone number was in the telephone book.
“This is the sheriff’s office calling,” I said into the phone, holding my nose lightly with my fingers. “You need to take a lie detector test.”
“Why would I have to do that?” Floyd wanted to know.
“It’s standard procedure. You found the body, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but….”
“It’s perfectly voluntary, of course, but you’ll clear yourself right away if you agree to it.”
“Clear myself of what?”
“I can’t answer that. It’s confidential police business. Can you be there in twenty minutes? Sheriff Johnson has the equipment at his mobile home.”
“I suppose. All right, but I never heard of anything like this before.”
“You never found a dead body before.”
Cora Mae giggled.
“And don’t eat or drink anything before the test,” I finished.
“What is going through your mind?” Cora Mae asked when I hung up.
She’s a perfect example of the difference between an investigative mind and a regular mind, if you can call Cora Mae’s mind regular. Regular minds rarely have brainstorm ideas that catch killers.
I flipped on the spotlight next to the drive leading past my house to Blaze’s mobile home and started gathering the supplies to make popcorn.
“If Floyd shows up, he probably didn’t murder Chester,” I reasoned. “The killer isn’t going to willingly walk into the town sheriff’s house to be hooked up to a lie detector.”
I finished making the popcorn, turned off the inside lights, and waited in the dark by the window, eating popcorn. Cora Mae held the bowl. “The beauty of the whole plan,” I bragged, “is that Blaze and Mary aren’t home. I saw Mary drive out half an hour ago and Blaze is still working. If Floyd shows up, he’ll find an empty house, take off his little cap, scratch his big head, and go on home. Blaze will never know what happened. But I’ll know Floyd didn’t kill Chester.”
I was tossing kernels of popcorn in the air and trying to catch them in my mouth when Blaze’s sheriff’s truck turned onto our road and passed my house. “Oh, no,” I muttered. Pretty soon Floyd’s blue truck went by. When he passed under the spotlight, I could see his large, pale head peering over the dashboard.
“How are you going to explain to Blaze?” Cora Mae asked, crunching popcorn.
“I’ll deny any involvement,” I said, disappointed that Floyd showed up. “What makes you think he’ll suspect me anyway?”
Cora Mae raised one eyebrow, which isn’t an easy thing to do.
A few minutes later, Floyd drove out and Cora Mae flipped the house lights on. I crossed Floyd’s name off my list of suspects and stared at a blank page.
“When is Little Donny going back to Milwaukee?” Cora Mae asked.
“I don’t know. He’s not in any big rush, since he’s between jobs.”
Between jobs is what Donny calls it. I call it canned, fired, let go, but I’m not saying anything. Little Donny’s had more jobs than a rabbit has bunnies.
Cora Mae picked up her purse.
“Little Donny should be back any minute,” I said. “It’s too dark to hunt. He must have stopped for a beer. If you wait a bit, he can drive you home.”
Neither one of us drives a car, which some people from other parts of the country might consider strange but it’s not so unusual in the U.P. Things are spread out here but we don’t go out that much and when we do there’s always someone willing to drive us. Once a week Blaze or his wife, Mary, drives me to the grocery story and, along with my own groceries, I buy a few things for Cora Mae from a list she gives me.
I’m now starting to see the complications of finding chauffeurs to drive me around to investigate crimes.
“Nah, it’s only down the road.” Cora Mae swung her purse and eyed my midriff. “Exercise is good for you.”
I found a flashlight in the closet, handed it to her, and watched her walk down the side of the road. Then I plunked down in front of the television to wait for Little Donny.
Chapter 2
Word For The Day
SIMPATICO (sim PAHT i koh) adj.
gets along well with or goes well
with another; compatible.
“WHERE WERE YOU LAST night?” I asked Little Donny the next morning when he staggered to the kitchen table.
I finished writing my new word on a scrap of paper and included the pronunciation since it wasn’t an easy one to say—it sounded Italian.
Little Donny looked like he’d partied too hard and smelled like stale beer and probably would have stayed in bed if I hadn’t rolled him out.
“Herb’s Bar.” Little Donny rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and squinted at me through narrow slits. “What time is it?”
“Way past time for you to drive me over to Chester’s house. I have some investigating to do.”
“What happened to your hair?” Little Donny’s eyes were peeling open. He had his elbow on the table and his hand held his head up, keeping it from flopping on the kitchen table. I stuck a bowl of cornflakes down so if his hand gave out he’d have something soft to fall into.
“I’ll be waiting outside.” I ruffled his hair as I passed.
George Erikson sat in a plastic lawn chair under the apple tree. I walked over to talk to him, since Little Donny was moving slow and I had a wait ahead of me before he could pull himself together and come out. Wasting time with George wasn’t exactly a hardship.
George’s father, Old Ben Erikson, and Barney developed a close friendship in spite of their age difference, and after Barney died, Old Ben told me he’d promised Barney he would look after me if anything ever happened to Barney. I thought he needed more taking care of than I did, but nothing could dissuade him. He’d made a promise and he’d keep his promise, but that’s a Swede. Loyal to the last.
So Old Ben sent his son around every day to do odds and ends and when Ben died in the spring at the ripe old age of eighty-nine, his son kept coming round.
I have a small Christmas tree business that brings in enough money to pay the property taxes. George trims the trees twice a year, then cuts and wraps them for sale in late November during hunting season. This year, I plan on sharing the profits with him even though he’s refused in the past.
George is a few years younger than I am, sixty, give or take a few years. He wears flannel shirts, colored t-shirts, and his trademark cowboy hat with a rattlesnake wrapped around the crown. You can see its fangs like it’s about to strike.
Oh, and his buns are still tight. I may be getting older, but my eyes still work just fine. He looks great in blue jeans. George used to be a construction foreman but quit to go into business for himself as a carpenter. He’s a lean, mean construction machine.
George and I are simpatico; we have the same view of life: Take it easy, but don’t forget to grab the gusto.
“What happened to your hair?” he said, amusement shining in his eyes.
“Celebrating hunting season.” I stuffed the hunting cap back on my head and tucked the loose strands under it. I sat down on a chair next to him and could feel the cold of the plastic working into my legs and thighs.
“I hear Chester Lampi took a bullet yesterday,” George said, adjusting his cowboy hat. He still had a full head of hair under the hat, dark brown with a touch of gray at the temples. “A stray bullet, they say.”
“I don’t know about that stray bullet business,” I said. “It seems too convenient to me. What do you know about Chester?”
“Kept to himself.” George had Barney’s chain saw between his boots and began rubbing oil in the joints with a rust-colored rag. “He’s got a son who lives east of town. The son got married last month—a blonde from down south someplace. Chester wasn’t happy about it. Marrying an outsider and all.”
Chester wouldn’t have been happy about that.
We don’t have Blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, or Asians in Stonely. Finns and Swedes settled the area. Culturally diverse to the people here means some fool sold his property to a Pollack or a Kraut.
I’m more German than anything else, which I guess makes me one of those cultural diversities, and the word Kraut has been dropped one or two times within my hearing. My maiden name was Miller. I met Barney in Washington, D.C., after arriving from my family farm in rural Ohio and finding work as a bookkeeper for the State Department. He was a marine stationed there and I fell in love with him the minute I laid eyes on him. I always loved a man in uniform.
Anyway, I came home with him to Stonely. People weren’t too happy about that, either. Times never change, and some haven’t forgotten that I don’t really belong. Forty-some years in the U.P. doesn’t give you automatic citizenship. You need three or four generations for that.
“I ran into Chester at Ray’s last week,” George said, working the oil around the metal of the saw.
Ray owns the general store on Main Street and sells hardware, gun supplies, gasoline, and he has a pretty good stock of essential grocery items. “Chester told me he was thinking about getting a winter home in Florida.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “When toads fly.”
Chester was dirt poor. His house wasn’t much bigger than that hunting blind they hauled him out of. In fact, the hunting blind was built better. “He must have been kidding with you.”
“No, he was serious.”
“Sounds suspicious to me and worth checking out.”
“Everything sounds suspicious to you. I suppose you think Chester was murdered.” When I didn’t answer, George looked up from greasing the chain saw and raised his eyebrows. Here we go again, his eyebrows said. I noticed he couldn’t do that one eyebrow thing that Cora Mae’s so good at.
“It sounds like Chester came into some money all of a sudden.”
George shrugged.
“What was Chester buying at Ray’s?”
George thought it over. “I don’t know. It was already bagged.”
George didn’t know it, but he was sitting this very minute right on top of my buried treasure. After Barney’s funeral and burial in the Trenary cemetery, Blaze drove me over to the Escanaba bank, and I hauled out every penny I own. Barney and I were savers our whole life so it amounted to quite a stockpile. I made Blaze wait outside so he wouldn’t find out what I was doing and try to interfere.
The teller had to get the manager to approve the whole thing. He tried to talk me out of closing our account, but I stood firm. When I make up my mind, nobody can change it. I filled a grocery bag with the bills as the teller counted them out, then stuffed an old shirt on top to conceal the money.
Never trust the federal government, I say. They’re out to get you. That crooked president, the IRS, all of them, a bunch of thieves waiting to pounce on good, law-abiding citizens the minute you turn your back.
Barney didn’t see eye to eye with me on this issue, but once he was gone I went and rescued our money. I buried it in a steel box right under where George had his tight buns parked, right under the apple tree Barney and I planted the first year we were married. I know it’s safe and I don’t need it right now anyway. My Social Security is enough to live on, but it’ll be waiting for me when Social Security runs out of money one of these days, when that bunch of thieves in Washington steals it all.
The cold from the plastic lawn chair numbed my thighs and sent chills shooting down my legs. I stood up and shook them out. Flecks of snow swirled in the breeze and the ground was crunchy with frost. I wore wool socks with my boots and long underwear under my hunting jacket, but George sat casually in a white long-sleeved t-shirt and an unbuttoned red flannel. His nipples stood out in the cold like bird dogs pointing.
Not that I noticed.
“Time to put on a jacket, George.”
“Not till January, Gertie. You know my rule. No coats till January.”
I can live with that.
__________
Bear Creek snakes around Tamarack Township, passing through the boundary line of my back forty. It also meanders through Chester’s land. I left my chauffeur, Little Donny, in the truck and trudged through the low spot between the blind and the creek, looking for clues to Chester’s death. I carried my twelve-gauge shotgun just in case. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, so I kept my eyes sharp.
Chester’s blind was perfectly situated, a few yards off a series of deer paths heavily traveled by herds of deer. City folks think deer leap every which way through the woods, but they don’t. They have their own road system and this is one of their superhighways.
The path wound through marshy low land with reeds and old cattails poking up, and ahead I could see young tamarack trees framing the ridge. My boots crunched through a thin layer of ice as I went. It was slow going because if I stepped in too deep, I would have water over the top of my boots. I tested each step and occasionally looked back at my sunken footsteps.
Eventually, I reached the ridge and continued following a deer path down the other side to the creek. The creek water still flowed, with a thin crust of ice beginning to form on the surface. A Tom turkey, startled by my presence, rose in the air and, with enormous effort, cleared the top of the trees. I’m always fascinated watching those big birds fly.
When I could no longer feel my nose from the cold, I headed back, taking a narrower deer path this time. It veered west of my original trail and crossed over the ridge. Reaching the low marsh, I spotted broken ice patches leading toward Chester’s blind. The same kind my boots made coming out, only I hadn’t come through this way.
I followed the broken ice, trying to match my footsteps with the broken patches, but whoever had come through had a wider stride than I did. About fifty yards out, the footsteps lengthened as though the owner began to hurry, perhaps running. I paused and looked around. From here I could see Chester’s blind. With a high-powered scope, I could easily hit it. I considered giving it a try with my shotgun, but the weight of it was making my arm feel like it was wrapped in concrete. Besides, I would have a hard time explaining to Blaze why buckshot was plastered in the side of the blind. I already would have some explaining to do if Blaze found out I tromped all over potential evidence, but it couldn’t be helped. Someone had to investigate.
Looking down, I saw something shiny lying under a thin patch of ice. I broke through with my boot and picked it up. It was a spent rifle shell. My heart started to pound in my ears. When the pounding subsided, I rummaged in my jacket, found a tissue, gently wrapped the shell, and tucked it into my pocket.
Little Donny was sound asleep in the truck, his head thrown back on the headrest, his mouth wide open. I took the opportunity to snitch the girly magazines out of Chester’s blind to show to Cora Mae. There were some hot male bodies in there, too.
__________
“What the hell were you doing back there in the first place?” Blaze yelled. “And you, why were you helping her?” Now he was glaring at Little Donny and jabbing his index finger at my grandson’s chest. “Keep your hands off my pa’s truck, Little Donny, if you can’t keep her out of my business. Next time I see you behind the wheel of that truck and her sitting next to you, I’m pulling you over and arresting you for obstructing justice. Do you understand?”
“Okay, okay, I get it.”
“And the next time….”
“You can’t do that,” I interrupted. “That’s my truck and you can’t arrest him for driving it.” I turned to Little Donny and patted his knee. “Don’t worry. He can’t do that.”
“I’m the sheriff. I can do anything I want.”
“But you didn’t let me finish before you started getting mad. Look at what I have.” I pulled the tissue out of my pocket and carefully unwrapped the shell. “Evidence.”
But Blaze wasn’t looking at the shell. He seemed to notice me for the first time. “What the hell happened to your hair?”
He was sitting at my kitchen table sucking down all my sugar doughnuts. His eyesore yellow truck was still running in the driveway and a cloud of smoke-like exhaust hovered over the truck, a sure sign that it was cold outside.
I ignored that last question and explained where I found the shell and about the footprints in the ice. Blaze didn’t look happy but it didn’t stop him from continuing to stuff his face.
“And I want you to test it for fingerprints,” I finished, pleased with myself. I thought about having DETECTIVE JOHNSON printed on the side of my truck.
“You’ve been interfering with my work again.” Blaze wiped his hands on a napkin. “Did you ever think that maybe I was going to check back there using proper police procedures? Did you ever think to check with me first?”
“No, I didn’t. Knowing you, you already closed the case, calling it an accident.” That was Blaze’s style and we both knew it.
“Did you ever think that maybe you screwed up a crime scene? Anywhere else you’d try a stunt like that, you’d be arrested for interfering with a police investigation.”
“Then you’re admitting it was a crime.”
Blaze’s nostrils spread out and his face turned the color of an overripe tomato. “Floyd Tatrow came by for a lie detector test last night,” he said. “I suppose you don’t know anything about that?”
“Not a thing,” I said, but we both knew that was a big lie.
“What have I done to deserve you?” Blaze shouted, throwing his arms up in the air. I could tell he was getting ready to go into all my past sins against him. He was the most paranoid person I ever met. “Why do I put up with this?” he continued, rising from the table. “You know what you are? You’re the family curse.”
I settled in for a go-around, which, I could have reminded Blaze, I always win. I stood up next to him and leaned in close.
“You put up with it for a lot of reasons, Doughnut Boy. You put up with it for those freebies you’re stuffing in your mouth, for one. You put up with it for the free rent, for another.”
This was one of those times I was talking about earlier when I don’t appreciate the close family ties quite as much as usual.
Blaze reached for the rifle shell and gave me an angry scowl.
“Be careful with that,” I said. “I don’t want your fingerprints fouling up the works. And I need the name and address for Chester’s son.”
There was a long glaring silence, then, “Why?”
“I’m going to interrogate him. See what I can turn up.”
“I’ll arrest you if you do.”
There was a loud bang as Blaze slammed out the door.
__________
“Blaze is still mad about the horse thing,” Star said over the telephone when I called her. “He sure does hold a grudge a long time.”
My baby, Star, and I used to talk on the phone every day, but lately she hasn’t been around much. She swore off men after her good-for-nothing husband finally ran off, but it looks like she’s getting back in the saddle. She’s being coy about it, though.
“He says he changed his name to Brian,” I told her. I was washing dishes trying not to clang pans while I talked. I had the phone on my right shoulder, wedged between my head and shoulder.
“Ma, nobody takes him seriously. Sometimes they call him Bucky or Bronco to tease him. But he’s tried to change it to Brian for years. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been busy.”
My other kids never complained about the names I chose for them. Star and Heather were happy, so I couldn’t figure Blaze out. Blaze is a nice name—original, manly. “He has a John Wayne name,” I said.
“He has John Wayne’s horse’s name,” Star said.
At least I should get points for originality. I didn’t name them Barney Junior, Barney Senior, and Barney the Third.
“Do you know the name of Chester’s son?” I asked Star, steering the conversation in the right direction. “I heard he lives on the east side of Stonely toward Trenary.”
“Wasn’t it terrible what happened to Chester? I think his son’s name is Bill. Bill Lampi.”
“Thanks, Sweetie. I just wish Blaze and I were more simpatico.” I pronounced it slowly, reading from my scrap of paper.
“What?”
“It’s my word for the day,” I explained. “Blaze must be under a lot of stress. He threatened to arrest me today.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it. Just don’t give him a reason.”
__________
Cora Mae almost fell off her high-heel boots when she came out and saw me driving Barney’s truck up her driveway. “Whee! You can drive!”
I didn’t tell her that I rammed a big hole the size of a meteor in the side of the barn when I accidentally shifted into forward instead of reverse. I was starting to get the hang of it, except for braking. I silently thanked Cora Mae for her circle driveway. I wouldn’t have to try to back down.
“Hop in.”
Cora wore a black turtleneck sweater, black stretch pants, and a fake fur vest jacket, also black.
“I told you to wear orange, Cora Mae. Out-of-town hunters are creeping all over the place. You look like a black bear. One of them is going to shoot your buns off.”
“Honey, orange just isn’t my color, but I can see it’s yours.”
Another hair joke. And from the woman who did it to me.
I was working on a quick comeback when I accidentally slammed on the brakes at the bottom of Cora Mae’s driveway instead of the gas.
Cora flew forward.
“Better put on your seatbelt till I get the hang of this,” I said, starting up again.
Chester lived in a cracker-box house about a quarter mile from his hunting blind. He wasn’t much of a handyman because the house was an eyesore - peeling green paint, rotting wood porch, bare windows.
Cora stepped gingerly over a gaping hole in the porch and peeked into the front window. “No one’s home, Gertie. We’ll have to come back another time.”
“Of course no one’s home. Chester’s wife’s been in her grave for years, and since Chester’s dead, we can safely assume he isn’t going to answer the door.”
“But why are we standing here if you knew no one was going to let us in?” Cora Mae’s penciled eyebrows were shaped like a question mark and she looked at me like I had ruined her day. I would have thought the ride over with me driving for the first time would have been excitement enough.
I grinned and held up a screwdriver and a hammer from Barney’s toolbox. “We have work to do on the back door. Come on.”
I planned on prying between the doorjamb and the lock with a screwdriver, but peeking in, I noticed the lock was a deadbolt. It’s impossible to pry a deadbolt. I found that out last time I locked myself out of my house after losing my keys.
I tried turning the knob to see if the door was unlocked, which probably should have been my first step, but it didn’t matter since the door really was locked.
I tried tapping gently on the glass with my hammer. Then I hauled off and smacked the window a sharp blow. Glass shattered at our feet. I said, “Oops,” as Cora Mae and I looked down simultaneously. I knocked the rest of the glass out of the doorframe with the hammer, stuck my hand through, and unlocked the door.
We began searching in the kitchen. The place was a mess. Piles of litter overflowing from the garbage can, six weeks of dirty dishes stacked on the counter and scattered throughout the house, clothes tossed over chairs.
I made notes in a spiral notebook in case something might be important later. My eye for detail is dead on, but my memory gets fuzzy now and then. I was careful to include everything, since clues to solving the case could be anywhere.
In the living room, I noticed three guns resting in the gun rack next to the television and an old sofa with a dirty blanket draped over it shoved against a gray wall. I also noticed things that weren’t there. There weren’t any drapes or shades on the windows, and there weren’t any more smut magazines.
We pulled out every drawer and went through every closet without finding anything unusual. I took a broom from the kitchen and swept up the glass and removed the shards still embedded in the frame of the window. I dumped the whole mess in a cardboard box and decided to haul it home with me to dispose of it.
“If all the window glass is gone,” I reasoned out loud to Cora Mae, “it might take longer for it to be discovered. Nothing like a pile of glass on the floor to draw attention where you don’t want it drawn.” I reached through the window and relocked the door.
I hit Chester’s mailbox with the bumper of Barney’s pickup truck on the way out and bent the post a bit, but likely he wouldn’t mind even if he were still alive.
After dropping Cora Mae at her house, I headed home. The hole in the barn wall was a gaping reminder of my driving skills, and now guinea hens ran around the yard squawking angrily.
Guinea hens are useful for ridding your yard of wood ticks and deer ticks, which is quite a mission considering the diseases ticks carry. Guinea hens cluster together and move around the yard looking for bugs to eat while making a lot of noises. Since I brought home these twelve guineas, I haven’t had a single tick slip through.
They’re a lot of work in the winter months, though. The raccoons like to snack on them, so I have to be careful to keep them inside at night and I have to buy feed for them.
I looked at the sky, which was darkening rapidly, and studied the guinea hen situation. I crossed the drive and looked for Little Donny in the house, but he wasn’t there.
Hauling the hens two by two, one under each arm, into the house, I shut them in the bathroom. It took a while because they started running from me after I caught the first two, probably thinking they were going to be tomorrow’s dinner.
Worn out from the chasing, I collapsed on the couch, my heart racing.
I was going to take a short break and then call George to repair the barn enough to hold the hens, but I must have drifted off for a spell. The next thing I knew, Little Donny was screaming and birds were running through the house flapping their wings, trying to go airborne.
I sprang up and surveyed the situation.
Little Donny, leaning against the wall next to the bathroom, held both hands clutched over his heart like he’d had the scare of his life. A hen screeched at his feet. Another one sprung across the couch. This was a full-scale invasion.
I walked over to Little Donny and pulled the startled kid in for a big hug while the hens ran everywhere. Little Donny’s shoulders started shaking and I hoped he wasn’t crying. A scare can do that to you. He had tears running down his face all right, but he was laughing. I chimed in until my sides started aching.
Little Donny managed to herd the hens back in the bathroom while I called George. He brought a large pen in the back of his truck and we transferred the guinea hens from the bathroom to the pen.
George took a good look at the hole in the barn, glanced at my new red hair, then studied the hole again.
“Did a meteorite shoot through here?” he wanted to know. “Didn’t hear we were expecting a meteor shower. Must have been a huge one.”
He glanced back at the truck, which was parked next to the hole.
“Don’t know how it happened,” I lied.
George grinned.
Chapter 3
Word For The Day
MACHINATIONS (MAK uh NA shuns) n.
An artful or secret plot or scheme, especially
one with evil intent.
IN THE U.P. WE take deer hunting serious. For most of us it isn’t sport, it’s survival. Of course, we make it fun. There’s the hunter’s ball at the beginning of the season, a banquet down at the senior citizen’s center on the last day of hunting season, and a few other events thrown in between. But we can’t afford to fill our freezers with sides of beef and slabs of pork, so instead we hunt and fish like our ancestors, and we count on dressing out at least two deer every season to see us through.
Little Donny still didn’t have his first one, and it was day three of hunting season. If things didn’t improve soon, I wouldn’t have venison through the winter. Even if he managed to get in a shot, I didn’t have a lot of confidence in his shooting ability after watching him target practice last year.
Target practicing is Tamarack County’s favorite hobby when we aren’t hunting. I’ve never been a hunter—can’t stand seeing an animal dying right before my eyes—but I love target practice. Little Donny’s shooting problem exists because he doesn’t show up until hunting season begins, and since target practicing during hunting season will make your neighbors want to hang you in the garage instead of a deer, we can’t work on getting him in shooting shape. I bet Little Donny hasn’t fired his rifle since last summer.