Tin City (Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie Novels)

by David Housewright

  “I should hope so.”

  “How did you make them?” asked Victoria.

  “I bought a mini-donut machine.”

  “Really?”

  “Really?” echoed Shelby.

  “I bought it off the Internet,” I told her. “Belshaw Donut Robot Mark I. It can make up to a hundred dozen mini-donuts in an hour.”

  “One hundred dozen mini-donuts?”

  “No home should be without one.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Let’s go to your house right now,” Katie said.

  “Let’s do your homework right now,” Shelby said.

  “Ahh, Mom,” both girls replied in unison.

  “Ahh, Mom,” she repeated, folding her arms across her chest, giving her daughter the don’t-mess-with-me look that she claimed was being challenged more and more as the girls grew older. To me, she said, “A mini-donut machine. To go with the sno-cone machine you bought last fall, I guess.”

  “Four flavors, no waiting.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s next? Cotton candy?”

  “I was thinking one of those machines that make corn dogs. I was never much for cotton candy.”

  “Oh, I love cotton candy,” said Victoria. “The pink kind, not the blue kind.”

  “Really. Well, I’ll have to give that some thought.”

  “You would buy a cotton candy maker just for me?”

  “Sure I would.”

  I think she would have hugged me except both hands were filled with donuts.

  “Homework,” Shelby said. “Go.”

  Victoria left for her bedroom, muttering, “What a grouch,” just loudly enough to be heard.

  “What did you say?” Shelby asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Katie, who was younger and consequently more cautious, followed her older sister out of the room without a sound.

  “Honestly, McKenzie,” Shelby said when they were gone.

  “What?”

  “You’re trying to buy their love.”

  “Hey, if it’s for sale, I’ll take it.” I held out a small paper bag for her. “Donut?”

  Shelby took the bag and the jar of Mr. Mosley’s honey and went into the kitchen. I followed.

  “How is Mr. Mosley?”

  “Okay, I guess. It’s just that he seems so … old.”

  She set the jar on the counter and turned toward me. “What is he, now? Late sixties, early seventies?”

  “Seventy—two. He’s as old as my dad would have been.”

  “My dad just turned sixty-five. He thinks that’s young.”

  “I just turned thirty-seven, and I don’t.”

  Shelby popped a mini-donut into her mouth. She closed her eyes while she chewed.

  “Rushmore, these are amazing.”

  Shelby’s the only one who gets to call me by my first name. I was christened after the national monument in whose shadow I was conceived while my parents were on a motor vacation through the Badlands. I liked to joke, “It could have been worse, it could have been Deadwood.” But that line was getting as old as I was.

  “I’m still trying to get the sugar and cinnamon mixture right,” I told Shelby.

  “No, no, this is good. This is perfect just the way it is.”

  She had another donut, and I told her about my visit with Mr. Mosley and his bees. I deliberately edited out his “your girl” remarks.

  “When will you know?”

  “I have no idea. Ivy—Ivy Flynn, she’s the grad student doing the Meldwork—she just started gathering samples this morning.”

  “You enjoy it, don’t you?”

  “Enjoy what?”

  “Helping Mr. Mosley. Helping any of your friends, for that matter.”

  “I like to be useful. I think everyone has that desire. I think we want that more than cash.”

  “Or love?”

  “Maybe that, too. Besides, it gives me something to do when I get up in the morning besides count my money.”

  “There are a lot of things you could do besides what you do.”

  “Go fishing? Play golf?”

  “Why not?”

  “I do go fishing, I do play golf. It’s just … People retire. They scrape enough money together so they don’t have to work and they say, ‘I’ll go fishing, I’ll play golf.’ It’s what they squeezed in during those brief periods when they weren’t working, and they enjoyed it. But take away the work and suddenly the fishing and golf become their whole lives. And it’s not enough. They go nuts. Some manage it, of course. My dad enjoyed retirement. But he had a hobby. Doing stuff for other people was his hobby. Shingling roofs and building decks and plumbing. He was even a volunteer firefighter for a while. ‘Live well, be useful,’ he used to say. Words to live by.”

  “Words you live by.”

  “They’re good words.”

  “Except you’re not particularly handy with a hammer or a wrench. So instead you perform other—what do you call them, chores?”

  “Favors.”

  “And the more difficult and dangerous the favor …”

  “The more fun,” I concluded.

  “And if someone tries to kill you like they did last fall?” There was anxiety in Shelby’s voice, but I pretended not to hear.

  “People tried to kill me when I was a cop, too.”

  “You and Bobby.” Shelby turned and looked out her back window. There was a swing set that the girls were starting to outgrow and two bikes lying on the grass. Moments passed before she spoke again.

  “I thought you were going back to the cops. I thought you were going to take a position with the St. Anthony Village Police Department. Chief of detectives, wasn’t it?”

  “They offered me the job, but … The thing is, being a cop, you have to follow an awful lot of rules.”

  “You didn’t mind when you were with St. Paul.”

  “That was before I spent two and a half years obeying my own rules, coming and going as I please. It’s hard to go back to the everyday grind after that.”

  “I suppose.”

  A few moments later, the front door opened and closed. A male voice announced, “I’m home,” without much enthusiasm.

  “In the kitchen,” Shelby replied.

  Bobby Dunston entered. He was the same size as I was, as well as the same age. I can’t remember a time when we weren’t friends.

  “Hi,” he said. He wasn’t surprised to see me. I had spent a lot of time in his kitchen when I was a kid, too.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “Murder and mayhem abound.”

  “So business is good.”

  “Too good.”

  He went to Shelby, wrapped his arms around her, and held on tight. She returned the embrace. It seemed to last longer than a welcomehome hug should, or maybe it was just me being embarrassed by their obvious affection for each other. After a few moments, Shelby gently nudged him away.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “McKenzie bought a mini-donut machine.”

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Bobby said. “I’ll be right back.”

  There was a look of concern in Shelby’s eyes as she watched him exit the kitchen.

  “He does that a lot lately,” she told me.

  “Take a shower? I should hope so.”

  “As soon as he gets home from work, before he talks to me or the kids. It’s like he feels he needs to wash off the day first.”

  I understood completely. I had been a cop for eleven and a half years before I quit in order to collect a three-million-dollar bounty on an embezzler I had tracked down in my spare time—St. Paul cops aren’t allowed to accept rewards and finder’s fees. Back in those days, I had taken a lot of showers, too.

  For dinner Shelby served pasta with a light sauce consisting of olive oil, onion, tomatoes, shrimp, dry white wine, and Italian parsley. However, the girls refused to eat it, insisting instead on smothering their noodles with butter and grated Parmesan. That was fin
e with Bobby, but Shelby glared at me like I was responsible for corrupting her daughters’ eating habits. Honestly, I don’t see them that often.

  After dinner, Bobby also inquired about Mr. Mosley’s health and welfare. I told him the same thing I had told Shelby. That prompted another discussion concerning the aging process, during which Bobby announced that he did not look old, feel old, or behave in any way that could be construed as old, as he was sure his lovely wife would testify, but that I was free to seize any excuse—including advanced age—that might explain my obvious dilapidated and sorry physical, emotional, and mental condition. I would have raced him around the block but I was afraid I’d lose.

  During the bottom of the third inning of the Twins-Angels game, my cell phone sang “Don’t Fence Me In.”

  “I bet that’s the girlfriend,” Shelby said.

  “Ahh, Nina,” Bobby cooed.

  Nina Truhler was the “jazz girl” Mr. Mosley had referred to. Only it wasn’t her. It was Ivy Flynn.

  “Oh, God, Mr. McKenzie …”

  “Ivy?”

  “Mr. McKenzie, unbelievable …”

  “What?”

  “The guy …”

  “What guy?”

  “He shot at me.”

  “What?”

  “He shot at me.”

  “Who shot at you?”

  Bobby Dunston’s eyes grew wide. He rose from the sofa where he had been sitting with his wife and stood in front of me.

  “Ivy? Are you all right?”

  A deep breath. “Yes.”

  “Who shot at you?”

  “Some guy. In the ditch. He shot at me in the ditch.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in a bar.”

  “Are you safe?”

  “What do you mean, am I safe? I’m in a bar. I don’t go to bars.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Should I do that? If I was trespassing-that’s probably why the guy shot at me.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Another deep breath. A second. A third. I didn’t rush her. After a moment, Ivy began speaking again in the same patient voice she used when I met her at Lori’s Coffee House.

  “I was collecting samples. I came across a large pasture. I might have neglected to tell you, but Sevin XLR Plus is often sprayed on unbroken ground such as pastures and roadside ditches. That’s because grasshoppers tend to lay eggs in undisturbed ground and, after they mature, disperse into neighboring crop systems. Although there are as many as 100 species of grasshoppers on the Northern Great Plains, only five rate as the most important crop pests—the two-striped grasshopper, the migratory grasshopper, the clear-winged grasshopper, and the red-legged and differential grasshoppers.”

  This was more than I needed to know, but the longer Ivy spoke, the calmer she became, and I didn’t want to disrupt the process.

  “I halted my vehicle and climbed down into the roadside ditch. There were no grasshoppers there, Mr. McKenzie, which I find telling. I began gathering samples. I heard someone calling something, but the words were snatched away by the wind. I looked up and saw a man approaching. A big man. Fat. He was carrying a gun—a shotgun—I recognized a shotgun. And he started shooting—he just started—I saw muzzle flashes and puffs of smoke—at least I think I saw … Mr. McKenzie, I wasn’t trespassing, it was a public road, a county road.”

  “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I scrambled out of the ditch, climbed into my car, and drove off. I drove very, very fast. I drove for a long time. I’m not actually in Norwood Young America anymore. I’m in—” She stopped speaking. I heard the sound of music and her voice calling, “Where am I?” The question was followed immediately by laughter and the murmur of voices. “I’m in Glencoe,” she told me after a few moments.

  Glencoe is nowhere near NYA.

  “Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’m okay.”

  “Ivy.”

  “No, really, Mr. McKenzie. I’m fine. It was scary, but I’m fine now. I’m going to get something to eat and then drive home.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir. But what should we do about … about the guy?”

  “I’ll deal with it.”

  Bobby shifted his weight and sighed.

  I asked Ivy if she had noted the address. She had. She had written it down along with the approximate distance from Mr. Mosley’s hives when she catalogued her samples.

  “You collected samples from the ditch even with the guy shooting at you?” I asked.

  “Only one. I labeled it before entering the bar. I kinda like this place.”

  I kinda liked her.

  “It is my intention to begin testing samples tomorrow,” Ivy said.

  “Begin with this one.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m sorry about all this, Ivy.”

  “Oh, don’t be. Actually”—her voice dropped an octave or two as if she were afraid to hear herself say it—“it was kinda fun.”

  She fear’d no danger, for she knew no sin. John Dryden had written that over three hundred years ago. Now I knew what he meant.

  Bobby Dunston was still standing above me when I deactivated my cell phone, his hands on his hips.

  “Someone shot at someone?”

  “Not in your jurisdiction,” I told him.

  “Does this involve Mr. Mosley’s bees?”

  I smiled at him, although I don’t know why.

  “The game’s afoot,” I said.

  “Ahh, man. Not again.”

  2

  The next morning I found Mr. Mosley working the hives near a shed about the size of a two-car garage—the “bee barn,” he called it. He was wearing a white hat with a round, flat brim not unlike what you’d expect park rangers to wear, with a light-colored wire-mesh veil that hung down over his shoulders. He was carrying a smoker, a galvanized metal container resembling a large thermos with a narrow funnel at the top. You light a fire inside using old newspapers and kindling such as pine needles, cotton rags, corn cobs, tree bark—whatever—and puff smoke into the hive. The smoke masks the pheromones secreted by the sentry bees at the entrance of the hive so an alarm isn’t sounded when you approach. The smoke also compels the bees to gorge themselves on honey, presumably because they believe the hive is on fire and they’ll need to swarm and find a new home. As a result, you’re able to go about your work unmolested. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve never actually tested the theory myself.

  I watched Mr. Mosley move among his hives, wondering not for the first time how he did it so fearlessly. I called to him through the screen of his back door. He waved at me to join him near the hives. Yeah, like that was going to happen.

  Eventually he moved back to the house. I watched him slowly remove his gloves, then his hat and veil, watched him fluff what remained of his white hair with both hands. Again I was jarred by how old he appeared. It seemed like only ten minutes ago he was telling me to choke up on the bat if I wanted to get around on a fastball. And now … I promised myself I would spend more time with him.

  He said, “I liked that little girl you sent over. Ivy Flynn? She knows her Apis m. mellifera. Ain’t afraid of ’em, either.”

  “Yeah, she’s tough as nails.”

  I deliberately crossed my arms over my gray sports coat and Minnesota Wild sweatshirt, knowing what was coming.

  “Pretty eyes. And hair. I don’t recall ever seeing hair that shade of red. Are you involved with her?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, you should be.”

  “She’s a kid.”

  Mr. Mosley raised an eyebrow.

  “She’s my employee.”

  He raised the other. “I’m startin’ t’ wonder about you, McKenzie.”

  I doubted my love life could stand much more scrutiny, so I changed the subject, telling him of Ivy’s encounter the previous evening with the sh
otgun-wielding fat man. Mr. Mosley became so concerned over her safety that I had to assure him twice that Ivy had escaped unscathed.

  I told him that earlier that morning I called up Carver County’s Web site on my computer. “Did you know that Carver County was named after a Massachusetts explorer who may or may not have ever set foot in the place? Guy named Captain Jonathan Carver. He had gone west in the hope of gaining fame and fortune, failed, and then wrote a book—Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768. The book did pretty well until it was discovered that much of the manuscript contained plagiarized accounts of the adventures of other explorers. Carver died penniless.”

  From the expression on Mr. Mosley’s face, I might as well have been lecturing him about the properties and characteristics of dirt.

  “Anyway …” I told him that I fed the address Ivy had given me into a search engine on the Web site that allowed citizens to access their neighbors’ property tax information and was instantly informed that the primary taxpayer/owner of the property was a finance company called Lundgren-Kerber Investments. A phone call to Lundgren-Kerber and a little fast talking revealed that the tenant was named Crosetti, Frank—which made me think of Frankie Crosetti, the great shortstop who helped the Yankees win eight world championships between 1932 and 1948.

  “I know most of my neighbors,” Mr. Mosley said. “I don’t know him.”

  “Crosetti moved in just over six weeks ago,” I said. “Which means he probably isn’t responsible for the Sevin XLR Plus that had been sprayed on his land—if, in fact, Sevin XLR Plus had been sprayed on his land. Still, I’m a little annoyed about what happened with Ivy. So I figured I’d wander over there and have a friendly chat with the man. Explain the situation. Ask him not to shoot at Ivy anymore.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “I rather you didn’t. I mean, if he shot at Ivy—”

  “He’s my neighbor, I should say hello. I’ll bring him a few jars of honey, welcome him to the area.”

  “If you say so.”

  Crop and dairy farming had been the chief occupation of Carver County for over a hundred years. But in a blink of an eye most of the farms had vanished and the county was suburbanized by housing tracts, strip malls, and sixty-four thousand additional residents, most of whom commuted to Minneapolis. You could still see a few farms sprawling west of Braunworth Lake where Mr. Mosley lived, although it was just a matter of time before they, too, disappeared. One of them already had a huge sign attached to its fence posts announcing that it soon would be transformed into a housing development called Carver Hills. There wasn’t a hill in sight.