A Fatal Four-Pack

by P. B. Ryan

  George walked around and looked in the window. I followed. In the back of the wagon, on a wad of black plastic garbage bags, lay a little spike-horned deer.

  “A little guy,” George said.

  “What? He’s a good size, isn’t he, Granny?”

  “I can still see the spots on him,” I said to Little Donny.

  Little Donny turned around in the driver’s seat to take a look, and at that exact moment the little spike lifted its head and stared back at astonished Little Donny. You could see that Little Donny would like to have opened the door and beat it out of there, but with George and me looking on, he had to make a stand.

  The deer and Little Donny leapt into action together. The deer started pounding on the windows with his hooves. Little Donny flew out of the front seat, opened the back door, and dove in. He grabbed the little buck by the horns and held on.

  “Go git him,” George said, and closed the car door behind Donny. I wasn’t sure which one of them George was talking to, and I couldn’t imagine what Little Donny was trying to do.

  The deer’s horns were making an awful mess of Carl’s brand new station wagon.

  “You call it,” George said to me as we stood, watching.

  “The little spike. My money’s on the little spike.”

  “Sure win,” George said, then to Little Donny, “Watch the horns, they’re wicked.”

  When Little Donny’s nose started gushing blood, I decided it was time for action. I couldn’t send him home to Heather gored by a deer. I dug the stun gun out of my purse, jerked the car door open, aimed at the spike, and zapped.

  I could smell that new car smell and something else. I sniffed. Something like burnt wires.

  Little Donny let go of the horns. His head hit the car window with a thud like a bird flying into a window. He started twitching.

  George opened the back hatch and the deer uncurled itself from the wagon and zigzagged with flying leaps out to the woods.

  We helped Little Donny into the house when he could finally stand up. His hair sprung from his head like he’d been hit by a bolt of lightning, and he couldn’t talk without slobbering.

  The good thing is, now I know it really works.

  “Next time you shoot at a deer,” I advised him, “make sure it’s dead before you load it in your car.”

  o0o

  Little Donny sat on the couch, his hair every which way, when the family began arriving. He still couldn’t talk, and his eyes were unfocused. George had said a hasty good-bye after making sure Little Donny didn’t need medical attention.

  Star drove over on her ex-husband’s ATV, wearing a fake fur jacket she had dyed orange for hunting season, a pair of mukluks, and a sassy orange and blue feather hat. Star, my baby, had turned forty-one in September, which she took hard at the time. She obviously is bouncing back. Petite, like me, she looked real spiffy in her new jacket.

  She carried in a bowl of creamed rutabaga, set it on the table, and hung her jacket on the coat rack by the front door. By then, I saw Blaze and Mary drive in.

  I wouldn’t say it out loud, but Mary’s the mousiest, plainest-minded woman I’ve ever met. You could meet her ten times in a week and never remember her from one time to the next. She named her daughters after her—Mary Jane and Mary Elizabeth—and they’re both just as drab.

  “Can I help?” Mary asked after she hung up her coat.

  “I’ll let you know in a little while if I need help. Right now you just have a seat in the living room and make yourself comfortable while I pound these steaks.”

  I picked up a hammer and began thumping the meat. Most people, unless they’re old timers or are trained by the old timers, don’t know how to cook good venison. A steak, in particular, is tricky. First you have to pound it with a hammer on both sides until it has holes clear through it like Swiss cheese. Then salt and pepper it all over, and quick fry it in butter. The butter’s important. If you use oil you’ll ruin it. Afterwards the cook gets to sop up the pan drippings with a piece of bread.

  I consider myself a pretty good cook.

  “What’s wrong with Little Donny?” Star called to me.

  “Nothing’s wrong with Little Donny,” I said.

  “His eyes are twitching and he won’t say anything.”

  “He’s tired. He had a hard day hunting and all.” Maybe I should have laid Little Donny out on the couch, closed his eyes, and said he was sleeping. Leaving him propped up was a mistake. “I’m going to start frying the steaks. Tell Blaze to mosey over and pick up Grandma Johnson.”

  As we were putting the food on the table, Blaze arrived with his grandmother in tow. We grabbed our seats and dug right in.

  “Why don’t anybody ever pick me up till the food’s on the table?” Grandma Johnson wanted to know. “I like to visit too, and I know all a you was here ahead a time.”

  We concentrated hard on our meal, pretending like we hadn’t heard.

  “And what did you go and do to your hair? Every time I see you, you’ve done something foolish to yourself.”

  My mother-in-law is ninety-two and doesn’t appear to be running down. She still keeps her own house, with everyone taking turns stopping in and helping out. If you ask her the secret to living a long life she’ll tell you it’s what you eat—lots of vegetables and suck candy. You know, she’ll say, that hard stuff like anise and butterscotch.

  But I think she stays young taking potshots at me.

  “Come and eat,” I called to Little Donny. “Won’t be anything left if you don’t hurry up.”

  “Noth righth now,” Little Donny said.

  “I’ll make you a plate for later.”

  “Place is going to pot,” Grandma Johnson said, swinging her head around like that possessed girl in the Exorcist. “I bet Barney is turning in his grave over the looks of this place. Did you see the hole in the side of the barn, Blaze?”

  Blaze doesn’t like to be interrupted while he’s eating, but Grandma Johnson’s hard to ignore when she’s right in your face. His mouth was stuffed with potatoes.

  I briefly thought about confronting Blaze about the court papers right at the dinner table, right in front of the entire family. But I wasn’t sure they’d side with me, especially Grandma Johnson.

  “First thing tomorrow I want you to fix that hole for your ma,” she continued.

  “Yes, Grandma,” Blaze said through his mouthful, glancing at me. I gave him a cold smile.

  “I hear you’re helping on one of the cases,” Mary said to me.

  “Not anymore,” Blaze said.

  “This apple pie is pretty good, considerin’ how bad your baking usually is,” Grandma Johnson said. “I used to feel so sorry for Barney, havin’ to eat what you baked.”

  A piece of apple pie with whipped cream topping called to me from the table. I had an uncontrollable urge to smear it in Grandma Johnson’s face. Picking up the plate, the desire became stronger and stronger, but Mary must have read my mind because she softly called my name. When I looked over, our eyes met, and she shook her head. Okay. When Grandma Johnson leaves maybe I’ll zap her with the stun gun instead. I set the plate down.

  “I love the pie,” Mary said. “The crust is just right.” She took another bite and hummed. Humming during a meal is a family tradition. If a meal is just right, the whole family takes turns humming. Except of course Grandma Johnson, who never hummed a note in her whole life. “Blaze said he had the rifle shell you found out at Chester’s hunting shack tested. Isn’t that right, Honey?”

  Blaze leaned back in his chair and glared at his wife. Apparently he didn’t want me to know how the case was progressing.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Well nothing. There weren’t any prints on the shell.”

  “The next step is to figure out what gun it was fired from.” Though I was disappointed, I was still trying to be helpful in case Blaze didn’t know the next step.

  “Already did that. It was fired from Chester’s own rifle, Ma. No
thing suspicious about it at all. Chester was probably target practicing before hunting season. That shell could have been laying there for awhile.”

  “How do you explain away the footprints coming from the creek, Einstein?”

  “Chester’s.”

  “What rifle was it fired from?” I asked.

  “Top one in the gun rack.”

  “Didn’t I tell you someone put a weapon in there after Chester died?”

  “I only had the shell tested to prove you wrong,” my son said. “And you are wrong. Nobody put a rifle back. You’re wrong.”

  “Building evidence against me, are you?”

  “I don’t need to, you build it against yourself.”

  Blaze and I were having a stare-down. We used to have stare-downs when he was a kid, but those were for fun. This was different. Blaze’s stare was telling me I was getting old and feeble-minded and a pain in the backside. My stare was saying he sure wasn’t Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson. More like Don Knotts in Mayberry RFD. And a lousy son to boot.

  He looked away first.

  It was snowing hard outside by the time the table was cleared and the dishes washed and put away. Star roared away on her ATV, and Grandma Johnson headed for the bathroom. Little Donny slept like a baby on the couch, and Blaze sat in a chair, a pained expression on his face like he’d eaten one piece of pie too much.

  “One of these days,” I said to Mary after Grandma closed the bathroom door, “I’m going to tell her off.”

  “You think I’m deaf,” Grandma Johnson called. “I can hear a cooked noodle hit the floor from across the house, and I heard that.”

  Mary and I laughed, and I took a good look at her for what might be the first time. She was plain, all right—nobody would ever call her pretty—but she had a rosy face, like she was happy all the time. She and Blaze were having some trouble with one of their daughters. I keep telling them she’s just young.

  I remember being young and it’s a tough business. I wouldn’t go back there for all the Christmas trees in Tamarack County, although I wouldn’t mind shaving off a year or two. But being sixty-six has its advantages. You don’t let anyone tell you what’s what any more, and you don’t have to pay so much attention to laws and rules. Break one and everyone just chalks it up to hardening of the brain. I like that.

  At least I did until Blaze decided I really did have hardening of the brain.

  Before drifting off to sleep, I realized I’d forgotten to use my word for the day. I guess I was thrown off by Blaze’s disloyalty to his own mother.

  I have more on my mind these days than I used to.

  Chapter 4

  Word For The Day

  PICAYUNE (PIK uh yoon’) adj.

  Trivial or petty, small or small-minded.

  FRIDAY DAWNED COLD AND crisp, with a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. Little Donny was as good as new. He ate half a pound of bacon and three fried eggs, and was on his second cup of coffee when he remembered Carl’s station wagon. He scrambled up and ran outside, forgetting his coat. He stood there a while staring at the car, then came in, stomping his boots on the rug, and collapsed at the kitchen table cradling his head in his hands.

  “What am I going to tell Carl?”

  “I called him last night and told him you’d bring his station wagon back today,” I said. “You can clean it up some.”

  “The whole thing’s a blur.” Little Donny had a knot on his forehead the size of a baseball where he’d hit his head on the car window.

  “That big old buck kicked you in the head,” I lied. “That’s why you can’t remember much. What do you remember? Anything at all?”

  Little Donny didn’t answer. He groaned and went back to rocking his head. If Little Donny didn’t remember getting zapped, I was home free. George would never tell.

  “It happens sometimes. Nothing to be ashamed of. You fire at a deer,” I explained, “and you don’t know it, but the bullet just sort of grazes him, and then he plays possum or he’s just stunned. Could have happened to anyone.”

  I instantly regretted saying stunned. It might trigger Little Donny’s memory.

  Little Donny looked at me through his fingers, then went back to rocking.

  “Your Grandpa Barney lost one that way,” I continued. “A nice eight-pointer he shot out at the blind. He went to get the tractor to pull it out of the woods, and when he got back it was gone. Just up and ran off.”

  Little Donny wasn’t taking in anything I said.

  I felt tired and stiff from cooking and entertaining company and tromping around on the investigation trail, and decided to head to my deer blind behind the house.

  I use the blind as a retreat rather than for hunting. When the kids were little, I’d pull my gun from the rack and trudge out there while Barney babysat. No one ever thought to ask me why I never shot anything, but I think Barney knew. Old habits die hard, and so I still spend time there whenever I feel a need to get away from the rest of the world.

  I needed to wind down and do some thinking about Chester’s murder and my approaching court date.

  George was working on the hole in the barn. His rattlesnake cowboy hat was all I could see as I shuffled by.

  “Hey, George.”

  He raised his head and tipped his hat.

  “I’m going to take a shot at Big Buck,” I said, lifting my gun. George nodded.

  The air smelled like burning wood, my favorite smell. It was nippy out and I could see my breath fogging around my face. I wore long underwear under my hunting clothes, and I turned down the earflaps on my hat when I felt my ears begin to sting. I could hear my feet swishing through the fresh snow as I approached the shack. Apples and corn that I had thrown in a pile had been whittled down to next to nothing, and deer tracks crisscrossed everywhere.

  I leaned the gun in the corner of the shack and started the propane heater, then settled into the worn La-Z-Boy to watch. I could hear wind whistling against the shack and the propane heater popping into high gear. Within minutes it was toasty warm inside.

  When I woke up, the last of the apples and corn had been eaten and half the day was gone. I stood and shook out my stiff legs, wondering how many of nature’s creatures had been in to eat while I napped.

  I replenished the apples and corn from a well-stocked barrel in the corner, closed up, and trudged back to get ready for Chester’s funeral.

  o0o

  At three o’clock, I picked up Cora Mae and headed for Lacken’s Funeral Home on the outskirts of town.

  “I told Kitty we’d pick her up,” Cora Mae said.

  “No problem,” I said, not exactly sure how we were going to stuff her into the truck.

  Kitty still sets her hair in pin curls, which went out of style a hundred years ago, and for good reason. Her short gray hair sticks out under bobby pins every which way like it’s spring-loaded. She always has her head wired up to come visiting and I couldn’t help wondering who was going to get to see the final product if not Cora Mae and me. Thinking back, I remember only a handful of times seeing Kitty without pin curls—weddings and funerals, mostly.

  Since this was a funeral, we were in for a treat. Kitty waddled out without her bobby pins. She had combed through the front of her hair, but when she turned around to close her door, I noticed she had forgotten to brush out the back.

  Kitty is overweight, always has been, and gravity is winning. Blubber hangs from her upper arms, and the front of her knees are dimpled. She wears housedresses and never learned to keep her legs together, so you can see her garter straps where they connect to her stockings. Most people look away. It’s not a pretty sight.

  But people like Kitty. She has what others refer to as an inner beauty.

  We were all dressed in burial black. I hoped for two things tonight. One, to find the opportunity to talk to Chester’s son, Bill, and two, to see how Ed Lacken hid the hole in Chester’s forehead. Because Ed Lacken did the burying for everyone in the county, I hoped his work was still high
quality. I wanted to be done up right when the time came. I know he did right by Barney.

  Cora Mae was hoping for something entirely different.

  “I heard that Onni Maki is some stud muffin since he’s taking Viagra,” my friend said. She sat between Kitty and me and had her knees and arms crushed tight against her body. Kitty was a tight fit in any truck.

  “Onni Maki’s an old has-been,” I said, watching the road carefully in case I missed something on my first drive after dark. “Who’d want to see him naked?” I shuddered at the thought. We were all starting to get old and falling apart, but Onni Maki was falling apart faster than most of us.

  “He looks like a plucked turkey,” Kitty added, and I laughed.

  “That’s not true, and I aim to get some of the action,” Cora Mae insisted. “Doesn’t come around these parts often.”

  “There used to be a lot of rumors floating around about him when he was younger,” Kitty said, shifting her weight. “Onni’s always been a wild one. Fist fighting, drinking heavy, women.” Kitty frowned in concentration. “I’ll remember it all eventually.”

  I shook my head. “Kitty, you know everything about everybody. Where do you get your information?”

  Kitty snorted. “Here and there. I keep alert. Call it self-preservation. The more you know about a person, the better your position is. Information is like gold bullions; it pays for itself.”

  “Kitty,” I said, “you watch too much T.V.”

  o0o

  The parking lot was packed when we pulled in, so we had to park on the road. We left our coats in the cloakroom, which was almost full. A funeral warrants a big turnout. This was a big event.

  “I can’t help noticing you’re wearing a red dress,” I said to Cora Mae when she peeled off her black wool coat. “I thought black was your color, and since this is a funeral, it stands to reason you would wear black.”

  “Not if I want to stand out in a crowd,” she replied, squeezing past Kitty. “You don’t know anything about snagging a man, do you?”

  With Cora Mae in the lead we headed down a short narrow hall to the Green Room, where Chester was laid out. My second hope for the evening—getting a look at Chester—was dashed when I spied the closed casket. My first hope stood at the head of the casket next to several flower stands, bawling his eyes out.