Murder Grins and Bears It

by Deb Baker

  Heather had put out quite a spread, whipping up a meal from my family recipe box – creamed rutabaga, mashed potatoes with creamed corn scooped on the top, and pan-fried chicken.

  I should include the creamed rutabaga in my future cookbook. I thought it tasted better when someone else made it.

  “Where’s Mary?” Star asked Blaze. “I haven’t seen her for a few days.”

  “She’s still feeling poorly.”

  I was sure she was making up excuses in case Grandma Johnson decided to cook another one of her roasted chickens.

  Blaze looked a bit haggard from putting in so many hours.

  After the meal, I cut everyone a thick square of apple crisp, made with juicy apples right from my own tree. Blaze poured heavy cream over his and pushed his expanding belly back from the table to make more room.

  Star, wearing a cute pink fuzzy sweater, started what I call the family hum, and we all joined in. “Hummmmmm…” we all intoned.

  Grandma Johnson, as usual, ruined the mood and I wondered for the umpteenth time how she managed to move into my house right under my nose without more of a fight from me.

  Blaze keeps talking about selling her house, but that’s where I draw the line. If she isn’t going into a nursing home, she’s going back to her own house someday. I’m viewing this as a temporary situation.

  “Why don’t you ever make my Spam casserole?” Grandma Johnson said, winding up to fire a few rounds now that dessert was on the table.

  “I’ll make it tomorrow,” Heather said quickly, when she saw me open my mouth to reply. “Or that meat loaf you make that won the prize at the fair.”

  “That’s good, too,” Grandma admitted, and I could have jumped up and kissed Heather for redirecting Grandma.

  I’d rather eat her raw chicken than the Spam casserole any day.

  “Someone thinks they spotted Little Donny in Newberry,” Blaze announced. “Deputy Snell and Deputy Sheedlo are checking it out.”

  Heather clapped her hands together and I saw a hint of the first smile since she arrived in Stonely. “That’s wonderful news.”

  “Probably running away on foot,” Grandma Johnson clacked. “To get as far away as he can. That rascal never should have shot the sheriff.”

  “That was a warden, Grandma,” Star said. “And he didn’t shoot him.”

  “Gertie put him up to it,” she insisted. “Or that woman.

  “Cora Mae has nothing to do with this,” I said. “Blaze, why would he be in Newberry? That’s a lot of miles east of here. Nothing’s up there.”

  Blaze shrugged. “We have to follow every lead.”

  “Who’s your source?”

  “Don’t know. Someone called the sighting in and hung up.”

  “I wish you’d take care of it yourself instead of sending Dickey.”

  It would be great to get rid of Blaze for a while. If Little Donny was in Newberry, which I doubted, cat-hair-crusted Dickey and his no-neck cohort could trip right over him and never know it was him. Especially since they retired the only one in the trio with any brains.

  “I asked you to quit calling him Dickey, Ma. That’s disrespectful.”

  “You better stay in town and watch this place,” Grandma advised him. “The British will be here any day and we’ll need all the reinforcement we can get. I’ll cover the front of the house and you take the back. Anyone know where my weapon is?”

  Too bad Mary wasn’t here to witness more of Grandma’s slippage, since she’s Grandma’s most ardent defender.

  Just for the record, I taped the conversation with my new micro-recorder.

  ****

  Kitty blew through Stonely’s one and only four-way stop sign like she was Otis’ train with a broken brake system.

  “You’re supposed to obey those signs even after dark,” I said, pretty sure of my facts. I’d been studying the driver’s-testing booklet. I didn’t remember any mention of the proper procedure after dark, but common sense would tell you that the same rules applied as during the day.

  Unless, of course, nobody was around to see it. Which in this case, there definitely was.

  “You almost sideswiped Onni Maki,” I said, a little louder, noting the surprised look on his wrinkled face when we careened past him with only an inch or two to spare.

  Kitty had that crazed look she always gets when she’s behind the wheel, and I thought, briefly, of belting up. Ordinarily Yoopers don’t wear seat belts because most of us aren’t in any hurry and we’re driving nice and slow. Besides, seat belts make us feel confined. But Kitty had me reconsidering.

  I glanced back to see how Fred was handling this from the Lincoln’s back seat. He had his head turned, and while I watched, he opened his mouth wide and yawned, slow and relaxed. That dog is made of reinforced iron.

  “You think they’ll be on the road this late?” Kitty said. “I don’t see any vestigial evidence that the truck is still around.”

  I sighed. It was my turn and I didn’t feel like playing anymore. “Time out,” I said, making a football ‘T’ sign with my hands. “You win this round.” I didn’t have any idea what vestigial meant, but in a few days I’d come back stronger than ever.

  Kitty nodded an acknowledgment but didn’t rub her win in my face. “How far north should we drive?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The moving van I saw by the restaurant could have come from any place to the north. We’ll need a little dumb luck to find it.”

  “We’re seen it several times in the last few days, so I think our odds are pretty good.”

  I glanced at the speedometer. It said eighty-five, but we were on a straightaway so I kept calm and devised a plan to save all of our lives.

  A private detective lives by her wits.

  “I have a better idea,” I said, slyly. “Why don’t we turn down a side road and wait there. Then we’ll catch them coming or going.”

  “Brilliant,” Kitty said, slamming on the brakes until the car was practically doing a handstand. I reached out for the dashboard with locked elbows and could hear Fred scrambling for solid footing.

  Kitty whipped the car to the right and did a U-turn on two wheels, with gravel flying everywhere. She stopped on the edge of a narrow side road where we had a good view of Highway M35.

  I hunted around on the floor to find my weapons purse and its scattered contents. It took all my willpower not to zap Kitty with the stun gun, which had rolled under the seat during her stunt driving.

  Two hours later we were still sitting tight. Kitty had fallen asleep, her head against the headrest, her mouth wide open, and the oddest collection of snorts and gulps emanating from her cavernous mouth. I didn’t mind because the noise kept me alert. Fred dozed in the back, occasionally rising to peer out into the blackest night I’d ever seen. Not a single star beamed down on us, and the moon didn’t offer even a slice of light.

  I wish I’d remembered to bring snacks along. Usually on a surveillance run we have an entire picnic basket – fried chicken and all the trimmings. Tonight’s run was impromptu and therefore without all the fringe benefits associated with a planned event.

  I gave Kitty a little nudge and her eyes flew open.

  “Let’s call it a night,” I said once her face lost that cloudy, confused expression.

  Kitty reached forward to start the car just as a white moving van shot by, heading north toward Marquette and Maple County. She jerked her head in my direction.

  “I saw it,” I screeched, excited to have a plan that was finally panning out. Most of our stakeouts are exercises in futility, but this one was going to pay off.

  We ripped out onto the two-lane M35 and turned toward the taillights fading in the distance. I didn’t have to suggest to my partner that we were in need of speed. Kitty accelerated and the G-forces snapped my head against the headrest.

  About a half mile down the road we caught up. Kitty pulled out into the other lane and came alongside the van. The driver did a double take and I slammed my
new sheriff’s badge against the window and motioned him over.

  He held up one particularly offensive finger and continued driving.

  Kitty laid on the horn.

  The driver reached onto the dashboard and flipped open a cell phone.

  “He’s calling for reinforcements,” I shouted. “We need to stop him right now before his backup shows up.”

  An oncoming car forced Kitty to take evasive action. She let up on the gas, pulled in behind the van until the approaching car passed, then roared alongside again.

  This time she gave his front bumper a little tap with her own rusted-out front bumper. That’s the beauty of driving a junker. You can let your creativity flow without expensive consequences.

  After the second love tap, the driver slowed the van and pulled over. Kitty’s Lincoln hugged his bumper all the way.

  “Are you nuts, lady,” he shouted, jumping out of the van and wrenching my door open.

  Fred growled menacingly, showing a collection of large sharp fangs. While the driver was wondering what to do about the devil dog in the back seat, I took the opportunity to hit him in the chest with my super-charged stun gun. He went down hard and fast, like a boulder flung from Lake Superior’s high shoreline. Once down in the dirt, he started twitching.

  While he rolled around on the ground trying to figure out what hit him, Kitty and I ran to the back of the van and pulled the doors open.

  “We need a flashlight,” I said, running back to the car and digging through my weapons purse until I found it.

  Kitty had already crawled into the back of the van when she reached out for the flashlight. I handed it to her and crawled in next to her.

  We watched the light move from one end of the van to the other. I grabbed it from her and repeated the process.

  We looked at each other, speechless.

  The inside of the van was as clean as one of Grandma Johnson’s plucked chickens. Not a single bird or egg or feather of any kind.

  The driver moaned and I noticed that he had staggered to his feet. Fred, joining in the fray, lunged through my open door and forced the man back against the truck.

  “Good boy, Fred,” I said, proud of my team in spite of my disappointment over the missing evidence.

  Then I heard the siren in the distance. “I thought you called your partners in crime,” I said urgently to the driver. “Who did you really call?”

  “Nith oneth oneth,” he said, spittle running down his chin.

  “Cops,” Kitty called to me, jumping from the van. “He called the cops.”

  Since we weren’t sure which side of the law we were on at the moment, and considering that some people thought a stun gun was an illegal weapon, Kitty and I took one last peek in the front of the van, shooed Fred into the car, and hit the road.

  The Lincoln fish-tailed onto the old highway, did a U-turn, and a few seconds later we passed a vehicle speeding toward the moving van, running lights and siren.

  “Dang,” I said. “That was Blaze.”

  “Good thing I turned the headlights off,” Kitty said. “I don’t think he saw us.”

  Earlier, I had wanted stars and the glow of the moon, but at least a few things were going my way tonight, so we slunk home under cover of darkness.

  Before going to bed, I put my stun gun on the charger.

  chapter 13

  “I know that was you and Kitty out there last night!” Blaze shouted in my face. He sat at my kitchen table drinking my coffee and sucking down my sugar doughnuts, and I couldn’t believe the way he was treating me once his mouth was empty. “Little bitty red-haired old lady, the driver said. And a Loch Ness monster. You and that fat friend of yours fit the description perfectly.”

  Blaze then pointed at Fred, lying by the door. “And he fits the guy’s description of a vicious, wild wolf that came close to shredding him into pieces.”

  “Shush,” I said, slightly offended by the ‘old lady’ description. “Or you’ll wake up Grandma and Heather. They need their rest.” I took a long sip of coffee before replying. “My truck was here at the house all night. You can ask anyone in the family once they get up. And that ‘vicious wolf’ is the result of your police training.”

  Blaze didn’t hear me, which isn’t unusual.

  He held up his cigar-fat fingers and ticked off his complaints. “Impersonating an officer by identifying yourself as a law enforcement official,” he said. “Using a dog as a deadly weapon, attempting to hijack a vehicle.” He looked up. “I don’t know what you did to the driver but he was a mess, so let’s include aggravated assault of some kind in the charges.”

  When Blaze put it like that, it did sound pretty bad.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised to find out you had a gun in your purse.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, throwing my almost-empty weapons purse across the table. “Search your own mother’s personal belongings like she’s some kind of common criminal. Instead of locating your nephew, you’re busy harassing your mother.”

  I had anticipated this moment and had stashed the questionable items away in my underwear drawer. “If you want to arrest all your family members, you should know that Grandma Johnson had a pistol when she moved in here. I took it away from her and hid it the first time she waved it in my face and threatened to shoot me. Maybe you can handcuff her and rough her up a little.”

  Blaze ignored me.

  After sorting through the purse and finding nothing, he glared at me and said, “You’re lucky the driver you assaulted isn’t pressing charges.”

  I snorted. Of course he wouldn’t press charges. He was engaged in criminal activity and didn’t want to call too much attention to himself. I was surprised he called nine-one-one in the first place.

  A clean moving van didn’t mean a clean life. I’d get him yet. Blaze might think the driver smelled like a rose, but I know skunk when it drives by.

  “What was he doing out so late?” I asked. “Did you ask him that?”

  “It’s not any of my business or your business. There’s no law says he can’t drive his truck anytime and anywhere he wants to.”

  I snorted again.

  “The only thing I haven’t figured out,” Blaze said, “is how you and Kitty got away. I didn’t pass a single vehicle heading for Stonely, and the state trooper meeting me from Maple County said he didn’t pass anyone either.” He waved a finger in my face, which I hate. “I’m warning you…” he said, and let the sentence die away.

  ****

  One of the best things the Finns and Swedes who settled in the U.P. brought over from the old country was the sauna. We build them as separate little houses in our backyards, where we meet for social gatherings to share town gossip while throwing water on hot stones and sweating profusely.

  Naked is the preferred mode of dress and in winter, after we’re done perspiring, we roll around in the snow to finish off the process. That’s why the sauna’s location is so important. It needs to be well hidden from the road and the driveway.

  We used to have a sauna behind the house until Blaze burned it down when he was about fourteen years old.

  Never give a teenager a box of matches and instruct him to burn a pile of yard rubbish. Somehow the dry grass leading to the sauna caught fire and that was the end of our meeting place. By the time the local volunteers heard the fire siren going off in town and turned up, the damage was done. No one would’ve been able to guess that a sauna had ever existed on that patch of land.

  George’s had made an offer to build a new one for me, and I found him working on it after Blaze blustered away.

  It was a gorgeous September day. We’d had a frost overnight, and earlier this morning the lawn had been covered with a sparkly dusting of ice crystals. When the sun rose, it thawed things out.

  “You’re early this morning,” I said, handing him a hot cup of coffee and sliding a napkin topped with a sugar doughnut onto the fence post. He picked it up and took a bite.

  “You make the best doug
hnuts in Tamarack County, Gertie. Better include the recipe in your cookbook.”

  “Good idea,” I said absently, more important things than doughnuts on my mind. “There’s been no word from Little Donny, yet. It’s been too long.”

  George gave me a gaze and I noticed that he’d cut himself shaving this morning. To me, that made him even more handsome and manly. “He’ll turn up,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m worried sick,” I admitted, because George is my best male friend and I can count on him to understand. I watched while he took another bite of the doughnut. “If he’s alive, where is he? He didn’t have two nickels to rub together when he went into the woods. How would he feed himself? What would he eat? He doesn’t know anything about survival in the wilderness.”

  George polished off the doughnut and took a long sip of coffee. “I wish I could reassure you. I know waiting is hard but that’s all we can do right now.”

  Something was tugging at my memory - had been for awhile. Watching George eat that little piece of bakery started the gears in motion again.

  “I’ll see you later,” I said, quickly heading for the house to gather my weapons, throw them in my purse, and grab my car keys. “I have an idea.”

  I rushed to the truck, turned it around so the front end was facing the road, and leapt into the driver’s seat to watch the road for action.

  If what I thought was true, I’d find Little Donny this fine, crisp autumn morning.

  “Where is Gertie?” I heard Grandma Johnson yell at George a little later. “She left the kitchen a big mess, flour and sugar from ceiling to floor. What kinda house am I having to live in?”

  “Haven’t seen her for awhile,” George yelled back.

  “Well if she shows up, send her fanny right in here to clean this mess up. I’m having to do all the work around here.”

  Out of the rearview mirror, I watched Fred’s big head come into view behind Grandma. She shrieked, opened the door wider, and whacked Fred’s backside with a flyswatter to force him out of the house.

  I almost gave up my hiding place to defend Fred, but he didn’t even notice the weak little tap coming from Grandma’s scrawny arm. He strolled out the door and sniffed the air to catch a scent. She tried to give him another whack, but he turned his head to stare at her. She must have decided not to push her luck because she lowered the flyswatter, shrieked again, and slammed the door.