Murder at Spirit Falls

by Barbara Deese

  George jerked his head around and, losing his balance in the process, rolled with a clatter onto a mound of aluminum cans.

  “Maybe you should just pick one key and stick with it,” José said, offering a hand and a broad smile.

  “Key?” George’s puzzled expression softened into a lopsided grin. “Oh, the singing.” He laughed in little bursts. “Heh, heh. Pretty bad, was it?” He stood, wiped his hands on his jeans and looked back at the pile of crumpled metal. “Well, at least I put my can in the right pile. Heh, heh.”

  José snorted. “I guess you did.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if you know where Johnson’s ladder is. He wanted me to do some jobs.” His fingers closed around the canister in his right pants pocket.

  “Sure, it’s up at the Bentley place.” He hooked a dirty thumb in the direction of Robin’s cabin. “The chimney needed—wait. What jobs? Far as I know, I’m the one who takes care of the Johnson place.” George eased his glasses off and began polishing them on his shirttail. “Besides, I know you. You’re the bartender.”

  “Hmmph.” José shifted his weight. “Johnson’s business associate, actually.”

  “Oh, a contractor, huh?” George settled his glasses back on his nose and adjusted the wire bows over the tops of his protruding ears. “I don’t think so.” He squinted up at the sun and shook his head. “Nope, not a contractor. You don’t work with those hands.”

  José made a show of inspecting his hands. “I guess it depends on what you mean by work. I never had complaints from the ladies about my handwork.”

  George tipped back on his heels and did his Heh, heh of a laugh.

  After sharing the laugh with him, José reminded him of the reason for his visit. “So, is it okay if I use the ladder?”

  George grunted and bent to straighten up the pile of cans. “Never did say what you’re doing up here.”

  “Ross wants some papers from the storage shed. See, I do his international business.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Again, he squinted into the sun. “Only a moron would keep papers in that shed. Can’t even leave my work gloves there without mice eating the fingers right off ’em.”

  José rolled his head around, as if loosening a kink in his neck. When he looked at George again, he grinned sheepishly. “Okay, you’re right, it’s not papers.” He laid a conspiratorial hand on George’s shoulder. “Truth is, Johnson’s girlfriend was coming on to me pretty strong the other night, and we had a little, whatchew say, tryst, in the hayloft. You know how it is.”

  George nodded, his tongue playing at the corner of his mouth.

  “It was wild,” he said letting George imagine it. “Anyway, when, uh, when we were finally done, she couldn’t find her bra, a lacy little number.”

  George’s head bobbed faster.

  “I thought I’d better find it, you know, before our friend Ross Johnson does. He’s got quite the temper. Besides,” he said, leaning closer and cupping his hands in front of his chest, “Those babies shouldn’t go unsupported.”

  George rubbed sweaty palms together, picturing it.

  In less than an hour, José was back, this time in the Porsche. He parked near the trailer and walked to the far edge of the clearing where George knelt to pat soil down on a newly spaded flowerbed. “Lay across my big brass bed,” George sang, still searching, evidently, for a key he could stick with.

  “I left the ladder by the shed like you asked,” José said.

  “Find what you were looking for?” George craned his neck toward the car.

  “I did,” he said, slipping a folded bill into George’s shirt pocket. “I hope this’ll stay between us.”

  “Mr. Johnson and I rarely discuss women’s, um, underthings,” George said peering up at him, and they both grinned.

  José prodded a clump of dirt with the side of his shoe. “You didn’t dig all that up just this morning, did you? It must be thirty square feet.”

  “Naw, it’s an old bed. I had tomatoes there last year, but the darn squirrels and woodchucks and deer ate ’em, so I thought I’d try something with thorns this year. I just had to turn over the soil and put in a special fertilizer is all.”

  José pulled his sunglasses down to inspect the newly planted rosebushes, neatly lined up in the rectangle of soil. Then he turned on his heel and got into his car.

  As soon as the Porsche was on its way, George reached into his pocket. He stared at the hundred-dollar bill.

  After spending part of the morning on site with one of his foremen and an HVAC engineer, Ross Johnson took sanctuary in his cherry-paneled, plush-carpeted office with a view of the Mississippi River. From behind his desk he could see three of his downtown buildings—one still under construction—as well as a couple of warehouses he’d converted into posh offices and condos.

  His secretary was a bony woman a couple years his senior with a tubercular-sounding cough. She walked soundlessly across the carpeted floor and plunked a stack of papers on his desk, giving him instructions about where he needed to sign the various documents, as if he couldn’t figure it out from all the little yellow Post-It notes sticking out from the stack.

  “Oh,” she said as she turned to leave, “your last appointment for the day called to cancel.”

  Ross checked his watch, considering how to spend the unexpected free time.

  They were startled by the sound of someone clearing his throat in the outer office. José strolled into the office, his long hair tucked behind his ears.

  “It’s okay, Maisy,” Ross said to his secretary, “I think I can spare you for a bit while you run those spec sheets over to the architect.” He motioned José inside.

  She left with a surreptitious glance at the man’s exotic face and tight black pants.

  José fingered the Remington sculpture of a horse as he passed it, taking his time, forcing Ross to ask, “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, boss, it’s like this.” He slouched in the leather wingback and stretched his legs in front of him. “See, I’m just going about my business, keeping a low profile. You know me, the soul of discretion. I see only what I need to see, you know, just concentrate on keeping my customers satisfied.”

  Ross gripped the edge of his desk. “Get to the point.”

  “Do I tell you how to tell a story?”

  “Just say it!”

  José tented his fingers, nodded slowly and continued. “So here I am, minding my own business, and I stop to get a few groceries, you know, bread, milk, a couple of man-goes …” He stretched out the syllables, enjoying Ross’s irritation.

  Ross jammed his pen into its holder. “You didn’t come to tell me your grocery list.”

  “You know, I’d get through this a lot faster if you’d quit interrupting.”

  Johnson glared at him.

  José examined the crease of his trousers before continuing, “I just happened to glance up at the rack where they display newspapers, and who do you think’s on the front page?”

  Ross turned to look out the window and scowled. “Yes. The young lady has been reported missing. So?”

  His eyes were unblinking. “So I thought maybe we should talk about it. I mean, there are people who know she was at your place. People who have something to tell.” He shrugged. “You know—if anybody asks.”

  Despite his urge to throw the man through his eighth-story window, Ross leaned forward, pressing himself into his desk. “Why would they do that?”

  “Do what? Ask or tell?”

  “Either. What’s the connection?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Okay, my friend is the missing woman’s boss. So what?”

  “She’s got a name, you know. Melissa Dunn.”

  Ross glowered at him. “Yes, most people do have names. And employers. The fact that Miss Dunn works for the college hardly sets the bloodhounds on Martin’s trail.” He clasped his hands in front of him and smiled thinly. “And certainly not on mine.” />
  “So what do you suppose happened to Melissa?” José asked in a conversational tone. “I mean, if she was too wasted to drive home, you’d think somebody would’ve found the car crashed somewhere along the way.”

  Ross restrained himself from massaging the throbbing vein in his right temple. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying maybe other people who were there are asking themselves the same question. What could have happened to her? No crashed car, no body … Thing is, they all know Melissa was there,” he said, accentuating her name.

  “And they will all deny it,” Ross growled. “You, for instance. As the man who supplied her with illegal drugs, I’m sure you’re just itching to call the authorities.”

  José shrugged. “I’m not the only one who knows Melissa was at your place. I think you know what I’m saying.”

  Ross stared at him.

  José stared back. “I think the phrase the police used is, ‘Foul play is suspected,’ and I think you know that’s what we’re talking about.”

  “Is that a confession?”

  José snorted. “Gee, I thought it sounded more like an accusation.”

  Ross’s fingers played over his top drawer where he kept the amber prescription bottle. It still had a little of the magic powder left in it. He wanted to reach in and snag a fingernail full to calm his nerves. “You’re accusing me? Oh, that’s rich.” He tipped back in his chair, stared at the ceiling and shook his head. When he sensed José shifting in his chair, he lowered his eyes in a challenge. “Perhaps the authorities would be interested to know where you were when the young lady took off. As I recall, you were missing for a rather lengthy time yourself that night.”

  José stood. His teeth flashed whitely. “Just off satisfying my sweet tooth, boss—having some Candi, if you know what I mean.”

  Ross knew he was being baited. He just couldn’t figure out why. “If there was foul play,” he said, clipping his words, “you obviously know more about it than I do. Did you do something to her?”

  “Did you?”

  “You bastard.”

  “Oh, sure, I’m a bastard until you need a little fix. He pulled a glassine envelope from his shirt pocket and dangled it in the air, noticing how Ross’s eyes fixed on it. “Which I’m thinking you need right about …” He laughed and flicked it across the desk to him. “Now.”

  8

  Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church, flanked on three sides by small single-family homes, shared a city block with the neighborhood library that provided the growing church with overflow parking on Sundays. Robin had always loved the steeple, towering above mature oaks and maples like a beacon of safety. When, as a child, she had finally been reunited with her mother, she was humbled to discover that the congregation had prayed ceaselessly for her safe return.

  Like so many of its members of Germanic and Scandinavian descent, the church building was tall and white. The essentialist artwork kept the interior from being downright austere, but it was the people who provided real warmth.

  Even though it was still more than half an hour before the service started, a few parishioners had already staked out their territory in the sanctuary, making sure nobody else took the choice back pews that offered an inconspicuous haven for the terminally reserved.

  Robin and two other choir members set up music stands in the choir loft for the special musicians—trumpet and French horn players and a flutist—then slipped back downstairs for a last-minute rehearsal. This day’s service was to be a celebration of music, a highlight of the choir’s musical calendar before their summer break.

  A flurry of activity created its own percussive music in the carpeted church basement. Mrs. Gilbertson, the five-foot, silver-haired dynamo of the Martha Circle, yipped orders to the Luther Leaguers, who were fixing trays of refreshments for the social time that would follow the service. They clicked silverware onto laminated tabletops, snapped coffee decanters open and banged cupboard doors. Two girls slathered circles of date bread with cream cheese, garnishing each piece with a slice of pimento-stuffed olive. When the trays were finished, Mrs. Gilbertson carried them to the serving table. With a wary glance at one lanky boy with glasses, she held the plate close and said, “These are for after the service. God is watching.”

  As soon as she left, the boy slid back the plastic wrap from a plate of bars. Robin cleared her throat and he looked up guiltily.

  “Go ahead,” she whispered to him. “God’s watching the date bread.” Guilt turned to glee and he snagged himself a frosted brownie.

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Gilbertson, whose first name may have been known to some but never used, measured coffee into a large commercial coffeepot, grumbling as she had for years about the Health Department’s edict against making egg coffee.

  In the far corner of the basement, the brass players began warming up and the flutist went through a set of scales and trills.

  Robin, already gowned, took her place among the sopranos for their own warm-up exercise—singing the tongue twister, aluminum, linoleum, aluminum, in descending chromatic scales. She kept shifting her attention from the choir director to glance at the exterior door, willing Grace to appear.

  The director looked at the wall clock and asked, “Robin, if Grace doesn’t show up, are you prepared to do her solo?”

  A muffled aluminum, linoleum, aluminum came from the doorway and Grace rushed in, grabbed a gown from the rack and slipped into line beside Robin.

  “Thank God!” Robin breathed. “Where have you been?”

  “Sorry. Overslept. Oops, we’re going up.” They turned to follow the rest of the choir. “Your shoes!” Grace hissed at Robin as they ascended the stairs.

  Robin looked down at her white and red Reeboks. “Yeah, my feet hurt.”

  “Did Millie see them?” Grace asked, referring to their choir director, whose interdiction against tennis shoes and dangle earrings had caused at least two members to drop out of choir.

  “She’s not happy, but she said she’ll overlook it this time.”

  “Oooh, Robin’s on probation,” Grace teased just before they entered the sanctuary, giggling.

  The program was the best Robin could remember. Their music selection was diverse and carefully picked to showcase a variety of talents. The choir really got into the gospel songs, shedding, for a time, their natural reserve, to sway and clap and shout out their lines responsively. Two of the numbers were accompanied by bongo drums. Grace’s solo, the second verse of “Beautiful Savior,” was flawless, and the flute descant gave Robin goose bumps. The children of the Cherub Choir sang audibly and not one of them cried. Millie was beaming.

  With the last notes of a trumpet fanfare reverberating in the sanctuary, the choir sang a benediction as they recessed down the center aisle, through the narthex and down the stairs.

  In the basement, Robin and Grace hung up their robes before settling at a table with coffee—decaffeinated, the only choice—and some goodies.

  Many parishioners left immediately after the service, most likely to glory in the spring weather. The faithful came to worship, but they sure as heck didn’t want to be stuck within the painted concrete walls of the church basement when the weather turned nice. They might just miss spring all together.

  “So how’d you wind up oversleeping today of all days?” Robin asked Grace.

  “Just another night of tossing and turning. That is, until about 4:30 when I slept like a rock. I thought I had set the alarm, but maybe I turned it off in my sleep. Thank goodness Buffy woke me up,” Grace said referring to her aging cockapoo.

  “Where was Fred?”

  “Fishing. Unwinding at the end of the school year. I didn’t see Brad today. Or your mom. I thought they’d both be here.” She glanced around the room.

  “Brad had a middle-of-the-night baby. He just got home when I was getting up. And then Mom called to say she just remembered she’d signed up for a senior bus trip to the casino, of all places.”

  “Really!”


  In past years, Grace and Robin had brought their mothers to church, where they would all sit together, and then go out to brunch afterwards. But two years ago, following a broken hip, Grace’s mom had gone into assisted living and began a slow decline, mentally as well as physically.

  Watching Grace’s face, Robin figured she must be missing her mother. “Everything okay, Gracie?” she asked softly.

  Grace appeared to be concentrating on nibbling a piece of bread. She stared at the last bite and sighed heavily. “I’m sick of it! Really sick of it!”

  Robin was taken aback by her friend’s vehemence. With visions of Grace upending the serving tray, she said, “But the date bread’s traditional.”

  Grace stopped mid-rant and laughed dryly. “Not the date bread. My life! I’m sick of always being nice, boring Gracie.”

  Robin stifled her laugh with a napkin as one of the Luther Leaguers, a tow-headed teen with a pierced eyebrow, offered more coffee, brownies and date bread.

  Grace held out her cup for a refill.

  “Sorry,” Robin said as she rolled her cup in her palms. “I really do want to hear what’s on your mind. I thought things were good.”

  “They are. I have a great husband and two wonderful sons and a great job.”

  Robin nodded and waited. “Did something happen?” she asked at last.

  “No, nothing happened. That’s the point. I feel unexciting. Invisible.”

  Robin sobered as she considered the comment. “I suppose that’s true for all of us. I sure haven’t turned any heads since I turned forty. But we’re not exactly chopped liver, more like vintage wine—”

  “Where’d you get that? In your book of tired platitudes?” She winced as soon as the words left her lips. “I’m sorry, Robin, it’s just that I’m so goddammed—” Immediately she covered her mouth and looked around to see if she’d been heard swearing in God’s house. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. You know I love you like a sister.” She put her hand on Robin’s. “Maybe all I need is a makeover, you know, new hairdo, tummy tuck, facelift, liposuction, laser eye surgery, husband transplant.”