Happy Homicides 4: Fall Into Crime: Includes Happy Homicides 3: Summertime Crimes

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  I visualized someone, likely the president, falling from the catwalk into the press and becoming one with a Jonagold, Mac, and Empire cider blend. I wanted to run after them, but knew it would be no use. What I feared more than becoming “pressed” in the mill was President Anderson getting interested in my Aunt Nozzie and falling prey to the kinds of disasters men usually met when they became romantically engaged with the womenfolk in my family. I shuddered at the thought. It would be better if he did find his way into a jug of Sam’s Famous Cider.

  I filled my cart with several bushels of apples and made my way back to the motorhome. I heard laughter from inside. When I stepped in, I found President Anderson, Nozzie and the two grandmothers drinking cider from one of Sam’s gallon containers shaped like old-fashioned jugs. They took turns slinging the container onto one shoulder and taking a swig as if it were a jug of white lightning and they were thirsty distillers. President Anderson swiped his mouth with the back of his hand like a real good ole boy and passed the jug along. I hoped the juice inside wasn’t hard cider or I’d have to drive us all home, including my president.

  “Call me Henry,” he said, handing the jug off to my aunt.

  Everyone giggled, including Henry.

  “Well, I’d better get going. I’ve got dinner plans tonight, otherwise I’d invite you, Darcie and her lovely grandmothers to dine with me. And thanks for the invitation. I’ll be there. Costumes, you say?” He smiled at me and limped down the steps.

  “Invitation. Invitation to what?” I asked.

  “Your Halloween party, of course,” said Aunt Nozzie.

  I was having a Halloween party?

  “We need to think of costumes,” Nozzie said.

  It was a costume party?

  Chapter 3: Or Applesauce for Three Hundred

  Nozzie drove us home without incident, unless you count sideswiping two mailboxes and shooting across a small ditch and toward a field of cows. The cows barely raised their heads from grazing as Aunt Nozzie maneuvered the motorhome back onto the road. I, however, headed for the floor and remained there until we pulled into my drive.

  We unloaded the apples from the motorhome and piled them on chairs, the kitchen and the dining room tables, the counters and even on the washer and dryer behind the bi-fold doors in my kitchen. Then we shoved the final three bushels into my mudroom, leaving a few strays in the motorhome.

  “I should have told you to get a few carts more,” Nozzie said, checking my cupboards for pots and pans in which to cook the applesauce.

  “In the garage,” I said.

  She wrestled two large kettles from the shelves in the garage and set them on the stove. The grandmothers carried in cardboard boxes filled with canning jars from the storage space under the bench seats in the motorhome.

  “Where do you store your cookware in the motorhome?” I asked as they filled the dishwasher with the jars for sterilization.

  “We don’t have any,” said Grandma Papa.

  “So how do you cook on the road?”

  “TV dinners, but most times we eat out,” she replied.

  “But I thought the whole purpose of RVing was enjoying all the comforts of home. You can make meals, watch television and sleep there.” Come to think of it, I didn’t remember seeing a TV set.

  “Most of the time we stayed in motel rooms, especially after Michigan. All those bushels of apples meant we had to share that tiny kitchen table bed, and she kicks in her sleep.” Grandma Mama grabbed her back and grimaced.

  “Now where’s your apple peeler? We’d better get started or we’ll be here all night.” Aunt Nozzie tied a deep purple bandanna around her hair and slipped one of my aprons over her caftan.

  “I don’t understand why you bought the rig if you had no intention of using it as a motorhome, as in home on wheels.” I grabbed the peeler out of the cupboard and screwed it to the table top. Nozzie did the peeling, and the grandmothers sat at the table and cut up the apples. I tossed them into a pot on the stove and began cooking them down.

  “How else were we going to transport all these apples?” Nozzie wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Besides it was on sale. I got a rock bottom price on it, only five hundred dollars.”

  I was shocked at the price. “Five hundred? That’s practically a steal. How many miles did it have on it?”

  The questions seemed to make Nozzie uncomfortable. “Hot in here isn’t it? Let’s open a window.”

  “Aunt Nozzie, what’s up?”

  “The motorhome has a history,” said Grandma Mama.

  “A history? What kind of history?” I opened the window over the stove to let in a breeze.

  “Tell her.” Aunt Nozzie left off peeling and sat back in her chair.

  The two pots were filled with apples, so I joined everyone at the table and began cutting up more.

  “Well, it was in, uh, storage for several years after the incident,” said Grandma Mama.

  “What incident?” I did not like where this was going.

  “The murder,” said Grandma Mama.

  I sliced open my thumb. “Yikes!” I held it up, blood trickling from the wound.

  “Don’t let that drip on the apples. That’s a health violation, and we won’t be able to sell the sauce,” warned Aunt Nozzie.

  “It might give it a nice pinkish tinge though,” said Grandma Papa.

  Grandma Mama rushed into the bathroom to find bandages while Grandma Papa pulled me to the sink and turned on the faucet.

  “Do you need stitches?” asked Nozzie.

  I shook my head. “I need an explanation.”

  “It was more of an accident than a real murder,” said Grandma Papa.

  Nozzie sighed and wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “See, there was this guy who used it as an office, but the police caught him, and then there was this chase where he ran it into a cornfield, and he jumped out and started to run across the field, and the farmer there thought he was trying to steal his tractor to use as a getaway car, and he was, of course, but then the farmer went into his house and got his shotgun and fired at the guy, but he missed, but the cops were still on his tail so he ran into the barn and climbed the ladder to the hayloft where he slipped and fell into one of the pens and….” Nozzie took a quick breath.

  “He died from the fall?” I asked.

  Nozzie shook her head. “No, he was stomped by a bull. Can you imagine? And he lived.”

  “Wait a minute. Why would the cops be after this guy if he was only using the motorhome as his office? And you said murder.”

  Grandmother Mama raised her hand. “I can answer that. “

  “Oh please do.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Because he was a hit man. He worked out of the motorhome, going from city to city contacting mafia types for work. He was a freelancer.”

  Grandma Papa piped up. “His business card read, ‘Your place or mine. I’ll get ‘em on the road.’ Only this time he was on the road. Neat, huh?”

  “The authorities kept the motorhome for evidence in several cases in Chicago, and then it went on the market, and we got it,” said Grandma Mama.

  “So he’s behind bars?”

  Three heads bobbed up and down.

  “For a while,” said Aunt Nozzie. “His lawyers got him a reduced sentence.”

  “You have title to the motorhome, right?”

  Nozzie gave me a stern look. “Of course I do. Do you think I’m dim? It was in the impound lot and then put up for auction in Rockford, Illinois. It’s all very legal.”

  “A member of the family wanted to bid on it, but the cops wouldn’t let him,” said Grandma Mama, her blue eyes wide with innocence.

  I looked at Aunt Nozzie and mouthed the word “family,” but she shook her head.

  Well, who was I to inform my grandmothers that there was family and then there was Family, the organized crime kind? Besides, Nozzie said she had the title to it, so I shook off my feelings of discomfort.

  We worked throu
gh the afternoon, the evening, and into the night, taking a break only for pizza delivery. At midnight, we left the kitchen a mess and went to bed. I was so exhausted that I could have fallen asleep on a cement floor and found it restful.

  Chapter 4: Find Me a Whip, a Gun and a Pair of Mary Janes

  Almost a hundred jars of applesauce sat on the shelves in my garage waiting transport down the interstate to Nozzie’s house back in Illinois.

  “There’s no way that health inspector can complain about conditions at my house since this stuff was made here.” Aunt Nozzie took a deep breath and gazed in admiration at the shelves.

  What she didn’t say was that the conditions under which the sauce was manufactured would be on my head. Maybe I could move before the authorities from the Midwest tracked me down. Best case scenario? There was no applesauce extradition agreement between our two states.

  Everyone rested up a day, but early the next morning Aunt Nozzie rousted us out of bed.

  “Okay, let’s get going. Where can we find costumes for the party? Or should we just make them here? You’ve got a sewing machine, don’t you, Darcie?”

  I imagined the three women using a device with racing feeder feet and a sharp needle and decided my only alternative was to lie.

  “No, I don’t have a machine.”

  Nozzie squinted her eyes at me in a suspicious look. “You told me you made your kitchen curtains.”

  “Uh, I did, but I borrowed a machine from a friend and…she’s left town for a while.” I saw the look on my aunt’s face and quickly added, “I don’t think it’s smart to break into her house. She lives close to the police department.”

  Aunt Nozzie looked ceiling-ward for a moment, and I was certain she was contemplating burglary.

  “How close to the cops?” she asked.

  “Next door.” I crossed my fingers behind my back, a childish gesture, I know, but maybe God wouldn’t punish me for a lie that insured my aunt and grandmothers would stay out of jail.

  “Then we’re off to the nearest costume store.” Nozzie grabbed her purple sweater from the back of a kitchen chair. “We’ll take your car, Darcie.”

  Thank heavens for that. The motorhome still smelled like over-ripe apples. There were escapees hiding somewhere in there.

  “There are no costume stores around here, and the stores that do sell costumes only have a few for adults. And those’re awful, so I guess we’re out of luck. No costume party.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Grandma Papa. “Let’s go to a thrift shop. We can alter something. I’m good at that. I almost never use a sewing machine. No need. We’ll just stock up on duct tape, staples, clear tape and paper clips.”

  “Great idea.” Aunt Nozzie grabbed my car keys out of my hand. “I’ll drive.”

  We settled into my tiny Toyota with my grandmothers in the back. I rode shotgun as usual.

  “You’re familiar with a manual transmission, Aunt Nozzie?”

  “Certainly.” Nozzie put the car in gear and let out the clutch. The car stalled.

  “You might try a gear other than fourth to start out,” I suggested.

  “I know, I know. I was just eager to get going, that’s all.”

  Nozzie tried again. This time, she shoved the gear shift lever into second and gave it enough gas to empty the tank, but we got going, bumping our way down the road and onto the highway leading toward town.

  “You just tell me where to go.” She passed a pick-up truck and narrowly missed a tractor coming from the other direction.

  “Whee!” shouted Grandma Papa.

  “Da bongle friegen rat!” added Grandma Mama. The rough translation of that is “Whee!”

  I turned around in my seat. “Why are you yelling ‘whee’? Didn’t you see that tractor coming toward us?”

  “What tractor?” asked Grandma Papa.

  I realized she couldn’t see over the back of the seat, and I wished I were back there with her.

  At the thrift shop, the grandmothers and Nozzie attacked the clothing racks looking for garments that could be converted into costumes. Since I had made myself a black cat costume years back, I searched through the yard goods to find materials I could use to drape the downstairs of the house to make it look scary. And, oh yes, we had decided we needed a large container to hold water and apples for apple bobbing. I located an old kiddie wading pool. If it had leaks in it, I figured I could plug them with duct tape.

  “What do you think of this?” Nozzie held up a black bustier and a pair of net panty hose.

  “And you’ll be going as someone with bad taste?” I replied.

  “No, as one of those dominatrix women. Look at this.” She pulled a leather whip from behind her back and cracked it. “Now I just need shoes or boots.”

  “I found these boots, and when you’re done with them, you can give them to me.” Grandma Papa handed Nozzie a pair of large black knee-high boots. I tried to envision how they might be made to fit Grandma Papa using her usual grosgrain ribbons but failed. Maybe she could just use them as hip waders if she ever got a yen for fly fishing.

  “You sure you don’t want to wear them?” asked Nozzie. “You would make a cute little house of ill repute madam.”

  “Nope. I found a Minnie Mouse costume, used, that will fit me perfectly.”

  I examined the costume that had to have been worn only one time if ever. It was still in its original packaging. Girls’ size 8. This would probably be the only time Grandma Papa wore anything that came close to fitting her. The costume included a large Minnie cardboard mask, but no shoes.

  “Let’s see if there are any Mary Janes in the children’s shoe section.” I said. Sure enough, we scored a hit, although they were too big, something Grandma could handle in her usual way.

  “I have nothing,” wailed Grandma Mama. “If you had a sewing machine I could make something. Now I won’t be able to attend the party. I’ll have to close myself in the bedroom upstairs or lock myself in the motorhome. I won’t have any fun.”

  “How about a ghost? We can use a bed sheet,” I suggested.

  “That’s boring.” Grandma Mama seemed about to cry when her face lit up. “I know. I’ll come as Lady Godiva. Help me find a wig.”

  “No Lady Godiva. Absolutely not. Not at my party,” I said. “Let’s keep looking around.”

  We spent the next half hour rummaging among the clothes racks, but nothing appealed to Grandma Mama.

  “Here’s a goblin mask,” I offered.

  “Too scary,” she said.

  “How about a princess?” said Nozzie, holding up a plastic tiara.

  “Too silly,” she said.

  “A cowboy?” asked Grandma Papa, who had found a child’s six shooter.

  “Too adolescent.”

  “A witch?” I pulled a pointed hat from a pile of caps and hats in a bin.

  “Too Halloweeny.”

  “Of course it’s Halloweeny because it’s Halloween!” I was getting frustrated.

  She sighed. “I can just sit in the motorhome and knit.”

  “I didn’t know you were a knitter,” I said.

  “I’m not. I’ll buy some books and learn.”

  I walked past the men’s clothes, and it hit me. She could dress in a man’s suit and trench coat and come as a detective. She loved the idea but insisted we find a gun for her.

  “What about the six shooter Grandma Papa found?” I asked.

  “Nope. That looks like a kid’s toy. I want something that looks real.”

  We dug into a bin of odds and ends near the back of the store and found a very real looking revolver there. It didn’t even look like a toy, and it was loaded with bullets, fake I assumed.

  “I wonder why it’s here and not with the other toys,” I said.

  “The barrel is kind of crooked,” said Aunt Nozzie, pointing the gun in the air. “No kid wants a revolver that looks this bad. It’s in the markdown bin and only twenty-five cents.”

  Chapter 5: Drowning In Party
Spirit

  The house was ready for the party, the rooms draped with spooky looking dark gauze and fake cobwebs. I spray-painted the wading pool black and orange, filled it with water and threw some apples in. I set it out on the back deck. We’d have a contest to see who could take the shortest time to get an apple. There was wine, beer, apple cider, hard cider, Nozzie’s signature Scarlet O’Hara cocktails, ghastly treats like devilled eggs that looked like eyeballs and pâté in the shape of a severed hand.

  I usually love a party, but this one gave me a feeling of dread.

  “Did you invite Mr. Smith from next door?” asked Grandma Papa. “I kind of fancy him.”

  Too bad the guy didn’t fancy my grandmothers. After he got boinked on the head with the gutter, and then sneaked back home, he hid in his house. I had to bang on his door and shout the invitation through the closed door. I knew he was in there because I could hear a sound like someone whimpering and then a “Go away. I hate parties.”

  I knew that wasn’t the case because he always showed up at my July Fourth parties and drank all my lemonade. I caught him sneaking vodka into his glass.

  “There will be lots of booze. You’ll hardly notice my relatives are there,” I told him, but there was no response.

  “I think he has other plans for Halloween night,” I said to my grandmothers.

  “Never mind the local bachelors,” said Nozzie.

  “Well, fine for you,” said Grandma Papa. “You’ll have your college president here.”

  “I’m certain Darcie invited enough single men from the college. We can find someone for both of you among that lot.”

  I was reluctant to invite colleagues, even those I didn’t like. I worried what might happen, but I also felt guilty thinking so poorly of my family that I assumed they would maim or murder or simply scare the stuffing out of my friends. I caved and invited everyone I knew at the college. It was probably a mistake, but I could always apologize to the victim of the disaster or, if fatal, to his or her surviving family.

  Nozzie was keen on turning the motorhome into a pumpkin coach like the one in the movie “Cinderella,” but we couldn’t locate enough orange material at the thrift shop or afford enough crepe paper to accomplish the transformation. After Nozzie pouted about the failure for a few hours, I convinced her we would just put a sign on the door reading “Pumpkin Coach.”