Murder Passes the Buck

by Deb Baker

FOURTEEN

  Word For The Day

  VISCERAL (VIS uhr uhl) adj.

  Intuitive; instinctive;

  Emotional rather than intellectual.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I asked with growing dread.

  “Taking care of a few loose ends.”

  The first thing I did was talk myself out of collapsing on the floor. It wasn’t enough that I’d almost died in a truck accident and that the knot on my head was throbbing with pain. My instinct, failing me until this moment, shouted out the truth, and it was a great measure of the importance of my friendship with George that my very first thought was of him. I muttered under my breath, “Thank you, George, thank you, for not letting me down. Thank you for not destroying my faith in humanity, my faith in you.”

  I didn’t have any more time for gratitude, because now was not the time to discover that Floyd’s secret occupation was murderer, since I was alone with him, miles from help, and couldn’t be more unprepared. I didn’t have my shotgun or the stun gun, only my pepper spray.

  A small voice inside told me I was probably overreacting. There must be a logical answer.

  “I’m ready to go home,” I said to Floyd, pretending that the knife didn’t exist, that it wasn’t pointing directly at me, that I wasn’t up a creek without a paddle or panning equipment.

  “You’re going for a ride all right,” he said quietly. “But not in the direction you think.”

  I chose that moment to reach under my jacket, yank the pepper spray out of my vest, and aim it at his face. I pressed the button. Nothing happened. The spray didn’t spray and Floyd didn’t fall on the ground writhing in pain like Onni had.

  “The can must have frozen,” I said to no one in particular, banging it against a kitchen chair while I reached into my vest with the other hand. In a blur of motion, I dropped the can, pulled out my Swiss army knife, snapped it open, and faced off with Floyd. My two-inch blade gleamed in the fluorescent kitchen light.

  Floyd smirked, reached into another drawer, never taking his eyes off of me, and I found myself staring down the barrel of a gun. Floyd dropped the knife into the drawer and closed it up.

  I’d used up my entire arsenal and it hadn’t been enough. I raised my hands in defeat, my small knife clattering to the floor.

  “Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?” Floyd’s eyes had a wild, crazy gleam to them, a trait I wished I’d noticed the day I caught him in his birthday suit inside his sauna. Although, his eyes weren’t my first concern at the time.

  I stared at the gun. “What’s happened to Kitty?” The white bobby pin lay on the floor between us where I’d dropped it attempting to defend myself.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Floyd sneered while I watched his right hand. “You two are going to meet up in the afterlife.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Don’t tell me you killed Kitty. Why would you do that? She never harmed a flea in her whole life.”

  Floyd cocked the gun.

  “Don’t shoot me in here,” I advised. “My DNA will be smeared all over the place and they’ll catch you.”

  “I don’t plan to shoot you unless you do something stupid.”

  “I wouldn’t do anything stupid,” I reassured him.

  “What I am going to do is haul you out back of the garage and tie you to the clothesline pole till you freeze up good. Then I’m going to take your stiff little body and throw it in the woods back behind your truck. Everyone will think you froze to death accidentally.”

  “I’ve always had the hots for you,” I said, “and you know it. Maybe you and I can blow this place together. Nobody has to know the truth.”

  That line always worked in the gangster movies, but it was a long shot here. I must be really desperate to even think it. If I make it out of here alive, I’ll deny ever saying it.

  I had to admit that the freeze-her-stiff idea was a good one, better than anything I’d ever come up with.

  “Why did you kill Chester? He was your friend.”

  “Same reason I’m going to kill you. To protect my interests.”

  “You don’t own the land, Floyd. You don’t own the mineral rights. You don’t have any rights at all, whether I’m alive or dead.”

  Floyd’s face flushed red, his eyes bulged, his gun hand quivered. “All I ever wanted was the land to stay the way it was. But, no, Chester wanted to sell out to a big city outfit and he wouldn’t listen to sense. When I stopped by his place to see if he wanted to take a sauna and I saw the contract lying on the kitchen table, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I went out to the blind and tried to reason with him, but I couldn’t talk him out of it. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “So you went back to his house, took his rifle, and shot him?”

  “I guess I panicked and wasn’t thinking right. I drove off with the rifle and had to figure out how to get it back in. Would have worked out if you hadn’t stuck your big nose in. And then I found out from Onni that you owned the mineral rights.”

  “But I didn’t register the deed.”

  “That’s right and you never are going to have the opportunity, either.”

  “You don’t have to kill me,” I said, grasping for straws. “I won’t tell anybody. I’ll listen to reason. I’m not like Chester. I won’t register the deed. In fact, I’ll turn it over to you.”

  “You’re a nosy busybody who causes trouble wherever you go. And I don’t want the deed. I told you, all I want is for things to stay just the way they are.”

  Floyd looked rabid, hunks of spittle shot from his mouth.

  I never in my wildest nightmare imagined I’d be confronting Chester’s killer alone and in the dark. I thought it would be in the light of day and with a posse to back me up, with the whole place cordoned off.

  My mind was telling me this was a good time to panic. Start screaming and running around. Go over the deep end. My mind and I talked back and forth, reasoning it out, and I decided the only way I had a chance was if I started thinking.

  “Why, Floyd? Why do you care about Chester’s land?” I asked.

  “Gold,” he whispered.

  “That’s ridiculous. There isn’t any gold back there.”

  “In the beginning it was just a joke.” Floyd’s eyes glazed over and his trigger hand shook. “We were stationed in Korea, Chester, Onni, and I, and we told stories to keep our minds off of the war. Chester already owned the land, but Onni didn’t hold it against him. And Onni told us about the rumor of gold and we imagined panning for gold after the war. It was all in fun, you see. Didn’t think about it again for years. Then my Eva took sick and I was desperate to take care of her, and we didn’t have much money. They were going to put her in a state-owned nursing home. You ever been in one of those?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I remembered what Onni said, and with God’s help, I went back to Bear Creek and the Lord provided. Onni and Chester were fools not to believe it. How else could I afford to take good care of Eva?”

  “You mean, you really found gold?”

  “Enough to get by. Enough to put her in a good place.”

  I shook my head in wonder.

  Then I threw the pepper spray can in Floyd’s face. He raised an arm to deflect the can and he fired a wild shot as I pelted him with the fire starter from my pocket, then a bookend from the table next to me. The heavy bookend connecting with his broad forehead and the inaccuracy of his next frantic shot gave me the few precious seconds I needed to escape out the door.

  I hit the driveway running, wishing I wore running sneakers instead of boots. They felt like they weighed fifty pounds each. By the time I reached the cover of the side of the garage, I was walking pretty slowly because the wind was engaged in a full frontal attack. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, and the cold reached into my lungs, freezing them up, too.

  A shrill whistle pierced the wind. The sound came from Floyd’s sauna on the far side of the house.

  “Gertie,” Floyd called from the
porch. “Come in here right now or I’m burning the sauna. And guess who’s inside?”

  I remembered the rope whistles we bought on our excursion to Escanaba. Kitty was locked in the sauna, blowing on her whistle.

  “I’ll burn Kitty,” he shouted again. I peeked around the side of the garage and saw him framed in the light from the house holding the fire starter I had thrown at his head. He had the gun in the other hand and a can of gasoline at his feet, and he looked wildly desperate.

  The whistle screeched.

  I hesitated. How could I run into the icy night and leave Kitty behind? Could I even find help before I froze? My eyes teared from the cold and I blinked several times to clear my vision.

  Floyd began pouring fuel on the front of the sauna.

  I crept around the back of the garage and plowed into the backend of Kitty’s car. Floyd must have pulled the car off the driveway to hide it from view.

  Smoke swirled in the air. The smell of burning wood caught the wind and came my way.

  I opened the door and the buzzer went off, telling me that the keys were still in the ignition. I slipped in as quickly as possible, hoping Floyd’s hearing was poor enough to miss the sound.

  “Surrender,” Floyd screamed over the frantic wail of the whistle and the screaming wind. “Or she dies.”

  Kitty’s car leapt from the shadows. I bore down on the sauna. Flames licked out from the doorframe, completely covering the front of the building. Floyd saw me coming and ran toward the car, pointing his gun at the windshield.

  I didn’t let up. Floyd, his face frozen in shock, flung himself at the hood of the car, rolling and crashing into the windshield as I carried him with me into the wood frame of the sauna.

  The sauna buckled. I threw the car in reverse, backed out, and screeched to a halt. Floyd rolled off the car groaning, his leg at an unnatural angle. I leapt from the car, kicked the gun out of his reach and continued on, running into the flaming building.

  Kitty and I collided and I started to fall, but she grabbed my arm and dragged me out with her through the gaping hole.

  “I blew on that whistle till I thought my brains would ooze out,” she said between sputters and coughs. “What took you so long?”

  The very best thing about my friends is the level of gratitude they display whenever I help them out.

  __________

  Before we could decide whether to leave Floyd on the ground to freeze to death or to make a call and save him, Blaze screeched into the driveway with George and Cora Mae beside him.

  Blaze called an ambulance after throwing a blanket over Floyd, who had stopped moaning. I wanted to straighten out his leg for him and see how loud he could scream, but I restrained myself and told my story instead.

  After the ambulance crew loaded Floyd and Blaze had made arrangements for a deputy to meet the ambulance at the hospital, Kitty and I followed Blaze’s sheriff’s truck to his mobile home. Mary waited with hot cocoa and warm blankets. We all pile in—Blaze, George, Cora Mae, Kitty, and me.

  “I suspected Floyd had killed Chester all along,” Kitty said, black smudges from the fire blotting her face. “Kid in a private college out east, big satellite dish in the yard, wife in a private nursing home. It didn’t add up. When George told me the gold pan belonged to Floyd, I knew for sure.”

  I glanced at George. “I thought it belonged to you.”

  George shook his head. “I saw it in Floyd’s car when he stalled out last summer and I gave him a jump.”

  “You even said it belonged to you.”

  “You sure have been acting strange,” George said.

  “I’ve been acting strange? You were the one who said you owned it.”

  “I would have told you who owned it if you’d asked me outright. I thought we were talking code or something.”

  George is a fine man, but he’s still a man, and their logic escapes me. I opened my mouth to try to make my point again.

  Kitty interrupted. “George is the one who told Floyd he was picking you up for cards the night your house was searched. That’s how Floyd knew you weren’t home.”

  “When did you two have this enlightening discussion?” I wanted to know.

  “Outside the restaurant right after you found the gold pan.” Kitty slurped cocoa. “Don’t you two ever talk?”

  “Not since you convinced me he was trying to kill me.”

  George and I exchanged stares and I shrugged as if to say, sorry about that. George grinned. “That’s why you’ve been running away from me like I’m a rabid skunk.”

  “Well, I was wrong,” Kitty said when I glared at her. “Can’t I be wrong once in a while?”

  “Why did you tell me you weren’t in Gladstone when we followed you…” I stopped and covered my mouth.

  “You’ve been following me?” George had a gleam in his eyes.

  I felt embarrassment coloring my face. “Maybe once. Just once.”

  “Carl’s driving a rental car while his is in for repair. We swapped vehicles so I could watch Cora Mae’s house without anyone recognizing me. You must have been following Carl.”

  Cora Mae sat at the kitchen table, not saying a word, and I noticed tears welling in her eyes. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “To think I almost lost both of you. She jumped up and after a round of hugs we settled back in and Cora Mae wiped her eyes.

  “Everything happened at once,” she said. “I closed up the sale and right after that George stopped by concerned about Gertie. Kitty was missing. Now Gertie was missing, too. We called Onnie and he said that Barb and Floyd had both tried to buy the mineral rights and when Floyd found out Onnie didn’t have them anymore, he blew up. Onni said Floyd always had a short fuse, even in the Marines.”

  “We called Blaze right away,” Cora Mae sniffled.

  “Let’s go out tomorrow,” George said to me, right in front of everybody. “Now that I’ve been cleared of all charges against me.”

  I blushed, feeling awkward and shy. “We can talk about it later,” I said, not sure I was ready, but not ready to say no to him either. He took my hand and squeezed in understanding.

  “Sure,” George said. “Take your time. There isn’t any rush.”

  I looked over at Blaze. “Now we can forget about this court stuff. Right?”

  Blaze wasn’t nearly as understanding.