by Maddy Hunter
“Like…opinions about debut novels?”
Looking sufficiently uncomfortable, he removed his glasses and polished them on his shirt. “I can’t say I didn’t deserve that. You’re going to embarrass me into offering Jackie an apology.”
“I don’t get it. How do you go from praising a book to claiming it’s nothing more than sensationalized tripe, all in a space of ten minutes?”
“I was placating Portia, telling her what she wanted to hear. We all treated her that way—dancing around her like monkeys around an organ grinder. Didn’t you notice the way we always deferred to her? You had to be blind not to.”
“Was there a particular reason you did that?”
“Damn straight. She kept threatening to move to a new gated community in Palm Beach, so we spoiled her rotten to convince her to stay. Portia wasn’t just well-heeled and well-connected. She was the best board president the Hamlets ever had.”
Nuts. Not exactly in keeping with my theory. “She was that indispensable?”
“Portia Van Cleef was the Hamlets. She made that place run as smoothly and efficiently as the Reagan White House. Without her expertise, the Hamlets would have been just another generic gated community. She put us on the map, on TV, on the pro golf tournament circuit. If we were a little too solicitous of her, it was a small price to pay for what she gave us in return.”
Yup, back to square one. I hated when that happened.
“We are heading south now to Saariselka,” Helge announced, “a drive of twenty-five kilometers. The wilderness surrounding Saariselka extends all the way to the Russian border and is home to bears, golden eagles, wolverines, and free-grazing reindeer. If you come back in winter, you can enjoy downhill and cross-country skiing, sledge runs, ski-trekking, snow-mobiling, reindeer-sleighing, twenty-four-hour darkness, and the phenomenon known as the northern lights.”
“Are we gonna get to see any northern lights while we’re here?” asked Margi Swanson.
“They could be sweeping across the sky right now,” said Helge, “but the daylight makes them invisible. The original Laplanders thought the spectacle was caused by a giant fox swishing his tail across the Arctic sky, but science has provided us with a much less romantic explanation. Still, the Finns refer to the northern lights as revontulet, which literally means ‘foxfires.’ You should see them at least once in your lifetime, because once you do, you’ll never forget them.”
“That was like Portia,” Gus said wistfully. “She was so stunning that once you saw her, you never forgot her.”
I patted his forearm in sympathy. “I’m sorry you’re forced to continue this tour when you’d probably rather fly home to attend Portia’s funeral.”
“Why would you think that?”
“She obviously meant a lot to you. When a friend like Portia dies, it’s only natural to—”
“Portia wasn’t my friend.”
I stared at him, nonplussed. “Excuse me?”
“I always deferred to her, but Portia wasn’t anyone’s friend. Portia Van Cleef was the most hated woman in the Hamlets.”
“Did he tell you why everyone hated her so much?” Nana asked me after lunch.
“He had a laundry list of adjectives. He accused her of being mean-spirited, critical, self-important, humorless, conceited, profligate, bigot—”
“Prof—what? I never heard that word before.”
“Profligate. It means wildly extravagant.”
“I gotta write that down. I like to surprise folks with them kick-ass words sometimes.”
While Nana jotted the word down, I turned a slow three-sixty to regard the terrain beyond the parking lot. Our restaurant sat atop a barren hill in the middle of nowhere. A giant erector set of a cell tower ensured good phone service, and straight winds rattled a trio of billboards displaying wilderness maps and trails. I’d never seen frozen tundra, but this is what I imagined it would look like if it thawed—desolate patches of bare earth intermingled with scrubby growth, deep ruts, and a boneyard of scattered rock. Ski-lift cables crisscrossed the area like telephone wires, and in the distance, the tundra spilled into dense woodland that looked even more ancient and forbidding than the forests of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
“Take a look at this, Emily. Did I spell it right?”
I stared at the indecipherable scrawl on Nana’s notepad. Eh! Nana had the most legible handwriting in the world, but this looked as if it had been scribbled by a two-year-old. Oh, my God! She’d suffered a stroke.
I looked her square in the face. “Are you feeling okay?” Her lip wasn’t drooping. She wasn’t slurring her words. Her eyes were alert. Those were good signs.
“I been better,” she said in a low voice.
I grabbed her arm to support her. “Do you feel woozy or confused?”
“I’m always confused, but I can’t say I been woozy, except maybe when George read me one a them racy passages in Jackie’s book in the airport this morning. He dog-eared the page if you wanna read it yourself.”
I smiled despite my anxiety. “So why aren’t you feeling up to snuff?”
“It’s them cloudberries we ate for dessert, dear. My dentures are full of so many dang seeds, I feel like a watermelon.”
“News flash, news flash,” Jackie announced as she joined us. She batted a mosquito away from her face, then slapped it dead when it landed on her forearm. “What’s this? I thought Helge said there were no mosquitoes in Lapland this year. Look at the size of this thing. Did it crossbreed with a pigeon?”
Nana stared at the flattened carcass. “Could be that one’s from Russia. Maybe he was on vacation.” She showed her notepad to Jackie. “Did I spell this right?”
“Profligate. Euw, ten-cent word, Mrs. S.”
I checked out the notepad over Nana’s shoulder. Squiggles. Lines. “You can read that?” I questioned Jackie.
“I spent a summer working in a medical office, Emily. I can read anything. And do I have news!” She drew us into a huddle, excitement oozing from every pore. “The government should hire me as a secret weapon, because I can literally squeeze blood from turnips. Reno O’Brien was putty in my hands.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s because he wants to go to bed with you.”
“Portia Van Cleef was the most hated woman on the planet,” George blurted out as he and Tilly came up behind us. “I got it straight from the Klicks.”
“That’s not fair!” Jackie stomped her foot. “That was my news.”
“It was my news, too,” said Tilly. “The Peabody sisters told me Portia was so obnoxious and contrary that no one in Florida could stand her.”
“How’d you get that outta them?” asked Nana. “I couldn’t get nothin’ outta Vern. He sucked me into playin’ travel Scrabble with him on the bus and didn’t have nothin’ to say except, ‘It’s your turn.’”
A smile teased the corners of Tilly’s mouth. “My ethnographic techniques are legend, Marion. Of course, it also helped that the ladies scarfed down their reindeer stew in two seconds, so that left plenty of time for chatting.”
“Do you think they’re ever bothered by heartburn?” asked George.
“I’d be worried about gas,” said Nana. “Has anyone ever heard of U-L-N-A?” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Is it naughty?”
“It’s a bone in your arm,” said Tilly.
“No kiddin’? I had a notion Vern was makin’ it up, but I didn’t wanna challenge ’cause I thought it might embarrass him to give a definition in mixed company.”
“Did Curtis and Lauretta happen to explain why they despised Portia so much?” I asked George.
He removed a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and angled his reading glasses over his plastic nose protector. “I knew you’d ask me that, so I made notes. They didn’t say how much they disliked Portia, they just talked about how much everyone else disliked her. They thought that was more ethical than trashing her themselves.”
“That’s so noble,” Jackie cooed. “Doesn�
�t it make you all warm and fuzzy inside to know that someone on this tour is willing to take the moral high ground?”
Oh, God. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” said George. “The Klicks summed up their thoughts in one sentence, and I quote: ‘We don’t have anything bad to say about Portia Van Cleef personally, but everyone who knew her said she was a spiteful, uppity, dogmatic shrew.’”
“Aha,” said Tilly. “A harridan.”
Nana scribbled furiously.
“So where do we go from here?” asked Tilly. “Do you still want us to cozy up to people and pump them for information?”
“You bet,” I said, as I watched guests amble back toward the bus. “If Portia was the most hated woman not only in the Hamlets and Florida but on the entire planet, too, why didn’t anyone bother to tell that to the Helsinki police?”
“They were covering their own butts,” sniped Jackie. “If someone leaked that bombshell to the police, they’d all be suspects.”
“Lots of people are obnoxious and critical, but they don’t get killed because of it,” George countered. “Look at Bernice. She’s a pain in everyone’s neck, but no one’s strangled her yet.”
“George makes a good point,” said Tilly. “We can usually tolerate obnoxiousness in a person, but when it gets meaner and is directed at us specifically, we tend to react by either circling the wagons or going on the offensive. I suspect Portia may have antagonized someone until it reached the proverbial tipping point. The question is, what was she using as leverage and why did it suddenly reach critical mass?”
“You s’pose them folks what live in the Hamlets have to fill out disclosure statements before they can move in?” asked Nana.
“Of course they do,” said Jackie. “You practically have to file a disclosure statement to buy a chili dog from a street vendor these days.”
“So if Portia seen them statements, she’d know an awful lot about them folks.”
“Things no one else might know,” I said with sudden clarity. “Financial history. Medical history. Family background. Do you think she was blackmailing someone?”
“Could be she was leaking confidential information,” said George, “but you can’t divulge what’s in those legal documents. It says so right there in the fine print.”
Tilly nodded agreement. “If she betrayed someone’s trust, she might have angered them beyond the pale.”
I suspected she’d angered someone, all right. Angered them so much that they’d decided to kill her.
CHAPTER 7
“Do you see the computer hookup?” Jackie asked as she glanced behind the television on our dresser.
Our hotel flaunted an alpine air, with dark wood interiors, acres of glass, and flower boxes brightening every balcony. A deck fronted one end of the building in German beer-garden style, and directly across the road sat an odd complex that looked like a misconceived experiment to cross a fairy-tale castle with the dogs from 101 Dalmatians.
I searched the wall beside our mini-sofa. “Are these rooms supposed to have computer access?”
“They better have! If I can’t check my Amazon numbers, you’re not going to want to be around me.”
Always something exciting to look forward to.
Knock, knock, knock.
“These rooms don’t got no computer hookups,” Nana fretted when I answered the door. “How am I s’posed to dig up the dirt on folks if I can’t Google no one?”
“We might have to do it the old-fashioned way,” I said as I ushered her inside. “Ingenuity instead of technology.”
“I’m old, dear. The switch might be too much for me.”
“Do you think there’s a computer room in the hotel?” asked Jackie.
“We might could look,” said Nana. “They got a cell tower, so Internet access shouldn’t be far behind.”
A familiar digital tone sent me rummaging through my shoulder bag for my cell phone. “Hello?”
“I have such good news for you, Em! Oh, this is your mother.”
“Hi, Mom,” I said, distracted as Nana shook her head and mouthed, “I’m not here.” “I could use some good news.”
“I knew you could. That’s why I’m calling. You’re going to be so proud of me, Emily. I’ve found a new venue for your wedding reception!”
“So soon? Wow. How’d you do that?” I nodded to Jackie as she herded Nana out the door.
“I talked to Arnie…krrrrrk…and he…krrrrrkkk…isn’t spoken for on the weekend of your—”
“Wait a sec, Mom. You’re breaking up.” I stepped onto the balcony and leaned against the decorative wood rail. “Okay, say again?”
“Arnie Arnoldussen told me the auction barn is available on your wedding day, so I went ahead and booked it.”
I paused. “The Auction Barn? What’s that? A new restaurant in Ames?”
“The Windsor City auction barn, Emily. The one west of town. It’s plenty big for the number of guests you’re inviting, and Arnie promised to fix the roof. It blew clear off in the tornado and landed in the middle of Elmer Egeland’s cornfield. We can set up tables. Sweep the sawdust off the floor. It’ll be perfect.”
“Mom, don’t they auction off hogs in that barn?”
“Yes, dear, but it’s close to home, and the building has lots of receptacles, so we can use those plug-in room fresheners to eliminate odors. They come in several delightful fragrances. We can even use the animal pens to display gifts. The key will be strategic use of crepe paper.”
Oh, God. “Have you talked to Sharon to see how she’s doing?”
“First thing this morning. She wanted me to tell you that she thinks she should bow out of the wedding, but I told her you wouldn’t hear of it. So here’s my idea: we rent a wheelchair and decorate it with crepe paper and tulle so it looks like a piece of wedding cake, and she rolls down the aisle as if she’s riding a Mardi Gras float. I’d like to add a few helium balloons, but Etienne’s relatives might find that a little tacky. What do you think?”
I hung my head. Why me, Lord? Why?
“Oh, before I forget, Emily, there’s a rumor circulating that Olle Erickson might decide not to rebuild the bank.”
“But he has to rebuild! Windsor City Bank is a cornerstone of the community. Where will people go to do their banking?”
“One of those newer national banks will probably take its place. Olle’s already past retirement age, so word is he might hang up the day job and become a snowbird.” She let out a tired sigh. “I don’t know what’s going to be harder on your grandmother—the prospect of never taking another trip with you and her friends, or standing in the rubble of the funeral parlor.”
“Nana’s the most resilient person alive, Mom.”
“I know, I know. But Heavenly Host is her home away from home. The shock of not being able to attend visitations when she gets back is going to come as a terrible blow. Between you and me, Em, I’m afraid she might never recover. When old folks are forced into changing their routine, it often proves to be the beginning of the end.”
“Nana is not old! She’s only seventy-nine. Have you read Cosmo lately? Seventy-nine is the new sixty.”
“Of course, it is. Have you noticed any changes in her since you broke the news about the tornado?”
“No, she’s perfectly fine.” I spotted her and Jackie on the lawn below me, making small talk with guests who were snapping photos of the dalmatian puppy castle across the street. “Except…her handwriting has gotten a little sloppy. Have you noticed that before?”
“Oh, dear. Handwriting is the first thing to go.”
“I thought it was memory.”
“Is it? I don’t remember. But it sounds as if she’s on a downward spiral. Will you be able to handle her, mily? Should I fly out there to help you? If I leave your father a list he can take over the wedding plans, though I’m not sure how well he’ll do if he has to pick out your flowers. His color blindness could be a real problem, especially—krrrrrk krrrrrk.”
> “Mom?”
“KRRRRRK!”
I killed the connection, then watched forlornly as Jackie helped Nana up the stairs to the beer garden. Oh, God. What if this was Nana’s last trip? What if the handwriting business was symptomatic of a larger problem? What if she didn’t live long enough to see me married?
I can’t go there.
Battling unwanted tears, I punched a number into my phone.
“Miceli.”
“Hi, sweetie, it’s me. Do you have time to cheer me up?”
“Always,” he said in an unhurried tone that wrapped dreamily around me. “Where shall I begin? By telling you how many days are left until our wedding, or by listing the things I love most about you?”
I dried my eyes, feeling better already. “Etienne, how would you feel if the wedding turned out a little different than we’d originally planned?”
“Different how?”
“Different church, different restaurant, different town.”
“As long as the bride stays the same, I won’t complain.”
“So you’d be okay with a bridal reception in a livestock auction barn with crepe paper streamers and plug-in room fresheners?”
Silence. “What happened to the elegant restaurant with the string quartet and candlelight?”
“Here’s the scoop. Have you ever seen the movie Twister?”
As I filled him in on Windsor City’s recent disaster, I watched Nana and Jackie hobnobbing with several guests who were seated around patio tables, drinking and swatting mosquitoes. August Manning waved a deck of playing cards in front of Reno O’Brien, drumming up a game of gin rummy, no doubt, while the Peabody sisters and Vern Grundy sat side by side, staring at mugs of ale. When Joleen Barnum shouted, “Go,” Vern and the two Peabodys chugged down their brew, then slammed their mugs onto the table. Joleen consulted her stopwatch, announcing in a thundering tone, “And our winner is—by one and eight-tenths seconds—Ap-rrrril Peabody!”
Applause. Table pounding. Foot stomping. A deep-throated chant that sounded like, “Ape-ape-ape.” Gee, these Floridians really knew how to celebrate a victory. Jimbob Barnum turned a cartwheel on the deck, which propelled him onto the surrounding rail like a gymnast on a balance beam. He flipped backward into a handstand, lowered himself onto his chest, then, with the ease of a Cirque du Soleil acrobat, coiled himself into a Chinese ball with his bony tush coming to rest on his head. Quite a trick for a guy who wouldn’t have to jump to dunk a basketball.
