Fish Fry and a Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

  I sighed. I didn’t want to go into details about finding a dead body with her. She didn’t always keep things to herself. “It’s true, and it’s also true that we need to keep it quiet. And no, I don’t have any more information than that. I better get going. I’ve got an afternoon shift at Sam’s.” I got to my feet and picked up my coffee. In a situation like this it was best if I vacated the area, otherwise, my mother would hound me for details.

  “Fine, you go to work and leave us hanging,” Mom pouted. “You’ll fill us in when you get more information, right?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll see you two later.”

  I headed out before either of them could say anything more. I worked part-time as a waitress at Sam’s Diner and while the job didn’t pay much, it helped and it was a convenient escape for me just then.

  Chapter Six

  “I’ve got a hot one today,” Bill Severs said from across the room.

  I looked up from my computer. It was two days later, and I was at my second part-time job at the local newspaper writing lifestyle articles. And while it was enjoyable, I hoped to be given juicer assignments at some point. “What are you talking about?”

  He looked up at me and grinned. “There was a body found out at the lake and the boss just handed the assignment to me. I love writing articles like this. It’s a real mystery how this guy ended up in the lake. It’s a shame we don’t have more opportunities to write articles like this.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yeah, it’s a real shame more people don’t die so you can write articles about it.”

  He laughed. “Rainey, you’re a card. You know what I mean. Small towns don’t give us nearly enough opportunity to write exciting news features. Don’t you get tired of writing articles about matching your curtains to your throw pillows?”

  I could have argued with him, but just then I was writing an article on household organization with a focus on getting rid of clutter. I sighed. That article he was writing should have been mine. I was an actual eyewitness. Or at least I was an eyewitness to finding the body. I looked at him again. “Who are you going to interview?”

  He shrugged. “The police. The widow, if I can get her to open up. Maybe other family members.” Bill was in his early fifties. He wore black thick-framed glasses and walked with a limp.

  “Who discovered the body?” I asked. Surely he had to know, right?

  “A cop. One of them was ice fishing on his day off,” he said, and quickly jotted something down on a notepad. Bill was an okay guy, but right at this moment I was feeling a little jealous that he was going to take the credit on an article that I should be writing.

  “Really? Just the police officer? It seems like there would be other witnesses. I wonder if there were other people at the lake fishing that day.” I stared at him, waiting for his answer.

  He shook his head. “Nope. The detective handling the case said he was alone.”

  I sighed. It figured. Cade wasn’t going to let me get involved if he could help it. He sometimes didn’t mind if I asked around, but lately he had become nervous about me getting involved with his cases. It may have had something to do with me almost getting my head blown off recently. But I wanted this article. “Bill, why don’t you let me write that article? I’m dating Detective Cade Starkey, after all. I might be able to get some information out of him.”

  He looked up at me. “You are dating him, aren’t you?” He shrugged. “What could you get out of him? He’s a professional. He can’t just give you inside information.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. I have my ways. Let me have it,” I said, a little too eagerly.

  He laughed again. “Are you nuts? I’m not turning this article over to you. I live for this kind of thing.”

  “I’ll trade you articles. You write mine and I’ll write yours,” I offered.

  He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “What article are you writing?”

  I glanced at the Word document I had open on my computer. I was nuts thinking he’d trade me. “Home organization.”

  He looked at me blankly. Then he laughed so hard I thought he would fall out of his chair. “You’re crazy. No way. Besides, our editor isn’t going to like it if we trade articles. He hands out the articles to who he thinks will write it best. And obviously, he knows I’ll write this one the best.”

  I sighed. If that were true, then I’d be writing articles about tossing unmatched socks and baking cookies for the rest of my life. Why had I thought I’d ever get a chance to write anything else?

  “Tell me what you have so far?” I asked. Maybe Cade had given him more information than he had shared with me.

  “They said the dead guy had some kind of accident and he had a bloody head injury. It’s murder, you know,” he said as he opened up a blank document. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  I didn’t know why Cade might suggest it was an accident when he knew it was murder, but there wasn’t any blood that I had seen and the head injury hadn’t seemed that bad. Bad enough to kill Rob Zumbro of course, but it didn’t look like it was a huge wound and the water would have washed away any blood. “Did you know the victim?”

  He looked at me. “Rob Zumbro? I saw him around town sometimes. His parents owned the old leather repair shop that used to be on Blake Street in the seventies. Not much use for that kind of shop these days. Everything’s cheap and disposable.”

  I could barely remember my father taking me into the leather repair shop once when he left off a pair of boots to be repaired. Bill was right. There wasn’t much use for those kinds of shops these days. Today many shoes were cheaply made with synthetic materials and bought for a few dollars. Disposable, indeed. “When did it close?”

  He thought about it. “I guess in the late eighties. Later the Zumbros opened up a gift shop, but it didn’t last long. Seemed Christopher Zumbro didn’t have a lot of direction in life. It also seems like there was another business sometime in the mid-nineties, but I might not remember it right.”

  “What kind of people were they? Rob’s parents, I mean.”

  “They were nice. Sparrow was even more tight-knit back then than it is now. People knew each other real well. I think Rob and his wife Sarah inherited money from his parents when they died. Rob’s uncle, Barron Zumbro, was a real hotshot in the seventies. He was on the high school swim team.”

  “Oh?” I asked. “I guess sports were big around here even then.”

  “You better believe it. Back then everyone said Barron was on his way to the Olympics.” He opened an internet page and searched for frozen lake facts.

  “Really?” I asked. “But he never made it?”

  He shook his head without looking at me. “No, he went off to college and joined the Idaho State swim team, but he got into trouble.”

  He didn’t elaborate, and I sighed. I was going to have to pry the information out of him. “What kind of trouble?”

  He stopped what he was doing and turned to me. “It was the mid-seventies. You know how it was. The country had moved from the counter-culture of the sixties to the sit around and get stoned culture of the seventies.” He chuckled. “He took it to heart and got in pretty deep. Stoned athletes don’t do much, except get kicked off the team.”

  “That stinks. He threw away an Olympic dream for drugs?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. It caused an uproar around here. Everyone had been watching him. The paper ran articles on his progress at the college swim meets. The buzz of Sparrow producing an Olympic athlete was deafening. When he got kicked off the team and eventually out of college, people took it hard, especially his parents.”

  “Wow. Can you picture the regrets he must have now?”

  “Yeah, I bet it’s pretty crushing. His father never recovered from it. I remember being at the local theater one Saturday evening and his folks had stopped in to watch Jaws. There they were, standing at the snack bar, and someone made a remark about what a loser kid they had raised. His dad got into a fistfight right there
in the lobby.” He chuckled and shook his head. “It was a sight. I was just a kid then, and I had never seen adults get into a fight like that.”

  I could just imagine it. The shame Barron must have suffered for having been kicked off the team, and then the shame of his parents when people looked down on them. I didn’t think people were very understanding back then and I could see things getting bad for them.

  “What happened when he moved back to Sparrow? Did he come back immediately after he was expelled from college?”

  “No, I think it took him two or three years before he moved home. I was in high school by then, and I saw all the swim trophies in the display cases that line the main hallway there. I saw him at the drug store one night, and he looked awful. Skinny and haggard looking. His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed or combed in weeks.” He shook his head. “I just thought he was a pathetic loser. I told the coach I thought his trophies should be removed from the display cases because he was such a disgrace.”

  I thought that was a bit much to ask, but didn’t say so. “What did the coach say?”

  “He got in my pimply face and told me to shut up. He said the guy was a champion swimmer and no one could take that away from him. He won those trophies for the team fair and square and until I was prepared to win my own trophies, I better shut my trap.” He looked at me and grinned sadly. “I was fifteen and I’ll admit that back then I was clueless about what makes a winner. He was right. He won those trophies fair and square.”

  “How did Barron’s brother and his wife die?”

  “A big rig pulled out in front of them on the freeway and they slammed into the back of it. Happened about this time last year. There was ice on the road, and they couldn’t get their car stopped in time.”

  “How awful. I hope Barron and his family made amends a long time ago,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t know. Poor sap. If he could only have gotten his act together before he lost his physical ability, he might have turned it all around.” He turned back to his computer.

  It was a sad story, and I did have to wonder how his failure in college had affected him. He had lost his brother last year and now his nephew was gone. Things hadn’t turned out well for Barron Zumbro.

  Chapter Seven

  The following day I was working a shift at Sam’s Diner and wiping down the front counter in anticipation of the end of the day. With the cold weather, people tended to stay indoors whenever possible and things had been slow. We’d get off work early today.

  The bell above the front door jingled and Stormy walked in. “Hey, sis,” she said, sitting at the front counter. “What’s up?”

  I smiled. Stormy and I were identical twins. We were thirty-six, and while some identical twins grew to look less alike than one another as they aged, we still looked enough alike that people still sometimes got us confused. “Hey Stormy. Not much. Stopping in for a late lunch?”

  “Not really. I already ate, but I heard there was an accident out on the lake and I knew you’d have the scoop,” she said and grinned.

  I sighed and put my hands on my hips. “What is it with people? Just because I’m dating a detective, everyone thinks I know everything that goes on around here.”

  “That’s because you do. It’s okay if you can’t say. Can I get a cup of hot tea? It’s such a cold, gray day today,” she said.

  “You got it,” I said and went to get her a cup of hot water and a tea bag. I had brought in some spicy and fruity teas in case our customers wanted something besides Lipton. As a diner, we didn’t usually have anything fancy, so I decided to help out with that.

  I brought the cup of water and an orange spice tea bag to her. “Here you go.”

  She nodded. “When do you get off?” she asked.

  I glanced at the clock above the door. “Probably a half hour or so.”

  She nodded and dunked the tea bag into her cup. “So, are you allowed to talk about it?” she whispered.

  I leaned on the counter. “Cade and I went ice fishing and there was a body under the ice. It’s Rob Zumbro.” I whispered the last part.

  She thought about it. “I think he’s the brother of Zack Zumbro. He owns the feed store.”

  “I heard he does have a brother named Zack, but I didn’t know he owned the feed store. How do you know that?”

  “The kids have two bunnies in the backyard. I buy their rabbit pellets there.”

  That got me thinking. “Do you know him well?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think I’d say I know him well, but I know him well enough to say hello and ask how the kids are. He has two kids, one in Curtis’s class and one in Brent’s. His brother Kyle has three kids, two of which are in the same classes as Curtis and Brent.”

  “Are those bunnies in need of some pellets?” I asked her.

  “No, we still have half a bag, why—oh.” She smiled. “We’re going to go investigating, aren’t we?”

  I shrugged. “We’ll need to keep it to ourselves, but maybe we can get a little information from Zack.”

  ***

  We pulled up to the feed store, and I looked the place over. I had never been inside, and I didn’t know why. Maggie could eat like a horse, and I figured they had to sell dog food.

  There was a giant fiberglass horse out front and an old-fashioned wooden wagon. The outside of the store was done in rough-hewn wood siding and it gave me a cozy feeling just looking at it. The Wild West had come to Sparrow, and I didn’t even know it.

  We stepped into the feed store and felt the warmth of an old woodstove that crackled with a log on the fire. “Wow, that feels good,” I said. There was a calico cat curled up on a cushion in front of the wood stove and I smiled. How had I not ever been in here before?

  “I love coming I here,” Stormy said. “The wood stove and the feed smell so rustic.”

  I glanced around. We appeared to be the only customers in the store and I didn’t see any employees about. “Where is everyone?” I whispered.

  “They’re usually around here somewhere,” she said.

  I followed her as we walked down one of the aisles that had bunny supplies as well as bird and hamster cages and feed. She picked up a small round salt-lick. “Spot loves these.”

  “I had no idea they had bunny treats,” I said picking up a small package of dried carrot treats.

  “They have all kinds of stuff that the kids insist the bunnies need,” she said with a roll of her eyes. Stormy had five kids, and it never surprised me when she suddenly announced they had a new pet.

  We heard shuffling steps coming toward us, and in a moment, a tall man in a black cowboy hat appeared at the end of the aisle. “Hello ladies, is there something I can help you with?”

  “Hi, Zack,” Stormy said. “I’m afraid the bunnies need treats.” She held up the salt lick and the bag of treats I had picked up.

  He smiled. “Bunnies have needs just like the rest of us.” He looked at me. “I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, Stormy, but I’d say you have a twin sister.”

  She chuckled. “This is my sister, Rainey. Rainey, this is Zack Zumbro.”

  He stepped forward, reaching his hand out to me. “Pleased to meet you, Rainey. Your parents must be creative folks. Stormy and Rainey.”

  “Oh, you have no idea. I think it was our mother’s fault that our names are weather related,” I explained.

  He nodded. “I like it.”

  “How are you, Zack?” Stormy asked.

  He grew somber. “Not great. I just found out my brother drowned in the lake.”

  “Oh, no,” Stormy said. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I added.

  There was a tremble of his lips before he pressed them together to make them stop. Then he sighed. “It’s kind of hard to process right now. I sure didn’t see it coming, but maybe I should have.”

  “What do you mean?” Stormy asked.

  He shrugged and looked away. “He’s been missing for
four months. I guess we all kept telling ourselves he was out enjoying himself and living it up. Only now we find out he’s been in that lake. Iced over.”

  “Did the police say he’s been in the lake all this time?” I asked. Cade hadn’t told me whether they’d figured out how long he had been in the lake.

  “I guess we don’t know that for sure, but I think so. He never contacted either me or my other brother after he left, and that’s unlike him.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know why I didn’t file a missing person report instead of listening to that wife of his.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Stormy repeated. “Where did you think he was all this time?”