Totally Buzzed (A Miller Sisters Mystery)

by Gale Borger

  Gale Borger

  Totally Buzzed

  TOTALLY BUZZED

  An Echelon Press Book

  First Echelon Press paperback printing / 2010

  All rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2010 by Gale Borger

  Cover Art © Nathalie Moore

  Echelon Press

  9055 G Thamesmeade Road

  Laurel, MD 20723

  www.echelonpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Echelon Press LLC.

  eBook 978-1-59080-957-0

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To the loves of my life, Bob and Shannon.

  I couldn't have done it without you.

  Without the love and support from the real Bill-n-Gerry Show, I would not have had the background material to mold my characters. I love you both.I only wish you could have shared this with us, Dad.

  Big thanks go to Sadie Sullivan Greiner–the finest witch in the west. Thank you for your expertise and your friendship–you too, Froggie!

  Finally, huge thanks to Karen, Kat, and all the folks at Echelon Press for your hard work, and for holding my hand through the process.

  1

  "Okay Buzz, let's do it; rock, scissors, paper," my younger sister Fred said.

  I stood, hands on hips, staring at the open door to the crawlspace under our parents' farm house. "Rock, scissors, paper my butt, who do you think you are talking to? It stinks to high Heaven down there! You are not getting me under that house."

  "C'mon, rock, scissors, paper!" Fred shook her fist in the air–like that was going to convince me to do something as stupid as to play her little game.

  "C'mon now Buzz, we've always made major decisions this way. We can decide fairly and impartially who has to go under the house, get the lamp, and drag out whatever died down there. I promised Mom." She wore that condescending look that never failed to piss me off, as if she were conversing with a foreign, slow child.

  I felt my blood pressure rising. "Impartiality my ass, you cheat. I never did know how, but I know you cheat. If you think Mom's ugly old floor lamp is under there, you go. No way are you getting me under that house!"

  I sniffed, confirming that it reeked under there. "I can smell something rotten in Denmark."

  I bent to look in the black hole. "Oooo, looks like some big hairy spiders are waiting for you Fred."

  Her face crumpled and her voice took on the nasty grating whine that told me she was getting desperate. "Aw geez Buzz, you know I have arachnophobia! I won't be able to breathe, I'll die down there! If I wasn't sure the lamp was there I would never suggest you going.

  "I remember we stuffed the lamp under there about five years ago, hoping she'd forget she owned it. Just go under there, get Mom's cowboy lamp." She sniffed. "And uh, while you're there you can drag that dead coon, or what ever the heck is rotting down there, out. I'll even pay you, I swear!"

  I sighed. "Damn right you'll pay me!" Fred opened her mouth and I held up a hand. "Okay, okay, rock, scissors, paper. I don't know how you Bogart me into this stuff, I never win anyway." I went for rock, and lost like I knew I would.

  "Crap, I really hate it when that happens," I mumbled as I crouched down and prepared to enter the crawlspace from Hell. "A few spiders and you'd think Godzilla was down there! I can't believe I have such a wienie for a sister."

  "Oh Buzz, you're the best."

  "Spare me, Spider Girl, and shine that flashlight under here."

  The reality of it was the crawlspace under our folks' house really was a damp, spider-infested, creepy place all four of us avoided at all costs–even when we were kids. Not that we were girlie-girls, well, except for Al, but we don't usually claim her as a sib anyway.

  Staring through the door, I saw a string tied to one of the rafters and smiled. I remembered one time when I was really pissed at my youngest sister, Al. I'd put a noose around her Beach Girl Barbie's neck and hung it about four feet inside the crawlspace. No one would rescue her and Al cried and tattled to Dad. He cut down the little Prima Dona's stupid Barbie doll and I got my butt kicked. That would have been about 40 years ago. The tell-tale string still hung, mostly rotted, to the rafter. I sighed. Ahhh, those were the days.

  Coming back to the present, and resigned to my dismal fate, I took a deep breath, cracked my knuckles, and squeezed my not-so-petite butt through the opening under the farmhouse.

  Inching through that damp, smelly crawlspace, I continued to cast aspersions on Fred's integrity, our ancestors, and any future-born children she might have. I huffed, I puffed, and I clawed my way through five thousand spider webs and 54 years of old junk.

  I heaved myself along what must have been the length of two football fields. Straining to look behind me for the opening, I realized I had gone about eight feet. Damn, feet schmeet; I was getting the hell out of Dracula's Den as soon as I laid a hand on Mom's stupid floor lamp.

  I crept further along, the smell of dead animal making me nauseated. The feeling of being trapped in this moldy, dark place brought every horror flick I ever saw to life. The tickling of panic settled in the back of my throat. In the ever-narrowing, coffin-like confines of the foul-smelling crawlspace, all I could think about was the many ways I could murder Fred.

  The rub was how to convince my parents she had run away to Alaska to count whales. It crossed my mind that it had been much easier to wind my way around broken pram wheels, rotten dog bones, and old window screens when we were younger... much younger.

  "Are you there yet? Are you there yet?" floated the sing-song mantra of my lovely–and soon to be dead–whale-counting sister. She sounded so smug and triumphant. I gritted my teeth and thought about bringing back a couple giant tarantulas and slipping them into her underwear drawer.

  "To Hell with this mess; I'm out of here."

  Scrambling around on my belly so I once again faced the door, my elbow smacked into what I thought was another empty box. When pain shot up my arm, I thought whoever thought up the words 'funny bone' should be shot. I nudged the box and figured this had to be where Mom must have stashed that butt-ugly cowboy lamp. Eureka! Now to get the Hell out of Hell.

  In the dim light, through an open corner, I could make out the cowboy boot which made up the base of the floor lamp. That was all the incentive I needed.

  I would have made Jesse Owens proud as I high-tailed it down Black Widow Boulevard and exploded out of the door, dragged in great gulps of fresh air.

  Looking much like Medusa must have on a bad hair day, I heaved the heavy box with the cowboy lamp to the door. I swept the spider webs out of my hair and choked on the foul smell emanating from the crawlspace. A brief moment of great joy rushed through me as I flicked six of those eight-legged little buggers off my sleeve in Fred's direction. Watching her screech and dance out of the way was the highlight of my entire morning.

  "Man, for a woman who owns a pet store, you sure are freaky about spiders, Fred."

  She gave me a 'You're number one' with the wrong finger, and I chuckled as we lugged the box around the corner of the house. We agreed we would clean up and de-bug the lamp before hauling it into Mom's kitchen, so we headed toward where Mom's garden hose lay in the back yard.

  Struggling with her end of the box, Fred waddled around the corner of the house. "I wonder if this thing s as ugly as I remember it."

  "I remember it as being butt-ugly, but not this heavy. Boot, rattle snake–distinctly Mom's taste. I wonder what made her decide to go for the southwestern décor again.
"

  "Don't know, maybe she was watching a John Wayne marathon and the mood struck. So how about if we accidentally drop this ugly sucker on the way in?"

  While I agreed the idea held merit, I figured nothing short of a sledge hammer would destroy it. We also thought about accidentally leaving it behind the pickup truck and letting Dad run over it, but we figured Mom might make him fix it. I didn't think Pat carried that much duct tape at the hardware store, so we just dropped it in the back yard.

  The box was slit up the side, so we decided to just flip it open. As the flap came loose, the putrid odor of rotting flesh lambasted our unsuspecting nostrils and sent us both stumbling backward.

  "Oh, my God! Something must have crawled in there and died," Fred yelled, falling over my feet, and gagging to beat the band.

  "No shit, Sherlock, and it don't smell like any dead raccoon, either." I poked the box with a long stick, but nothing moved. As Fred continued to choke in the background, I lifted the flap on the box, again exposing the cowboy boot.

  Much to my dismay, I noticed I had overlooked one minor detail about the lamp down in the crawlspace. The cowboy boot base, which normally would have been attached to a rattlesnake on a pole, was instead connected to a blue-jean covered leg. By Fred's shriek and the gagging noises coming from behind me, I guessed she saw it too.

  "Damn, I hate dead bodies," I said lifting the rest of the flap. I pinched my nose and stared at the bloated and decomposing body of a woman.

  2

  Dead bodies really piss me off. Twenty-three years of wading through blood, guts, and bad guys, too much booze and a bleeding ulcer later, retirement never felt so good. I have had about enough of staring at dead bodies in my lifetime, and I wished this one would have found its way somewhere else. What made my stomach churn about this particularly odoriferous cadaver however, (aside from being really, really smelly) was the fact that something struck me as familiar about it.

  I let the flap fall back in place and stepped back. I turned and sucked in a lung-full of clean air, then pulled my tee shirt over my nose–like that was going to help. "Well, at least we know one thing, Fred. We don't have to go back under the house to look for a dead raccoon."

  Fred stared at me with those saucer-like eyes of hers, then turned and puked in Mom's Knockout Roses–what a pansy.

  Swallowing the bile rising in my throat, I saw my chance for revenge.

  "Hmmm, was it something I said, Fred?" I slapped her on the butt. "Come on, Spider Girl, buck up."

  Fred wiped her mouth and took in great gulps of air. Her hands flapped wildly and she began by hyperventilating. "Who is he, Buzz? Where'd he come from? Is it a man or a woman? What's he doing under Mom's house? Oh man! What are we telling Mom? We gotta call Mag! We gotta tell Dad; we gotta call the cops!"

  I could see she was about to lose it, so I reached over and rapped her on the back of the head.

  "Good Lord, Fred. Take a 'lude and slow down for a minute. Let me call J.J. and let's keep this quiet. We don't want those little old ladies hearing this over their police scanners, and we definitely don't want to give Mom a heart attack."

  I took her by the shoulders and squeezed until her glazed stare focused on me. "So here is what we're going to do…."

  Under my arm, I could feel the hysteria bubble to the surface though I tried to calm Fred down by rambling on about my plan of action. She tore herself out of my hands and flew to her car, hands still flapping. She grabbed her phone and dialed 911 at lightning speed.

  I rolled my eyes. What did I expect from a woman whose highlight of the day was cleaning the poopy papers out of a puppy cage? I grumbled as I resigned myself to setting up a crime scene. I halted in mid-stride when the thought hit me I still had to tell my mother.

  "Crap. This ain't going to be pretty. Drag the dead woman out of the crawlspace, puke all over, and leave Buzz to break the bad news to Mom. Good job, Fred, you're smarter than you look"

  I scuffed my way toward the back door, rehearsing how I was going to break the news to Mom, and break the neck of my younger sister.

  I had my hand on the screen door when I realized I probably got the better end of the deal. Mom would be more concerned with having enough coffee and snacks for the Sheriff's deputies than how a dead woman came to be in her crawlspace. Fred, on the other hand, had to deal with a lazy, incompetent town constable until the real cops arrived on scene. I probably didn't even have to tell Mom now; the bad news might send her into a tizzy. Or, I could tell Dad and make him tell Mom! Hah! Sometimes my own genius surprised even me. I took a seat on the swing and waited for the chaos to begin.

  Sure enough, in less than five minutes a dust cloud formed at the end of the long gravel driveway. The engine roar of the township's new squad announced that the little weasel wearing a badge was on his way in. If the noise wasn't enough to raise the dead, he laid on the equally new siren. At the same time, the squad skid sideways and almost went through Dad's new fence.

  Animals scattered and the local pigeons had heart attacks as our bungling, inept excuse for an elected official with a gun raced up the long drive. Dad poked his head out of the barn when he heard the commotion, shook his head when he realized it was Ted.

  Telling Constable Ted Puetz (correctly pronounced 'Pets', but most folks just call him Putz) that the victim was already dead and there was no hurry to mow over the local flower and fauna obviously had fallen on deaf ears.

  "We'll be lucky if that little piece of shit zipped his pants and dropped off his latest bimbo before making ruts in my driveway," Dad shouted as he stomped toward me.

  "Dad!"

  "What the hell would Dead Butts be wanting way out here, I wonder? There ain't a donut shop for miles."

  Dead Butts, as Dad called him, was not about to be left out of any headline if he could help it, I thought.

  Topping the final rise, Ted hit the brakes of the speeding squad, slid sideways and sprayed gravel in a tidal wave over the front quarter panel of Dad's new truck. In that second, I almost felt sorry for Ted. Almost.

  My father despised Ted to begin with and that new truck cost him more than what he originally paid for the farm. A smart person would not even breathe hard in the direction of Dad's new truck, but no one would ever accuse Ted of having a brain.

  By the time he made it over to his new truck, Dad had called Ted every name in the book. In a loud voice, my father told Ted he hadn't voted for him last election, and he would run himself if it meant Ted wouldn't win in the next one.

  Ted, blissfully ignorant of the insults hurled his way, turned off the squad. He smiled and waved as Dad passed the squad. Dad flipped him the bird.

  Ted wrestled his considerable bulk from behind the wheel of the squad chuckling at Dad's ravings. While Dad checked out the damage to his truck, Ted brushed the white donut powder from his potbelly. That belly of his is quite a wonder in itself. It always made it around a corner a split second before the rest of Ted's five-foot-three frame did. He continued to flick the residual doughnut crumbles from his tie as he lumbered toward my dad. Ted was mostly deaf in one ear, and he made an art form out of 'turn a deaf ear' when he wanted to.

  Speaking of deaf, I yelled, "Hey Ted! Turn off the siren!"

  Ted looked at me, and looked at the squad. I took a deep breath. "Turn off the siren!"

  He raised his hands and used sign language to tell me he couldn't hear me. I stomped over to the squad, leaned through the window, and turned off the siren. I walked up to Ted and yelled in his good ear. "I said, TURN OFF THE SIREN!"

  Ted rubbed his ear. "Oh, uh, okay." He hitched his pants in true Barney Fife form. "Well now Bill, what do we have here?"

  Not bothering to turn around, Dad ran his fingers over the dings the flying gravel had made in the door of his new truck. "You mean, of course, besides an auto body shop estimate for the damages you caused to my new truck? Nothing is going on, Putz. Nothing that would interest you, like say, work. Why don't you waddle back to the taxpayer's
new squad and go wreck someone else's $40,000.00 vehicle?"

  "Uh, well now take it easy there, Bill. I'm an officer of the law, you know…"

  Dad spun around and gave Ted an evil scowl. Ted had the sense to back away a couple steps.

  I jumped right in. "Hey Dead–uh, Ted, I think Mom has some of those fudge brownies you like and a new pot of coffee going in the kitchen. Why don't you go on in and check it out? I'll be sure to call you if anyone wants you."

  The sarcasm took wing over Ted's head, and he scuttled off toward the kitchen door. "I guess you'd be right, Buzz, I could use a good cup of joe right about now. Can I get you anything while I'm there, Bill?"

  Dad's temper boiled over. Through gritted teeth, he seethed, "You mean like maybe some rubbing compound and a new Town Constable, you damn maniac?" Dad fumed as he watched Ted hitch his pants again and stroll through the kitchen door.

  "Humph!" Dad looked at me and grinned. "That idiot is deaf as a doornail and twice as dumb. Ha-ha, wait until he gets a belly full of Ger's coffee. That stuff has been known to melt the enamel off your teeth, but at least it keeps me regular." He patted his belly. "Ger will keep Dead Butts eating and talking local gossip so he won't mess up anything. Now what the hell is that smell, Buzz?"

  Sharp as a tack, my dad. "Well, Dad, to make a long story short, I was looking for Mom's nasty cowboy lamp under the house, and I found a dead body instead." At his raised brows, I gestured. "There it is, over in that box. Fred panicked and called 911 and Edie over at Dispatch must have called Ted."

  "At least now I know why that idiot came screaming up the drive like a bat out of Hell, wrecking my new truck. Speaking of old bats, don't tell your mother about this yet, okay?" He looked beyond me to his truck. "Say, do you think I can buff this scratch out?" He bent over again, running his fingers lovingly over the truck door.