Cletus ignored Flo and continued, “I watched it run along the baseboard with them in its mouth and then poof! Just like that, it was gone.”
“Poof! It was gone,” Flo echoed like a backup singer in a doo-wop band, making the claim sound all the more far-fetched.
“You saw this mouse in the dark, Mr. Harper?” the cop asked.
Cletus shrugged. “It’s white. I told you people that the last time. Besides, it wasn’t all that dark. We’ve got a nightlight.”
“Maybe it’s one of them ghost mouses I read about in The Enquirer,” Flo heckled. “That would explain how it flies. It’s probably just floatin’ from room to room on vapors. Does it squeak or moan all dead-like, Cletus honey?”
“It don’t fly.” Cletus shot her a look. “It runs like the wind. One minute it’s here.” His hand zigzagged through the air. “And the next it’s there.”
“According to Cletus, it got into his memory box and stole his granddaddy’s genuine diamond chip cufflinks,” Flo said with a half-hearted sigh. “The little fella was probably fixin’ to put on a teeny-weeny tuxedo and take in an opera with the Queen of England.”
“For the love of Pete, Flo, for once in your miserable life get a story straight! It stole just one of them cufflinks. I flushed the other down the crapper before he could get at it.”
“Mr. Harper, Mrs. Harper,” the cop said, not looking at either, “you can’t keep calling us out here every time something goes missing or one of you gets on the other’s nerves.”
“It ain’t enough that he ruined Thanksgivin’, he’s not gonna be happy ‘til he shoots that make-believe mouse!” Flo punctuated the statement with a poke to the cop’s chest.
“Oh, I’m aching to shoot me something, all right,” Cletus snarled, “and it ain’t just that mouse.”
“You heard him.” Flo pointed her cigarette at Cletus. “That was a direct threat on my life.”
“That ain’t no threat, darling, it’s a promise.”
“Mr. Harper… “ the cop warned.
“Can’t you see he’s out of his ever-lovin’ mind? He needs lockin’ away.”
“Why? So you can get ahold of my money?”
“Since when have you got money?”
“What’s mine ain’t none of your concern,” Cletus mumbled.
“Ain’t none of my concern?” Flo sneered. “We’ll just see about that.”
“Gold-digging harpy!” Cletus shot back.
“Heathen!”
“Is this about your Social Security checks again, Mr. Harper?” the cop asked.
“Social Security checks?” Flo snickered. “Is that what you’re tellin’ folks? That I’m pinchin’ your Social Security money?” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and blew it out in a smoke ring. “Well, the jig’s up now, buster.”
“You keep your yap shut,” Cletus warned.
“He’s got himself millions stashed away behind these walls, under the floorboards, and up in the ceilin’,” she told the cop. “Cletus here’s an international playboy and I’m Jackie Frigging Onassis. And this dump”—she sliced her hand through the air like a gone-to-pot Price Is Right model—”this is our winter retreat. We summer down at the Third Street Shelter.”
“You hear the gibberish she’s spouting?” Cletus asked the cop. “She’s the one that’s crazier than cotton.”
“I’m crazy? He keeps a sock full of spoiled mayonnaise under the seat of his truck as a theft deterrent!”
“It ain’t never been stolen, has it!”
“He only clips his toenails durin’ the full moon and drinks pickle juice martinis—says James Bond fixed him one once with a slice of kiwi and a tiny paper umbrella. You listen long enough to him and he’ll have you believin’ he’s climbed Mt. Everest, boxed kangaroos down in Australia, and doggie paddled his way clear across the English Channel. He’s a loon!”
“And she’s a boldfaced liar!” Cletus snapped. “Did she tell you the one about me being that second shooter when Kennedy got killed? Or that I played Parcheesi up on the moon with Neil Armstrong? How every Tuesday night I sprout wings and fly off to China for moo goo gai pan with Mata Hari and Elmer Fudd? That I’ve got a Nazi submarine run aground in the basement and a time machine in the can? Go ahead, Flo, tell him.”
“Oh, I’ll tell him, all right. I’ll tell him about that money you’ve been goin’ about for months every time you’re three sheets to the wind,” Flo sneered. “After seventy-eight years of tellin’ one whopper after the other, Cletus Harper has run out of lies. Now he’s takin’ credit for his cousin Bobby’s bank job back in ‘56. Bobby robbed the Portsmouth Savings and Loan on shipment day. Apparently stupidity runs rampant in the Harper family genes. Bobby decided to make his getaway over the Memorial Bridge into Kittery. Only problem was, it was July third and the bridge was bumper-to-bumper with holiday travelers. That moron Bobby weaved his jalopy in and out of traffic with the cops on his ass and took a shortcut into the Piscataqua River. Three days later, Bobby’s bloated body bobbed up in the harbor. The money was carried out into open water and only God knows where from there. All of a sudden, this one’s claimin’ he was Bobby’s wheelman, that he swam against the current and he’s been sittin’ on all that money waitin’ for statute of limitation to run out.”
“Bobby’s wheelman!” Cletus barked. “You’re the one that need putting in a nut hatch. I can’t even swim!”
“I knew it!” Flo ground her cigarette out in the broccoli and cheddar casserole. “You never swum that English Channel!”
“You’re the one telling folks I did! I’ve never even been to England. Outside that damnable day I drove up to Maine and had the misfortune of meeting up with you, I’ve never been outside of New Hampshire!”
“I suggest the both of you take a time-out,” the cop advised. “Mrs. Harper, you put on a pot of coffee and Mr. Harper, you put away that shotgun before someone gets hurt. The next time we get a call to come out here, either from one of you or one of your neighbors, the both of you are getting locked up. That understood? No more mouse heists, Mr. Harper. No more tall tales, Mrs. Harper. I mean it now. Enough’s enough. If your neighbors want to take in a show, they can head into town for a double feature at the Cineplex.”
* * *
Flo Harper sat at the kitchen table watching coffee drip into the pot on the counter, cursing both Cletus and the cop, when she caught something moving out of the corner of her eye. Her jaw went slack as a white mouse with a hundred-dollar bill in its mouth scurried across the cracked linoleum floor, up a chair leg, and onto the table. It blinked its pink eyes, twitched its whiskers, and raised a paw as if to wave.
“What did you bring Momma?” Flo gushed, patting the mouse on the head and taking the bill from its mouth. “That’s my sweet thing.” She tucked the bill into her bra, extended her hand, and giggled as the mouse scampered up her arm and took a seat on her shoulder.
“You’d best be stayin’ away from Cletus,” she whispered, giving the mouse an oyster cracker. “He’s got himself wound up like a cheap alarm clock.” She reached into the pocket of her housecoat for another cracker when a shotgun blasted somewhere up on the second floor.
“It’s got my nail clippers!” Cletus hollered down the stairs. “Flo!”
Flo tsked as a second white mouse scampered up on the table, deposited its find for her, and begged for a cracker.
“What did Momma tell you?” she asked the mouse. “There’s no snacks for naughty little mice. You know what Momma wants.” She reached into her bra and waved the bill. “The way I figure it, Cletus has close to two hundred grand from that bank heist squirreled away in the walls of this shack and even if it takes one bill at a time it’s gonna be mine. Yes siree, come next Thanksgivin’ I’m going to be sendin’ Celine a postcard from one of those Hawaiian Islands, dancin’ me the hula and havin’ myself a grand ol’ time mournin’ the tragic death of my husband. Next time I tinker with the brakes on Cletus’ old pickup, he won’t be so lucky as to have someone
find him.”
“Flo!”
Fowl Play
By Mary Mackey
You don’t expect mass murder in Nowhere, Alaska. That’s one of the reasons I moved up here from Oakland, California, where homicide is so common there’s a Facebook page for the victims. But mass murder it was, and not just mass murder committed by some guy who had come down with a bad case of cabin fever and shot his wife, kids, and the family dog. Three-quarters of the population of Nowhere had been systematically eliminated by someone who had caught his victims by surprise just as they were sitting down to their Thanksgiving dinners.
If three-quarters of the population of Oakland had their throats slit while they were heaping sweet potatoes topped with miniature marshmallows on their plates, you’d hear about it on CNN thirty seconds later. But Nowhere only has thirty-two residents tough enough to stay put in the fall when the big game hunters and snow geese fly back to the Lower Forty-Eight.
I say “fly” because the only way you can get in or out of this town is by plane. That had always suited me just fine since after I was fired from the Oakland Police Department for sexual harassment, I decided to become a hermit.
At the moment, however, I was doing some serious rethinking about that decision. One of the survivors of the Nowhere Thanksgiving Day Massacre had to be a homicidal maniac, and since no one in his or her right mind would voluntarily spend winter in a place where you have to wear a fleece facemask when you take out the garbage, that meant almost everyone in town but me was a suspect.
I first heard about the murders from my neighbor Moonfire Edithsdaughter. Moon is a self-styled witch who smokes herself into oblivion every night on homegrown weed when she isn’t out chanting at the aurora borealis. She is also a woman of substantial girth, which is a major advantage in cold weather, so despite the fact that the snow was thirteen feet deep and more was coming down so hard you’d smother in it if you opened your mouth, she showed up at my door like Paul Revere.
“They’re all dead,” she said as she stamped the ice off her boots. “Dead as the turkeys on their dining room tables.” Then she threw up her arms and began a witchlike shrieking that sounded like cats being trampled by cattle.
While Moon was doing her official lament, I wandered over to the kitchen cabinet, pulled out a bottle of whiskey, and poured myself a stiff drink. I’d read somewhere that the Vikings sent their souls to a better place by staying drunk all winter, and I figured since there was no way in hell to get out of range of Moon’s wailing, whiskey was my best alternative.
Moon’s so short she’s practically a Munchkin even when she waves her arms over her head like a windmill, but I’m six feet two inches tall with broad shoulders and a don’t-mess-with-me attitude. That’s what got me hired as the first openly gay woman on the Oakland police force. I believe my sexual orientation is also what got me fired, but I can’t prove it. I innocently sent a text message to another female officer telling her to get some sleep or I’d come over and “tuck her in bed.” The autocorrect on my smartphone changed the “t” in “tuck” to an “f.” If I’d been straight, we’d have all had a good laugh about it. Instead I was stripped of my pension, and fired.
As I slugged down the last of the whiskey, I noticed Moon had stopped screeching.
“You want to have a look at the bodies?” she asked. When she’s not doing her witch number Moon can be surprisingly calm and practical. I’ve always appreciated that aspect of her even though she’s definitely not my type. She’s straight, plus I go for big-breasted blondes who wear four-inch open-toed heels with ankle straps. Not that I’d seen a woman wearing anything but mukluks for the better part of three years.
“You mush over here?” I asked. Moon nodded. Everyone else in Nowhere used snowmobiles to get around, but she kept a team of sled dogs that she treated like her own children. Those dogs ate with her, slept with her, and for all I know did a lot more with her when the lights were low, but you couldn’t beat them for transportation in the middle of a blizzard.
“Okay,” I said. “Let me grab my gun and cuffs and put on my gear, and we’ll inspect the crime scene.”
“Crime scenes,” Moon corrected. “There’s seven of them.”
“Holy jumping Jesus Christ, seven!” That was the first time I realized this was no ordinary mid-winter murder. “How many dead?”
“Twenty-four,” Moon said, “plus the Vandenbergs’ cat Attila, which is lying paws up in their living room stiff as a board. Not that anyone is going to mind. That cat was the meanest bastard in town, and that’s saying something. Scratched kids, ate baby birds, attacked people without warning. I’d have gladly killed Attila myself if he wasn’t already dead.”
I didn’t like the gleam in Moon’s eyes when she spoke about doing in Attila. Witches are supposed to like cats, but maybe there are limits.
By the time I put on all the stuff it takes to go outside in late November, I looked more like a grizzly bear than a woman, but I was grateful for every layer. It was so cold that when I took a breath the snot inside my nose froze, and the snow was coming down so hard that if it hadn’t been for the dogs, Moon and I might have ended up getting lost.
We came to the Murrays’ house first. It was warm inside and the lights were on. An old-fashioned tape deck was churning out an endless version of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant,” and all seven of the Murrays were sitting around their dinner table, every one of them from old man Utica Murray to moose-killing Dwayne dead as a doornail.
“Stand back!” I ordered Moon. “Don’t corrupt the evidence.” I took off my fur-lined gloves and drew on the rubber ones I used when I washed dishes. Then I began to look around for clues. I had no idea what I was doing because, despite being an ex-cop, I’d never investigated a murder; but since Frank Murray, who was sitting at the head of the table in full rigor mortis, had been the Sheriff of Nowhere, it was obvious that the job of solving this crime had fallen to me.
Okay, what did I see? A half-eaten turkey, an empty gravy boat, a green bean and pearl onion casserole, a bowl of mashed potatoes, a bowl of stuffing, cranberry sauce from a can, and that traditional Thanksgiving abomination I mentioned earlier: candied sweet potatoes with miniature marshmallows. Out of the corner of my eye I also spotted two pumpkin pies resting on the sideboard next to some Reddi-wip. All perfectly normal except that seven dead people were sitting around this feast with their throats slit like a herd of field-dressed deer.
I walked closer and inspected the victims’ wounds. The cuts were very straight and almost obsessively neat. There was no blood to speak of. Something tickled at the back of my mind about dead people who didn’t bleed, but I couldn’t remember the details.
“It looks like whoever cut their throats took his time about it,” I told Moon. “But why did they all just sit there and watch each other die? Why didn’t they fight back or run away?”
“Maybe the killer hypnotized them before he killed them.” Moon drew a small crystal necklace out of her pocket and dangled it in front of my eyes. “Like this.”
“If you’re about to tell me that I’m feeling sleepy, forget it. I’m too stubborn to be hypnotized, and Utica and Frank Murray were the most pig-headed men north of Anchorage. This is way out of my league.”
“But you’re a cop.”
“Was a cop. I saw a lot of dead bodies in Oakland, but all I did was string yellow Police-Line-Do-Not-Cross tape around them and wait for the experts. We need to contact Barrow and tell them to fly a forensic team in here ASAP to take DNA samples and do all the things real crime scene investigators do.”
“Good luck with that. Nothing can fly in this weather and the murderer, whoever he was, cut the guy wires to the communication tower, so we got no satellite contact, no radio contact, nothing, zip.”
Moon delivered this disturbing news very calmly without a hint of witchiness, which meant that either she was so stunned by the murders, she’d reverted to Mary Anne Finkelbaum—her real name—or she was the o
ne who’d cut the guy wires. I made a mental note to remember not to turn my back on her, particularly since she had won the annual Nowhere Trout Gutting Contest two years running.
Leaving the Murrays to stare blindly at the remains of their Thanksgiving dinner—not to mention at the remains of each other—Moon and I mushed on to the other crime scenes, which except for tablecloths and china patterns were all pretty much the same.
We found three people dead with their throats slit at the Vandenbergs’, who were planning to have pecan pie instead of pumpkin; ditto four at the Patuks’, who had been eating fresh cranberry relish instead of jelly out of a can; two at the Jensens’, who favored red cabbage and apples over green beans; four at the Bonnevilles’, who had exactly the same meal on their table as the Murrays except they’d used large marshmallows instead of miniatures; three more at the Da Silvas’, who preferred baked potatoes to mashed; and last of all poor old Hiram Hark, who would have been the town drunk if there hadn’t been so much competition for the title.
Seeing Hiram sitting there with his throat slit made me feel particularly blue. He was a harmless old guy who often brightened up my mornings by yelling “Lookin’ good, Yvette!” when I snowshoed by his place on my way to Patuk’s Hardware, Tack, and Groceries. For Thanksgiving, he’d cooked himself an entire turkey even though he had no prospect of ever finding a female to share it with. There are five men to every woman in Nowhere, and that includes me whose taste doesn’t run to men and Moon who believes celibacy gives her the power to channel Isis.
I decided it was time to sit Moon down for a talk. If I had still been a cop, I would have had to read her her Miranda rights, but as it was, we were just a couple of neighbors having a friendly conversation during which Moon might or might not reveal that she was a homicidal maniac who enjoyed cutting up people as much as she enjoyed gutting trout.
“So how did you first discover that all these folks had been murdered?” I asked.
“Easy.” Moon gave a toss of her head that set her brass Isis earrings slapping against her neck like beaver tails. “I was out giving the dogs a run around two a.m. before the blizzard hit. Those were the only seven houses with their lights still on. No one stays up until two in the morning on Thanksgiving. Turkey is packed with tryptophans that knock you out faster than Ambien. Well, well, I thought, what have we here? Are the Murrays throwing a party I haven’t been invited to? I knocked on their door, and when they didn’t answer, I let myself in. When I saw the whole pack of them sitting there bleeding into Mabel Murray’s apple-nut-and-sausage dressing, I mushed over to the other houses that were lit up. Then I came to your place to tell you the bad news.”
The Killer Wore Cranberry Page 15
