Murder Passes the Buck

by Deb Baker

TEN

  Word For The Day

  KERFUFFLE (kuhr FUF uhl) n.

  Disorder; uproar; confusion

  “WHAT’S HE DOING HERE?” Cora Mae whispered to me when Little Donny and I picked her up for the pasty dinner. She wore a short black skirt under her unbuttoned coat, a tight-knit sweater that made her look like a thirty-eight double D, and black fishnet stockings.

  “Couldn’t get rid of him,” I whispered back. “He’s sticking like toilet paper on a shoe. I was cleaning up inside my house and he appeared. He won’t go away.”

  I managed to stay one step ahead of him, though. I had the driver’s seat of my truck and I wasn’t giving it up.

  Little Donny had on his fancy loafer shoes with the little tassels, beige dress pants, a blue shirt, and a long wool overcoat. I wore black cords and a black sweater with fall leaves swirled on the front that matched the color of my hair. I had styled it loose and curly. My feet were cold, as usual, so I decided to wear my boots. I didn’t plan on dancing anyway.

  “You’re turning the wrong way,” Little Donny informed me.

  “We have a stop to make first,” I said.

  The house was dark but the yard light illuminated the front and side of the house. Remembering our last fiasco, I made one pass on the road, looking for a good place to hide the truck. There wasn’t one. Banks of snow on both sides of the road made it impossible to pull off. I turned into Bill and Barb’s recently plowed driveway and stopped to mull the situation over. If I left the truck in the driveway under the yard light, anyone driving by would see my truck.

  I backed up for a running start, gunned the engine, and headed for the snow in the shadow on the far side of the drive. Little Donny clutched the dashboard and I heard him suck in his breath. Cora Mae, sitting between us, gripped my arm.

  The truck settled into a snow bank next to the driveway. I turned off the ignition. Little Donny rubbed his head where it had hit the dash.

  I hopped down, waded through the snow, and lifted a toolbox out of the back. “Let’s go, Cora Mae. Not you,” I added when Little Donny opened his door. “You stay here and guard the truck.” Breaking and entering was okay for us, but I didn’t want my grandson involved. Wasn’t that a perfect example of competent thinking? The very thing Blaze accused me of lacking.

  “Blaze is going to kill us,” he called after me. “We’re stuck good, you know.” His voice trailed off.

  We went around to the back of the house. Cora Mae began complaining that her black boots were going to be ruined, but I steered her onto the same path Kitty and I had made going through the night before, and she quieted down.

  “What did you bring the toolbox for?” she said, her voice coy and cooing.

  “How else are we getting in?”

  “Maybe we should try these first.” Cora Mae held up a ring of keys and dangled them.

  “Hot dog,” I said. “Where did you get those?”

  “I snitched them from Kitty. She took them from a hook by the door when you two were running your brilliant surveillance scheme.” Cora Mae giggled. “When you ditched us today, she showed them to me and I lifted them.”

  “Way to go.”

  “I feel terrible about leaving her behind. You should be kinder to her, Gertie.”

  “All I needed was a little time away. She’s pretty intense. I didn’t know she was going to take the bodyguard job so seriously.” I did feel a few pangs of guilt. “She’s beginning to grow on me,” I said. That comment surprised both of us, earning a quick double take from Cora Mae, but it was true. I missed her.

  We let ourselves in, and Cora Mae put the keys on a hook by the door. I pulled two flashlights from my jacket and handed one to Cora Mae. “You search the closets, I’ll do the drawers. And be careful. Put everything back right where it belongs. We don’t want them to know we were here.”

  Within minutes I found a handgun in Barb’s panties drawer. I wrapped a pair of undies around it to avoid fingerprints and held it up for Cora Mae to see, wondering out loud, “If Bill hates guns like I hear he does, do you think he knows about this?”

  Fascinated with Barb’s clothes, Cora Mae didn’t answer. She held up a sheath dress. “I’d look good in this,” she said.

  “This isn’t Kitty’s rummage sale,” I said, stuffing the gun into the drawer. “Put it back.”

  Cora Mae reluctantly hung the dress in the closet and followed me into a small bedroom used as an office. I scoped out the desk while Cora Mae worked through a three-drawer file cabinet.

  Nothing.

  “I’m looking through Bill’s desk again,” I said, rooting through his papers. I pulled out and examined each folder, then did the same with the file cabinet. There wasn’t anything bearing Chester’s name in the whole bunch, nothing about the land.

  “My chief two suspects at the moment are Barb and Bill, with Onni running a distant third,” I said, perplexed. “There has to be something here.”

  “Maybe Onni killed Chester because of the land,” Cora Mae whispered. “Maybe I dated a killer.”

  “Killing Chester wouldn’t get Onni’s land back. With Chester gone, the land belongs to Bill. Onni doesn’t have a motive.”

  “Whew. That’s a relief. For a minute there I was worried.”

  “But he could have killed Chester in a fit of rage that he’d lost the land. Whoever vandalized my home knew a lot about rage since he went beyond a normal search.”

  “Now I’m worried again.”

  Discouraged, I collected my toolbox from the kitchen and we trudged back to the truck.

  “I saw lights come on in the house,” Little Donny said. “Don’t tell me you two broke in.”

  “All right, I won’t.” I hadn’t planned on telling him anyway.

  “You’re going to have to get out and push,” I said to him after I’d been rocking the truck back and forth like I’d watched Barney do. Every time I spun the tires, we slid sideways a foot or two. We needed to go backwards but it wasn’t happening.

  Little Donny looked down at his fancy tassel shoes and sighed. Then he opened the door and stepped out into the snow.

  He threw his weight against the truck while I revved the engine. Over and over we tried. Finally Little Donny stood up, panting, “Granny, are you sure you have it in reverse?”

  I looked at the gear stick. “Oops,” I said, moving it from neutral to reverse.

  A few more tries and we were out.

  “Looks like a snow plow ran around their yard,” Cora Mae pointed out as we swung into the road.

  Little Donny ran up covered with dirty snow from the knees down.

  “Next time you better wear more practical clothes,” I said to him. Then I remembered that Little Donny wasn’t exactly a willing conspirator. I dug through the glove compartment for paper napkins and helped him wipe off his shoes. Little Donny’s a good boy and a great grandson. I’d have to think of a way to make this up to him.

  __________

  We arrived at the pasty dinner as the Lionesses were beginning to clear away the food. The pasties were still out so we helped ourselves. A lot of people who aren’t from the U.P. don’t know what pasties are. Little Donny’s city-slick father thought they were something strippers wore on their boobs. I wanted to ask him how he knew what strippers wore, but Heather was sitting right next to him at the time, and since I’m the last one to make trouble in our family, I kept my mouth shut.

  Pasties are a staple of life in the U.P., like bread or rice, and the Lionesses make the best found anywhere. A small wad of dough is rolled out like a piecrust, only smaller, then it’s filled with chopped carrots, potatoes, onions, ground meat, and a little salt and pepper. Fold the crust over, crimp the side closed with a fork, and bake it for an hour or so. Of course, everyone has a secret ingredient they add to the mix to make theirs special. The Lionesses are sworn to secrecy and not one of them has spilled the beans yet. I’m thinking of joining just so I can find out what they do to make theirs so good.


  Little Donny stacked three on his plate and sat down with a cup of coffee at an empty table. Cora Mae and I took one each and followed him over. I noticed the long metal tables were cleared of people, everyone gathered on the opposite side of the room next to a barrel of beer.

  I could see Star across the room hanging on a short stocky fellow with dark wavy hair.

  “Who’s that with your Aunt Star?” I asked Little Donny.

  “Some guy she met in Rapid River.”

  No wonder I hadn’t seen much of her lately. Star’s enjoying her freedom, but it sure took awhile. I’m proud of her for not jumping into a steady relationship with the first guy who paid her a little attention. A lot of women would do that, but Star’s taking her time. “He looks like a young one. How old do you think he is?”

  Little Donny shrugged his shoulders. He packed the last of a pasty in his mouth, picked up his plate, and went off in the direction of the kitchen to find more.

  I saw Bill Lampi standing next to Floyd, sipping a glass of beer. He wore a proud smile like Barney used to wear when one of his kids did something special, like winning a spelling bee or scoring the winning basket in a basketball game. Only Bill smiled at the crowd of guys gathered around Barb. His smile seemed to say, “That’s mine, fellas. Pretty great stuff, hunh?”

  A lot of men wouldn’t like their wives getting the kind of attention Barb was getting. Maybe somewhere in Bill’s mind he felt lucky to have her. He probably didn’t do too much dating when he was growing up.

  I just hope he didn’t have more than he could handle.

  I could hear dishes clattering in the kitchen and a swelling din from the other side of the room.

  “Little Donny must be eating his way through the kitchen,” I said to Cora Mae when he didn’t return. “Let’s go mingle. And keep your ears open.”

  We left our plates at the kitchen window and joined the crowd. The first person we saw turned out to be Kitty. She wore a housedress covered with pink flowers the size of watermelons, and I caught a glimpse of her dead-white lumpy inner thighs, although I tried hard not to. She had taken the bobby pins out of her hair, but as usual forgot to comb them out. Tight corkscrew curls bounced on her head as she leaned into a group of women.

  I recognized them as Kitty’s card bunch. They got together every Friday night for rummy. Should be playing Old Maid, I thought. Not a one of them had ever been married except Pat, and that lasted only three weeks so it didn’t really count.

  Kitty looked directly into my eyes. Then she bent over and said something to Betty, who had taken time out from busy-bodying at Chester’s door to see who else’s husband she could try to steal.

  Betty gasped and covered her mouth with her hand, and the group all began to giggle and glance over at me.

  “Hi, Kitty.” I ambled over. “Hi, girls.”

  Kitty turned her head away.

  I had managed to make Kitty mad at me and now I had to pay the price as the central topic of gossip. Great. “I’m sorry about earlier, Kitty. I don’t know what got into me,” I said, certain that a public apology would do the trick. I tacked on the clincher. “I’ll get you something to eat from the kitchen. Would you like that?”

  Kitty beaming face swung back. “I’m okay. I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

  “No hurry. Take the night off. I don’t need a bodyguard in a crowd like this.”

  I nudged Cora Mae and nodded in Onni’s direction. “Look. There’s Onni Maki.”

  Cora Mae barely glanced at him. “I’ve changed my mind about Onni. He’s not what he appeared at first. Besides, he’s a murder suspect and a cheater. I’ve heard more stories about his cheating than I care to. Believe it or not, I have my principles. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  Cora Mae was making love eyes at someone behind me. I turned to look and saw George talking to old Ed Lacken.

  “Good God, Cora Mae, not the undertaker.” Just the thought of Ed touching a living woman made me feel sick.

  “Of course not. I mean George. Isn’t he cute?”

  Well, doesn’t that beat all? Cora Mae is a living wonder, and I can hardly keep up with her. George better watch his goods, because once Cora Mae sets her sights, it’s usually too late to get away. I felt a twinge inside, not sure I liked this new development.

  Cora Mae wrenched loose from my grip and slithered over to him, finding her way through a clearing in the mass of people crowded around the beer. I joined her next to George.

  Ed Lacken wore the same bow tie he wore for his funeral services and every hair on his head was slicked straight back. I wondered how he kept his head from sliding off the pillow at night. He ran his fingers around the bow tie as though it pinched his neck.

  Cora Mae batted her eyelashes, laid a hand on George’s arm to get his attention, batted her eyes some more, and said, “I need some advice on repairing my fence. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop by tomorrow and take a look at it.”

  I couldn’t believe anyone could be so bold and obvious. Plus, now we have to break Cora Mae’s fence.

  “Sure,” George said innocently. “I’ll look at it first thing in the morning. Then I’m heading to Gertie’s place to work on a few things.” He smiled at me and I felt my face heating up.

  The sound of laughter caught our attention, and we all looked over at the gang gathered around Barb.

  “I think,” George said slowly, “Bill has a wild cat by the tail.”

  While we focused on the tight circle around Barb, Onni Maki walked up and stood next to me, wearing the same green disco suit he’d worn to Chester’s funeral. He wasn’t standing there three seconds before I felt a hand on my rear end. I jumped and moved forward a step. The hand followed. Glancing over my shoulder, I couldn’t help noticing it was Onni’s hand. We looked at each other. He had a blank dumb expression on his face. I could feel his fingers spread out over one whole cheek.

  I slowly opened my purse, passing up the stun gun with a pang of regret and wrapping my hand around the can of pepper spray. Then I sprayed it in Onni’s face.

  It was a direct hit.

  He blew back like he’d been hit full force by a tornado. When he hit the floor, he covered his face and started screaming. Boy, that stuff really works.

  I didn’t choose the stun gun because I didn’t want to cause a big scene, but with Onni screaming and the whole place turning and heading over, I might as well have. I eased the pepper spray back into my purse and edged away from the group forming around Onni, where he was still on his back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Blaze rushing through the crowd, and I got myself tucked back behind George just in time. I peered out.

  “What the hell happened?” Blaze asked the crowd. Everyone looked at each other. I looked at Kitty, who had plowed through to stand beside me, and shrugged along with the rest of them. Blaze bent over Onni and helped him up.

  “I’m blind,” Onni screamed.

  “There, there,” Blaze said. “You just got a little something in your eye.”

  Onni continued screaming as Blaze guided him to the men’s room. I wandered in the opposite direction before the crowd started comparing notes and looking around for the perpetrator.

  I leaned against a pile of jacket in the coatroom and closed my eyes. When I opened them, Barb sashayed in like one of those fancy New York models on a catwalk, her hands on her hips and a sour look on her face.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “Suits me.”

  “I want to know why you’re bothering Bill and me? I know you were sneaking around outside our house spying on us, but I don’t know why.”

  I never liked the word “sneak,” but I let it ride. And I didn’t like her tone of voice. Up close I noticed a tired edge to her face, like she’d been losing sleep. I decided to cut to the chase, hit her with both barrels, as they say.

  “Someone broke into Chester’s house,” I said. “And tore it apart looking for something, and I’m pretty sure it was yo
u.”

  Her face crumpled and her voice went limp. “That’s why you’re snooping around? You think I did that?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  Barb looked around. No one was nearby. “Promise you won’t tell Bill what I’m going to tell you, or anybody else, for that matter. Promise and I’ll tell you.”

  She wrung her hands and chewed the bottom of her lip.

  “I promise,” I said. We used to call them “toilet paper promises” because they were the kind of promises that lasted about as long as one piece of toilet paper at deer camp.

  “Chester found out something about me that Bill didn’t know about, and after he died, I worried that Bill would go over and discover it.” She paused and glanced at the door. “I went there, but I didn’t have to break in. The back door was standing open and someone had already searched through everything. Chester’s belongings were thrown everywhere. I looked around but whoever was there ahead of me must have taken the thing I was looking for, because I couldn’t find it.”

  Her voice started to crack and I thought she was about to cry, but she didn’t.

  “What were you looking for?” I asked, but of course I knew—the magazines I had discovered in Chester’s blind.

  “I can’t tell you that. It’s too embarrassing, something foolish I did years ago and regret every day of my life. Chester told me he had it and threatened to show it to Bill if I didn’t go back where I came from.”

  “Sounds like a motive for murder to me,” I said.

  Barb narrowed her eyes, back to her old self.

  “Where were you opening day of hunting season around dawn?” I asked her.

  “You just don’t quit, do you?” she said.

  Little Donny wandered into the coatroom sucking on a toothpick and Barb used his presence as an opportunity to escape.

  I called to her as she strutted out, “Don’t leave town until this matter is resolved.”

  I’ve always wanted to say that.

  __________

  Not one to put all my guinea hen eggs in one basket, I knew it was time to expand the scope of my investigation. There was a distinct possibility that Barb wasn’t the murderer. I wanted her to be my prime suspect because she wasn’t a local and because I didn’t like her. But the evidence wasn’t stacking against her.

  If Barb told me the truth, Chester’s place had been searched three separate times the day after he bought the big one: by Cora Mae and me, by whoever trashed his place, and by Barb. At least I knew Barb hadn’t wrecked my place, or she would have taken the magazines.

  I looked around for Kitty and finally found her in the ladies’ room washing her hands.

  “Barb didn’t do it,” I said. “And Onni didn’t do it because he didn’t have anything to gain.”

  Kitty studied me in the mirror. “Sounds reasonable.”

  “That leaves Bill. Or we are barking up the wrong tamarack tree altogether?”

  “They just took Onni to the hospital in Escanaba,” Kitty said, still watching me in the mirror.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I squirmed, wondering how a little shot of pepper spray could require hospitalization. Those cans should have warnings.

  “No one knows. Ed Lacken said Onni was standing by you one minute and screaming the next. Funny thing.”

  Kitty watched me in the mirror. My curls were beginning to flatten to my head. I fluffed them with my fingers and said, “Little Donny’s going to need a ride home tonight. Ask George to take him and meet me by the door. I’ll get the truck.”

  Kitty nodded.

  __________

  The emergency room desk attendant was solid, like a refrigerator. She wore a fuzzy black mustache over her lip and thick black eyebrows.

  “Only next of kin beyond this point,” she said.

  “I’m his wife.” I tried to look worried.

  She scanned a clipboard. “Doesn’t say he has a wife on his intake sheet.”

  “He’s not thinking right. I’m definitely his wife, though.”

  “Okay, but they…” Refrigerator pointed at Cora Mae and Kitty, “will have to wait here.” Cora Mae shrugged and took a seat by the television. Kitty positioned herself for a view down the hall, leaning against the wall, a hint of garter protruding below her housedress.

  I walked down a long corridor with Fridge leading the way. She wore hospital white shoes and white stretch pants that showed the lines of her panties. Worse, the panties were black.

  We entered a room with three beds partitioned by curtains. She pulled aside the first one, waved me through, and thundered away to man the fort.

  Onni was lying on an examination table still wearing his green suit and paisley shirt. The shirt, unbuttoned halfway, exposed his plucked-chicken wrinkly chest. He held a white cloth over both eyes.

  I peeked out of the curtain to make sure no one was coming, then said in the gruffest voice I could manage, “Onni Maki, I have a few questions for you before the doctor comes in.”

  Startled, Onni began to lift the cloth. I quickly shoved his hand back and said, “Better not open ‘em yet.”

  “Who are you?” Onni asked from under the cloth.

  “FBI.” I improvised as I went. “We’re investigating the death of Chester Lampi, and this assault on you might be tied in.”

  “No,” Onni began, “that lunatic Gert..”

  “Let’s not go pointing fingers yet,” I broke in. “This is way more complicated than it seems, and it involves land and mineral rights and greed?”

  “I don’t have any stake in the land anymore,” Onni said. “Wish everybody would leave me alone about it. I don’t take to threats.” Sweat glistened on his chrome-dome and a long strand of cover-up hair had slid down the side of his face.

  “I’m not threatening you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Have you noticed any unusual activity over there?” I asked.

  “What? Where?”

  “On the land next to your place. Chester’s land.”

  Onni seemed surprised. “That’s vacant land and it’s November. What kind of stupid question is that?”

  Interrogation work is harder than it looks. The interrogatee might know valuable information without even knowing it. It’s the interrogator’s job to ask the right questions, even though the questions might seem stupid to someone not acquainted with the procedure.

  “I’m asking the questions here, remember?” My throat was getting sore from keeping my voice low. “Who else has been asking about the land?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Onni said, “I don’t have anything to do with the land or the mineral rights anymore.”

  “We need a name for our records.”

  “Well, to begin with, Barb Lampi wanted to buy the rights from me, but I told her I didn’t own them anymore, that I’d traded them…”

  Just then the curtains parted and the doctor entered, followed by Blaze, who sipped from a cup of coffee.

  “Ma,” Blaze said, “what are you doing here?”

  Onni screamed, threw the cloth aside, and tried to open his eyes. “What’s she doing here? Get her away from me!”

  “That’s no way to treat a visitor,” I said. Blaze had me in one of his elbow lock and we headed down the hall.

  “Bye, Mrs. Maki,” Fridge called when we walked by. I waved.

  Blaze stared hard to me and said, “Mrs. Maki? You impersonated a dead woman? Where’s Little Donny?”

  “He was having such a good time, I let him stay for the dance.”

  Cora Mae came trotting over. “I’m keeping an eye on her,” she said. “And so is Kitty.” I could see Kitty attempting to launch herself from a waiting room chair.

  “Oh, good,” Blaze said. “Now I won’t worry anymore.” He towered over me. “Onni said you squirted something in his face.”

  “Don’t know where he got that idea. Viagra must be affecting his mind. I read that stuff can make everything look blue. Imagine what it’s doing to hi
s mind.”

  “I’m staying to make sure he’s okay,” Blaze said. “You better hope he doesn’t want to press charges.”

  On the way out the revolving door Cora Mae said, “spraying Onni in the face sure isn’t going to help your case. Can’t you save outrageous behavior till after the hearing?”

  “Good point, Cora Mae, but I wasn’t thinking about the case while Onni pawed me up. It was pure instinct.”

  We waited outside for Kitty to catch up. I filled them in on my conversation with Onni. “Barb’s back on my list.”

  “I thought women didn’t murder men with rifles.” Cora Mae said. “Didn’t you say that?”

  “She must have an accomplice,” I reasoned. “That’s the only explanation.”

  “Bill,” Cora Mae and Kitty said in unison.