Geared for the Grave (A Cycle Path Mystery)

by Duffy Brown

  “Well, there you are,” Irma said to me. “Just the person I want to see. But I didn’t think you’d be out and about at this hour. How did the call to Winslow go?”

  “You’re blonde . . . and where are your glasses? And what color lipstick is that?”

  “I’m now officially a Pink Coquette girl; that’s what the package of lipstick said I’d be if I bought this stuff.” Irma puckered up and kissed the air. “I needed some coquette in my life and everybody knows blondes have more fun and men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

  “You’re looking for passes?”

  “You betcha.” Irma held out her arms and did the look at me twirl. “I went off-island and got modernized. I got contacts, baby blue ones, and those jeans that hold your stomach and butt in so you look skinny.” She gave her backside a swat. “Now I got a pretty nice rump for a gal my age. And I got Top-Siders like all the boat people wear around here. I’m part of the in crowd.”

  “What brought this on? You were fine before, you know.” I itched my neck, then rubbed my arms.

  Irma’s lower lip dropped into a pout. “Rita the Bimbo called me a granny and Dutchy said I was an old biddy. I decided if I’m going to find the instigator of the Bunny Festival I need to get in the groove, change things up—think outside the fudge box, right?”

  “Like as in Jessica Fletcher?”

  “Like as in CSI. I just got back from the Lucky Bean,” Irma went on. “Took my new threads out for a test-drive and got a wolf-whistle from Smithy heading over to his blacksmith barn. He’s always so relaxed, a pleasure to be around. He gave me a Little Debbie Cosmic Brownie to go with my coffee. So what’s the scoop with Winslow—is he coming to the island to harass Dutchy and Rita or what?”

  A kid on a bike with pink and chocolate brown boxes piled in the front basket for a bunch of deliveries zoomed by, nearly running us over. “There’s a problem,” I said in a rush to Irma, feeling the need to get a move on before the kid headed up the hill toward Dwight’s house. “I made the call but Dutchy caught me using his phone at the fudge shop. I needed an excuse, so I said I was taking an order and Dwight wanted five pounds of fudge delivered this morning. Dutchy saw dollar signs and ignored the logic of Dwight never ordering fudge, but now I’ve got to get that order before—”

  “Before Dwight and Dutchy realize you’re up to something and start wondering what’s going on,” Irma said, grabbing my hand and trotting off for the steps with me in tow. “We got to get Dwight’s fudge before he does is what you’re saying. Looks like that kid has a lot of deliveries; we can make it.”

  “You don’t have to go.” I started off, guilt riding me hard, knowing if I hadn’t stuffed my cheeks with maple-nut I wouldn’t be in this mess. “I can do this on my own.”

  “But I got outfits for just this sort of thing. More jeans, a cute denim blouse. Right now I’m all decked out and ready for action. Maybe I should get pepper spray.”

  I am never eating fudge again.

  The bluff was socked in just like town, the weird sensation of Irma and me being the only people on the island closing in around us. We hung a left onto Huron and crossed the street to the sidewalk. The big Victorians were completely hidden in the clouds and my scalp itched like the invasion of a million ants.

  “We can hide here and wait for the kid on the bike,” Irma said when we passed the concrete pots with purple and white petunias spilling over the edge. “Dwight’s house is right next door, and he’s more of a party-hearty, late-night kind of guy than an early riser. We can snatch the fudge and no one will see us in this fog and—”

  A door opened somewhere in the haze and I put my fingers over Irma’s mouth. She pointed to SeeFar and I nodded in agreement. Low, sweet-talking voices and seductive giggles drifted our way from Dwight’s front porch, followed by footsteps coming down the walkway heading right for us. Irma ducked behind the big flowerpots, pulling me with her, the two of us hip-to-hip, and the urge to scratch driving me nuts.

  The wrought iron gate squeaked open just as the shadowy outline of a bicycle and rider headed up the street from the other direction. Dwight’s early-morning visitor . . . or more than likely overnight playmate . . . jumped behind the pots. Huffy’s left foot now squashed my right one, her nose flattened Irma’s and three pairs of eyes rounded to the size of baseballs in what are you doing here fashion as we all stared at each other. I bit back an Ouch.

  None of us moved a muscle as the kid put down the kickstand on the bike, opened the gate and ambled up the walkway, my pink and brown fudge package tucked under his arm. In a flash, Huffy flipped us the bird of the non-feather variety, then scurried off down the street, fading into the swirling froth with CSI Irma right behind her. Go, Irma.

  I scratched and itched everything I could reach till the delivery kid took off to complete the rest of his deliveries. I then hoisted my leg over the gate, avoiding the squeaky hinge alarm system, and made my way to the back porch, keeping below the windowpanes, which revealed lights on inside. Picking up the fudge, I then chanced a peek into the kitchen, and there, right in front of me, was Dwight. If he weren’t so caught up in a phone conversation, he would have seen me for sure. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, with two more smoldering in an ashtray, taking chain-smoking to the master class level.

  As part of my lawyer-infested upbringing, I knew that seven AM nicotine-enhanced phone calls came in two varieties: business that’s gone down the drain or someone who was dead. With a little luck this was both, involving Bunny croaking and Winslow delivering bad news, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Itching that little space between my eyes and then the one between my nose and lips, I clam-crawled my way to the front, keeping close to the house and out of sight.

  Pea soup still engulfed the bluffs as I scrambled back over the gate onto the sidewalk, landing right in front of a man whose chin had not connected with a razor in days—maybe weeks. He wore a crumpled navy captain’s hat, a ragged Green Bay Packers sweatshirt and a knife with a well-used handle strapped to his belt.

  “Who the heck are you?” captain guy grumbled, eyeing my fudge package. “You’re Dwight’s newest squeeze? Sweets for his new sweetie?”

  I shuddered so hard at the thought of me with Dwight together that I stopped itching for a full minute.

  Captain guy took a step closer, his barrel chest nearly touching my mostly flat one, for once making me grateful for 32-A’s. “Stay away from Dwight if you know what’s good for you. He’s taken, and don’t forget it. Mind your own business around here.”

  The left corner of the captain’s lip arched in a sneer, exposing teeth the color of chewing tobacco and black coffee, then he strolled down the hill, disappearing into the mist. Since I’d seen 1-800-HotBabe on Dwight’s dresser and just witnessed his secret rendezvous with Huffy, it was a pretty fair assumption that Captain Yellow-teeth’s interest in Dwight was not of a personal romantic nature.

  So why was he warning me off Dwight and why was he standing here in the fog staring at SeeFar and just how big was that knife he was packing? Was he casing the place out? Planning a burglary and not wanting me to burgle it first—is that what he meant by saying Dwight was taken?

  Scratching my arms while making sure to keep away from the edge of the cliff and the express route to town, I located the steps. When I reached the bottom, I cut through Marquette Park, giving the Father a little good-morning salute, then passed the big Dutch Elm at the corner and crossed Main Street.

  Okay, I should dump the fudge in the trash out of respect for Irma and her recipe plight, and I sure didn’t need five pounds of butter and sugar clogging up my arteries and adhering itself to my behind. But in the world of Evie Bloomfield, dumping fudge was never going to happen, so I dropped it off at Doud’s Market for them to share with their customers. I snagged a piece for myself because the devil made me do it, then crossed the street
and banged on the back door of Irma’s shop.

  Inside I could see her hustling around the kitchen, which was piled with bags of sugar, chocolate, maple caramel, shelves of nuts, a rainbow of candies—all the good things in life. Using a Goliath-size spoon, Irma stirred a massive copper pot simmering on the stove, ribbons of steam curling over the edge. Irma was the poster gal for the if at first you don’t succeed philosophy of life. Here she was giving fudge yet another try . . . God save us all.

  “Did you catch up with Huffy?” I asked Irma when she let me in and poured coffee.

  She did another stir while kicking out her left foot for me to see. “Top-Siders are the bomb—that’s what the kids say these days, the bomb. I guess ‘cool’ is back to being about the weather. These shoes don’t make a sound, and I scared the bejeezus out of Huffy when I caught up to her on her porch. She told me to mind my own business if I knew what was good for me.”

  “That phrase seems to be making the rounds this morning. So what’s with Huffy and Dwight anyway? I got the feeling this was more than a one-night fling.” I pulled my socks down and scratched my ankles.

  Irma gave the brew another swish, then sat across from me at a little wood table by the window. The fog was starting to burn off the harbor, letting in patches of sun and blue sky. “Everyone around here knows those two always had the hots for each other,” Irma said to me. “But Bunny put the kibosh on it from the get-go, just like she didn’t want her daughter to get involved with Smithy. Huffy’s dad runs the delivery system on the island; he ferries in all the stuff we need from the mainland.”

  “He sounds like a respectable enough guy—so why didn’t Buffy approve?”

  “Oh, he’s got money to be sure, and Huffy’s his pride and joy, but a shower, shave and clean shirt don’t exactly top his priority list. Bunny used to say that she was related to the Rockefellers, and she told Huffy right to her face and in front of half the town she must be related to Kentucky moonshiners. Dwight wouldn’t cross Bunny, since she paid for his lifestyle, but now that Mother Moneybags is between Rocky Road and Cookies ’n’ Cream, Dwight and Huffy can do what they want.”

  “But that’s just it, they’re not—they’re slinking around like love-struck teenagers. And there’s something else going on with Huffy—she also wants to buy out Rudy and take over the bike shop. She said she’d have the money in a month and it was her money, not her dad’s. She sure didn’t get that kind of cash from her own shop. Where’s it coming from? And I think I saw her dad outside SeeFar when I was rescuing the fudge off the back porch. What’s that all about?”

  “That the captain was up there doesn’t surprise me a bit,” Irma said over the rim of her mug. “Now that Bunny’s at the big town council meeting in the sky and driving them all nuts, the captain wants to make sure his little girl gets what she’s always wanted . . . Dwight!”

  A little smile played at the corner of Irma’s mouth as she went back to the stove, turning down the flame under the pot. “I know where this is leading; I’m getting good at detective stuff. I think it’s the clothes I’m wearing. Gives me good snooping vibes. I never had vibes of any kind before.”

  “We’re not detectives. We’re just concerned citizens trying to help Rudy.”

  Irma added cocoa to the cooking mixture, the aroma of rich chocolate filling the kitchen. “I bought a fingerprint kit at Walmart yesterday, so that makes us detectives—it says so right there on the back of the box—and I think that you think that Huffy joined up with Dwight and they got rid of Bunny for the money and maybe a little payback for keeping them apart all these years. That’s where that buyout money’s coming from, I bet.”

  Irma held up her big spoon in triumph, dripping chocolate on the floor. “And that explains why they don’t want to be seen together. They knock off Bunny and frame Rudy.”

  “Fingerprint kit?”

  “I was thinking about getting a stun gun too; Tasers are too expensive. We really need a stun gun.”

  Nate Sutter was going to kill me dead.

  “And we need a plan.” Irma put down the spoon and whipped open double cabinet doors to reveal pictures of Bunny taped on one side and Huffy and Dwight on the other. “It’s a murder board like they use on those TV shows, except this is really a murder cupboard. We have the victim and suspects. I got the pictures out of my Town Crier recycle pile. Pretty slick, huh?”

  “How’d we get from bookstore to murder cupboard?”

  “What bookstore? I’m sorry to say my son’s convinced Rudy’s the killer, and that leaves finding him innocent up to you and me. So what do you think?”

  “I think we’re looking at five to ten in a Michigan state prison for obstruction of justice.”

  “So we won’t obstruct; we’ll just divert.” Irma turned down the boiling fudge, then looked back at me. “I don’t want Rudy to go to jail. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep him out.” There was a hitch in Irma’s voice that I hadn’t heard before.

  “Whoa—you like Rudy.”

  “Everybody likes Rudy; least everyone in town here.”

  “You really like Rudy. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

  Irma faced me, nibbling at her lower lip. “That dumb widow thing I told you about before with Dutchy . . . well, I sort of chose Dutchy over Rudy. Talk about stupid on steroids—that would be me. I hurt Rudy’s feelings something terrible. If I can help find the real killer, it might make things right between us and we can at least be friends again. I truly miss him in my life. You’ll keep this to yourself and won’t tell anyone? There’s already enough gossip flying around here about me and Dutchy, and this would be fuel for the fire for sure.”

  Such a little island for so many secrets. “Mum’s the word, I promise.” Irma and I were the Mary-Kate and Ashley of dumb guy choices. If there were a class called Men 101, Irma and I should sign up and sit in the front row and take notes.

  Irma shoved her now-nonexistent glasses up her nose out of habit. “Huffy and Dwight weren’t the only ones with an interest in our resident dead person.” Irma reached for an issue of the Crier and ripped Speed Maslow’s picture right off the front page and taped it to the suspect side of the cupboard. “Bunny and Speed used to be friends, then last week she made a comment over at the bank about how he couldn’t be trusted. It was all over town in minutes, being as he’s trying to raise money for the Speed Maslow Challenge. You’d think she’d be more considerate of someone she knew when he was a kid around here.”

  “Speed’s from Mackinac?”

  “Helped his uncle with a lawn maintenance business in the summers. We figured that’s why he came back. He’s got an apartment over his bike shop now, but I’m sure he has bigger plans. There’s a lot of money here and people like him. Maybe Speed had enough of Bunny’s badmouthing and decided to shut her up.”

  Irma held up the Crier with the big gaping hole where Speed’s picture had been. “Says here that tonight’s the kickoff up at the Grand for the Labor Day Jazz Weekend. It’s one of those asparagus and thin salty meat on water crackers affairs and Speed’s getting an award—Entrepreneur of the Year. Everybody’ll be talking about the Bunny Festival, and maybe somebody will let something slip.” Irma parked her hand on her hip. “Bought myself a ditching-Dutchy dress, and it’s time to take it out for a spin. I’d say you should go too, but it looks like you’re coming down with a rash.”

  “Cat allergy—and try not to spin too fast, okay? We got to keep a low profile, or people will get nervous and clam up.”

  Irma dipped a spoon in the fudge brewing on the stove. She handed it to me, a glint of hope in her eyes. “Okay, here we go. Tell me—what do you really think of this batch? I’m getting better.”

  I really needed to enroll in lying school.

  I headed off to Rita’s trying to enjoy the relaxed, quaint, agonizingly slow little town coming to life. Wagons and drays plodded alo
ng, people who hadn’t ridden a bike in years wobbled down the street, crashing into whatever got in their way, overnighters drifted into restaurants for breakfast. By some miracle of the island gods, and by using every ounce of patience I possessed, I didn’t yell or shove anyone out of my way. I figured that made me an urban saint.

  When I finally got to Rita’s Fudge Shoppe, I waited for her and Dutchy to retreat back into the kitchen, then I slipped the bill and money for the fudge onto the counter. I went with the idea that they wouldn’t care where the money came from for the five pounds of fudge and would have no reason to call Dwight about the order if they were paid in full. Now there was no reason for Dwight to call Rita’s Fudge Shoppe and no reason for Rita’s Fudge Shoppe to call Dwight. This was a lot of mess for two pieces of maple-nut fudge . . . but honestly, it was so worth it.

  I snuck out the side door, blending into a milling crowd that was going absolutely nowhere. Turning onto Market Street, I avoided the bottleneck on Main as Sheldon beeped and vibrated my butt. It was a text from Mother. Leaving for Paris tomorrow AM. Check on Grandpa don’t forget.

  Right, the parents’ trip to France for a month. Good for them, but the only thing Grandpa Frank needed from me was a lift back and forth to the airport when he headed off to Vegas for some R&B. He told Mother it was his love for rhythm and blues that took him to Vegas a few times a year, but I suspected it was more like roulette and bourbon. I sucked at lying, and Grandpa Frank had it down to an art form, except with me. We were buds. Maybe it was because I had his eyes or because he taught me how to drive a stick shift, but more than likely it was because neither of us fit the Bloomfield mold of society perfection and sublime snobbery. I like beer more than champagne, candy bars more than tiramisu and the Gap more than Saks. Grandpa Frank’s favorite club is Canadian Club whiskey, and his idea of the perfect night out since Grandma died ten years ago is playing poker with his army buddies. Yeah, we were buds.