by Sandra Balzo
Bernie shook his head. ‘That’s in Milwaukee. Here in Brookhills, we’re up to nearly two feet. It’s the heavy stuff, but even so, the wind is causing drifts up to some rooflines. In order to get through, I had to snowshoe smack down the center of the road. Not that it mattered, because nothing is moving. In fact, the police are threatening to ticket people if they take their cars out.’
‘Smart,’ Luc said, nodding his head. ‘A curfew’ll keep everyone safe until they can clear the streets.’
‘Not a fit night for man nor beast,’ said Bernie. ‘Or beasts, plural, I guess. I don’t think even the animals can survive this. Believe it or not, Eric and I saw a pile of squirrels huddled together for warmth, right on Brookhill Road.’
I’d been looking out the window, trying to catch sight of Aurora. Now I turned. ‘In the street?’
‘Yeah,’ Bernie said. ‘Right in the middle of a snow drift at the corner. Damndest thing I’ve ever seen. I figured squirrels would hide in trees or maybe under things, like any other rodent.’
Bernie had it right. Squirrels usually stayed in their nests when it was cold and nasty. And their nests were in trees, not snow forts. ‘Did these...squirrels move?’
Bernie looked at me differently. ‘Something wrong, Maggy?’
‘It’s just that Aurora went out some time ago to measure the snow and she hasn’t come back.’
‘And, she was wearing a squirrel coat,’ Caron said as she drained Luc’s glass, otherwise forgotten on the counter.
‘Mink,’ Verdeaux said irritably. ‘It’s sheared black mink. With a sable collar and cuffs.’ She turned to me. ‘You don’t think...’
Bernie looked skeptical. ‘These didn’t look like mink. They were brown, with rings on them. Maybe I’m wrong about the squirrel part. Could be that it’s a raccoon, I suppose. Even a whole family of them.’
I looked at Verdeaux.
‘The sable trim has markings on it,’ she admitted. ‘I suppose it could look like...’
‘I think we’d better check, don’t you?’ I looked around for my jacket, forgetting that it was soaking wet and still in Uncommon Grounds. The former, I could have put up with. The latter...well, there was no way I was going back there by myself.
Opting to dig through the tourist trash instead, I found a beach towel emblazoned with ‘Milwaukee, a Great Place by a Great Lake’ and wrapped it around myself.
Eric looked up. ‘Nice fashion statement, Mom.’
Geez, everybody was a critic. Witness what Project Runway hath wrought.
Nonetheless, I looked down at my oversize T-shirt, tights and slipper-socks. ‘You’re right. Give me yours.’
Eric hoisted himself up off the floor and went across to the pea coat, which he’d slung over one of the stools at the lunch counter.
He lifted it. ‘Wow. It’s dripping.’
It was. A lot. ‘That’s all right. It still beats a beach towel.’ Besides, my having Eric’s jacket would prevent him from coming out with us, something I feared he, being curious and male, would want to do.
‘Where are you going,’ he asked. ‘Can I go, too?’
‘You don’t have a coat,’ I said sweetly, as I slipped his on. ‘Bernie, can you show me where you saw the squirrels?’
As Bernie nodded, Luc stood up. ‘You’re not going out there alone, Maggy. I’ll come with you.’
‘No, I’ll go,’ Rudy and Jacque said in unison.
‘Hey,’ Bernie protested. ‘I’m a guy and I’m going to be with her. It’s not like she needs more protection, after all.’
Nobody met anyone’s eyes.
‘Right?’ Bernie asked.
Still no answer.
Eric looked at me suspiciously. ‘Mom?’
I cleared my throat. ‘We, umm, we’ve had a...’
‘My dad’s dead.’ Oliver gave Frank a final pat and stood up. ‘Somebody killed him.’
Bernie looked from me to Caron and back again. ‘Truly?’
The lawyer in him. I suppressed the urge to say, ‘No, we just figured we’d tell the kid that.’
‘No, we just figured we’d tell the kid that,’ Sarah said.
It was like having my very own bad angel, one who didn’t even need to sit on my left shoulder to say out loud what I was thinking.
‘Mr Benson was killed?’ This from Eric now. ‘But how?’
‘An accident with a snow-blower,’ I said.
‘And a hatchet,’ Caron piped up. ‘Don’t forget that li'l detail.’ She was picking her teeth with the business end of an umbrella-topped toothpick.
Bernie and Eric pivoted toward me, but Tien, surprisingly, was the one who took charge. ‘Maggy found Way’s body just as the storm was reaching its peak. We haven’t been able to get in touch with the police, since, as you know -’ she nodded toward Bernie - ‘all the telephones are out.’
I said. ‘Text message.’
Everyone looked at me.
‘I was going to get my cellphone to see if I could text Eric, when I...didn’t...’ I trailed off lamely. Eric and Bernie had just gotten there, after all, why pile on bad news?
I wasn’t fooling Eric, though. ‘Didn’t what?’ he demanded. God help me, but he had his mother’s eyes and his father’s impatience.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Sarah had her own patience issues. ‘The murderer knocked your mother down in making his getaway.’
I opened my mouth to protest, but that pretty much hit the nail of brevity on the head.
Eric gave me a dark look. ‘You couldn’t tell me that?’
‘I didn’t want you to worry,’ I said and Eric’s face changed.
‘I get that,’ he said.
He was letting me off the hook far too easily. Which meant he was not telling me something, so I wouldn’t worry. Wasn’t working.
‘By the way,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Text messaging isn’t getting through either now. I tried it.’
He and I looked at each other. We needed to talk and both of us knew it.
Ducking that, Eric asked, ‘So, umm, you think something might have happened to Mrs Benson?’ Eric asked, cocking his head toward Oliver.
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ I said. ‘Maybe she even went for help, in fact.’ Or had run into a homicidal maniac.
‘And the “squirrels”? This from Oliver.
‘They’re probably just that,’ Tien said, stepping in. She was closest to Oliver and Eric’s age, and therefore had more standing in their eyes. ‘But we’ll never know until we look. If your mother did fall down or something -’ she’d engaged Oliver now - ‘she might need help.’
If it was Aurora out there, I was afraid she was beyond help.
‘Besides,’ Tien continued, rubbing her arms, ‘maybe we can find something to burn. The fire in the wood stove is almost out.’
‘Whoever wants to come, you’re welcome,’ I said, though I didn’t see the attraction of sloshing through the snow toward what might very well be a dead body. In fact, if they all wanted to go I’d be happy to stay inside and tend the stove.
Nah, who was I kidding? I had every intention of seeing for myself.
In the end, we left Caron to finish off the dregs of everyone else’s brandy old-fashioneds. Mrs G, Eric and Oliver were staying as well, though the last two, not happily.
Eric insisted I take Frank ‘for protection’. I started to argue, but our sheepdog had been staunch when I’d been attacked. I actually wanted him with me.
I also wanted him to pee outside for once.
We trooped through the door and out into the storm, Bernie leading the way with a Scooby Doo Flashlight ($9.99), me on his heels and Frank on mine. Bernie had insisted that I wear his rabbit fur hat. I pulled down my earflaps.
‘You look like Rocky the Flying Squirrel,’ Sarah said, catching up to me.
Of Rocky and Bullwinkle - the old, but - back then - cutting-edge cartoon show. I remembered Rocky wearing one of those antique aviator caps. I thought his cap was leather, but
given that Rocky was furry, himself, I guessed it all balanced out.
‘At least my head is warm.’ I swore that when I got home, I was going to sink into a hot bathtub and never come out. Frank would lie on the bathmat next to me and bring me whatever I needed. ‘Do your business, Frank,’ I urged as we cleared the front sidewalk.
Sarah looked sideways at me. ‘We’re stuck here in this nightmare of a storm, with one person murdered and another likely at the business end of a snowdrift. And you’re worrying about your dog?’
‘He’s got a bladder the size of Lake Michigan,’ I said, pausing to let Frank sniff around. ‘Believe this, you don’t want to be close when he lets loose.’
Ignoring the warning, Sarah leaned down to snarl in my ear, but all she got was a noseful of rabbit fur. ‘Focus, dammit,’ she said, rubbing her tickling nose. ‘People might be dropping like flies.’
‘I get that. But it’s not like there’s something I can do about it. We’re stuck here.’
‘Then stop finding bodies, dammit.’
As Sarah spoke, Frank let loose. I believe it’s called the fire hose effect. She couldn’t say I didn’t warn her.
Knowing that the two of them were up to the challenge, I left Frank to Sarah’s tender mercies and, as the rest of the group hung back, approached the pile of snow on Brookhill Road. Just as Bernie had said, it did look like a family of squirrels or raccoons had made their nest there. I signaled Verdeaux to come closer. ‘Don’t trample the area, but can you see? Is that your coat?’
‘I can’t tell,’ she said irritably. Verdeaux stepped in a little more and peered at the dark-colored tangle. It had begun snowing harder again, making it tough to tell if the mass was black or brown. ‘For all we know it’s the big brother of that stupid hat you have on.’
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I took one more step and leaned down. Holding my breath, I reached out and touched the material. It was fur. However, I couldn’t tell what it was attached to. I tangled my fingers in the fur to get a grip and pulled up. The material came away easily.
A hood. Fur-trimmed.
And beneath it, Aurora Benson’s blonde head, streaked here and splotched there with blood.
Chapter 15
‘Now I’m sorry I called her the Weather Slut,’ Sarah said to me.
We were crouched down next to Aurora’s body. Any hope of keeping the crime scene intact was lost when Naomi Verdeaux started to scream and Frank came running.
I was of the opinion that Verdeaux was more distraught about the blood on her coat than she was about Aurora’s death. But then I’m a cynic.
Frank, on the other hand, didn’t care why Verdeaux was screaming. He just wanted part of the action.
‘I think Aurora kind of liked the slut thing,’ I said. ‘Especially as she...well, aged out.’
Sarah nodded. ‘Like old ladies don’t mind being called girls.’
Personally, I’ve never minded being called a girl. Sure beats other things I’d been called.
‘Yes, like that.’ Gently, I brushed the snow off Aurora’s back. ‘Well, that’s a relief, at least.’
‘What?’
‘No cleaver.’
‘Unless the murderer used it on the back of her head.’ Even Sarah, as tough a broad as she was - or tried to act - seemed shocked.
‘I don’t think there’s enough blood for that kind of wound,’ I said, going for observant, yet detached. It was either play professional or run back to Goddard’s and hide under a counter. Or maybe throw up. Egg salad and bloodied bodies - especially that of someone who might have become a friend - don’t mix.
‘Maybe she wouldn’t bleed as much with the cold and snow,’ Sarah suggested, presumably following my lead. ‘You know...umm...coagulation?’
We looked at the matted mess in Aurora’s hair.
‘There is that,’ I said.
‘Bring her inside.’ A voice from above.
I pivoted and looked up. The speaker was Rudy.
I shook my head. ‘No way. Pavlik will have our heads if we move either of the bodies.’
Even as I said it, I realized how ridiculous my reply sounded.
Especially after I’d done such a great job ‘preserving the scenes’. In back, the snow around Way’s body had been trampled by all of us, not to mention by Frank and my attacker. Then it had been covered by fresh snow.
The same thing would happen to Aurora’s body, I thought, as Frank raced around us in ever widening circles, barking excitedly and spraying snow as he went.
Rudy put his hands out, palms up. ‘What do you want to do? Leave her here for the plows?’
A good point. The trucks - garbage haulers during the warm months, with snow blades attached for the winter - would come out as soon as the plows were readied and the storm tapered off. We couldn’t very well post someone outside overnight to ward them off when they arrived.
‘I guess we could put her in back,’ I said.
‘Next to Way?’ Verdeaux, who was still eying her coat, asked. ‘She’d probably like that.’
I’d prefer to put Verdeaux next to Way. Permanently.
Before I could say anything snotty, Luc intervened. ‘Listen, I was thinking about that. I hate to say it, but we have predators and scavengers out here. Coyotes, crows, hawks. And they’re probably getting pretty hungry by now.’
Ugh. In the space of a few hours, I’d gone from serving lattes in an upscale suburban coffee house to a walk-on role in Wild Kingdom.
‘Maybe we should bring them both inside.’ Luc said, waiting for Frank to pass by on his circuit before he joined us.
‘Bodies stink,’ I said with the certainty of personal experience.
Rudy, who, like Luc, had been in the Vietnam War, apparently had the same kind of experience. ‘Even with the hallways as cold as they are, corpses will thaw and then decompose pretty quickly.’
‘We can put them in my freezer,’ Luc offered. ‘It’s almost empty and, even with the electricity out, they’ll probably stay frozen.’
Corpse-sicles.
‘You want two bodies in your deli?’ I asked.
Luc shrugged. ‘It’s not mine any more. And if Gross National Produce wants to keep the fixtures for some reason, they’ll just have to get things cleaned.’
Worked for me, assuming Gross’s customer base could get over the eventual news stories that would describe the freezer’s most recent contents in the kind of detail usually reserved for a celebrity’s fall from grace.
We sent the rest of the group back to Goddard's and, with Rudy and Luc doing the heavy lifting, managed to get Aurora’s body out of the street and to the front door of Luc’s store. From there, God help us, we put her in a shopping cart and wheeled her into the freezer. Then we took a second cart through the service hallway to get Way.
‘Pavlik is going to kill me,’ I moaned, as we surveyed the walk-in freezer after we were done. There was no emergency lighting inside, of course, so I’d run to the store and gotten one of the paper lanterns ($7.99). It added a bizarrely festive air to the scene.
Aurora was still in her cart, but Way was stiff enough that we had needed to balance him diagonally from the handle to the nose of the cart in order to traverse the narrow hallway to An’s. Once we got his body to the freezer, we lifted him off and took Way in, feet first. He was lying face down on a shelf next to the frozen peas, cleaver and all.
I shuddered.
‘Let’s get you out of here, Maggy.’
Luc was eyeing my tights-clad legs, not in a God-but-you’re-hot kind of manner, but more of a God-you-look-cold-and-stupid one. ‘With how you’re dressed, you’re going to catch pneumonia.’
‘I’ll just be happy if I don’t catch a meat cleaver in the back,’ I said to him. Then I lowered my voice and gestured Luc to move away from Rudy, who was backing the cart out of the cooler. ‘That cleaver in Way’s back. Do you recognize it?’
‘How could I recognize a -’
‘I mean, is it one of yours?’
‘It might be, Maggy, but those things are pretty standard,’ Rudy interjected before Luc could answer. The man must have the radar of a bat. ‘Besides Luc and Tien sold off their stock. Anyone could have one.’
That was true, I guessed. Even I had a cleaver at home that looked similar. I used it to cut pizza. And pretty much everything else. Except people. I draw the line at people.
Luc looked surprised that Rudy was defending him. ‘I had three or four cleavers - all slightly different sizes and shapes. It’s hard to tell whether this is one of them without pulling it out.’
‘We sure aren’t doing that,’ I said flatly, closing the freezer door, ‘even if it were possible.’ I remembered trying to pick up the ‘shovel’. The blade was either frozen in or stuck deep into bone. Or both.
I shuddered again. ‘Luc, were all the cleavers sold?’ I’m not Pavlik, my method of interrogation being more oblique. You’ve heard of Good Cop, Bad Cop? I’d be more Wimpy Cop.
And, the Wimp Method seldom got immediate results.
Now Luc shrugged. ‘So far as I know. Tien might have a better idea. She took everything we didn’t sell over to Goodwill.’
‘Are you thinking a cleaver killed Aurora, too?’ Rudy slid the cart we’d used to transport Way’s body into the line of stacked ones by the door.
Luc cringed and pulled our ‘hearse’ back out again, rolling it into the corner, where it couldn’t interact with - and infect - its cousins.
‘If so,’ Rudy continued, not seeming to notice, ‘that means there are at least two.’
At least two? Like he was entertaining the possibility there might be a third cleaver with somebody else’s name on it?
I said, ‘We’ll probably have to wait until the professionals get here to figure out what killed Aurora.’ A thought struck me. ‘If it was something sharp like a cleaver or an axe, though, it should have cut the hood of the coat.’
‘Could you tell through the fur?’ Luc asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Maybe by looking at the inside of the hood, but it’s probably lined with fur, too. I was so shook by finding her that I didn’t think to look.’
