Starke Naked Dead
Conda V. Douglas
Starke Naked Dead © 2018 by Conda V. Douglas
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
©2012 by Conda V. Douglas
To my niece, Victoria Head.
Thanks Vikki, for inspiring me to create my dreams.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to: Tricia Keener Blaha, Bruce Demaree, Gilbert and Joan Douglas, Kathy McIntosh, Cynthia Reed, Diane B. Rice, Lorca Warner, Michele Winkler, and my beloved hometown of Sun Valley, Idaho.
ONE
The bell rang. My father, Wild Rupert the mountain recluse, shuffled inside the store, his shoulders hunched for a blow. I jumped up from my stool behind the checkout counter.
“Dora, I’m in trouble,” Rupert whispered low and hoarse. His wet lower lip wagged and displayed the rotten stumps of his bottom teeth. A sweet stench of decay wafted my way.
First time in months I’d seen my father. He never ventured into Mad Maddie’s Marvels, my aunt’s store. He never dared.
Yet he stood in front of me. Backlit by the late afternoon sun streaming through the front door of Mad Maddie’s Marvels, his long gray beard trailed around his shoulders.
He crept a few steps inside. “You have to help me.”
A deep warmth spread in my chest. First time my father ever asked me for anything. “I’ll help you, Father. Anything. I’ll do anything.”
Rupert slid his hand into a pocket of his ragged leather duster. Strips from the lining of the old coat hung to the floor. It gave off a faint aroma of old tanned hide, nasty, vile, but familiar and thus, comforting.
He dragged out a jeweler’s velvet bag, the largest made. Covered in soot, the filthy bag once had been a deep burgundy, the color of old blood. My father loosened the drawstring and withdrew a grimy blue flannel rag.
I clutched my favorite Ohm pin, a backward three with a couple of dashed accents, which rested on my jeweler’s apron. I watched, transfixed.
He opened the first corner of the rag. Silver flashed in a stray sunbeam.
“Oh, what have you got?” I breathed.
He unwrapped the rest and held out the rag on his open palm, a sacrificial offering. There, on his calloused and acid-scarred hand, lay a necklace.
I gasped, grasping my Ohm pin so tight it cut into my palm.
Twelve, two-inch, heart-shaped cabochon blood rubies, each nestled in a platinum heart setting, created the heavy collar of the necklace. A pendant of a naked woman carved in onyx and set in platinum depended from the twelve links. Worth millions.
“Sell it.” Rupert thrust the rag with its valuable burden toward me.
Unbidden, my hand reached toward the necklace. The enormous piece glistened with platinum and rubies and black onyx. Oh, my.
The necklace balanced over his hand, resplendent on the dark blue flannel rag. The voluptuous woman pendant hung from his fingertips. Perfect. No, not perfect. Torn solder dangled from one tiny foot, obscene.
I wanted to pin the necklace to the glass counter and grasp all that glory. I jammed my hands into the encyclopedia-sized pockets of my jeweler’s apron.
“Take it, quick,” my father said. His voice quavered, his beard trembled. “Before Maddie gets back.”
We both glanced around the store. If Aunt Maddie returned and found her despised brother-in-law here we faced a storm of mad Maddie trouble.
“Who’s the designer?” I demanded.
I wanted, no, needed to know. The elements of the necklace screamed Art Nouveau. The design glowed unique, the work of a master jeweler. I couldn’t place the necklace in an oeuvre. “Vever?”
“Sell it,” Rupert said.
“Lalique?” But no, the necklace couldn’t be a Lalique. In everything, including his jewelry, he always used glass. Onyx, a dyed semi-precious stone, didn’t count.
“Sell it.”
“A Verdura?” I asked, before my father’s words at last sunk in. My head jerked up. I stared at Rupert. “What do you mean, ‘sell it’?”
He gave the rag bundle a shake. “Now. Today.”
My mouth hung open. “B-but, where…where did you get it?”
Even at the height of his popularity and fame, when he was renowned all over the West for his “Starke” designs, Rupert never enjoyed the resources to create such a piece. I doubted any designer did today. Platinum went for well over a thousand a troy ounce.
My father shook his head. His fringe of long gray hair flew. “If you love me you won’t ask any questions.”
“No questions? You’ve got to be kid— If I love you?”
First time he spoke of my love for him. And he used it like a club.
He looked far worse than when I’d seen him last. His clothes, always old and worn, but always clean, were gray with grime. His spirit, blue.
I gulped back bile. Good thing I’d not eaten in hours. It was tough being a vegan in Starke, Idaho.
“I’ve run out of time.” Rupert spoke to the floor. “Sell it today.”
“Today?” I glanced around at Aunt Maddie’s shop, at the decades of dust and disorder. I couldn’t sell the Crown Jewels in this mess. I imagined the shelf with the potato salt-and-pepper shakers, priced at three dollars a pair, and next to them the necklace. Worth millions.
“Get cash, no checks.” Rupert’s hands shook as he clutched the bag and the necklace with its soiled flannel.
“Cash?” I rubbed my face in disbelief. “Cash?” Nobody had that kind of cash, not even the wealthy who would flood into Starke when the ski resort would open in two weeks. Buddha willing and the snow should fly.
Rupert stuffed the necklace back into the dirty velvet bag. “Take it.” He held out the bag, his hand shaking.
I took a step back and bumped into the display case of spud-based souvenirs. The case rocked. A little Spuddy Buddy fell off onto the floor and produced a poof of stale dust. “What? Where did you get it? Where did you find it?”
Where could my father have found such a treasure?
“I need—at least a—a hundred thousand.”
“A hundred thousand?” My voice squeaked. “Dollars?”
“It’s worth millions. Even a bit damaged. Even with a bit missing.” He fingered the bag in his hand, a talisman. “And it’s worthless.” His chin dropped to his chest. “To me,” he whispered.
“But who would have a hundred thousand?” Even as I spoke, I realized I knew one person with tons of money. She might know who created the necklace as well. She knew everything. Or so she always insisted.
“Your boss,” Rupert said. He knew too.
“Nance is not my boss. Not any more. Not ever again,” I said. “Now I’m my own boss.” I refrained from another chaos check of the room.
“She’s rich.”
“Yes, but I’ll bet she doesn’t have a hundred thousand stashed in that battered steamer trunk she carries around as a purse.” Although I believed the cash might fit into Nance’s voluminous satchel.
Rupert gulped. “Dora, please, I’ve never asked you for anything.”
And you’ve never given me anything either, I wanted to blurt out. Ohm, I breathed. As a practicing Buddhist, and boy did I need a lot of practice, I knew that a brutal accusation would so be not Right
Speech.
“What are you going to do with a hundred thousand dollars?” I couldn’t imagine why Rupert needed all that money. He never needed money before, living in a tiny cabin in the woods and selling a few of his “junk” jewelry pins every fall to buy food for the winter. His clothing he got from the Widows Brigade during their annual “Charity Party.”
“No questions. I have to have the money. Now. Today.”
The slanting afternoon light through the dirty front window grew dimmer. “Today is gone. I can’t—”
“You have to,” Rupert insisted.
“No, we have to tell Lester,” I said.
Lester the Arrester, Starke’s Sheriff for thirty years, would know what to do. He always knew what to do. Or had known, before his grandson’s death.
“No, no, no.” Rupert placed the bag next to his heart. “Promise you won’t tell.” He looked over his shoulder at the front door, as if checking an escape route, and then back at me. He shook his head. His never-shorn beard waved from side to side. “If you tell anyone,”—he shook harder—“or if you don’t get the money now, I-I’m—dead.”
“Dead?” I threw my hand out to steady myself. The display case toppled over.
Rupert and I jumped as potato-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers, butter dishes, and flower vases all with “Souvenir from Idaho” scrawled across them in flaking gold paint crashed and broke.
“Maddie will be mad,” Rupert said, his voice high, threaded with fear. He glanced behind him at the front door. Perhaps he feared she would appear at the speaking of her name.
“Wait. No problem and good riddance.” I didn’t want him to run before I had some answers.
Rupert stared at me. “But your aunt…”
I flapped my hand at the broken junk, dismissing it. “I’ll take the blame. I don’t want the tacky things in Maddie’s new, improved store.” Aunt Maddie’s renovated store would showcase my original jewelry designs.
The corroded bell above the door clanged. Another thing I’d replace. A blast of frigid air followed the bell. Too cold to snow, darn it.
A woman’s voice sang out, “Hello?”
The necklace flashed as Rupert stuffed it back in the velvet bag. “Get me the money. Or I’m dead,” he hissed. With a desperate nod, he tossed the bag to me.
I caught it on the fly and thrust the bag into my pocket. Even in my oversized jeweler’s apron, the bag bulged the pocket. Ugh.
The woman stood behind my tall father so I peeked around him to where an even-shorter-than-short-me plump figure stood in the doorway. Unfamiliar. The woman’s long, thick golden hair cascaded past her waist and obscured her features.
“Pardon me, please, if you don’t mind,” the woman said in a high, childlike voice.
Rupert flung his hands up and froze, a terrified statue.
“It’s not Maddie,” I reassured him.
I wondered how many years it’d been since he and Aunt Maddie spoke. Although my father should know that my aunt would never begin a sentence with “pardon me.” She might not even say “please.” And she never cared if anybody minded.
Rupert looked over his shoulder. He gasped.
The woman stared up at him. “Is it—could it be?” She flung aside her curtain of hair. Her large blue eyes widened. “Bertie?”
TWO
Bertie?
Rupert’s jaw dropped. His mouth gabbled wide, his rotten teeth black flags. “No, it can’t be!” he screamed. He ran for the door.
The woman grabbed at his arm as he scuttled by. “Bertie.”
Bertie? Did this stranger confuse my father for someone else? Someone she knew? Someone not a mountain man. Someone not a recluse. Someone, Buddha above, gregarious?
She caught the material of his leather duster. “Wait.” She tugged.
My father gave an inarticulate cry.
I grabbed the woman’s grasping arm. “Let go.”
“Never,” she spoke in a high snarl. A mean Pomeranian growl.
I stepped between them and placed my hand on the woman’s considerable bosom. My hand sunk into her abundant flesh. “Let him go. Now.” I nudged. Well, pushed. Not hard. Still not Right Action.
Rupert ripped free. He ran. His battered ancient sneakers crunched over the shattered spud bits. His beard floated behind him in a gray cloud. He slammed the door behind him. The bell leapt and clanged.
“Don’t run,” the woman called.
We dashed to the door. The woman got there first. She flung it open. The bell jumped off its nail and clattered to the floor.
I followed her out and squinted in the late afternoon glare. The tang of the Canine Creek forest fire stung my nose. The Sleeping Gods lay deep bronze in the sun. Blue haze gathered around the bare brown southern exposed mountains. This cold, this late in the year, and still somewhere near Starke a fire burned.
A pin of the golden mountains, with smoky blue-fused glass as an overlay…a friend did gorgeous fused glass…if I asked her to provide the—
The woman waved with both arms high. “Bertie.”
Bertie?
She hopped up and down. An aggravated long-haired Pomeranian.
My father scuttled toward his ancient station wagon parked behind a neon pink Cadillac.
A man slouched behind the wheel of the Cadillac. His shaved bald pate reflected the neon pink. He sat up and stared at my father.
Across Main Street, two of the Sun Dog Development Company’s construction crew paused from work on the Dog’s main office façade. Squeezed between Maureen’s Bar and McIntosh’s Drugstore, the building’s front mirrored the traditional “Wild West” false two-story frontage of the other century-old buildings. Badly. The faded, worn carving on Mo’s Bar’s and the drugstore’s windows and door frames couldn’t compete with the riot of crossed skis and ski poles on the new building. The Dog’s building vibrated bad taste, bad planning, and bad karma.
After staring for a moment, the two construction workers turned back to work. I snorted. Strangers. Oh, not Right Thought. Perhaps they only rushed, frantic to finish before Starke, excuse me, Aurora opened as Idaho’s newest ski resort. In two weeks. If it ever snowed. Or maybe they feared Tony, the construction foreman for most of Starke’s work.
Rupert skittered over the pine wood sidewalks and almost slipped and tumbled. Brand new, courtesy of Starke’s new Town Council, the sidewalks were “authentic Wild West,” which meant they were slicker than snot.
The pink Cadillac man watched. His eyebrows rose toward his non-existent hairline. He leapt out of the car, revealing himself as a barrel-shaped bear of a man who appeared to have squeezed his excess pounds into a tiny pair of exercise stretch pants. A cropped sweatshirt completed his—um—ensemble.
A cold wind skittered down the sidewalk. I stuck my hands inside my apron bib and shivered. Dressed so scantily, that guy might freeze to death.
He pointed at my father. A patch of fat white flesh rolled out between pants and top. “Hey,” the man yelped.
My father yelped back. He skidded to a stop, spun around, saw me and the woman, and spun back.
“Derek,” the woman called, “it’s him.” She pointed at Rupert.
Rupert ran.
Derek jumped onto the sidewalk into Rupert’s escape path. Bad idea. My father banged into the man full force and knocked Derek off the sidewalk. Derek bounced off the Cadillac.
Rupert jumped into his station wagon. It coughed to life. He cut the wheels tight. The station wagon leapt forward. Rupert missed the fender of the Cadillac by a micro-millimeter.
“Hey,” the Cadillac man yelled again. A limited vocabulary that went with his limited outfit. He shook his fist at my father.
Bald tires squealed as Rupert tore down Highway 21, also Starke’s Main Street.
The man showed his teeth at the departing car. “I’ve got you, Bertie, at last.”
With one hand, the woman scooped air. “Derek, come over here,” she said, a command in every word.
The
man scowled. Then he stared at the station wagon’s retreating dust trail. He smiled. “I’m done taking your orders, Sis.”
“It’s mine, not yours,” the woman answered.
“We’ll see about that.”
“Derek, you have to—”
The man jumped back into the Cadillac. “Finders keepers,” he yelled at her.
“Wait for me!” She sprinted toward the Cadillac.
The big car purred as Derek cranked the wheel and pulled away from the curb in one smooth motion.
Inches from grabbing the car’s door handle, the woman stopped and stamped her foot.
The Cadillac passed, headed fast in the same direction as Rupert’s car. A magnetic sign on the driver’s door showed a logo of a naked woman sitting sideways on a horse. The woman’s long yellow hair preserved her modesty, or rather most of it—one tiny nipple half-peeked through a strand of hair. Purple lettering proclaimed, “Godiva, God’s Naturist.”
I almost wished I’d left with Rupert, or even the obese Derek. Everyone seemed determined to escape the obnoxious woman.
“Derek, come back here.” The woman put her hands on her hips and muttered, “You bastard,” under her breath. She turned and faced me. Her one blue eye not covered by hair narrowed. “You scared him away,” she said.
“Huh? Who?”
“You know who. Bertie.”
My eyes widened. Was this odd woman a threat to my father? Or did he run because she was a stranger, and strange? “Who’s Bertie?”
“I needed to talk to him,” the woman said.
“You did talk to him. You not only talked to him, you assaulted him. Why?”
The woman gave a laugh and a flippant flip of her hand. “Oh, he was just surprised.”
“No kidding.”
She raised one eyebrow at me as if I’d just farted and blamed her.
I plunged both hands into my apron pockets and held onto my temper. After all, I supposed I didn’t look that threatening in my heavy-duty cotton jeweler’s apron spattered with green and pink casting wax and so large it hung past my knees. Although the ball peen hammer and leather mallet hanging from the apron loops ought to help.
Starke Naked Dead (Starke Dead Mysteries Book 1) Page 1
