If You See Kay Jig

by Quinn Glasneck

  Everyone turned and stared down where I huddled on the ground.

  The words “means, motive, and opportunity” raced through my mind.

  Yes, I had all three.

  They’d have to arrest me.

  I was about to be arrested for a crime I most certainly did not commit.

  What was going to happen to Hooch’s? To Twinkles?

  Shit.

  20

  Sunday Morning

  The Celtic Festival

  The police officer showed up in his uniform.

  “Hi, Burt.” I was still hunkered on the ground, clutching my coverslut.

  Dick and Connor caught him up on today’s doings.

  He looked around to where the CSI team had set up a tent and put up crime scene tape. “You didn’t smell that before you pulled the door open?” Burt asked.

  “Of course, but it’s a latrine,” I said with a wrinkle of my nose. The smell was getting worse as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the temperature came up. “I thought it was the latrine smell.”

  “If the guy was in the can taking a dump,” Burt asked. “How’d someone get the door open to throw the hatchet?”

  Dick said, “Two of the Bumpass police tried it out. One went in, and the other tried to get the door open. He just pulled the handle to get enough space to put his fingers in then yanked. He said it wasn’t much effort and any fit adult could do it without a problem.”

  I knew that they had been trying to help me out, by proving the opposite − they had told me so.

  But nope. They’d put another nail in the arrest-BJ coffin.

  I asked Delight to take Twinkles back to our tent now that the Celtic Festival was open, and the patrons were coming through the gate. I wanted her to set up the kissing booth for Twinkles and pour whiskey.

  I reached into my dress pocket and pulled out the jar of brown gravy that Connor let me borrow from his pantry.

  “Kay, I need you to go help run things, if you can. Just because I’m in this mess doesn’t mean that I want the families of fallen officers to pay the price. The whiskey tent is how the charity takes in most of their money.” Kay’s face shifted to fierce mama bear.

  Connor turned to Delight and said, “Delight do me a favor, please, and go to BJ’s car. Under the front seat, you’ll find a manila envelope. I need it.”

  Delight turned and handed Twinkles’s lead to Kay and set off across the festival grounds.

  “I’m not leaving you,” Kay said, and crossed her arms over her breasts.

  “Honestly, how are you going to protect me right now? I just have to work my way through this. Dick and Connor are here.”

  Kay was still scowling as she strode toward the Hooch tent. Twinkles was walking dutifully beside her at the end of his lead.

  “I’m sorry about this BJ really I am,” Burt said. “But I’m going to have to take you down to the station for questioning.”

  I blinked.

  “I’m going to have to put you in cuffs.” He was all hang dog. I’d feel sorry for him if I weren’t feeling so sorry for myself.

  Connor walked behind me, put his hands under my arms and lifted me up to standing. Then held me there until he was sure I had my balance. “Let’s figure this out.” He looked at the coverslut that I held over the girls. “Okay, can you hold up your dress and hand me the apron?”

  I did as he asked.

  Connor tied the apron strings around my neck then grabbed either bottom corner of the cloth and tied it at my back like a great big baby bib. I felt ridiculous.

  This whole episode was ridiculous!

  Burt pulled his cuffs from his duty belt and came around behind me. “You have the right to remain silent.”

  The first cuff was zipped around my wrist.

  Now, I had been cuffed before. It could be fun from time to time. I sometimes enjoyed it, to be honest. But those were very different circumstances. Very different.

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law.”

  “I want to cooperate, but I need my lawyer present before I say anything more,” I said. I’d read enough police procedurals to know how easy it was to shove a foot in your mouth.

  The second cuff went around my other wrist.

  “Stop! Stop! What are you doing?” I turned toward the female voice calling out. Meadow was running pell-mell straight for us, waving her hands over her head, her skirts billowing then knotting around her legs as she ran.

  She arrived winded.

  Meadow posted her hands on her knees and shook her head. “It’s not BJ,” she said, shaking her head some more as she came to a stand. “It couldn’t have been BJ,” she repeated. She shook her finger at me. “I told you, you shouldn’t have left your hatchet where people could see it.”

  Yeah, well had I known…

  She turned toward the arresting officer. “I was with BJ while she was straightening her tent, getting ready for today, putting the whiskey under lock and key. I watched her leave.”

  “But she could have walked away from the tent and come here and killed Sal Stromboli,” Burt countered.

  “No, I watched her and Twinkles walk out of the festival area and get into her little red car. And I also saw Sal Stromboli alive after she pulled out of the parking lot.”

  “You did?” we all said in chorus.

  “I did. I most certainly did. He and his cousin Guido were having a massive fight about the family business. I’ve never seen either man look so angry. Well, no.” Meadow put her finger to her lips. “Guido was furious. Sal looked constipated.”

  Delight walked up with the envelope.

  Connor took it from her hand. Opened it. His gaze scanned over the pages.

  I held my breath.

  “This is good news, Bobbi Jax. All of the citations from the ABC board have been dropped. You’re no longer in danger,” Connor said.

  Really? I thought. Is that his take away? My take away was that mob can be your friend or your enemy. They were teaching me a lesson with this envelope. You could do it the easy way or the hard way. It looked like Sal picked the hard way. There could be no in between. It was either do or die for the family.

  21

  Sunday Evening

  The Celtic Festival

  I was exhausted.

  The best part of this day was that Connor had sliced the stitches on the costume’s zipper. It turned out Delight had used fishing line to sew it in place. She’d said cotton thread wouldn’t hold up to the job. So (whoop!!!) I hadn’t been able to fix the dress to wear the rest of the day.

  Now, I was in Hooch’s tent pouring whiskey, comfy in my yoga pants, a Hooch’s T-shirt, and my hoody. My feet were laced into a pair of tennis shoes.

  Polar Bear and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Beavers came by for a celebratory glass. They’d won the rugby tournament. And they wanted to hear the story about this morning’s fiasco.

  Dead Sal had been bagged, tagged, and was now under refrigeration at the morgue.

  CSI had taken down the tape and tent.

  The news crews had come and gone.

  This misadventure was now the subject of festival intrigue. But people seemed to have moved on.

  I had not yet moved on.

  It was times like these that I wished I were a drinker.

  Knowing the perils for barkeepers and booze, I abstained.

  That and weird shit was always happening to me. It was better to keep my wits about me.

  Morgan caught my eye. “Do you know where Kay is off to?”

  Now this was interesting. Morgan and Kay had been friends for years. They had a similar sense of humor, and they looked like a matched pair. I was wondering if there might be a little sniggle of something developing between them. And Kay did seem to like being in long-distance relationships. It was probably her protective mechanism − just like mine was the magical number twenty-five. I still had three more scientifically-sanctioned years before I needed to adult.

 
“She’s got her slip jig competition now,” Delight said.

  Morgan looked toward the competition tent, finished his whiskey, and set his shot glass on the bar.

  “Morgan, if you see Kay jig, would you take a video, so I can watch later?” I asked.

  “Will do.” He raised his hand to salute his good-bye.

  I raised a brow toward Polar Bear, and he sent me a wink of confirmation. Yup, Morgan was interested in Kay.

  Now, I just needed to get Kay to tell me what she thought of Morgan and how things were going with Terrance. Surely, it wasn’t just the fear of looking like an imbecile while skiing that was keeping her from Switzerland. I mean, the chocolate alone would entice me.

  The crowd was starting to thin.

  The cars were starting to motor away.

  Connor called, and I walked to the tent and put him on speakerphone.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m lining up for the closing parade. I just got a call from Burt.”

  I froze. Was he back to wanting to arrest me?

  “It wasn’t Guido. He has an alibi. He was working at Nicky’s last night, a dozen people saw him.”

  “Which means Meadow lied about them fighting?” I asked.

  “No. It could just mean that she misremembered the time period.”

  “Or that she was lying to keep me from being arrested. They’re going to arrest me, aren’t they?” I looked down at the tips of my tennis shoes, feeling thoroughly wrung out.

  “I think you should contact your lawyer. It would be a good idea if you presented yourself at the police station for questioning of your own accord.”

  “Okay I’ll call him. I just have these last few things to do here. This is going to cost a freaking fortune, rousing him on a Sunday evening is going to be double the cost.”

  “If you want, I can tell Burt that you’re going to come down tomorrow morning. At least it will be a Monday, and the cost will be less.”

  “Yes, thank you,” I muttered, thinking that if this Celtic festival hadn’t happened, my hatchet would never have been lodged in dead Sal’s chest.

  I was definitely done with this Celtic Festival and all of its drama.

  Whew! Was I ever ready to write THE END across the bottom of this chapter of my life. I never wanted to be handcuffed (for real) again.

  That was pretty scary.

  And even though I’ve experienced a lot of scary things in my pre-adult-brained life, the thought of going to jail and sitting behind bars ranked right up there with the worst of them.

  My phone blared ‘Bad Boys’ in my hand.

  Justice.

  That was weird. Justice only texted. I wondered if the bar was on fire again − but wait. It was Sunday. The bar was closed…

  “Hello?” I said on speakerphone.

  “Hey, I didn’t know who else I should call.”

  “Okay…” I started to take down the “Whisky ~ Whiskey” sign.

  “It was on the news earlier that Sal Stromboli is dead.”

  “Yes. I found him in the port-a-potty. He was definitely dead.” Just like that. Sitting there, minding his own business, doing his own business, when BOOM! He was dead. From the look that froze on his face, he was completely surprised by the intrusion and his ensuing deadness.”

  “I like my job at Hooch’s.”

  “Okay…” I think she’d taken some synaptic leap. I wasn’t sure I was drawing a line from one thought to the next.

  “And I figured, if there was a dead body anywhere near your physical proximity, you’d be involved.”

  She was right about that, I sighed heavily.

  “And knowing that you’ve been freaked out about Sal and the mob, I thought you might end up on the suspect list.”

  Justice was a genius. And that’s one of the reasons I liked her so much.

  “I decided to do some digging. And I found some interesting connections that the police might want to know about.”

  “Mob-wise?”

  “I didn’t find anything that made me think that he was connected to organized crime. But he is divorced.”

  “Okay…”

  “So let me run down the court documents I found.”

  “Shoot,” I said and instantly regretted it. I didn’t need shooting juju anywhere near me. “No evil eye, no evil eye, no evil eye,” I muttered the anti-venom incantation under my breath.

  “First, I found a divorce decree between Salvatore Stromboli and Isabella Stromboli from five years ago. It seems they owned a large parcel of land. Isabella wanted all of it for herself. But the judge ordered the land split in two. The interesting part is that the parcel was held in trust, and whoever died first, the other person got all the land for themselves. Neither could sell it while the other person was still alive.”

  “Was it valuable land?”

  “That’s the second part I found. The land came up again in a recent court case. Sal had contracted with Jefferson Lumber to come in and clear cut. He’d sold all the lumber rights. His ex-wife, Isabella, tried to stop him, arguing that it depleted the value of the property in trust. She wanted the judge to put an injunction on the contract and stop the lumber people from cutting down the trees.”

  “What was the outcome?”

  “The judge ruled for Sal. The clear cutting will start tomorrow.”

  I stopped my task to frown at the phone. “Do you think Isabella cared enough about the trees and the land value to kill?”

  “That could very well be, because I found Isabella Stromboli’s name in an arrest record.”

  “Domestic abuse?” I asked.

  “BJ,” Delight called. “I’m taking Twinkles to the dog area. He needs to potty.”

  I looked over and saw Twinkles with his lead in his mouth standing expectantly next to Delight. “Thank you! Just turn the open sign to closed. I think we’re done serving for this year.”

  I watched them walk off.

  “Sorry, Justice, you were telling me about the arrest record?”

  “Isabella was arrested five years ago just before Sal filed for divorce. She is or was involved with a group called. MILF.”

  “Mother’s I’d like to f−”

  “Miraculously Illuminating Life Force.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  “Okay…”

  “MILF is an organization that’s has been cited for eco terrorism. Violence carried out to save the environment.”

  “What did Isabella do?” I whispered.

  “She was arrested for destroying the machinery and computer systems at a meat packing plant. But they didn’t have enough evidence against her and the charges were dropped. Guess who owned the meat packing plant?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Guido Stromboli.”

  “The butcher.” I rolled my eyes at myself.

  “Well, he’s not exactly a butcher. He owns the processing plant and the distribution center. They specialize in sausage. His advertising says, ‘No one beats my meat!’”

  “No doubt. All right. This is pretty interesting about Isabella. We should get that information to Burt. Have you told this to anyone else?”

  “I didn’t know anyone else to tell it to. It might be a connection that he wouldn’t make.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There was one other set of court papers I came across. Right after the case was heard to stop the clear cutting, Isabella Stromboli went to court to change her name.”

  “Seriously?” I asked, as I heard a click that made me turn my head.

  There stood Meadow with a gun in her hand. It was such a mind-bending picture to see cave-dwelling, fairy-feeding Meadow with a violent instrument in her hand that I started laughing.

  “I don’t know what your laughing about, but you’ll probably find this funny. She changed her name to Meadow Bushwalker.”

  Meadow held out her hand for the phone. And having had a little experience with killers, I
knew that compliance, until I could get my brain functioning again, meant survival.

  Meadow tapped the phone off and put it in her pocket. She pulled a linen napkin, studded with acorn muffin crumbs, over her hand.

  “We’re going to take a little walk. You’ll want to cooperate. Or very bad things will happen to you and to those around you.”

  I wasn’t sure what to think here. She was a MILF, and I had to consider dead Sal. I mean, someone − and I was now assuming it was Meadow − had pried open a port-a-potty, for heaven’s sake, and caught Sal with his pants down.

  22

  Sunday Evening

  The Celtic Festival

  I walked.

  Meadow followed.

  She nudged me toward the woods.

  There was a path.

  Of course there was.

  And she knew exactly where to find it.

  Of course she did.

  At some point, she was going to be distracted, and I could either wrestle the gun away from her, which would be a really dangerous thing to do, or I could take off through the woods. I didn’t think she’d want to harm any trees or wildlife with stray bullets. And for heaven’s sake, the Celtic Festival was full of police − Jamesburg’s finest along with Bumpass and Beaver Dam and the Royal Canadian Freaking Mounties. Gun shot? Hmmm, that might actually be the best way to save myself.

  Wait. No. I wasn’t going to put anyone in danger for me. My life wasn’t more meaningful than theirs. What I needed was to use psychological jujitsu, here.

  “Meadow, you’re such a nature lover. I remember you telling me about how you waited until the trees sacrificed themselves in the storms for the best and highest of the woods. I bet the idea that Sal was about to clear cut the land was devastating. You did the right thing by taking it to court. I’m so sorry things didn’t work out the way they should have.”

  “Sal is a murderer. The trees, the soil, the animals who make their homes. Heartless. Horrible. Sal was a serial killer in the making. He was about to commit large scale floricide.”