by Mark Zubro
He pushed the coffee maker’s ‘on’ button, raised an eyebrow in my direction, and held out an empty cup.
I said, “Thanks.”
He indicated a chair. A small window looked out on a backyard that was mostly weeds interrupted by patches of dirt. The alley looked as busted and crumbling as the town, the backs of the houses beyond it all sagging and withering in the heat.
When we were seated and settled with coffee, Snedeker asked, “What’s Murray gotten himself into? I’m worried about him. Ambitious to a fault but a good kid. Is he in danger?”
“Possibly.”
“He trusts you.”
“I trust him.”
“You’re not going to get him killed?” he asked.
“I don’t want to get anyone killed.”
He gave me a grim smile. “I’m not accusing anybody, but you get here, and Tyler Skeen dies and then this national reporter. You a bad luck charm?”
“Knecht hired me and so far I’ve found Peyton Place on steroids mixed with bits of celebrity. I can’t see how the murders would be connected to the town except by happenstance.”
“Murder by random chance?”
“Well, not so much.”
“This town is screwed.” He waved a hand toward the window and the world beyond. “Look at the place. There’s no gold or jewels or oil. They’re like children fighting in a sandbox. For what? There’s no point. These ballplayers coming to town? It’s like they’re from an alien world. It’s a little fun and gives people something to do, but murder? It just doesn’t make sense. The town isn’t worth killing over. It’s just not.”
I chose not to quote the cliché, wars have been fought for less.
I asked, “Did you know Tyler Skeen?”
“Met him, didn’t know him.”
“Did you go to his parties?”
“I’ve got a wife and kids and a real life. Those parties were for the young and bored.”
“Old Charlie Hopper makes a lot of drugs.”
“Nothing illegal as far as I know.” He sipped some coffee, wiped at the sweat on his forehead with a small towel from his desk that might have been there for that express purpose. He asked, “You saying Old Charlie’s connected to murder?”
“If it was some kind of drug mixture, legal or illegal, he’s a person that it makes sense to talk to.”
He shrugged. “That makes sense and it doesn’t.”
“How so?”
“Well, he makes all those weird concoctions, but then half the town takes them. They’re cheap and people say they feel better.”
“He’s the town pusher?”
“Sort of.” He leaned forward. “I wanted to talk to you for two reasons. One, for Marty’s sake. I don’t want to see him get hurt.”
“Neither do I.”
“And because I got a visit this morning. I think several people did. Representatives of the league itself and the big team are here. They don’t strike me as a happy, cheerful bunch at any time. Both groups were specifically asking questions about you.”
“How do they know I even exist?”
“Which I asked them, which they managed not to answer. They are not happy about this whole thing.”
“Other than the killer, who would be happy with murder?”
He grimaced. “You put it kind of flippantly. I’m trying to give you a fair warning. They were not happy in a you’re-the-problem kind of way.”
“Why me?”
“You’d have to ask them. One was a really scrawny guy in a black coat.”
“In this weather?”
“Takes all kinds.”
“They working together or separately?”
“Again, you’d have to ask them.”
“Tyler Skeen having affairs?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
“What would cause someone in this town to kill?”
“Same things as any town, I expect.”
“Anything specific to Butterfield?”
“Not that I know of.”
THURSDAY 11:03 A.M.
I didn’t have to wait long for a conversation with the folks from the big team and the league. As I left the newspaper office, a stretch limousine idled at the curb. The front passenger side door opened and a guy the size of a Volkswagen got out and opened the passenger side back door. He motioned me inside.
I smiled and said, “No.”
He advanced on me. These big guys always think they can push everybody else around. As he got closer, he held out his hands as if to catch me. This only made sense later because someone bashed me in the head and knocked me out.
I awoke in the back of the air-conditioned limousine.
The car wasn’t moving. I was sitting up. My head hurt. I looked out the window. The limo hadn’t moved.
Next to me was the big guy.
A man with an emaciated face sat across from me, his legs crossed and encased in severely creased, flat black trousers. He’d mastered the Professor Snape/Ichabod Crane look, including the black coat with a high collar pulled close around his neck. Good thing the limo was air-conditioned or the guy would have baked. His pinched face had the kind of look of somebody who hadn’t had a bowel movement in a week. Next to him was a man in a gray suit. He had a spray-on tan that made him look more orange than John Boehner.
I asked, “Are we there yet?”
The thin guy spoke in a whisper. “Your reputation for pointless repartee precedes you.”
“Who are you guys?” I wasn’t tied up, so presumably I could just open the door and leave. The big guy kept his eyes on me, and the doors were probably locked.
“We represent the best interests of all concerned.”
I said, “You’re the scrawny guy Snedeker described.” I turned to the other guy, “Who are you?”
No answer. No names.
I tried again. “Why are you here?”
The scrawny guy’s hands rested in his coat pockets. Cold? Or he had a gun trained on me? He said, “I’m an investigator sent to find out what the hell is going on in this town.”
“Are you with the team or the league?”
He leaned forward. “We all need to agree that Tyler Skeen died of a heart attack, and you need to leave.”
“Are you investigating Skeen, his death, or his drug use? Or Knecht? Is he involved in drugs somehow?” My questions got not even a flicker of annoyance from them much less a response.
I continued, “You really think semi-kidnapping me and threatening me are good ways to accomplish anything? Why not just talk to me on the street? Invite me for a cup of coffee? Why this nonsensical way of getting together?”
I turned again to the gray suit guy. “You ever talk?” Not a whisper of response.
Scrawny guy said, “You need to get out of town and forget this whole investigation.” He opened a brown envelope filled with money. “This will pay you for your time and expenses.”
He reached over and dumped the money into my lap. There were ten thick bundles of hundred dollar bills. I replaced the money in the envelope and returned it.
“That’s a hell of a lot of cash. Who told you the way to be inconspicuous in a small town is to drive around in a stretch limousine? Showing up like this means either you’re very confident in your power and influence, or you don’t give a shit who knows you’re here, or you’re seriously stupid. Knecht must not be cooperating or you wouldn’t need to talk to me. He could just fire me, but you can’t get him to do that.”
“You talk too much.” The sibilant whisper sounded very annoyed. He neither twitched nor blinked.
“Why don’t you guys like Knecht? What’s he done to make you want him out?”
I doubted if I’d get answers any time either side of his next bowel movement.
I plunged ahead. “You don’t have the votes, or the clout, or the influence, or the power, or the money to just get rid of Knecht as an owner. Or maybe he’s got friends. Did you guys deliberately off Tyler Skeen to save money?”<
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The scrawny guy with no name pressed a button on a panel to his left. The car began to move but within a few seconds lurched and stopped.
We all looked forward. A plump woman dressed in Salvation Army severe stood two inches from the hood of the car. Sunlight glinted on her gold-rimmed glasses. She thumped the Bible in her left hand on the hood of the car. She shook the umbrella in her right hand at the driver who began to back up. The plump woman followed, still shaking and thumping the items in her hands. The driver switched gears and moved forward for a second.
The woman threw the Bible at the windshield, which cracked the way windshields do when a stone hits them, kind of lightning lines from a central spot. One hell of a tough book or a great throw.
The driver opened his door to get out.
I tried the door handle. It opened.
The big guy grabbed me. I broke his wrist. He screamed. The scrawny guy shouted, “Get back in the car and run her down.”
I leapt out.
In the sunlight I could see the plump woman had a face covered in freckles. She gave me a severe frown as she moved next to me out of the way of the limo. A few cars were making their way around us.
The limo sped off.
Georgia said, “You do need watching.”
THURSDAY 12:16 P.M.
My staff and I met at the Pitstop TruckStop for lunch.
On a bench outside the entrance sat a man with his legs spread wide. His skinny-leg jeans were cut low and clung to his narrow hips, the gleaming white band of his tight mesh underwear peeked out above the waistband of his jeans. He wore tan, steel-toe work boots. Jerry smiled at me. His broad shoulder muscles rippled as he stood and slipped a size-too-large T-shirt onto his torso.
“Hey, boss.” I liked his slight southern drawl, his deep low voice, and the way his words seemed to ease through the humid air.
Jerry was very married to a slip of a guy who was a librarian in Omro, Wisconsin.
We walked in together and found Duncan in the darkest booth nearest the back. Duncan wore his suit, and Georgia was still in Salvation Army frump.
I threw myself into the booth. Georgia smiled at Jerry and pointed at me, “He’s got another dead one.”
Jerry said, “How many is that now?”
“How many cases has he had?” Duncan asked.
I said, “I do not meet a man on every case. And they don’t all die.”
“They never work out,” Georgia said.
“I’ve dated a few of them.”
“For how long?”
“Not long,” I admitted. “And they don’t all end in disaster.”
Georgia said, “All the ones I know about did.”
I said, “We are not here to discuss my love life.”
Duncan interjected, “I thought we might need help so I called Jerry in.”
I said, “Not a problem.”
Jerry said, “I drove through hundreds of miles of Montana wilderness, flew a thousand miles before dawn, and you’ve got a moving corpse problem.”
“Only one of them is moving around. Tyler Skeen has stayed put.”
“So far,” Georgia said.
Jerry said, “I hate disappearing corpses.”
The waitress brought menus and coffee.
I said, “He didn’t disappear. He was dead. Someone moved him. I moved him back.”
Georgia held the menu with the tips of two fingers. “Anything good here?”
I said, “Try the lettuce. How badly could they mess that up?”
Georgia sniffed. “I’m on a new diet. Only strawberries.” Georgia ate minuscule amounts of food and had a fabulous metabolism.
Duncan said, “Andy said Caesar is fine.”
At least the dog was okay.
I asked Jerry, “Where do the Montana Freedom Fighter and Elk Molesting Society think you are?”
“We are free to go wherever we want whenever we want and do whatever we want as long as we obey the strict rules of the organization. And they don’t molest the elk. Pretty much they shoot at them and miss. The most fighting they do is finding the right end of the sleeping bag to get out of in the morning.”
Georgia asked, “How did you get out?”
“I just saluted their version of the Constitution and walked away. Besides, I happened to find out the leader of the group likes to tramp deep into the woods to secluded sites so he can get pissed on by young studs. He knows I know so he leaves me alone.”
Georgia sipped her coffee. “I thought they were all straight.”
“Except when they’re not,” Jerry replied. “Mostly they kind of smell like campfire, bug spray, and unwashed body odor.”
I gave them all the information and details I’d found out since Monday. Duncan added to his notes on his laptop as the food was brought and while we ate.
When I got to the Old Charlie Hopper section, Duncan used the Internet to pull up a large topographical map of the entire area with Old Charlie Hopper’s place outlined in red, homes of the significant players as blue dots, routes to and from venues in a rainbow of colors.
We pored over it for several minutes. I said, “We should all get copies.”
“Check your phones. I’ve emailed it.”
Duncan was efficient.
After checking the maps, I told them the rest. When I finished Jerry said, “Take them out and shoot them.”
“Who?” Duncan asked.
Jerry said, “The usual suspects?”
I said, “They all seem fairly vicious in an incompetent sort of way. Townspeople, baseball people. Nobody likes anybody.”
Georgia looked up from her compact. “They’ve never been backstage in a drag bar at three o’clock in the morning. That’s real dislike, and it’s very competent.”
Jerry said, “That kidnapping of you sounds pretty amateurish. Why try that?”
“Let’s go with the obvious. They wanted to scare me off. Clumsy and inept can be done by rich people and poor people.”
Duncan asked, “But who has the wherewithal to do all this?”
I shrugged.
Georgia pointed at me and said, “Somebody poisons Skeen. Then somebody shoots your one night stand and then shoots at you. The body just happens to be in a condo you’re hunting through. The body is moved. How long did it take you to get through the woods back to your car?”
“Over half an hour. We were being extremely careful.”
“They move the body to your motel. After keeping it on ice because they couldn’t immediately dump it in your room because another of your conquests was awaiting your triumphant return.”
I began a protest, but she held up a hand. “Toting bodies around is not easy. Obviously they were trying to implicate you, but who and why? Why kill Skeen in the first place for that matter? Marksmanship skills, poisoning ability, body toting? Who can do all that?”
“A cop with a police department, a group of baseball players, and an environmentalist with a lot of hired help who also happens to manufacture drugs.”
Duncan said, “I’ve got Hopper’s website.” He turned his monitor so we could see it. We paged through it in silence for several minutes. There were lots of ads for myriad different elixirs. I saw blather and brag about what looked like sugar water, but no evidence of criminality. But really, anyone with half an atom of brains wouldn’t be advertising, “Buy Criminal Stuff Here.” Unless you were an international drug connection like Silk Road, which we had no evidence of yet.
I mused, “I don’t suppose he’d advertise illegally made drugs?”
“Some are stupid enough,” Georgia said.
Duncan added, “I haven’t found any such thing.”
Georgia said, “Angry townspeople led by the old guard including a drug producing peddler in the woods? Pitchforks and torches at midnight?”
“But directed at who?” I asked.
Georgia said, “Whom.”
I smiled at her. Grammar correction was one of her fetishes, something like a copy editor
just out of college. Jerry said, “Maybe you’ve got more than one criminal or set of criminals.” We looked at him. “We’ve talked about the various skills or combinations of them. Then they tried to semi-kidnap you.”
Duncan said, “Why poison Skeen but shoot Czobel?”
Jerry and I shrugged. Georgia glanced up from her lettuce leaf.
Duncan continued, “Skeen dies. Knecht maybe loses prestige, maybe a pot of money, and we have an unhappy client. Czobel dies. We have no idea who benefits, although his death may have been designed to frighten you. He could have had incriminating information on Skeen or on someone else. Moving his body to your room definitely had to be designed to implicate you.”
Georgia stopped chewing on a lettuce leaf. “I can’t picture someone in this burg getting tired of carrying a body and saying, oh, look, there’s a motel room, let’s put it in that room for no discernible reason.”
“Unlikely,” I said.
Duncan added, “Then there’s the town connections. Old Charlie Hopper sort of benefits if Knecht goes under or gives up. The old guard faction also sort of benefits if Knecht goes under or gives up.” He hitched closer to the table. “We’ve got any number of people who could have shot at you, smashed Murray’s windshield, and moved the body.”
“They’d shoot at their own?” Georgia asked.
“I’m listing possibilities.”
I said, “They’ve all got to be connected to Skeen’s death.”
“How?” Jerry asked.
Trust the man to be succinct and get to the point.
“Why?” Georgia asked.
Trust her to ask the most complex question.
Duncan said, “Let’s start with the simplest. How did the body get moved?”
“I’m one guy, and I moved it. I don’t know why someone would kill Czobel. He was a threat to the killer? He was threatening the killer? Maybe he had information on someone. Maybe someone killed him to silence him.”
Georgia said, “Maybe he went to bed with you and was using you to get information. Or maybe you slept with a killer. Maybe you fell asleep with a killer in your own bed. We’re talking the need for serious therapy here.”
“For me or the corpse?”
