by Sandra Balzo
I shivered in my thin T-shirt, wishing I could wave a wand and magically dry my soaked Columbia jacket. Caron and I had decided not to take up precious storage space with a washing machine and dryer for towels, but the dryer portion sure would have come in handy now.
In fact, I’d be tempted to hop right in there with the jacket. Not that the generator had enough juice to power such a thing. It was barely keeping the lights on.
Moving carefully to my right, I concurred with Mrs G. It was spooky in the dim hallway, especially with the sounds and sights of the storm emanating from the open door just twenty feet away like something out of The Twilight Zone.
Storms involving thundersnow sound differently than regular electrical ones. The falling snow muffles the thunder and the low clouds seem to hold the sound close, usually creating more of a long, menacing growl than a sharp crack.
As I got to the door and reached for the handle to pull it closed, the lightning strobed above. I stopped to look at the way the bolts, which I couldn’t see, reflected off the clouds. First here, then there, then back here, then over there. It reminded me of the scene in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when the alien space ship is hovering above the clouds before making itself visible.
‘Dum dum dum, hoo-hah.’ I was trying to recreate the musical tones from the film, the ones the scientists played to invite the ship to land. When hummed into the teeth of a raging storm, however, the sequence of notes turned out sounding...well, just plain ‘dum’.
Anxious to get back inside Uncommon Grounds and warm - not to mention safe from extraterrestrial life forms - I tugged on the door handle to close it. The thing wouldn’t budge.
Of course. There had to be snow in the way. I tried to clear it with my foot, but it was frozen slush and awfully heavy. I needed a shovel, but I didn’t see one in the hallway.
As the light show continued to flash above, I looked to the far right and caught sight of the big John Deere snow-blower. I didn’t know how to run the monstrosity, but lying in front of it was what looked like a half-buried shovel. Good thing the John Deere hadn’t run into it, the collision between the auger - the blade that goes around and chops up the snow - and the shovel probably would have been the end of both.
I tugged again at the door. Damn. Much as I hated to shovel, I’d left the door open and that made it my responsibility to get the thing closed to keep in what was left of our heat.
Trying to stay as dry as possible, I gingerly took a step toward the shovel and sank to my knees in snow. Well, no need to be careful anymore. Best to get out and back fast, the five-second rule on dropping food onto your kitchen floor, but now applied to avoiding frostbite.
I waded to the shovel and gave it a pull. I could barely see in front of me, but I stubbed my toe on something hard. Probably the scoop of the shovel buried under the heavily packed snow. I gave another yank, and it gave a bit.
But just a bit.
This was ridiculous. I was soaked up to my waist, but I wasn’t going to leave without that damn shovel. Sort of a sword-in-the-stone thing.
My hands were frozen and the handle was slippery. As I leaned down to get a better grip, the lightning above me lit the snow at my feet.
Screaming, I toppled onto my butt, making an impromptu snow angel. Then I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could, wiping my hand on my jeans.
What I had thought was the end of a shovel nearly buried in the snow was instead the handle of something like a hatchet or cleaver.
Buried in Way Benson’s back.
It wasn’t that, though, nor the blood on my hands, that made me scream. I’d seen more than one body. Even held a grisly murder weapon or two.
No, what scared the shit out of me was the red sunburst around what little was left of our landlord’s head.
Chapter 9
Back in Uncommon Grounds, Caron was the first to offer a theory. ‘Maybe the snow-blower’s auger got stuck and Way tried to clear it?’
‘With his head?’ Sarah snarled. She was pouring bottled water over my hands so I could wash them, the emergency generator no longer up to the task of keeping the pump running and our plumbing working.
For my part, I was trying not to gag, either at the cooling, sticky blood remaining on my hands or the image of Way, his head blown open like a surreal chrysanthemum blossom on the lean stem of his body.
‘You’re sure it’s Way Benson?’ Caron asked me. ‘You could be wrong, right?’
‘Wrong,’ I said, flatly. ‘Unless there’s another six-foot-four Clint Eastwood look-alike running around with “Aurora” tattooed on the back of his neck.’
‘Or not running around,’ Sarah contributed dryly, capping the bottle of water.
We’d left Way out there because I knew that’s what Sheriff Jake Pavlik would want: preservation of a crime scene. Still, it seemed wrong. Still, yet, though, I sure as hell wasn’t touching him again.
When I’d screamed, Caron and Sarah had come running, followed by Rudy Fischer and Naomi Verdeaux.
After the requisite gasping and gaping, I’d gotten hold of myself and told Rudy and Verdeaux to find Aurora and tell her what we’d found. I thought she should be the one who broke the news about Way to Oliver, who, after all, was still their son. I also asked my messengers to round up anyone else still stranded in the mall and have them gather at our coffee shop.
To be honest, though, I wasn’t sure if I was rounding up the ‘usual’ suspects or circling the wagons of potential victims.
Most likely, it was neither. I’d simply seen too many movies.
‘Sarah’s right,’ I finally managed, drying my hands a little too vigorously with a paper towel. ‘Way didn’t get his head accidentally stuck in the snow-blower, any more than he stabbed himself with...whatever he has sticking out of his back.’
My words were punctuated by a rumble of thunder. Under the circumstances, more ominous than usual.
Caron giggled, a little hysterically, I thought. ‘Our own sound effects.’ She began reciting, ‘“It was a dark and stormy night―”’
‘Not to mention goddamned cold and snowing,’ Sarah interrupted. ‘We won’t be out of here until spring.’
‘This is spring,’ I reminded her. ‘But I see your point. I can’t imagine we’ll be able to leave the mall tonight. It’s already getting dark - night dark, not just snow dark.’
Six o’clock had come and gone with no sign of Pavlik. Not that I really expected him, given the weather and his myriad responsibilities in an emergency. Even calling me was out, since the phones - including the cellulars - were, as Jacque put it, ‘dead’.
Join the club.
‘We might as well face it,’ I said with a sigh, ‘we’re stuck here until someone plows us out.’
Sarah had been studying me. ‘You’re as happy as a pig in shit, aren’t you?’
‘About what?’
‘Another murder, but this one all to yourself.’
That was unfair, I thought. ‘It’s not like I go looking.’
‘You don’t have to. They come to you.’
‘Death Makes a House Call.’ Caron was still chuckling. ‘It could be a movie.’
Caron has always had peculiar ways of dealing with stress. I try not to judge, but it ain’t easy.
Loud voices from the service hallway signaled the troops were gathering. I stepped out into the corridor. I knew everyone would want to see, but I needed to make sure Pavlik’s crime scene stayed intact.
Aurora led the way toward me, with Mrs Goddard, Naomi Verdeaux and Rudy in single file behind her. There was no conversation amongst them that I could hear. Trailing were Luc and Tien Romano, the father/daughter team who owned An’s Foods. Unlike the other four, Luc and Tien were walking next to each other, talking softly, even reverently.
Tien Romano’s name reflected her looks and ethnic heritage, just as her father’s reflected his. Tien was a beautiful mix of her Italian -American father and An, her Vietnamese mother.
I knew that Luc and An had met when Luc was stationed in Saigon during the Vietnam War. An was dead when I’d met Luc, but I knew from her picture, displayed in a position of honor above the cash register, that Tien had gotten the best of both her parent’s worlds: complexion and facial features from her mother, thick, curly hair from her father. Finally, while the tilt of Tien’s eyes was An’s, their hazel color was Luc’s.
In short, Tien was a beautiful woman and I’d caught myself wondering why she still hadn’t ‘found someone’.
Then I internally slapped myself upside the head.
Why did a woman have to be with a man to be fulfilled? God knows that marriage to Ted hadn’t been so ‘ful’.
When Aurora reached me, I laid a hand on her shoulder. I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I knew that despite my divorce and his betrayals, I would feel awful if something happened to Ted, both for myself and for Eric.
I wasn’t sure what Aurora’s reaction was going to be. By the look on her face, she didn’t either.
I settled for: ‘I’m sorry, Aurora. Have you been able to find Oliver?’
She shook her head. ‘Where is he?’
I sensed that she wasn’t talking about her son. ‘In the back parking lot, just to the right of the service door.’
As Aurora moved forward, I cleared my throat. ‘It’s pretty bad. Are you sure...are you sure that you want to?’
She met my eyes. ‘Either I see him now or I imagine what it looked like for the rest of my life. I guess I prefer the known to the unknown.’
Having seen Way in the flesh, or what was left of it, I wasn’t so sure Aurora would continue to feel that way. But I understood, nonetheless. I’d probably have decided to do the same, against all advice.
Aurora opened the door and stepped out. The others followed and looked around questioningly, mostly at me.
I pointed.
In the short time since I’d found the body, an amazing amount of additional snow had fallen. The blanket of flakes I’d dislodged when I pulled on the ‘shovel’, was nearly replenished. Using the John Deere as my signpost, I led the group toward Way’s body.
The blood spray was still discernible, the warm blood melting the snow under it, creating an almost embossed effect.
Aurora put her hand to her mouth and for a second I thought she was going to be sick. As I moved forward, though, she waved me off.
‘Do you have any idea what happened?’ Her voice sounded calm. Or maybe the tone of shock.
I decided straight answers - what I had of them - were best.
‘There’s something stuck in his back. You can see the handle...there.’ I pointed. ‘I think someone may have come up behind him when he was snow-blowing and attacked him. Then, when he fell―’
‘He went under the auger of the snow-blower?’ This last was from Oliver, who had pushed his way to the front of our group. Apparently, the boy had finally arrived to help his father. A bit late.
Oliver was always pale from too much time spent inside, but he looked even more so now in contrast to the green-plaid flannel shirt he wore. As he looked down at the body of a parent who’d pretty much ignored him, his face took on the same cast of his shirt.
I wasn’t sure what to say, but that was probably best left to Aurora, anyway. Until I noticed that she hadn’t so much as glanced at her son.
Accordingly, I answered Oliver’s question like I’d answered his mother’s: the best I could. ‘I don’t know, but it’s possible.’
Since the John Deere was positioned with its auger-end toward Way’s head, his son’s assumption seemed logical. My only question was whether our landlord fell or was pushed forcibly enough to land under the spinning blade.
‘What’s that in his back?’ Rudy said, stepping to the front of us.
The whole group was getting closer and closer, one person maneuvering past another like a game of cautious, macabre leapfrog. I strode back into the lead and held up my hands.
Jacque, whom I hadn’t seen arrive, peered around me. ‘I believe it to be a cleaver, for the cutting of meat and bone.’
Nauseatingly put, but I had to admit it had looked like a cleaver to me, too. Since Luc Romano had been a butcher by trade, though, I didn’t want people speculating. That was my job.
Besides, something told me you could chop heads off fish with a cleaver, too. ‘I thought you’d left,’ I said, irritably, to Jacque Oui.
‘I go around the corner to the pharmacy. There they have the flashlights and the batteries.’
‘And radios.’ Mrs G held up a banana-yellow transistor model that certainly went for at least fifty bucks when I was a kid and now probably could be had for more like a buck fifty. Burgeoning technology - the antidote to inflation. Unless, of course, you wanted new technology. I understood you could get an eight-track player for pennies on eBay. With cartridges.
Mrs G twisted the radio’s dial. ‘...calling this bizarre spring snowfall the storm of the century. All of Milwaukee County and Brookhills County services are shut down and people are being ordered to stay off the streets. Electricity is out in a wide area covering western Milwaukee and eastern Brookhills and crews are not expected to be able to reach the downed lines until the snow stops. That, we’re told, may not be before tomorrow morning. When all is said and done, certain sectors will have received up to three feet of snow.’
Holy shit.
I looked down at my knees. A good eighteen inches was soaking through my jeans already. Preoccupied with Way’s murder and people’s reaction to it, I hadn’t really felt the cold. Now I looked around and saw that Oliver’s lips were blue and trembling as he hugged himself for warmth. Even as I thought it, Mrs G came over to add her body heat to his.
Only she didn’t look any warmer and suddenly I was freezing, too. ‘OK, there’s no reason to stay out here. We can talk about this just as well inside where it’s warm.’
‘Or at least warmer,’ Tien said, rubbing her arms.
Tien managed the store for her father, who ran the meat department. There, meat cleavers hung like the animals they butchered from fixtures on the wall. Thing was, though, Luc had been selling off his equipment, including the cutting tools. Anyone could have one.
‘Didn’t you buy a set of knives from Luc?’ I asked Caron as we moved inside. ‘They have those rough, wooden handles, right? Like all knives and cleavers used to have?’
‘Like the cleaver in Way’s back?’ Caron shook her head disgustedly. ‘As a favor between friends, could we get sucked into just one murder where you don’t suspect me?’
Luc caught up to us as I pulled open the door to Uncommon Grounds. A good-natured guy, Luc came by his trade naturally. His mother had owned a deli throughout his childhood and he’d continued the tradition with An’s. He was a teddy bear of a guy, though this teddy bear still had the muscles.
Luc had built them back when he was in the service and maintained them in the years since by whacking meat at the butcher counter. I refused to believe he was whacking anything else anywhere else.
‘Maggy,’ Luc said now, ‘Gloria has a wood-burning stove in the corner of the pharmacy and we managed to get it going before we heard about Way. I think we should all move in there for warmth.’ He hesitated. ‘And besides, maybe it would be a good idea to put some distance between us and -’ he gestured toward the outside door - ‘that.’
‘Good idea.’ Not only for Aurora and Oliver, but for everyone else as well. For the first time, I thought about Naomi Verdeaux. Aurora might be Way’s ex-wife, but Verdeaux was Way’s current...whatever.
I tried to view Verdeaux sympathetically. For about ten seconds and then gave up. I had a lot of trouble generating any emotional connection with the bitch who was going to destroy not only Uncommon Grounds, but the other stores in the mall as well. Not that Way was blameless. Maybe his double-dealing was the reason I was able to - despite the horror of it all - separate myself from the man’s murder.
I wanted to know who killed our landlord - n
ot because of Way, himself, but because of the people who would be affected by his death. Oliver. Aurora. And...well, I wasn’t sure how many more would be affected negatively. Would Way’s death save the mall? I wasn’t sure of that, either. Worse, I didn’t know if I wanted to be sure.
‘Maggy?’
I started. Luc stood waiting.
‘Sorry,’ I said, closing the door to Uncommon Grounds. ‘I was thinking about what I could bring over food-wise, to share. We should have muffins left over from breakfast and maybe―’
But Luc waved me to calm down. ‘Don’t bother. Gloria has the lunch counter and I’m right next door with plenty of food.’ His eyes darkened. ‘In fact, it’ll be a good way to clear out some of our stock.’
‘Are you looking at space for another store?’ Sarah had come up behind us. ‘There’s a new shopping plaza going in near Poplar Creek. I’m sure they’d love to have An’s as a tenant.’ She looked at me. ‘And Uncommon Grounds.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but the scuttlebutt is that Poplar Creek already has a Starbucks signed on.’
‘Where’d you hear that?’ Sarah was obviously affronted at the thought that something could go on in the Brookhills real-estate realm without her knowing about it.
‘Amy’s my source,’ I said. ‘And you have to be aware that she’s aware of all things coffee.’
There was no arguing with that, even from Sarah. She did, however, start patting her pockets, reflexively looking for a smoke.
‘C’mon,’ I said to my friend. ‘We’re going to Goddard’s. Gloria has a wood stove.’
Sarah didn’t look all that interested in a stove, wood or otherwise. ‘I’m going to talk to Rudy. He’ll know what building permits have been approved.’
‘Only up to the election last month,’ I called after her as she strode ahead of us.
Sarah ignored me and I turned to Luc. ‘Sooo, you were saying you might open where?’
