Becklaw's Murder Mystery Tour (Jo Anderson Series)

by Dane McCaslin

  The ride back to our house was punctuated with laughter and joking comments directed at the way that Derek twirled his towel and Leslie teetered around the stage on high heels. LJ’s face blushed when I mentioned his choice of entrance song, “Happy Birthday to You”. I laughed outright when Derek reminded me of my Louisiana accent that had crept unawares back into my speech.

  ‘You sounded like “Daisy Mae Meets the Wild West”,’ he hooted, and I had to agree. I would have to work harder on my Western dialogue.

  Miss Bea drove silently, a quiet smile tucked into the corners of her mouth. She was tired, but we all were. I mentally predicted a quick bedtime and a long snooze for one and all.

  I was wrong.

  It was sometime after one in the morning that I was awakened by a dull thump and the sound of something rolling across the floor below. I lay completely still, listening as hard as I could. Had the field mice joined forces and invaded? I sincerely hoped not. One mouse was one too many as far as I was concerned.

  No one else seemed to have heard it. I could detect no sounds of footsteps or doors opening, so I cautiously leaned across to the lamp that sat on my bedside and pulled the little chain that hung down from its bulb. The click of the light coming on seemed extra loud, so I waited, frozen, straining to hear noises from downstairs.

  A discomforting thought flashed into my mind: why hadn’t Miss Bea heard it? Or was it she that I was hearing? Or – I crossed my fingers – only someone up and getting a drink of water from the kitchen?

  Or, heaven forbid, it was an intruder.

  I made up my mind. Swinging my legs off the bed and fishing under my pillow for my slippers, I opened my bedroom door as softly as possible. Pausing on the landing, I began to tiptoe down the stairs, sending up a silent prayer that I would miss the squeaky step that was second from the bottom. Or was it the third?

  It was the third.

  The wooden shriek that it emitted when I put my full weight on it was loud enough to wake the dead. I could hear doors popping open all over the house, and the sound of the screen door on the front porch slamming closed as someone in their haste to leave banged hard into it.

  Miss Bea stumbled out of her room, her head full of those pink cushiony rollers that my mother used to put into my hair to coax it into curls. Her eyes were bleary, and I could see right away that she had no idea what had happened.

  Derek came thumping down the stairs, a little unsteady in his slippered feet. His face was full of concern, and he looked ready to do battle with whatever forces of evil might be lurking about.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, hands on his slight hips and a frown creasing his brow.

  Miss Bea turned to me, as did the rest of the troupe who now stood huddled together.

  ‘I have no earthly idea,’ I admitted. ‘Something woke me up, I came to see what it was, and then someone ran out of the front door.’ I looked from one face to the other.

  Derek spun on his heels, no mean feat in slippers, and marched to the front door. Without touching it, he used one foot to pull the slightly ajar door more fully open, then leaned out and scanned the verandah.

  ‘No one’s out there that I can see,’ he reported, then pulled his head back in the door. ‘Miss Jo, did you actually see anyone down here?’

  That flush I mentioned before, the one that gets blotchy sometimes? It appeared almost instantly, and I could tell by the alarmed look in Derek’s eyes that I looked a bit, well, unbalanced.

  ‘Hold on there, girl,’ he admonished, hands raised before him in a placating gesture. ‘I don’t mean that you imagined it, but …’ His words trailed off, not really apologizing but not admitting he was wrong, either.

  Nice. Between mouse issues and phantom noises in the night, I was rapidly becoming the troupe weirdo.

  Chapter Four

  Somehow we all got back to our assorted rooms without a brawl breaking out. No one was thrilled about being awakened in the middle of the night for what might be a figment of my wild imagination. Leslie muttered and threw dark looks at me as we climbed the stairs, and even LJ showed his disapproval by stomping a bit more loudly than usual. Derek, as per usual, reserved comment.

  Apparently no one remembered the open front door.

  Breakfast was subdued, not much in the way of conversation but with a lot of eye rubbing and yawning. It was safe to surmise that this was the worst night since our arrival in Copper. Even Miss Bea, normally chipper and ready to rock no matter the time of day, seemed a bit under the weather. Her hair, normally just frizzy, was both curly and frizzy this morning. Her head looked like a Brillo pad had landed there and exploded, corkscrew curls fighting for autonomy amidst the requisite pins.

  I decided that someone needed to say something, and since I was Miss Jo, leader of the band, I voted on myself. It went a little like this:

  ‘So, has anyone bothered to check outside for the paper this morning? Or look for footprints of whoever was in our house in the middle of the night?’

  The response sounded like this:

  … Well, actually there was no sound to accompany the three glares from my fellow actors or the look of pity from Miss Bea. So, having been brought up in a house where you never say “never”, I tried again. This time I roused the troops and got an earful.

  Leslie went first, apparently since she was the one who shared the bathroom with me and therefore felt entitled to first dibs in telling me off.

  ‘Jo, I have no idea what you heard, or thought that you heard, only …’ – here a glance at the clock on the sideboard – ‘… five and one-half hours ago, but I can tell you that I heard nothing, saw nothing, and regret not having a full night’s sleep.’ Her glowering face told me that I might come to regret this as well.

  Next in line was Derek, his normally calm features rearranged into a look akin to disdain.

  ‘I’m positive the door was open when we went to sleep last night, Jo. I can’t imagine anyone actually coming here and breaking in. And even if it wasn’t already open, no one ever comes around here anyway.’

  He looked so smug that I felt compelled to point out that the paper person managed to come around every morning. This earned me a derisive snort from Leslie.

  LJ, bless his reticent heart, took a ‘pass’ in the game of “Kick Jo When She’s Down”. I gave him the benefit of my sunniest smile, which sent a ripple of color across his face. This earned me another glare from Leslie.

  Finally, it was Miss Bea’s turn.

  To my surprise, and also to my delight, Miss Bea took my side. If I hadn’t already begun to admire the woman, this would have been the start.

  ‘I happen to find your tale quite believable, my dear.’ I smiled in triumph at the others, relishing their looks of incredulity.

  She continued in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I think that you might have encountered a local scourge known as raccoons.’ This sounded so ridiculous that I burst out laughing, causing Leslie to give me the ‘stare of death’ with eyes narrowed to virtual slits in her face.

  That girl needed to be careful; her face could freeze like that one day and then where would her acting career be?

  The idea that forest creatures could actually manipulate doors and find their way into a house without the aid of a human repelled me. Never one to glory in animated movies featuring sweet fawns bounding playfully through trees or birds chirping merrily as they did housework, I felt a smidgeon of fear tiptoe from the recess of my mind and go tripping down my spine. Visions of mice and raccoons in cahoots, planning feverishly to run me out of town, gave me a sudden headache.

  This called for serious strategizing. This was war.

  Despite Miss Bea’s many assurances that raccoons could not purposely hunt me down and hurt me, especially if I locked my bedroom door, I could not shake the image of a stealthily creeping animal, moving up the stairs and straight to my bedroom door in the dead of night. Leslie must have had similar thoughts. I saw her shiver and move closer to LJ, who, in turn,
edged his huge body nearer to her. As upset as I was, I had to grin at the sight. Just who was comforting whom?

  The troupe was feeling a bit awkward with me since Miss Bea had exonerated me of my sin. I, on the other hand, was feeling quite magnanimous, and proved it by offering to do the dishes alone.

  I had hardly begun to run the water when Leslie joined me, standing off to the side as if we had never met before. I tossed her a towel, keeping up a stream of chatter about this and that. We were soon joined by LJ, then Derek, each of the boys looking a little sheepish.

  I let them all suffer for a few minutes more, then turned and gave them all a brilliant smile. ‘I hope,’ I said, ‘that this ends the issue.’

  Talking over one another, they each assured me that yes, indeed, this proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was both sane and sage, and did I have any plan in mind to prevent this from happening again?

  Miss Jo was back in the saddle again.

  I rallied the troops once again (pardon the mixing of analogies) and laid out the plans for the day. Tomorrow morning we would be picking up camp and moving to Manchester, a mountain town not too far from Copper, north-east up Highway 25 and the site for the county fair. We were booked to perform nightly at the barbecue tent, and Miss Bea wanted to meet up with the local talent a little earlier than we had for the Moose Lodge performance.

  Leslie was put in charge of gathering and packing the costumes and accessories we would use. To Derek, I assigned the task of checking on our accommodation, which would be in a KOA – Kampgrounds of America – campground just outside of Manchester. I told him to make sure – doubly sure –that there would be electrical outlets. I needed my blow dryer. LJ was set to washing the faithful station wagon, shining up the tires, and vacuuming out the interior, which I felt had not been done for at least ten years. Or more.

  Miss Bea kept herself occupied bustling around the house, checking that the paper delivery would be stopped for the six days we would be gone, and that someone would be coming out to fix the rather large tear in the verandah’s screen door. I had to smile whenever I saw the hole left behind by the fleeing raccoon. I felt vindicated and a lot less worried about turning into a version of Crazy Great-Aunt Opal.

  Just a bit of background on my family: we tend to assign names to one another, such as Crazy Great-Aunt Opal or Sleepy Uncle Pete. While there are times these names are a good indication of the type of person they are, more often than not it’s a misnomer. For instance, Sleepy Uncle Pete wasn’t.

  That wasn’t the case of Crazy Great-Aunt Opal, though. She really was a one hundred per cent, bona fide nutter. Some said it was because of a broken heart, others pointed to the time that she fell out of the persimmon tree and did a number on the back of her head. I personally think it’s genetic, since her mother was also a bit gaga, shall we say. Which is why I was worried about myself and the “Raccoon Incident”. Having Miss Bea explain what had happened gave me hope that my marbles were still together.

  But I digress. As I was saying before I felt the need to explain my family’s foibles, I kicked it into high gear and got the four of us moving. While LJ tended to get more water on himself than the car, he still did a passable job. At least the road salt from the winter had been removed, and the scuff marks on the tires, from where Miss Bea would often scrape the sidewalk, were gone, replaced by a high glossy shine thanks to some elbow grease and tire cleaner.

  When we regrouped for a quick lunch of grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches and a heaped platter of Miss Bea’s garlic home fries, Derek was able to report that our reservations for two large trailers had been confirmed, and that yes, indeed, there were both hot showers and electrical outlets in the campground’s facilities.

  And indoor toilets.

  Leslie brought up the fact that we needed more sizes available for the dancer and ‘lady of the night’ costumes because, as she delicately phrased it, some would be able to ‘hold up the front’ and some wouldn’t. Derek understood and smiled, but I could tell from the look on LJ’s face that this was a concept that he didn’t quite get. He was really very sweet, I had discovered, and probably needed Leslie more than she needed him. Oh, well. To each his own, I sighed inwardly.

  I had spent the morning going over our roles and the plot of the performance. We had discovered several gaps in logic at the Moose Lodge dinner which, thankfully, the audience either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared about. I was determined, though, to put together a top-of-the-line murder mystery that would challenge our viewers for more than ten minutes.

  By the late afternoon we had done all we could do to get ready for our first real tour. The costumes had been sorted and packed, and the boys loaded the various boxes and bags into the back of the station wagon to save time in the morning. We had each packed a suitcase of personal items, as well as a few ‘modern clothes’ for whenever we might have a few hours to ourselves. I didn’t know about the rest of the bunch but I thoroughly intended to avail myself of the fun – and food – the county fair might have to offer.

  Derek took his turn cooking that night. I suppose I expected the typical bachelor fare: pizza, hot dogs topped with canned chili beans, and the like. Much to my surprise, he served up a meal that was on par with some of the best restaurants around.

  Dinner began with bowls of creamy tomato bisque, topped with a dollop of sour cream and home-made croutons. Luscious! Baskets of rolls that oozed cheddar cheese sat on the table, and I could have happily made a meal of that and the soup. The main course, though, almost blew my gastronomical expectations clear out of the water.

  From the covered baking dish that Derek carried from the kitchen emanated the most tantalizing odors, and I discovered that I still had quite the appetite. Carefully placing the dish on the pizza stone that served as a table protector, Derek lifted the lid, stepping back a bit to let us savor the rosemary-scented steam.

  ‘It’s my version of raspberry-glazed chicken breasts,’ he announced. I could see that he was struggling to keep the pride off of his face. Heck, if I could cook like that, I wouldn’t care if I looked a bit full of myself!

  ‘Derek, that looks absolutely divine. May I ask what’s in it?’ Miss Bea held out her plate for the first portion, and we all waited to hear what he had to say.

  ‘Well, it’s simply chicken breasts, boneless and skinless, of course, rubbed with rosemary, oregano, and sage then baked with a honey, mustard, and raspberry glaze. Not too difficult. Do you like it, Miss Bea?’ We watched her take the first bite, then close her eyes in rapture.

  ‘Mmmm,’ was all we could hear, and Derek finally allowed himself a big grin. We feasted that night. Unbelievably, there was still a side dish of rice pilaf, delicately flavored with something citrus – lemon zest, I think – and a dessert that almost brought me to tears. A large pizza pan filled with chocolate chip cookie dough, baked just until the edges were set and the middle still gooey, was placed on the table. Derek had topped this with many scoops of vanilla ice cream, then drizzled the entire concoction with fudge sauce and slivered almonds. We all ate out of that one pan, doing battle for chunks of cookie dough with our spoons.

  It was a light-hearted conclusion to a very busy day.

  Chapter Five

  The morning came extremely early, or at least it seemed that way to me. I had stayed up later than usual, writing a long-overdue letter home to my mother and a few notes to various brothers and cousins. To Neva, I sent a postcard with an old cowboy on the front with a balloon thing coming out of his mouth that said, ‘You ain’t seen nuttin’ yet!’ It made absolutely no sense to me, and I knew that was precisely the type of card that would tickle Neva pink. She did have a very wacky sense of humor at times.

  Since we had packed the station wagon the night before, there was nothing to do but shower, eat a hasty breakfast, and hit the road. Miss Bea climbed into her customary position as driver, and Derek, who seemed to have an innate compass in his head, took over as Chief Navigator and Map Reader. I sat b
ehind Miss Bea, with LJ crammed in between me and Leslie. For some reason, LJ didn’t like sitting near a car door, and since Leslie didn’t care for the middle, they were a perfectly matched set.

  It really did take all kinds to make the world go ’round.

  We left our woodsy neighborhood and began the trek to Manchester, Colorado, whose population was 9,035 and growing. A quick check of the Weather Channel had shown today’s temperature would be 38 degrees with an overcast sky, which still seemed a bit odd to me. I guess I still measured most places against Piney Woods, Louisiana. Here, I had on a pair of jeans, an LSU sweatshirt over a long-sleeved T, and a heavy jacket. Back home, I’d have tossed on a pair of shorts and a tank top.

  We headed up Highway 25 at a north-eastern angle, according to the map. The aspens that populated the Copper area gave way to spruces and firs, open meadows of golden rod and asters, and a variety of local wildlife. With wild animal experiences not at the top of my list, I wasn’t too keen on looking, but the others ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ over brief glimpses of deer and squirrels, coyotes, and even a fox or two. I kept my eyes averted, not wanting to add these creatures to my mice and raccoon nightmares.

  Around ten o’clock, we pulled into a small town with the name of Big Bertha. For a few minutes I assumed it was some type of a local joke, but the owner of the gas station where we filled up assured me that, yes, this really was Big Bertha, Colorado, and it was named for the wife of the mine owner who settled the parts in the mid-1800s.

  I knew right then that I needed to replenish my growing collection of postcards to send to Neva, so I purchased a handful. I chuckled to myself as I flipped through them. Neva was going to think that I had gone right over the edge and landed in a Western version of ‘Lala Land’.

  After a round of bathroom breaks and stocking up on our traveling snacks and drinks, we took off once more. The gas station owner had guaranteed that we would be close to Manchester before three that afternoon. That was fine by me; the skies were looking lower and darker, and I didn’t relish the idea of precipitation of any kind at that elevation.