The fellows left me standing there, bent over, wheezing, and took off like a herd of buffaloes to the swimming area. Even the boys. None of them had ever discovered a dead body before and I guess they were curious.
Me? The minute I caught my breath, my stomach decided it was its turn to act up and I had to throw up awhile. Then the shock of everything gave me a sudden case of the trots and I just managed to get to the outhouse in time. Sat there shivering and crying and just a mess. Truth be told, I was glad all the men and boys had left me stranded. It would have been plumb embarrassing if one of ‘em had stayed behind to try to help me.
I managed to get myself to my cabin, stripped off my old, wet, bathing suit, got my flannel nightie on, and climbed into bed. I didn’t exactly pull the covers over my head, but I came a one of doing it. I just wanted to shut out the world. Ella was up at the kitchen putting supper together by then and I figured she’d just have to take care of things without me. I weren’t up to no cooking. I weren’t up to nothing at all. I just lay there hoping the trots didn’t start up again.
When they didn’t, I calmed down and started putting my mind to work wondering who it was I bumped into out there in that lake.
The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to go back home to my little house. It really, really don’t pay to travel far, far from home.
Soon, Reverend Jimmy Bell came back from the lake. He came a’knockin at my door and he had Ella with him. Supper got put on the back burner that night. Everyone was upset about what they’d found in the lake, and they was worried about me. Frankly, I was kinda worried about my own self.
Then Jimmy Bell told me that the dead body was Denny. Mr. Droopy Drawers himself! And him with five kids and a pregnant wife at home!
I didn’t like the man, but I didn’t want him dead. That shock brought on another bout of vomiting and trots. The Reverend high-tailed it out of there to get away from me and I was glad he did. I didn’t want to be that sick in front of some man even if he is my preacher, but Ella stayed with me and I didn’t mind that so much. She’s a comforting soul. We’ve been best friends since we were girls and the nice thing about being around Ella is when she looks at me or when I look at her, we still see the girls we used to be—in spite of the battle scars life tends to throw at you.
The boys and their dads had cereal for supper and it didn’t hurt ‘em one bit.
Police came, or whatever it is they’re called in Canada. Hard to tell what kinda name they use for police in a country that gives its pocket-change nicknames like Looney and Tooney and colors its paper money everything in the rainbow, like it was Monopoly money. Anyway, I had to talk to them cops. They spoke to me real careful, like I might be slow in the head. I realized after they left that I probably looked like a crazy lady with my hair all every which way, wearing my flannel nightie with the faded purple Irises. I hope I sounded like I had more sense than I must’ve looked like.
They wanted to know where, when, and how exactly I had found the body. After I’d answered all their questions, they went at me again asking the same ones. Well I knew what that was all about. I watch TV. I knew they thought I might trip up on some detail. I didn’t think anyone could actually suspect an old woman like me of murder, but I guess they see all kinds of people and after a while they start becoming suspicious of everyone.
Me? I just felt guilty because I hadn’t actually liked Denny much and now he was dead. It weren’t fair of me to dislike a person just because he wore his britches a little low for a grown man, or because he sat on the porch and talked a little longer than he oughta with the camp nurse. I’m a better Christian than that, truly I am, but sometimes I forget myself and think things that just aren’t all that kindly.
The police were real interested in the fact that me and Ella saw Mr. Haney a’waving his finger under the camp manager’s nose the day before. Reverend Bell told us later that they went and got Mr. Haney and brought him in to the local police office for questioning, too.
When we went to bed that night I was awful grateful to have Ella there in her bunk beside mine. We left a kerosene lamp burning all night long. Maybe it was wasteful, but I just couldn’t take sleeping in complete darkness that night.
A body forgets how dark it can get in the woods with no electric lights. Especially when it’s overcast and you can’t see the moon or stars. Especially when there is a killer on the loose. It could have been anybody. Even one of the men who came with us. Or one of the big boys we brought along. One thing for sure, though, at least that killer weren’t Ella. I’d stake my life on Ella not being capable of murder.
Unfortunately, our cabin sat just a few feet from the lake and there was that steady sound of the lake all night long. It went lap, lap, lap. And every now and then one of them loons would give out one of their lonesome, reedy calls, and all I could think about was that body floatin’ silently there beside me while I was swimming and splashing around thinking I was one with nature--like I didn’t have good sense. There’s only one way a person can truly be one with nature as far as I could see. To be dead and buried. That’s how you become one with nature and I weren’t anxious to do it.
I felt like I was nothing but a darned old fool. My biggest fear, though, was that no one would want to be my friend anymore since I seemed to keep finding dead bodies everywhere I go.
The next day, we had a meeting at breakfast and Reverend Jimmy Bell led us in prayer for wisdom to know what to do. None of us had much of a heart for working anymore. Denny hadn’t been as work brickle as I would have liked but he did kinda organize things and bring in supplies. I’d heard his motorboat coming across the lake so often bringing stuff we needed that I had gotten to where I didn’t notice it all that much. It was just a cheerful sound that blended in with all the other nice sounds around us.
Now, the whole little island suddenly felt ominous, which was a shame because it was such a pretty place.
Then, to make things even worse, it began to rain. And rain. The fellows played cards in the kitchen and kept us company. None of us much wanted to be alone right now. Ella got her book out again and started to read. I got out my crochet work. I didn’t feel like poking anyone with the needle anymore. In fact, I think I would have liked it if the Peterson boy had started up the beer bottle song again. Thinking back on that trip up there and how cheerful the boys had been, made me long for the good old days, five days earlier, when I hadn’t yet found a dead body floating in my bath water.
There weren’t no T.V. to take our minds off things. And there weren’t no radio to cheer us up neither. We just sat there in that camp dining room, listening to the rain hitting the tin roof, and the boys slapping down cards. Not gambling, mind you. Reverend Bell wouldn’t hear of that. (I think I told you I suspect him of having Baptist tendencies.) They just played any old kind of card game to pass the time.
I had never been so depressed in my life, but it was helpful to know everyone else was feeling about the same way. There we were, stuck on that island, not real sure what to do, and thinking there might be a murderer on that island with us. Our reservation for the Chi-Chi-Maun weren’t scheduled until the day after tomorrow so we couldn’t just up and leave.
I kept thinking about everything that had happened, trying to put something together in my head that made sense. Nothing did. I started going over everything in greater detail. Was there something I missed? Some little something that might shed some light on things?
The police motored out again. They didn’t know much more than when they started. Denny had been killed by a blunt object, they said. A blow to the head. I felt so sorry for his pregnant wife and them little kids of his.
Maybe he’d just had a bad fall somehow and ended up out there in the water, I suggested to the police. Maybe his shoes had been too slick.
He weren’t wearing any shoes, they said.
Shoes. There was something about shoes…
That’s when I remembered that one flip flop I’d found—the on
e that looked like it was made out of plastic snakeskin. I’d just tossed it into a bin they kept there at the swimming area for beach balls and floaty things before I went in the water. One plastic flip flop didn’t amount to much in the scheme of things except for one thing—it was where I’d found it. In the middle of the path. Just the one. It weren’t as though the nurse would have accidentally lost it and not realized it. No one walks along with just one flip-flop.
I didn’t know if it could be significant, but I told them about it. They asked me to come show them where I’d found it on the path, and I did, even though it was still raining. I remembered where it was because after picking it up, I looked up and saw the blue lake peeking at me through the trees. It had been close to the swimming dock. I hadn’t carried that flip-flop very far.
It turns out that the police had another problem. The nurse had family who lived nearby and they were starting to wonder where she was. We hadn’t wondered because we thought she was in Toronto. That’s where she said she was fixing to go to. Then we started all talking among ourselves and no one could remember taking her in one of the boats to the dock on the other side of the lake. There were only two motor boats, and she wouldn’t have taken one by herself and left it over there or we would have noticed. It was too far to swim unless someone was awful anxious for exercise and a strong swimmer. In all the excitement, we’d done gone and lost track of the camp nurse.
The police had already looked in all the cabins, to make sure there weren’t nothing amiss or anyone hiding out in one, but me and Ella hadn’t looked yet. Now, we took a gander inside the cabin the nurse had stayed in, and we was surprised to find out that she’d left everything behind. Everything. The cabin had clothes, bedroll, makeup--the whole works. Of course she might have left things there deliberate except for one thing….something we didn’t know about but the police did. She’d left her medication there and Ella found it and gave it to the police.
They didn’t tell us what the medicine was for, but Ella knew. She’d had a niece who’d had to take it for a while she told me—but she was ashamed when she did. The medicine was for one of them new social diseases that we never heard tell of back when we were kids.
I suppose it weren’t too unusual for a single woman to have a social disease in this day and age, but it was unusual for one to leave her medication behind and not come back for it. Or her cell phone. Or her purse.
Things weren’t adding up.
The rain had let up by then, and the police engaged our boys and men in doing a thorough sweep of the Slippery Slope peninsula--looking for anything that might tie in with the missing nurse. I did not participate. I stayed in my cabin. The way things were going for me, if there was anything to find, I’d be the one to find it. I’d made enough discoveries for one old woman in one lifetime. If there was something else out there to be found, I didn’t think my heart could take it.
Reverend Jimmy Bell was the one who saw it first, the shallow grave among the ferns. The dead woman was in it. People don’t slip and fall and hit their head and then dig themselves a grave. It was ruled a double homicide and before long our little peninsula camp was crawling with more police than I would have figured a nice, quiet place like Canada ever needed.
All work stopped, of course. Except for me and Ella. We ended up being the designated coffee brewers and sandwich makers. Reverend Jimmy Bell motored across the lake to go to the grocery store to get us some more bread and peanut butter, bless him.
The police finally found the murder weapon—it was nothing more than a croquet mallet taken from the athletic supply shack. I don’t know why there was a croquet mallet there since there weren’t hardly anyplace smooth enough to set up a croquet game, but I figured maybe it was donated by somebody who didn’t know any better.
The croquet mallet had blood and fingerprints on it. The fingerprints weren’t in the system, so we all had to be fingerprinted. They hurried up the matching process since we needed to leave the country soon—and we all got ruled out as the murderer thank goodness. Mr.Haney got released, even though he didn’t have any alibi for that night except he was at home alone watching a movie on the television and going over the camp books more carefully. He’d found several thousand dollars had been skimmed off the donations. This kinda made sense to me and explained the fact that the camp was in such bad repair. But why had Mr. Droopy Drawers done such a stupid thing?
We found out the answer a few hours before we were supposed to leave to get on the Chi-Chi-Maun. Denny and the nurse had done a whole lot more than chat with each other on the front porch, as it turned out. They’d started an affair the summer before, and had kept it up. He’d started skimming money from the camp fund and squirreling it away because they was planning to run away together in a few more months.
That plan had been ruined when Mr. Haney began to suspect about the money.
Unfortunately, Droopy Drawers’ wife had been suspicious ever since two days before when during her pregnancy checkup, she’d found herself with a certain disease and knew she hadn’t been the one doing the running around.
Pregnancy hormones can do strange things to a woman. It can make even a sweet-tempered girl awful angry, and evidently it can turn an angry woman into a murderer. Droopy Drawers had told her he needed to stay at the camp that night, and she suspected something was going on, so she got a babysitter and followed him. She was an island girl and knew her way around a canoe, which can be real silent in the right hands. Turns out she was a big girl, too, and strong from toting them five kids around. What with the adrenaline that anger gives a person, she was able to drag little Miss Short-Shorts’ body into the woods and cover it up with the loose earth you can always find in an old forest.
Instead of the little romantic get-together with his girlfriend he’d had planned, Droopy-Drawers met the end of a croquet mallet wielded by an angry wife.
Sometimes I’m real glad I ain’t never been married.
So now the grandma has the five kids to raise and the pregnant wife is sitting in jail, and Miss Short-Shorts…well, no one’s walking into trees over her anymore.
It’s all just a crying shame, is what I think.
I’m surely glad to be home. From what I can see, a lot of people are pretty much as crazy as them loons I spent a week listening to that week I was foolish enough to get on a church bus and drive all the way to Canada.
I better get this finished. The Peterson boy is coming over soon to mow my yard for me. He don’t have no grandma no more and he’s kinda taken a shine to me. I’m planning on baking some cookies for him. It won’t hurt me none, and it’ll make him feel special. Everybody needs a grandma to fuss over them every now and then.
It feels good to do something normal like bake cookies and get my yard mowed.
I’ll tell you one thing I know for sure. I ain’t planning to leave South Shore, Kentucky ever again. I don’t know if it’s me or just sheer bad luck, but terrible things seem to happen to people when Doreen Sizemore leaves town.
Oh. And for your information, I burnt that old bathing suit. I’ve swum enough for one lifetime. This last time in the water just about killed me. Nope. I don’t have no desire left to go splashing around in a bunch of water again. Can’t tell what you might find.
Also by Serena B Miller
The Doreen Sizemore Adventures
Murder On The Texas Eagle (Book 1)
Murder At The Buckstaff Bathhouse (Book 2)
Murder At Slippery Slop Youth Camp (Book 3)
Murder On The Mississippi Queen (Book 4)
Murder On The Mystery Mansion (Book 5)
The Accidental Adventures of Doreen Sizemore (5 Book Collection)
Love’s Journey Series
Love’s Journey in Sugarcreek: The Sugar Haus Inn (Book 1)
Love’s Journey in Sugarcreek: Rachel’s Rescue (Book 2)
Michigan Northwoods Historical Romance
The Measure of Katie Calloway (Book 1)
Under a Blackber
ry Moon (Book 2)
A Promise to Love (Book 3)
Uncommon Grace Series
An Uncommon Grace (Book 1)
Hidden Mercies (Book 2)
Fearless Hope (Book 3)
Uncategorized
A Way of Escape
More Than Happy: The Wisdom of Amish Parenting
About the Author
Serena B. Miller lives in Ohio, near the largest Old Amish settlement in the world. Her fascination with this culture led to her first published book, Love’s Journey in Sugarcreek: The Sugar Haus Inn which became the basis for the award-winning movie, Love Finds You In Sugarcreek starring Kelly McGillis, Tom Evert Scott, and Sara Lancaster. A movie based on her second Amish novel, An Uncommon Grace, was recently filmed for the Hallmark Channel. In addition to her Amish books, she's written a lumber camp historical series which includes, The Measure of Katie Calloway, which won the RITA award for inspirational fiction, A Promise to Love, which won American Christian Fiction CAROL award for best historical fiction, and Under a Blackberry Moon, which was a finalist for the CHRISTY AWARD. Before writing full-length novels, Serena worked as a court reporter in Detroit, Michigan while writing numerous articles for periodicals such as Woman's World, Guideposts, Reader's Digest, Focus on the Family, Christian Woman, and more.
For more information:
@serenabmiller
AuthorSerenaMiller
SerenaBMiller.com
Murder At Slippery Slope Youth Camp Page 3
