January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) (10 page)

Twenty-Two

I squeaked and dropped
to the ground. Where that instinct came from, I didn’t know. Maybe a fainting goat as a distant ancestor?

I considered my situation from the crouch on the floor. I had been standing in front of the sofa when the rap on the door came, facing the bay windows which were jungle-thick with green plants, the closest I could get to gardening in the winter. The plants and my attention on the book explained why I hadn’t noticed the person walk to the door, right? For sure it wasn’t because my guest was actually an invisible ghost who could reconstitute herself enough to knock when she returned to feed on living souls.

I listened to my shallow breath, the nub of the carpeting digging into my sore knee. I’m sure there was a perfectly safe, normal, live human on the other side of my door.

Still, all instincts said a dark closet was the best place to be right now.

I was in mid-scurry, pointed toward the bedroom, when the front door opened. Kennie popped her head in, her glance immediately going to me on all fours scuttling across the room.

“Yoo-hoo! You said to come in, didn’t you? What’re you doing down there? Did you drop something?”

Only my heart and about five pounds of chicken fat
. “What are you doing here?”

Kennie cocked her head like a curious bird, an effect enhanced by the feathered Mardi Gras mask she’d pushed to the crown of her platinum hair. She was otherwise sedately dressed, for her, at least the parts of her I could see peeking inside the door. She wore a brown fur stole around her neck, matching gloves, and a black cloth coat. “I told you I was going to stop by, silly. To counsel your pets and your plants?”

Luna amped up her growl, but at a blinding smile from Kennie, she switched to a whine and hunkered down on the ground next to me. I felt bad for her. She was a smart dog, but like most canines, she didn’t know she could prevent many things from happening to her. For example, me putting sunglasses over her tail and taking giggling pictures of her “gonzo face,” or turning her ears inside out and telling her I could see her brains. Tiger Pop, on the other hand, took advantage of the open door to slip outside and away from Kennie.

I stood and brushed off my knees. That’s when I noticed that her fur stole was wiggling. Luna observed it too, and she growled low in her throat. I put my hand out to comfort her.

“Are you
wearing
Peter?”

Kennie’s face brightened, and she stepped fully into the house, closing the door behind her. She reached around her neck to pull the alert wiener dog off and into her arms. “I sure am,” she said, nuzzling his pointy nose. “It’s easier than carrying him when he has one of his spells. So, where should I start?”

Resistance only makes it stronger. “I don’t have many plants, just these in the window,” I lied. “And Luna.” Tiger Pop would surely not return while Kennie was still around.

“Perfect.” Kennie set Peter on the floor. He wiggled over to Luna, and they sniffed noses. Luna placed her big German Shepherd paw on Peter’s side and pushed him gently to the ground. Peter stayed there, feet in the air, tongue lolling out. Luna smiled back at him, then went into the kitchen to drink some water.

Kennie ignored both animals, instead focusing on my aloes, jade tree, ferns, ivy, African violets, and ficus. She introduced herself to each one of them and gave them a chance to say a little something about themselves. At first I was sure it was one of the craziest things I’d ever seen, but then I started to feel a bit jealous. What if they liked her more than they liked me? Or worse, what if they revealed some of my secrets? Oh my god. Crazy is contagious.

“Will this take long?” I asked Kennie.

She slipped off her coat, revealing a dress constructed of green, purple, and yellow Mardi Gras beads. “Not too long, love. I have a party to go to.”

“Mardi Gras isn’t until February.”

“Mmmhmm,” she murmured, staring at a jade tree I’d grown from a clipping as if it were telling her its life story. “It’s not a Mardi Gras party.”

Underneath the dress, she wore fishnet stockings and four-inch black heels. I had to admit, she had killer legs. I was positive I didn’t want to know any more about the party, however. I knew for a fact that Kennie did things behind closed doors that should never see the light. In fact, I’d stumbled upon a house full of such activities last May. “Are you almost done?”

She ignored me, staring fixedly at the plants as if her eyes were the sun. I began to clean my kitchen, slamming cupboards a little louder and running water a little longer than necessary. It made me itchy having Kennie in my house, and particularly watching her bestow attention to something besides herself.

“Know anything about Gary Wohnt?” I asked when I couldn’t bear her silence any longer.

“He gets out of the hospital tomorrow,” she said. “He’ll be behind the desk for a while, but he should be fine. As far as I know, they still have no idea who shot him.”

“How about the body in the ice? Do they know any more about him?”

She turned to face me. The lamplight reflected off the lip of her perched mask, giving her eyes a deep-set, glittering cast. “Maurice Jackson had two gunshot wounds in his chest, but they don’t think that’s what killed him. He had water in his lungs. You know what that means, right? Somebody shot him and then shoved him in the lake to drown.”

Twenty-Three

My restless, fretful, under-bed
sleep was fraught with nightmares of pink piñata pigs dressed in Mardi Gras streamers and strung from the ceiling, getting whacked with sticks shaped like wiener dogs. The night before, I’d ejected Kennie from the house in less than an hour, but the damage to my psyche was likely permanent.

I rolled out from under the bed and padded straight to the shower, not even bothering to brush my hair. Standing under the hot water, I focused on sending all my stress to the skin level so it could wash off like dirt. Maurice, the man who had saved me from the whangsters, had been murdered, and I hadn’t been able to locate any information about him beyond the Chicago Public Library card. The next day, Police Chief Gary Wohnt had been shot in what appeared to be a routine pull-over. In his drug-induced haze, he’d called me beautiful, which was about as desirable as finding a bug crawling in your underwear.

That was followed by one of the whangsters tossing me a copy of an obscure, cryptic letter that I didn’t know what to do with. On the Operation Offerdahl side, I needed to locate Eric, who was somehow tied to the Prospect House. In addition, I still owed Ron Sims an article on the House, something was up with Mrs. Berns, and Kennie Rogers had spent the better part of an hour cooing to my plants and sending “healing chi waves” into poor Luna’s brain. Did that just about cover it? Wait—almost forgot. I now slept under my bed, and I liked it. The only normal thing in my life was Johnny, and I hadn’t seen him in two days. It was too much. My head was ringing.

And ringing.

It wasn’t until the answering machine clicked over that I realized it was actually the phone I was hearing.
Let the machine get it
. I stretched my arms under the steaming stream of water. I had a stress knot the size of a tangerine between my shoulder blades.

I listened for the sound of a voice through the bathroom door, but none came.

Must not have been important
.

The ringing began again almost immediately. I didn’t want to abandon the hot shower for the brisk morning air. Didn’t want to dribble all over the floor. Didn’t want to face the day. This internal whining kept me through the next cycle of ringing, which ended as soon as the machine clicked on and started up the second my voice recording stopped. Whoever was calling was not going to be deterred.

Reluctantly, I turned off the water, wrapped a towel around my hair and another under my arms, and treaded softly to the kitchen, trying not to slip in my own footprints. I snatched the phone just before the machine got it.

“Hello.”

Silence.

“Hello?” I strained my ears. Was that crying I heard in the background? “Hello, this is Mira James. Do you need help?”

“Naw, hold on.” The female voice had a distinct twang, a cross between Southern and inner-city. “Timothy, you get your sister a bottle, you hear? I’m on the phone.”

I stood, water dripping off me and pooling at my feet. I held the towel closed over my chest and balanced the phone in the nook of my shoulder so I had a free hand to crank up the thermostat. Sixty-two degrees is great when you’re saving energy but brutal when you’re wet and there’s snow outside.

“Yeah, this Mira James?”

“Yup.” I refrained from adding
still
on the end of my sentence. The baby’s wail grew louder in the background.

“This is Taunita House. You called me yesterday? Left a message looking for Maurice Jackson?”

My heart picked up, and I looked around the kitchen for a pen and paper. “You’re in Chicago?”

“That’s where I live, but I’m actually in Minnesota now. I’m trying to track Maurice down. His kids want to see him. So do I.”

I paused with my hand halfway to the notepad magnetized to the side of the fridge. I gulped, feeling like I’d just swallowed a cold rock. I had made the connection, but at what cost? Maurice had kids, at least two. And a girlfriend, who apparently had no idea he was dead. “Maurice Jackson is your boyfriend? Can you describe him?”

I heard the shrug over the phone line. “About five-ten, hundred forty-five pounds. Skinny sucker, skinnier than me. Turns twenty-three in February. Kept his hair trimmed short, earring in his left ear. Was wearing a green Land’s End parka I bought him for Christmas when he left. He took off three weeks ago to look up some old relatives in Minnesota, he said. He hasn’t called in two days, though, and his work leave has about dried up. It’s time for him to stop this nonsense and come home, but since he clearly doesn’t have the sense for that, I’m coming to get him.”

The rock dropped into my stomach. That described the Maurice I’d helped at the library—and whose corpse I’d skated over—to a T.

“Have you tried all his friends?”

“I have. And now I’m trying you. In your message you said you were looking for him, too. Why?”

The crying in the background had stopped. Now I heard a giggle. “How many kids do you and Maurice have?”

“Two,” she said impatiently. “Timothy is three years. Alessa was born last year Christmas. Maurice said it was his present for me. I told him he better get me something that makes less noise next holiday.” She laughed ruefully, then her voice grew serious. “I miss him. Have you seen him?”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ram the truth into her ear with her kids laughing in the background. I told her the version that I could bear. “I live in Battle Lake, northwest of the Cities? Maurice came into the library where I work last week. He left his Chicago library card, and I was hoping to track him down.”

“Well, that’s some service,” she said wryly. “If he stops by again, tell him Taunita and the babies want him to call, okay?”

“Will do,” I said, feeling like a monster for not coming clean. I kept that feeling with me as I finished getting ready that morning, and it was hung so thickly over me that I almost walked out of the house without noticing my plants. Something was off with them.

It took a lot of squinting before I realized what it was: they looked healthier than they ever had.

Twenty-Four

The parking spot immediately
in front of the Fortune Café was open, which was the first good thing that had happened since I’d woken up. I steered my Toyota snugly between a Ford and a Chevy pickup, one rusty and the other spanking new but road-splattered and sporting a Ducks Unlimited sticker in the rear window. A handful of people on the street took mincing steps as they went about their day, trying their hardest to stay upright as the two previous days’ brief thaw—warmer during the day, freezing at night—had turned the sidewalks into treacherous frozen sheets. I chose to not lift my feet off the ground, instead skating over the top of the greenish-black ice.

When I pulled open the door to the Café, I was immediately awash in the warm scent of freshly ground dark roast and cinnamon scones, and the happy burble of gathering people. Buddy Holly was crooning softly in the background. I yanked off my mittens, tapped the winter off my boots, and got in line. I didn’t recognize any of the half-dozen or so people sprinkled around the main room, though I spotted
Bernie Nordman, co-owner of Ace Hardware, make her way into the computer/library/board game back room with a steaming mug in one hand and what appeared to be a cherry Danish in the other. My stomach growled so loud that the woman in front of me turned and flashed a smile.

I grinned back, embarrassed. When my turn came, I knew exactly what I wanted. “Everything bagel, toasted, with Greek olive cream cheese and a slice of fresh tomato, a large green tea with honey and soy milk, and maybe a cherry Danish for later?”

“Hi to you, too,” Nancy said, grinning. She owned the Café along with her partner, Sidney. Sid was not a people person by nature but was a brilliant pastry chef and kept mainly to the kitchen. Nancy was friendly and never seemed to become stressed, no matter how many people were in line. She’d helped me through a tough patch in July, and we’d been fast friends ever since. “You must be hungry.”

I blushed for the second time in under four minutes. “Sorry. You seem so busy. I didn’t want to waste your time with chit-chat.”

“Like talk about a police chief who was shot, or a mayor with a strange new business, for example?”

I pointed my chin at the gorgeous row of plants lining her front window. “You obviously don’t need Kennie’s help. I’ve never seen your plants look better.”

“Kennie
was
here,” Nancy said, sounding as incredulous as I felt. “I think that’s why they look so good. Maybe she finally found her thing.”

I was surprised to feel another pang of jealousy. Gardening had been
my
thing. I loved digging my hands into the dirt in the summer, dropping seeds into the thick black earth, watering them, mulching them, petting the soft shoots when they first popped up. Weeding was my meditation. Come winter, I’d started a mini-greenhouse herb garden in the back bedroom, which I’d intentionally hidden from Kennie. I felt the jealousy sprout and took a deep, deliberate breath. Really, what was to be envious about? The more love the plants received, the better.

“Maybe,” I said agreeably. Well, almost agreeably. Okay, I was still pissy.

Nancy continued to talk as she poured the hot water into the travel mug I’d brought and popped the two halves of my bagel into the toaster. “Know anything about Gary?”

“Kennie said he’s getting out of the hospital today, but she didn’t know anything about who might have shot him.”

“As uptight as he can be, it’ll be nice to have him back, what with all the robberies.” She ducked her head into the counter fridge and came out with a tub of cream cheese.

“Robberies?” My stomach growled again. The Fortune’s cream cheese was amazing, the perfect blend of creaminess accented with salty slices of green and black olives.

Nancy nodded. “Empty cabins around the lake. Whoever is doing it is taking TVs and computers, some kitchen appliances if they look valuable, I guess. They’re not damaging the cabins except for the new one that went up on the north side of Silver Lake. Almost over in your neck of the woods. They trashed that one.”

I knew the area well. I’d had a run-in with a scalped corpse there a few months back. The memory made me shudder.

Nancy glanced at me sympathetically, as if she were reading my mind. She slid the wax paper–wrapped bagel into a small brown bag, and stacked a cherry Danish and a lemon Danish on top of that, another thin sheet of wax paper separating the two. She winked. “For lunch.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the bag and sliding her a five. The food was ridiculously inexpensive. “Wait! I almost forgot. I owe Curtis some treats. Can you make up a bag for me to take to the Sunset?”

Another five dollars later, I was out the door with two bags in one hand and my travel mug filled with steaming tea in the other. I was in the process of transferring it all to one hand so I could open the Fortune’s door with the other when it swung open. In walked Mrs. Berns.

“I have had just about the most terrible day of my life,” she said to me, as if she’d expected me to be standing exactly where I was.

“What happened?” I looked her up and down, checking for an injury or torn clothing.

She scowled. “Is that any of your business?”

“What? You just … forget it.” I would have thrown my hands in the air if they weren’t so full. Something was clearly still off with Mrs. Berns, and she was going to tell me in her own sweet time. “Are you coming to work today?”

She stretched her arms. “Doesn’t sound too exciting. What else can you offer?”

I sighed. “I’m touring the new microbrewery in Swederland as soon as I close the library. It’s part of a small case from Litchfield.”

“Now you’re cooking with Crisco! Pick me up at five o’clock.”

She held the door open for me as I eased out and mostly slid to my car. I balanced the bag and the tea on the Toyota’s roof and brought them in with me as soon as I had the door open. I let my car reheat while I devoured half my bagel, loving the chewiness of the fresh-baked roll, the cream cheese oozing out the sides, the sharp earthiness of the tomato the perfect foil for it all. The second half was polished off before I reached the nursing home. I ran the treats into a grateful Curtis then pulled into the library parking lot fifteen minutes early.

All in all, I’d had worse mornings. At least, I had until I saw Bad Brad standing outside the library door, hands in pockets, head hung like a dog on the way to the vet.