by Jess Lourey
He nodded, once. “You look nice tonight.” And then he turned to follow Kennie.
I stood there, stunned, parsing his words. Had he put the emphasis on “tonight,” suggesting that I’d looked like a red monkey butt during all our previous encounters? Or had he put more weight behind “nice,” meaning that I looked generally dull and inoffensive? I glanced over at the wine table. In the past, liquor had helped me to clarify these questions, or at least render them irrelevant. Crap, it was hard being dry. I forced myself back into the crowd, asking questions and talking to people I’d only known by name as the clock crawled toward 8:00.
I was peripherally aware that the crowd was growing louder as the wine bottles emptied, but it wasn’t until people began to dance the “time to go” shuffle that I realized that Clive was responsible for a lot of the noise. He was gesticulating and arguing with the hardware-store-owning Nordmans, who were gazing hopefully toward the door. I also noticed Mike, Frederick, and Mitchell staring across the room at the situation with steely eyes, and Gary on the other side of the front desk doing the same. Intending to head off an uncomfortably dramatic intervention, I made my way to Clive’s side.
“Hey, Clive. Thanks again for coming. Say, can I ask you something about cars?” I knew how to deal with a drunk man. I’d trained for it the first 17 years of my life. You start by distracting them by making them feel smart, and then you lead them away like kittens.
“I’m no car mechanic,” he slurred.
“No, but you’re handy. And this is important. My car runs great, but there’s no heat in it. I’m afraid to bring it in because I can’t afford to fix anything expensive.”
“It’s your thermostat,” Carla said. The Nordmans had seized the opportunity to grab their coats and exit, leaving only the three of us in this corner.
“But what if it isn’t?”
“Only one way to find out,” Clive mumbled. “And it isn’t by talking about it.”
I studied him. I’d witnessed him making six runs to the liquor table in the past hour, but except for his slurred words, I wouldn’t have called him drunk. “Carla, I think we’re closing up here. Can you get Clive home?”
“It’s what I do for a living,” she said. “You ready to go, honey?”
Clive threw off her arm and raised his voice so it carried to the far reaches of the library. “What, they don’t want no murderers here?”
My skin grew icy. All conversations in the room stopped.
Carla said, “Clive, this isn’t the place.”
“If you don’t want a killer here, then you should just say so. It was an accident! A goddamned accident!”
Mike made his way over. “You’ve had too much to drink, buddy. It’s time to go.” He put his hand firmly on Clive’s and guided him toward the door. Carla trailed behind. Clive began to struggle, but Mike tightened his grip.
“Wait now, I got something to say.”
“You’ve already said enough.”
“But I got something here.” Clive reached into his inside jacket pocket with his free hand, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Gary move in from his back-up position. Before he arrived, Clive produced a checkbook. “You gotta be a moneybags to come, right? Pay to play. Well, I’d like to donate some money to the library. Just so I feel bona fide.” He laughed. It was a melancholy sound.
I walked over and made sure he was looking me in the eyes. The look he shot me was belligerent but not mean, the pleading glance of an over-disciplined dog. “That’s not necessary.”
Clive dug in his heels, and Mike reassessed his grip. “I think it is,” Clive said, any hint of reasonableness gone from his voice. “You gonna stop a man from donating money to the library?”
Mike and Gary exchanged glances. Mike spoke. “You write the check, and you go. You understand?”
“Yessir.” Clive leaned clumsily into the nearest table, yanked a pen from his pocket, and began scribbling loudly on the check. He ripped it out with a flourish and handed it over to me.
I glanced down. It was made out to the Battle Lake Public Library in the amount of $5,000. This hefty donation created three possibilities. Number one, Clive had been squirreling away honest cash for a while and was overcome by the season to show his admiration for the public library system. Two, he was as good as declaring to the world he was a pot dealer. Or three: someone had recently paid him a hunk of hot cash, possibly in the form of a bribe, and he’d rather donate it publicly than hang onto it one more minute. The third option suggested Hallie’s intuition had been dead on.
Twelve
The antiseptic hospital smell immediately curled my ovaries. It reminded me of the fear I’d felt when I’d arrived here last October, not knowing whether or not Mrs. Berns had survived her car crash. I shoved that thought down and asked for Hallie’s room.
I found her in a private wing on the second floor, reclining in bed and watching a rerun of The Golden Girls. Her face and hands looked swollen and her eyes were grayish and bagged. “Hallie?”
She turned slowly from the TV, and it took her a moment to register who I was. “Mira? What are you doing here?”
“I hope I’m not bothering you,” I said apologetically. “Ron Sims at the paper said you’d been hospitalized, and I was worried.”
She clicked off the TV and pushed herself up in bed like she was made out of glass. “I’m fine. This is nothing new. Meet my good friend, Fresenius 4008.” She motioned toward the machine next to her bed. It was taller than I was, boxy, and on wheels. Red lights flashed sleepily on the front. A screen on the top third scrolled information I couldn’t decipher, and a bag of clear fluid hung off an antenna-like structure on the side.
“What’s it do?”
“Dialysis.”
“Oh. Your kidneys are bad?”
“They’ve been better, but not for a while. I have diabetic ketoacidosis. It’s treatable, but stress exacerbates it. I guess it’s been a pretty stressful week.”
I sat heavily on the chair next to her. “I guess. You’re going to be okay?”
She smiled reassuringly and made an “x” motion across her chest. “I’ll be fine, cross my heart. I’m used to this. Sorry to worry you.”
I tried to return her smile and made a weak attempt at a joke. “Can’t have anything happen to my only client.”
I immediately regretted my words because her eyes sparked. “Have you found something? You have, haven’t you?”
Clive’s indoor field of thick green mary jane flashed in my brain. I’d found something, but I couldn’t be sure it was related to Tom’s death, which made it probably none of her business and for sure none of mine. As to the big check he’d written at the library tonight, I wasn’t certain I wanted her to know about that just yet. It might cause stress without purpose. “I only started looking, and it doesn’t help that I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“You’re trying to find out why Clive killed my dad.”
I envisioned Clive swaying at the library, yelling. It was an accident! A goddamned accident! “Could there be more reasons than whatever they were arguing about?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just brainstorming. We know that Clive shot Tom, or has at least taken responsibility for it. If the shooting was intentional, could there have been other reasons for Clive to have killed your dad, other than a little fight?”
She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
I sensed a latent diplomacy gene trying to spark, bless its soul. I ignored it and laid out what I’d been thinking ever since I’d spotted that pot in Clive’s barn. “What if the shooting isn’t as direct as you think? Maybe someone had something on Clive and talked him into shooting your dad in exchange for their silence.”
“What?” She rubbed at the IV needle taped to the back of her hand and began coughing. “But that would mean someone else wanted my dad dead. He was a wonderful man. Wonderful! No one would ever want to hurt him.”
“I suppose,” she said shakily. Her coughing fit had passed, but it left her looking and sounding like she’d run a marathon.
“Then I need you to give me the full background on Clive and Tom’s relationship and any other relationships your dad had, suspicious or otherwise. I should have gotten all this from you right away.”
I pulled a notebook and pen out of my shoulder bag. She seemed reluctant but plowed in, beginning with her earliest memory, that of her dad taking her on a business trip to Orlando.
“I was maybe four years old. I got to sit in on sales meetings with him, and at the end of the day, he took me to Disney World. I felt like a princess.”
I glanced up from my note taking. Her skin was still gray, but her eyes had the sweet joy of a well-loved child sparkling in them. I was ashamed at the sudden wash of jealousy I felt and pulled my eyes back to the notebook in my lap.
“He took me on most of his business trips after that, even when it meant pulling me out of school. Catherine didn’t like to travel, not at first, but she learned to love our trips.”
I paused in my writing. “Catherine?”
“My stepmother. My dad married her when I was little, still a toddler.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“She died in childbirth.”
“I’m sorry.”
Hallie shrugged. “I never knew her.”
“Your stepmom was at the funeral?”
“She was. She and dad divorced about ten years ago, but they stayed friends.”
I nodded. I’d heard of stranger things. “Do you happen to have her contact information?”
She pointed an unsteady finger toward the address book in her purse and returned to marking off Tom’s life with landmarks that she remembered as his daughter—holidays, graduation, milestones in the business. When I asked for more detail on Tom and Clive’s relationship, she reiterated that Clive had been working at Battle Sacks for as long as she could remember and that he and her dad had always been friends, though other than hunting, they rarely socialized outside of work.
“They’d never had an argument before that night?”
“None that I knew about. Neither of them was aggressive. My dad was too easy-going, and Clive, well, Clive didn’t care enough about anything to fight for it.”
“Is that why he was still a line mechanic? Given his relationship with your dad and the number of years he’d been at the business, I’d think he could have advanced to an office position.”
“Not Clive. He liked to work with his hands. And believe me, he got paid well for what he did.”
I scribbled that fact and asterisked it. Maybe Clive did indeed have enough money to legitimately donate some to the library. “During the fight, you heard Clive say he didn’t want anyone to find out for a week?”
Hallie studied her hands. “Yes. I think so.”
“You think?” I looked at her incredulously. “That single disagreement is the whole reason you believe your dad’s death wasn’t an accident, right?”
“Right,” she said. “I still believe that. It’s just, I’m not so sure exactly what Clive said anymore. I don’t know if he was talking about himself or my dad not wanting other people to find out.”
I thought about that. “Does it make a difference?”
“I don’t know,” she said simply.
“Where in the county was your dad shot? I’d heard it was a local hunt club, but if anyone mentioned the name, I don’t remember it.”
She winced. I didn’t know if it was the question or her medical condition, but she was appearing paler than when I’d arrived. “Deer Valley Hunt Club. It’s out by Millerville. My dad and Clive hunted there all the time. It was owned by a friend.”
Well, I could cross one item off my list. I already had a visit out there planned to interview Mitchell. I leaned in. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Clive had quit?”
She looked genuinely shocked. “He didn’t. I saw him at work just yesterday.”
“He quit right before your dad’s death and reclaimed his job right after. Why would he have done that?”
“I don’t know. He was impetuous, but that job was his life. How do you know he quit?”
“I have my sources.” Luck, Chance, and Serendipity were their names. “What else can you tell me about your dad? Any enemies you can think of ? Anyone he unintentionally upset?”
“This is confidential, right?”
“Absolutely.”
She glanced over my shoulder like she wanted to shut the door all the way but settled for lowering her voice. “Battle Sacks wasn’t entirely my dad’s idea.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there was another guy in town who had a similar business making hunting packs. He didn’t have a catchy name for them and was never much of a businessman. My dad saw one of these backpacks and decided he could do better. He made some improvements and started marketing his version. I don’t think the original guy made any profit at all. That’s how capitalism works,” she said a little defensively. “You have to be quick to make the money.”
“Is that guy still around?”
“I’m not sure. He’d be pretty old. Last I heard, he was living in a nursing home in Fergus Falls. His name is Julius Mertz.”
I wrote down the name. “Can you think of anything else worth mentioning, anything that seemed a little off ?”
She returned to studying her hands. “There is one more thing. A mechanic. Over in Parkers Prairie. That’s the only place my dad would ever bring his cars to get fixed.”
Parkers Prairie was another small town about a half an hour southeast. There were twenty mechanics between here and there, most of them reliable. “He couldn’t get it fixed any closer?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you know the mechanic?”
“I never met him. One time I asked my dad if I should bring my car there because the guy must be a magician with cars. It was one of the only times I’ve ever seen him angry. He wouldn’t even tell me the name of the mechanic.”
“How do you know where it is, then?”
“I’m his bookkeeper, remember? I pay the bills. It’s Lyle’s in Parkers Prairie.”
I scribbled that information in the notepad. “Anything else?”
“That’s it, I think.”
I finished jotting down notes and looked up. Her eyes were closed. In the restful position, with her cheeks puffy and innocent, she looked much younger. “Thanks, Hallie.” I whispered. “I’ll take it from here.”
She didn’t stir.
I let myself out and drove home. The weather was still holding above freezing, which meant I could keep my fish house heater on its lowest setting. Maybe, I thought as I drove, this whole case was a cosmic Rube Goldberg designed to force me to a mechanic through the most circuitous route possible. I would call Lyle’s tomorrow, but I wouldn’t commit to more than an oil change. And in the meanwhile, I had some vitamins to ingest and some hair to grow in time for tomorrow’s date.
Thirteen
The next morning, I awoke feeling oddly jumpy, like I had a bug crawling on me that I couldn’t locate. Shrugging it off, I hopped in the shower, scrubbed with sandalwood-scented body cream, and washed my hair and shaved my legs in anticipation of tonight’s date. I toweled off outside the shower and stood naked in my foggy bathroom, twining my hair into a dozen braids so it’d be wavy when it dried. After applying body lotion to my winter-parched skin, I pulled on a pair of Levi’s, a thermal undershirt, and my favorite roller derby t-shirt.
My list for my day off included calling three people to see if they’d answer a few questions: the mechanic, the po
ssible real creator of the original Battle Sack, and Tom’s ex. I also wanted to talk with Jed to see what he knew about Clive’s pot farm. In addition, I planned to bake fresh bread and whip up some clam chowder from scratch for my date with Johnny tonight. I had told him I’d do the cooking, and I didn’t want to let him down.
I loved to cook in the winter. It took the place of my gardening obsession, which wasn’t an option in the icy months. Sure, I had my miniature indoor greenhouse where I grew fresh herbs, and my orange and lemon tree that were both laden with babyfist-sized ripening fruit, but it wasn’t the same as digging my fingers in the dirt and yanking weeds. Kneading bread dough, however, or mincing spicy fresh thyme and chopping sharp onions, felt real and soothing. And the aromas of my kitchen as a pot of homemade soup simmered and I pulled a loaf of crusty brown bread from the oven was as satisfying as surveying an immaculate garden.
I grabbed a handful of granola, washed it down with some rice milk, and considered starting a pot of coffee. Caffeine was a Sunday morning treat for me, along with the New York Times crossword puzzle, but I felt too jittery and so passed on both. I wondered, as I downed a quadruple dose of the hair and skin vitamins, if I was nervous about tonight’s date. I was looking forward to it, and I knew Johnny’d respect my boundaries, but dang if I didn’t feel like something big was about to happen.
I shrugged it off and settled for a mug of herbal tea. Tiger Pop twined herself around my feet when I plopped down by the phone. Hallie had provided the phone number for Tom’s ex, Catherine, who’d kept her married name. I couldn’t remember if my phone book covered Parkers Prairie, though, so I’d stopped at the library on my way home from the hospital last night and retrieved the number for Lyle’s. I made a copy of the yellow pages devoted to all the Fergus Falls nursing homes while I was at it so I could track down Julius Mertz.
