The Rampant Reaper

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Gentle Oaks, may I remind you gentlemen, is the only full-occupancy business in the county. And it thrives on more than cheap labor. It thrives on my good head for business.”

  “Charlie says that makes you a bad actor,” the marshal offered.

  “Even with a good supply of cheap labor, I don’t see how you can make money at this,” Charlie said. “I don’t see how you can make money with Viagra’s or The Station either. Look, it’s noon. There’s hardly anybody here.”

  “Ahh,” intoned Mr. Rochester, “the staff at The Station does the cooking for Gentle Oaks as well. Food is transported in a van on trays in specially warmed or cooled shelf containers. And food is even cheaper than labor here. Small gold mine is what it is. Long-term care is an industry that far outdoes soybeans in Northern Iowa now. And once the poor old souls have spent down all their money, we plug them into Medicaid, which in Myrtle can pay for years of caregiving and Depends and make a profit, too. The Station is also cheaply staffed and can keep people permanently employed thanks to Gentle Oaks, Myrtle’s curse, and Medicaid. Sweet deal all around.”

  “I grind my own beans,” Kenny teased. “Keep them in the freezer before that. Import them. They’re top dollar, too.”

  “You sure you don’t have a grand piano in your living room?” Charlie asked Harvey and wrapped the tomato and onion in the leaf lettuce, topped it with a ketchuped fry and pushed the rest away as she had the beer.

  “Cross my heart. But, my dear, that throaty voice of yours is about to convince me to go out and purchase one shortly.”

  Kenny made shooshing noises, like he was steaming milk. “Even grate my own nutmeg nuts.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t a natural death, you’d expect someone had just taken a pillow and held it over her head until she suffocated. Probably two someones. The bed was well-rumpled, which could mean either a struggle with death, with a murderer, or she was a restless sleeper. She was dressed in nothing but her diapers. Let me see, my writers—who are nearly as crazy as the inmates of Gentle Oaks—would probably deduce from those facts, and that her arms were lying crossed on her stomach, that another person was pinning her down across her middle to keep her from struggling with the person holding the pillow. That better be a damn good latté, Cowper.”

  It was marvelous—just what she needed. Hers came first, and soon Harvey, Edwina, and the proprietor were each having one, too.

  But everyone, including her mother, seemed to have gone into some kind of shock. The marshal, who was having just a cup of plain coffee, sat writing down what she’d said, reading it back to her to be sure it was right.

  “Oh, come on. That was all just conjecture. My guess is she just up and died on her own. And, Del—you have a cellular but not a Palm Pilot to document evidence?”

  “You come up with all that just by looking at a dead body you can’t touch? A person you don’t know anything about?” Kenny pretended to be really impressed.

  “So what do you suggest we do?” Harvey Rochester had turned ashen.

  “I don’t know. Don’t let anybody wash any pillowcases? There might be some kind of bodily fluid coughed up in the struggle.”

  “Call the Oaks,” Rochester ordered Marshal Brunsvold, and the two departed without finishing their coffees.

  “Is this place weird or what?” Charlie asked her mother.

  “You don’t realize how convincing you can be, Charlie.”

  “Why a pillow?” Kenny chewed on a cold french fry.

  “Well, something like a pillow then. Used to be you couldn’t get much in the way of fingerprints off a pillow—now you might get the killer’s DNA. I had a writer once who used cotton stuffed up the nose and down the throat of a victim, but that left shards or traces of cotton on the victim that the famous TV detective ID’d with cotton wads found at the perp’s home. Hey, this is all fiction. The coroner will know what to do.”

  “He has to depend on the first cop to reach the crime scene to secure it, right?” Kenny winked.

  “Marshal Del.” Oh, boy.

  And on that note, Uncle Elmo Staudt staggered in, a layer of snow on his cap and the shoulders of his coat. “Am I glad to see you gals. It’s gettin’ bad out there and I was worried you got lost.”

  Their host seated Uncle Elmo in his chair, presented him with a stein of his own and a promise of fries and a hamburger on the way and then seated himself beside Edwina. “So what’s the news at the Sinclair?”

  “Well, this front’s moved in faster than they thought with the ice already and now snow to cover it, so if you plow off the snow, you leave the slippery ice exposed. If you don’t, nobody sees the ice under the snow and goes into the ditch. But the real story is about my sister dying up at the Oaks. Helen’s really going to be hell to live with now. Talk is, it was murder and maybe my aunts, too. But know what I think now? Anybody was going to murder anybody around here, they’d of started with old Abigail.”

  “But she’s not up at Gentle Oaks,” Charlie pointed out. “Does this front mean we’ll have trouble getting to Mason City tonight?”

  “Hell, we’ll have trouble getting back to the home place. Mason City airport’s closed down. Minneapolis, too. Ain’t anybody going nowhere until tomorrow at the earliest. Not that unusual for winter. Been mild a lot longer than anybody thought it would.”

  “Looks like you have no reason to avoid investigating the deaths at Gentle Oaks, doesn’t it?” Kenny Cowper sounded smug, like he’d conjured up the storm for his own entertainment. “Soon as we have Elmo settled with his food, I know exactly where you should start, too.”

  CHAPTER 16

  IF CHARLIE HAD thought the ambiance of Myrtle, Iowa, dark and gloomy in the wake of rain and sleet this morning, she didn’t know dark and gloomy. They left Uncle Elmo describing the collapse of his barn to Ben the watchman and stepped out into so thick a snowfall the snow wasn’t white.

  “You got chains for that rental?” Kenny pointed to the lone morbid mound at the curb. “I’ll check it before you try to take off.” He looked like some kind of a god himself when he raised his arms to the totally invisible heavens and said, “God, I missed this in Florida. Got me a new snowmobile out back all ready to go.”

  If he was a god, he was a nutty one. All Charlie could think of was another night at the home place and missing the plane out in the morning. “I better call the office.”

  She rummaged through her purse, only to find her cellular missing. If she could get any lower, she didn’t know how.

  “We’ll use the phone back at Viagra’s.” Edwina sounded low, too. “You probably left your cell out at the farm.”

  Kenny unlocked a door two or three down from Viagra’s and ushered them into a darker, colder, danker place than outside, switching on some wall switches to display the Myrtle Museum.

  “Used to be a drugstore,” he explained the marble-topped soda-fountain bar and narrow, wire-legged stools of one display.

  Edwina ran a finger through the dust. “Used to be a real soda fountain. I liked the black cows best. Sort of like a chocolate sundae with cashews on top, served in a tall Coke glass.”

  “Did you ever dress like that?” Charlie pointed to a red-lipped woman with a Coke bottle in one hand and hair tied up in a scarf with the knot on top.

  “That was more my mother’s era.”

  “Lots of generations of stuff here,” Kenny said. “Only place in town we keep locked because of marauding collectors and the thieves who sell to them.”

  There was an old post-office display, wood-burning cook-stoves, an ice box, quilts and clothing and carpentry and cooking implements. And a large upright tank sort of thing with tube coils, a spigot, and, perched on top like the Tin Man’s hat, the largest funnel she’d ever seen. “Is that a still?”

  “Nah, used to make molasses.”

  “That is a still. Where’d it come from?”

  “Arly Truex’s fruit cellar, actually.” Kenny opened an old photo album on top of a glass display case
that had come from Marlys Dittberner’s grocery store on the corner. He lit a gas lantern, kept for the purpose apparently, so Charlie and Edwina could look into the past. Even on a sunny day with the place on fire, this old stone building would be dark.

  “Cousin Helen’s family had a still in their fruit cellar?”

  “Lots of people collect antiques. End up giving them to museums.”

  On the first page of the album was a daguerreotype of poor Myrtle’s tombstone, the space between her name and birth dates blacked out or a very precise piece of damage to the picture. “Was there originally a family name on that stone?”

  “Beats me,” Kenny said, turning the page. “It’s all a mystery I don’t remember hearing much about as a boy growing up here.”

  “Just hints and innuendos.”

  “Yeah, if it’s important, it’s not discussed. Gonna make your investigation tough, Charlie Greene.”

  I’m not investigating, you gorgeous jerk. “How come you and I and my daughter and Harvey and Marlys all have the same color eyes?”

  “We must have a common ancestor? A prolific one. Those eyes show up in about twenty percent of the population around here.”

  “Myrtle. I saw that painting above Abigail’s fireplace. No bunch of old-guy farmers that long ago would have bothered to have a portrait painted of an ugly daughter they intended to enslave as a spinster caregiver. And why name the town after a poor soul like her? This legend doesn’t wash, barkeep.”

  Kenny turned another page to reveal a formal and crowded family daguerreotype. Inked in underneath, in perfect flowing handwriting at odds with the stiff image, was the caption explaining—FATHER, MOTHER, AND THE SIX LIVING CHILDREN. It was sort of a black-and-brown picture, the eye colors indistinct. But on the opposing page was a small, single picture of a young woman in a tidy little hat tied under her chin, big expectant eyes that could have been dark, and hair that was obviously blond or gray or colorless. The flowery caption beneath that read MYRTLE.

  “That’s not the ugly Myrtle in Great-aunt Abigail’s painting.”

  “Abigail fancied herself as an artist at one time.”

  “The Victorian penchant for revising history.” Edwina looked up over Charlie at Kenny Cowper, the lantern on the display case hissing and flickering shadows across her face and the bare brick wall behind her. “I sure hope those people meant well, because they screwed up more history, science, society, medicine, government—you name it—with their pretend facts. And we accuse communists and dictators of doing that now.”

  “And don’t forget families.” Kenny had bent to look into Edwina’s eyes, Charlie knew, because she could feel his breath in the hair on top of her head. She hated when men did that. “They screw up families, too. Whole little towns full of families.”

  “How did that still survive the purge?” Charlie wanted to know.

  “Old Abigail doesn’t get down to the museum anymore.” He turned another page to another huge family caption here was THE STAUDTS. And on the opposing page were two little girls and a baby ANNABEL, GERTRUDE, AND ABIGAIL. Abigail was the baby. “Although she gets out and about more than she lets on. Ben walks her to church and up to visit at the Oaks in nice weather. Neighbors drive her in bad.”

  Charlie asked her mom why Libby’s middle name was Abigail. Charlie had chosen the first and consented to Edwina’s choice of the middle.

  “I don’t know whether I thought I was getting even with you for deciding to keep the baby or if I thought it would make her pure and chaste or a combination of the two. Or maybe the name was forever burned into my psyche.”

  Del Brunsvold stuck his head in the door, a cold eddy of wind and snowflakes swirling past him. Charlie’s feet were so cold already she could barely feel them. “Got to get the Greenes up to the Oaks, Kenny. Can you get their rental off Main Street?”

  “Oh, Jesus, I forgot. He’s going to plow. We’re talking massive destruction here.” Kenny closed the album. “More later, ladies—sorry, women. When the marshal plows, even stray dogs, drunks, and Marlys Dittberner get off the streets.”

  Marshal Sweetie’s Cherokee gunned, skidded, tossed snow to either side like a TV commercial for dud dudes. Charlie didn’t even want to think about what he and that really big dump truck with the blade on the front did to anything hapless caught on Myrtle’s streets in a blizzard. And a blizzard it was.

  “Yell if you see a tree coming up too fast in the middle of the road—means we’re not in the middle of the road.”

  “How can you even tell where we are?”

  “We just crossed the tracks, so we’re headed in the right direction.” Delwood was obviously elated—imagine getting high on the kind of snow that melts in the sun.

  The coroner had not been able to make it to the Oaks today, partially, Del guessed, because of the roads, the accidents, and perhaps other suspicious deaths in Floyd County. Phone lines were down and cellular communication intermittent. So Harvey the boss decided the marshal should bring in the only investigator he had on hand at the moment and plow a path for food and staff to get to and from. And, Charlie suspected, keep the marshal as far away from the crime scene as possible. “There’s the gate. Don’t hit the wall.”

  The only good reason to go to Gentle Oaks Charlie could think of was that it was kept very warm and maybe she could thaw her feet out. Her boots were dress boots, not mukluks. And the longer she could stay away from the drafty home place, the better.

  “Tree, tree!” Edwina shouted, and the marshal set the brakes so the Jeep just skidded into an oak trunk—so big none of the branches showed down out of the weather—instead of smashing into it. “Charlie, don’t freak on us now.”

  “I’m okay. But how do we get back to the farm in all this?”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take you out there on our snowmobiles. It’ll be a blast, a glorious blast.” He gunned and rocked and backed and forwarded until they were presumably on the drive again.

  “I can hardly wait.”

  Sure enough, some lights wavered ahead in the drifting snow that hammered them when they dashed from the red Cherokee to the porch of Gentle Oaks. You couldn’t even see the branches of trees above here either, but Charlie could see them from memory, feel them. If you believed in the archaic hippy culture’s “vibes,” this place simply did not have good ones. Period.

  Well, what do you expect? It’s filled with dying people who don’t die.

  “Until recently.”

  “Until what recently?” Mr. Rochester met them at the door.

  “She talks to herself,” Edwina explained.

  Harvey ordered the marshal to get on with his plowing and be back here in time to help transfer one shift of employees to homes here in town where the last shift was now resting and bring the resting shift in. “There’ll be no going and coming except from here in town. We do, however, have a plethora of insanely eager volunteers with snowmobiles to help with the shuffling duties. But I must get staff to The Station to cook supper for these lost souls and transport it here, as well as breakfast in the morning. Going to be a long day and night. Meanwhile, ladies, step inside and please try not to murder our beloved and insufferable administrator.”

  The place really bustled now that no one could go home. The dining room was half filled with people playing music in one corner and people helping inmates cut out snowflakes in another. The staff kept looking up at the large TV, where the Munchkins danced around Judy Garland and Toto. Marlys Dittberner, supposedly well over a hundred years old, skipped around tables like a fifty-year-old, making Munchkin sounds, grabbed the dusty eyeglasses right off some lady’s face, and danced out of the room singing, “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz, because, because, because—”

  The imprisoned employees continued their duties but with waning cheerfulness, except for Darla Lempke, who led a chorus of wheelchair-bound zombies in a song that only she was singing—joyfully—like she was blind to her drooling, snoring, confused, mostly s
ilent, and largely toothless choir.

  Just beyond the dining room, which Harvey explained was the activity center between meals, they came to another wing of rooms where a woman’s voice groaned and cried out over the blaring TV in her room with monotonous heartrending repetition, “It’s so-o-o haarrrd to be alive … nowww.”

  “How do you keep from going crazy here?”

  “Ahh, my dear, the world is crazy, but the answers to it all may lie at Gentle Oaks,” intoned the mover and shaker of Myrtle. “Now here is the crime scene again, perhaps not as pleasant as this morning, and here are all the pillowcases I saved from the laundry. Two thirds of them have some sort of fluid on them. What do I do? This isn’t going to work, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps if you got a better look at the deceased? I don’t know when the coroner will get here. Meanwhile, we’ve had to move Ida Mae’s roommate out. Can you help me, Ms. Greene? I know you are not a professional crime-scene investigator, but things deteriorate fast.”

  “I will deny anything you see me do or hear me say. But I’ll look her over and then she should be outside in the deep freeze. You can take all credit or blame for whatever I tell you I notice in the next few minutes.”

  “Deal. Hurry.”

  “Okay. Hard to tell the time of death because this place is kept so warm.”

  “Drives the staff insane, but these frail people are always cold.”

  “Right. There is a definite odor of death here and some obvious rigor has set in, blood settled on the bottom of her considerable bottom—that’s the bruising, some here on her stomach as well. I thought everybody lost weight here.”

  “She has. You wouldn’t believe how huge she was in her past life.”

  Charlie lifted both of Ida Mae’s eyelids, even the one that had not been completely lowered the last time she was in here. Since then, someone had taken care of it again. “Clouded corneas. I estimate she expired last night probably before midnight and while the full moon raged. I see no signs of entry or exit wounds or bruising on the neck that would indicate murder by stabbing, shooting, or choking. No outward signs of poisoning. The bedclothes have been straightened up since this morning—which could mean a demented inmate—”