Starke Naked Dead (Starke Dead Mysteries Book 1)

by Conda V. Douglas

  My hand jerked out when it touched the velvet bag.

  The woman tossed her head. The ocean of ultra-blonde hair gone, her face displayed deep sun-cut grooves around her generous mouth and ultra-wide baby doll blue eyes. The hair framing her face had concealed her age. She must have been in her fifties. A pin in a far-too-familiar style perched on her generous bosom. The unmistakable mishmash of beaten bottle caps, old telephone wire, scraps of cloth, and old buttons combined into a portrayal of an old mansion in flames, somehow captured at the moment of total conflagration, ethereal, beautiful, and terrifying.

  Rupert, who once worked in silver and eighteen-carat gold, now created these pins during the long winter months. Always of a burning mansion.

  Was this annoying woman only an overly-enthusiastic customer, the type who always felt compelled to meet the artist? A customer who’d misheard his name?

  “Did you get that pin from Nance’s?” I asked.

  Only two places carried my father’s jewelry these days—my aunt’s store and Nance’s gallery in Boise. Aunt Maddie hated having Rupert’s pins in her store, but I’d convinced her to sell them. We held little inventory.

  Now, with the potato tourist gewgaws scattered all over the store floor even less.

  The woman frowned. “Delightful person, and so knowledgeable.” She gave a shake of her head. “Very, very, very knowledgeable.”

  This woman knew Nance all right.

  Her outfit exuded wealth, she wore a simple velour sweat suit in a matching neon pink to the Cadillac. It was doubtful the heavy plush of the velour provided any real barrier against the cold.

  I pointed at the grimy display window of my aunt’s store. Clean window, check. Add to list, check. Long list. Inside, on top of a couple of Spuddy Buddies, I’d displayed my few cast pins and several of Rupert’s pieces. “If you’d like more, I’ve several lovely pieces.” I tried for a happy-helpful-salesclerk voice.

  The woman crossed her arms over her large breasts. “Nance didn’t know where Bertie lived.” She leaned in toward me. “Do you? Whoever you are?”

  Enough. I leaned forward until we almost touched noses. ”What do you want with my father?” I demanded. Do you want to kill him? I wanted to add. Somebody must.

  I stepped back at the realization and clutched my Ohm pin. What somebody?

  I’d only been up to Rupert’s cabin twice in my life. A third time would be added as soon as I got rid of Miss Lots of Hair for answers to the questions that reeled in my mind.

  The woman put her hand up to her mouth. “You must be itty-bitty Dora MacDonald.” Odd thing for a woman shorter than me to say. “All grown up.”

  Shocked she knew me, I blurted, “It’s not MacDonald, it’s Dora Starke. Born of the Starke’s in Starke then always a Starke,” I quoted my Aunt Maddie.

  The woman ran her hand through her long hair. It took quite a while. “Whatever. You’re his daughter. You know where he lives.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Where?”

  Why was she so vociferous in her pursuit of him? “You’ve already frightened him enough. Leave him alone.”

  The woman dropped her arms. She glanced at where her ride had taken off, as if the Cadillac might magically reappear.

  I softened my voice. “Look, my father’s called Wild Rupert because he’s been a mountain man for years and he’s gone all feral shy.”

  So how did he get hold of the necklace? My hand strayed to my bulging apron pocket. I ached to pull the necklace out of my pocket and examine it. I put my hand in the pocket that held the necklace and felt it through the cloth bag.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” the woman said.

  “A neck—some jewelry.” Good save, Dora. I even told the truth.

  “Jewelry?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lester clumping down the wooden sidewalk. My clenched stomach relaxed. When I handed over the necklace to Lester then—

  “If you tell anyone, I’m dead.”

  I couldn’t chance it. The necklace weighed leaden in my pocket.

  The woman stared at Lester. “Oh no, he’s still sheriff? Isn’t he dead yet?”

  THREE

  I wondered at her words, but before I asked, Lester arrived. He wore a mélange of a faded uniform and an old corduroy jacket, patched at the elbows. Over six feet tall, stick thin, with his stoop he resembled an aged professor. For his thirty years as sheriff, Lester the Arrester never arrested a soul. ’Course, until Starke got declared a new ski resort, less than three hundred souls existed in town to arrest.

  He stomped up to me and glared, all cop, no professor. “I heard that crazy father of yours tearing out of town all the way down the block.”

  The woman scurried back, away from our confrontation. She flipped her hair back over her shoulder, hiding her face.

  I couldn’t blame her. The rage in Lester’s voice would terrify a hardened criminal.

  My sour stomach roiled again. I gulped. Lester might arrest Rupert, for the fatal sin of driving fast. Lester the Arrester never arrested anyone until the tragedy, but now…who knew?

  “Rupert was frightened,” I said.

  Lester removed his hat and ran a hand over close-cropped, silver-gray hair. His hair glinted as bright as any glittering jewel in the last rays of the late October sun.

  My empty stomach burned.

  “That’s no excuse. And who was that maniac following Rupert?”

  The woman paused mid-creep. She pulled her curtain of hair aside. “Oh, Derek was only headed to our new home, The Starke Naturist Center.”

  Lester’s shoulders jerked. “Derek.” His pronunciation of that name made it clear he knew the cropped-top man. His mouth twisted in distaste. “Godiva.”

  The woman widened her best feature, her large blue eyes, at Lester. “After all these years you remember me.”

  “The nudist.” Lester’s neck spasmed.

  Godiva lifted her chin. “Such an old-fashioned term. We’re naturists.” She clasped her hands as if in prayer. “As God made us.”

  An image of this woman naked in a snowstorm came to me. I shivered. “In Starke? You’ll freeze to death.” I sighed. “Maybe. If it ever snows.”

  Godiva giggled, an odd, high childish laugh. “We’ll be inside during the winter.”

  “I hope you have a good furnace,” I said.

  “We have fire, the greatest of the elements.” Her face shone. “We’ll live as our true selves, unburdened by the fake encumbrances of cloth, honest and free.”

  I found myself smiling and nodding. Attachment to a dream led to suffering, but such fervor delighted me. I possessed a passion for jewelry design that despite all my practice of the Way still held me fast.

  Lester gave a growl, deep in his throat. “Not while Starke is still my town.”

  Godiva cringed.

  Lester added, “We ran you out of town before.”

  I grimaced, hearing no appeasement in his tone, no calm and steady of the old Lester. “Lester? Sheriff?” I asked in as quiet a tone I could manage.

  “Get out of Starke.” Lester took a step toward Godiva.

  “You can’t arrest her. She’s done nothing wrong,” I said.

  “She is everything that’s wrong.” Lester reached for Godiva, his hand clawed tight.

  She gave a tiny yelp. “Bye,” she squawked. Miss Too Long Hair trotted away, heading down Main in the same direction as my father and Derek, the driver of the pink Caddy.

  Lester swore under his breath.

  He’d never sworn before, not in my hearing.

  I patted Lester on the elbow patch. “Lester, why are you—”

  He turned to me, his face hot red.

  “—so angry?” I finished. I already knew the answer and it had nothing to do with nudists.

  Lester grimaced.

  “Oh, Sheriff, I’m…” I struggled for something not trite to say. “You can’t change or fix the Path,” I managed.

  Lester’s eyebrows rose.
<
br />   “I mean—” How to explain a Buddhist precept that I couldn’t grasp myself?

  Mallard, Starke’s deputy, drove Starke’s brand new, one and only police car up to the curb and honked. Lester’s face smoothed into a cop’s mask.

  “Um, boss?” Mallard called out of the open side window.

  Dust covered both sides of the car. Until Starke got the nod for a ski resort, only Main Street, also Highway 21, had been paved. Now two other streets could claim that distinction. Not enough.

  “Mallard, get out of the car,” Lester ordered.

  Mallard got out. Even in the crisp air, sweat stains circled under each of his arms. His broad-nosed face bore his usual expression of a stunned duck. Ever since he arrived six months ago, he’d struggled to swim in the whirlpool of Starke.

  Lester held out his hand. “Give me the keys.”

  “Um,” Mallard said as he handed them over, “I was working on those programs on the computer, you know?”

  Lester crossed his arms over his chest, an irritated professor. “I suppose that’s why you drove over here? To tell me that?”

  “Um,” Mallard said again. A huge drop of sweat rolled down his forehead, down his nose to rest, glistening at the tip. “You didn’t take your cell phone, boss.”

  “That piece of junk doesn’t work most of the time,” Lester said. “And if it’s an emergency, Mallard, it’s probably over by now.” He moved to the police car.

  I understood Lester’s impatience. Mallard would act as Sheriff after Lester left for Houston.

  “We got a call from Mrs. McGarrity,” Mallard managed.

  Mrs. McGarrity provided the Starke gossip service for the Widows Brigade, a service faster than the Internet.

  “And?” Lester said.

  “Mad Maddie—” Mallard began

  “Hey,” I said. Mallard hadn’t been in town long enough to call my aunt mad.

  Mallard glanced at me and gulped. “I mean Miss Maddie Starke.”

  “That’s better,” I said. “What’s she done this time?” My aunt earned her sobriquet, often hourly.

  “Mrs. McGarrity says that Maddie’s going to shoot Henry,” Mallard said in a rush.

  I sighed. One catastrophe at a time.

  “I’m out of time,” my father had said.

  Mallard held out his hand toward me, palm up. “Why is your aunt going to shoot Henry?”

  “Family tradition.”

  “Tradition?”

  “We’ve been blasting away at the Camerons for generations.”

  Why my aunt wanted to take pot-shots at Henry, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.

  More sweat beads popped out on Mallard’s forehead. I’d bet that when he signed up as Starke’s first ever deputy, he expected boredom in an old mining town. At least until the ski resort opened.

  “Ever kill anybody?” he asked.

  My shoulders rose again. “Not recently. We’re past due.”

  Mallard frowned. The sweat started to collect in the crevices of his forehead, little rivers. “So, boss,” he said to Lester.

  “Sheriff,” Lester said. “I’m not a boss, I’m a sheriff.” He grunted. “At least for a few days.” He slid into the police car as if finished with the discussion and the situation.

  “Um, bo—Sheriff,” Mallard said. “Don’t you figure you ought to head over to Maddie’s and defuse the situation?”

  “Defuse the situation?” I said. “You can’t defuse Aunt Maddie, trust me.”

  Lester lifted his chin in the general direction of the Starke homestead, now occupied by the last of the Starke family, Maddie and me. “You go, Mallard,” Lester said.

  “Me?” Mallard wilted even more.

  “Mallard?” I asked.

  Lester gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’ll be a good experience.” He started the police car.

  I looked at Lester’s closed down face. Before his grandson died, he’d never send anyone off to an armed confrontation. And an armed confrontation with my aunt.

  Mallard shrugged. “But bo—Sheriff, I’m the computer geek.”

  “You’re sheriff in five days,” Lester said.

  Mallard looked about to drown in his own sweat. “But—”

  “And I’ve got to get to Houston.” With that, Lester drove off.

  I took Mallard’s arm and flinched at his wet shirt. “You can survive anything.”

  He stared down at me, his eyebrows raised.

  “If you survive my Aunt Maddie,” I said to make him sweat.

  A line of huge sweat beads formed on Mallard’s brow.

  Too easy.

  FOUR

  “Aunt Maddie, nobody dies today.” I hoped I spoke the truth.

  “Family tradition to shoot Camerons,” Aunt Maddie replied. She squatted next to me on our homestead’s roof, in Great Grandpa’s favorite spot.

  The first family into Starke—not counting the Native Americans, and nobody did in those days—built our homestead for the view of Dog Face Mountain, where Great Grandpa Starke figured to find his fortune. When none of his stakes paid out—instead the Camerons discovered the rich vein of silver ore—he started sitting on the roof and glaring at the mountain. We continued the habit. Minus the glare. Below us stood Henry and next to him, Mallard. Both managed to look worried and confused at the same time.

  Aunt Maddie’s old, bottle green, paint-spattered gardening coat spread out around her. She resembled an enormous toadstool grown on the second story roof of our homestead. The icy wind tore her short-cropped orange hair around in a storm with no snow.

  The same wind tattered the smoke of the forest fire, destroying any illusion of Japanese art. I hoped the dissipation of the smoke meant the fire fighters had succeeded and the fire was out. One catastrophe dead.

  Aunt Maddie drew a bead on Henry with Great Grandpa’s old .22 revolver. “’Sides, I wouldn’t be pointing at him if I didn’t mean to shoot him.”

  I made an ineffectual half-hearted grab for the gun, half-afraid it’d go off if I grappled with my aunt. “Lester taught me ‘never aim to wound, only to kill,’” I said.

  The wind cut past my heavy cotton apron. Shivering, I wished I could wear my old pink parka over the bulky apron. It didn’t fit. And I hated not wearing the apron, the badge of my chosen profession. Besides, the coat didn’t have oversized pockets.

  I shifted my position on the slippery shingles and tried to get comfortable. Impossible. Should have taken off my weighty apron before I got up on the roof, but I didn’t dare let the necklace out of my sight—or at least possession.

  “Now, Miss Maddie, please listen to Dora,” Henry called. He sweated almost as much as the deputy. His fancy pantsy cost-as-much-as-a-wedding-ring suit hung limp and wrinkled on his solid, muscular frame. Always rumpled, our Henry.

  “I’ll just wound him a little,” Aunt Maddie said.

  Henry ducked behind Mallard.

  Mallard rubbed his wet face. “Does that gun work?”

  “My, my, that boy is new to Idaho.” Maddie didn’t look away from where she sighted down the barrel.

  “Yes, he’s new and you’re terrifying him.” I shifted again and the necklace clinked.

  Aunt Maddie looked down at the lump in my pocket. “What the devil have you got there?”

  “Jewelry. Mallard’s going to sweat to death if you don’t put the gun down.”

  “I am not,” Mallard said.

  “Not until Henry stops talking crazy,” Aunt Maddie said.

  Henry stepped back out around Mallard. “I’m not crazy, and I’m not talking crazy, and it’s not crazy.” He crossed his arms.

  Aunt Maddie lowered the gun. She enjoyed people standing up to her. It was as rare as Mama Chin cooking a bad meal in her café.

  I breathed a little easier.

  Henry spread his arms wide, resembling a supplicant appealing to a higher power. “Miss Maddie, I need you to pay the rent now.”

  “You know full well I’m good for every si
ngle penny, including any late fees.” Aunt Maddie crouched on the roof, an Old World god, one of those crabby, vengeful ones. “Soon as the Marvel’s back open and selling, you’ll get your money.”

  He rubbed at a crease in his jacket. Didn’t help. Never did. Never would. “Too late,” he mumbled to the cloth, “with your back rent and the rent from the Castle, I can bring the electrical up to code, re-roof the office, put in the firewalls. Without it, I’ll have to sell to the Dogs.”

  “Don’t you threaten me with going to the Dogs. You’re trying to steal the land, just like your great grandfather,” Maddie said.

  The word steal brought back the problem of the necklace and I jerked. My right foot slithered over the shingles. The necklace clinked in the bag.

  “Is that true, sir?” Mallard said to Henry.

  “No, it’s my land, I mean property, I mean store,” Henry said.

  Mallard looked lost. I figured he’d get used to it, about the time he became a true Starker, in about fifty years. Or a hundred.

  “I own Maddie’s Marvel’s.” Aunt Maddie harrumphed.

  “And you’re over six months behind on the rent,” Henry added.

  I cringed. Most of that debt belonged to me. Over the last six months, I’d used my aunt’s money to fix my kiln, buy casting wax, investment powder, and silver. If I hadn’t spent her savings for my new business I’d bet she’d have plenty to pay rent. Or at least enough.

  My aunt waved the old gun. I leaned back, away from the any possible line of fire. I hoped.

  “Same answer,” she said, “you’ll get it when I’ve got it.”

  Henry hopped from foot to foot. I understood his agitation, a common experience whilst talking to my aunt.

  “Look, Henry,” I said, “Everybody’s behind. If we open on schedule—”

  As if on cue, Maddie and Henry looked up. I followed. Beyond the low-lying smoke, a clear sky, as blue as a deep, true turquoise, stretched from Dog Face Mountain across Starke Valley to the Sleeping Gods. The setting sun shadowed Dog Face and obscured the new ski runs, claw marks. Dog Face carried the scars of our ambitions.