by P. B. Ryan
While Cora Mae gossiped with a few rummage sale stragglers, I checked my supplies—the recharged stun gun in my purse, my weapon vest under my jacket, loaded with extra ammo for my shotgun, the pepper spray, and a Swiss army knife I had found last week in Barney’s dresser drawer. Sifting through Kitty’s front hall closet, I filled my arms with things I might need if I ended up outside on a surveillance mission—a facemask, hand warmers, and a fire starter. I wanted to take a flashlight but couldn’t find one, settling instead on the red-handled fire starter next to the wood-burning furnace. It had a trigger like a gun, and when I pulled it, a large steady flame shot out the end. I stuffed it in my pocket.
I drove away from the warmth and comfort of my friends, wishing for the first time in a long time that I had some company next to me. But Cora Mae had to stay at the sale and Kitty was nowhere to be found. Even the scrawny deputy kid would be welcome to join me if I could locate him.
Being a private detective is lonely work.
o0o
Dusk settled in as I pulled out onto the road. Winter dusk looks like an enormous rain cloud creeping in, and it comes early in the U.P. By four-thirty we start turning on our lights to get ready for another long night. I checked my watch again—almost five o’clock.
My plan was to drive over to Onni’s house and convince him that George and Barb were trying to kill both of us. Once he believed me, maybe between the two of us we could work this out and devise a plan to stop them. Onni might have valuable information that could help us.
At the four-way stop in the center of Stonely, I heard a horn blaring behind me and I saw Kitty’s cousin fold out of his purple car and strut up to my window, a cigarette between his lips.
“Kitty’s missing,” he said, talking around the lit cigarette.
“No, she’s not. I saw her a few hours ago. She said she had some checking to do.”
“She’s missing.” He inhaled deeply and blew recycled smoke at me.
I waved it away. “How would you know? You didn’t even check for her at her house because I just left there and I didn’t see you.”
“I got worried when she didn’t call. We have a deal. Ever since she took the bodyguard job we check in with each other twice a day. She missed her check-in this afternoon.”
“She’s fine,” I reassured him. Cars were slowly driving around us. “I’m kind of in a hurry. If I see her, I’ll tell her to call you.”
“She’s supposed to be guarding you. Why isn’t she?”
Up ahead, I saw George pull up to the stop sign from the opposite direction and I watched him drive past us. Craning my head out the window I saw his brake lights go on and he began turning around in the road. “Gotta go,” I said, and pulled away quickly.
Another horn blared behind me and George’s truck appeared in my rear view mirror gaining fast. He flicked his headlights on and off to get my attention and I hit the accelerator and roared away. He stayed with me for a while then began to fall back and eventually his lights disappeared.
When I was sure I’d safely lost George, I turned onto Onni’s road, the back truck tires sliding on the road ice. I could see large patches of ice puddled across the road.
Gunning the engine, I hoped to get past the ice quick, but the truck didn’t cooperate. It spun out of control. The steering wheel felt like a stripped plumbing washer; it just went slack and stopped working. I tromped on the brake and that too felt disconnected from the truck. Everything went sloppy loose and there wasn’t anything I could do but spin the steering wheel like a ride on a bumper car and watch the sights as they spun by.
The truck did a complete circle, then lurched toward a deep ditch, rolled over, and settled sideways in a broken patch of ditch ice.
I wasn’t feeling too good. I had hit my head on the top of the truck when it rolled, and I could feel a knot the size of an apple beginning to swell over my eye. I slowly moved my legs and arms and felt my ribs. Everything seemed in working order, so I reached up and forced the passenger side door open since my door was down on the ice. After climbing out, I packed snow on the top of my head to slow the swelling.
My head seemed to be taking quite a beating lately—wood splinters from the sniper attack, a nosedive into the icy-covered snow, and now this.
I moaned.
Any movement took a ton of strength, making me wonder why I felt so heavy and burdened since none of my bones were broken. Then I remembered the loaded weapon vest. I thought about taking it off but didn’t have the strength left.
For a brief moment I wished I had listened to Blaze and worn my seatbelt. He’s always preaching about seatbelts, but I come from the old days when we tucked them down deep in the seat cushions to keep them out of the way. Nobody in those days actually wore them.
I crawled up the embankment and sat on the side of the road, assessing my situation. The temperature was dropping quickly. I guessed it must be about ten below, with the wind chill maybe thirty below. Ice crusted on my eyelashes and my hands felt cold and stiff. I couldn’t remember where my hat and gloves were. I crawled back down into the truck and found my hunting hat, but didn’t see my gloves, the facemask, or my purse. I crammed the hat on, flipped the earflaps down, and quickly shoved my hands into my coat pockets. I felt the fire starter deep in my pocket and thought I could harm my hands with it if worse came to worse.
Looking both ways down the road, I decided to head back to the main road, which was about a half-mile away. Onni’s house was at least a mile in the opposite direction and I didn’t think I had the energy to make it that far. Feeling disoriented, I trudged down the road at a snail’s pace.
Out of the twilight, I saw lights coming toward me. I squinted, trying to recognize the driver and hoping it wasn’t George. Wouldn’t that be an awful end to the day? Wouldn’t that be an awful end to my life?
I crept off the road, attempting to hide myself behind a telephone pole until I was sure it wasn’t George. When I was sure it wasn’t a truck, I bolted back into the road and waved frantically.
The car slowed and stopped and Floyd opened the door. “Good God, Gertie. What are you doing out in this weather? You’ll freeze to death.”
“I need help,” I said, walking up. “My truck is in the ditch over there.” I pointed across the road. We could barely see the truck sunk in the ditch.
“Well, git in.”
I jumped into the car, the warmth from the heater blasting in my face. It felt great.
“Looks like you left the truck running and the lights are on.” Floyd peered out into the night. “I’ll shut everything off.” He got out, crossed the road, and a few seconds later I saw the lights in the truck go out. “It’s sure cold out there,” he said after he climbed back into the car.
As we pulled out, I remembered my purse and stun gun were somewhere in the truck, and almost asked Floyd to turn around, but changed my mind. In another few minutes it would be completely dark and no one passing would be able to see the truck. When I got back, everything would be right where I left it.
“Thank the Lord I saw you. Passed you up in Stonely. Looked like Kitty’s cousin you were talking to. You all right?” Floyd wanted to know. “You have blood all over your face.”
I reached up and noticed a cut on the back of my hand. “Must be from this,” I said showing him my hand.
“There’s a rag in the glove compartment,” he said watching the road. “Use that. It’s clean.”
I wrapped my hand in the piece of cloth. The cold had pretty much stopped the bleeding anyway. It didn’t look serious. I clicked on the overhead light and pulled the rearview mirror over to my side and checked out my face and head. Other than a mess of dried blood, I couldn’t find any injuries other than my head knot.
My truck was in a lot worse shape than I was.
I warmed my hands next to the heat register as we drove back through Stonely. “Your house is closest,” I said. “Let’s stop there and I’ll use your phone to call somebody to pull my truck out
.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Floyd turned onto his road. “Come on in and warm up,” he said when we pulled up to his house.
I heard a sound as I closed the car door, shrill yet muted, like a screech owl in the distance. “What’s that?” I asked Floyd.
“What’s what?” Floyd said, and I remembered his defective hearing aid.
“Nothing.”
“I sure am glad I ran into you,” Floyd said after we entered the house and he hung his coat on a hook by the door. “The good Lord guided me right to you.”
“Well, that’s nice, but can you guide me to your phone. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible. Oh, look at this.” I bent down and picked up a white bobby pin, the exact same kind Kitty had in her hair earlier in the day. “Has Kitty been here?”
“Say what?” Floyd had his back to me, fumbling through a kitchen drawer.
“Kitty,” I said as loud as I could. “Has Kitty been here?”
“Don’t know why you’d think that.” Floyd turned around and grinned, not a warm friendly grin, but rather a hard, cold grimacing grin.
And I couldn’t help noticing the long-bladed carving knife he held in his hand.
Chapter 14
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.
“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.
