January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) (20 page)

Fifty

My breath was a
full second behind me, slamming into my back as my eyes frantically tried to take in everything. The dirty windows gave the inside of the cabin a smudgy, underwater feel. The single room was bare of all furniture except a pile of wood and a pot-bellied stove that turned the space into a sauna and a rickety table surrounded by four mismatched chairs. Hammerhead was sitting in one chair, Vienna in another.

Niall, my brewery tour guide, was seated in a third. Eric was standing behind them, had probably been pacing before I rushed the scene. Taunita was tied in a bundle on the floor in the far corner, unmoving, her face turned away from me, her hands limp. Alessa was next to her, sucking on a pacifier, a bottle filled with what looked like cola leaning against her chunky little thigh. She had one possessive little hand on her mom. Her eyes appeared swollen, and I could smell her dirty diaper from across the room.

Everyone but Taunita looked up when I flew in, their faces a palette of anger and surprise. Vienna moved immediately to the door and slammed it shut behind me and leaned against it, her arms crossed.

“You’re in on this?”

She ignored me.

“Who are you?” Niall asked, standing. He was wearing a wife beater, which revealed a deep purple octopus tattoo curling down his right arm.

Eric was breathing heavily, clenching and unclenching his fists. He must have barely beaten me here. The air was still charged with whatever heated argument they’d been having when I barged in.

“That’s the detective I was telling you about. She’s got the fife.”

Niall shook his head. “You’ve messed it all up, the whole thing, for a
fife
?!”

“Not just a fife.” Eric tugged on the barbell above his eye. “It’s my family legacy.”

Niall smacked Eric alongside the head with enough force that he almost fell into the stove. On the ground, Taunita’s form shifted, making me realize I’d been holding my breath.
She was alive
. Relief washed over me, making me weak.

“Now what?” Niall asked. “You think about that?”

Eric held his hand over his bleeding nose. His eyes glowed like dynamite fuses. “Now I go back for the fife. I still have one of the kids.”

“Except now both of these women have seen me. Dammit, I knew you weren’t worth it, Offerdahl.”

“Who told you about this cheap land?” he whined. “Who connected you with all the buyers?”

Was Niall an O’Callaghan, or just someone who had the ear of an O’Callaghan and used his access to convince them to open a brewery here? I inched closer to Alessa, who was still in her footie pajamas. The diaper smell intensified. Poor baby probably hadn’t been changed since they’d been abducted. I didn’t have a plan, exactly, except to comfort Alessa and her mom until the police got here. I prayed Taunita was conscious, though I wasn’t hopeful.

“You. Brownie. You look familiar.”

I stopped in my tracks. “You led a brewery tour that I was on. Is your real name Niall?”

“Bill.” He continued as if we were on a first date. “I’m the graphic designer for O’Callaghan’s. Maybe I mentioned that in the tour? I did the same job for their carpet company, and it was my idea that they start this brewery. As you just heard, Eric helped us to find the cheap land. Would have been a great gig with a little drug running on the side to keep things interesting, except this shit got greedy.”

He lunged at Eric again, and Eric tripped over himself trying to get away. It worried me, to see how scared Eric was of Bill. Hammerhead watched it all impassively. Vienna was fidgeting at the doorway, shifting from foot to foot.

“It’s my inheritance!” Eric said.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” Bill said, matter-of-factly. “And you’re the reason I now have to kill all three of these people. Or, I should say, why
you
have to kill them. If you hope to walk again, that is. We’ve got too much money riding on this. Those drugs don’t grow on trees, you know? There’s investors I got to pay off. Hammer, you guarantee he does what he’s supposed to do. Chop the bodies up for all I care, just don’t leave a mess here.”

He grabbed a black ski jacket off a chair and strode toward the door, his cold authority chilling me. “Oh, and her, too.” He tossed a glance at Vienna.

“What? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Except tell people about this place. You had one job, and that was as lookout, not hostess. You messed up a good thing, sweetheart.”

She opened and closed her mouth like a landed fish.

“Don’t look so stupid,” Bill said, brushing past her. “Eric said he saw you showing some old lady around. Had to be how Brownie here found us, right?”

He glanced at me. My poker face must have given me away. “That’s what I thought.” He slipped out the door, slamming it behind him.

I started talking fast, the sweat running down my spine. “You’re not guilty of anything right now, Eric. You kill us, though, and you’re a murderer.”

He looked at me blearily. “Shit, I’m already a murderer. It should have ended at Maurice, then that damn backwoods sheriff almost catches me with a trunk of Oxy. Plus, now I got this little kidnapping. What’s four more bodies?” He reached into his waistband and pulled out a gun, a sleek black semiautomatic, glittering and efficient. “If I don’t do it, I can’t live nowhere no how. Bill has eyes everywhere. You watch the door for me, Hammer.”

The giant was emotionless. He strode to the door, pushing Vienna toward the table. She was as pale as winter, her eyes wide circles of shock.

My voice was hoarse. I felt like I was choking on words, not sure which to choose, knowing that four lives rested on me picking correctly. “Kidnapping carries a whole lot shorter sentence than murder.”

“I don’t plan to be caught for either.”

“I don’t believe you can shoot us in cold blood.”

He snorted, aiming the gun at me sideways, gangster-style.

“Dang, Eel,” Hammer growled, his first words since I’d charged into the cabin. “Bill said not here. Then we just got a mess to clean up. Go do it out back in the woods.”

I was wondering if this is what Orpheus’s last moments had been like, fumbled between inept crooks who were trying to steal what was rightfully his. As long as we were talking, though, we weren’t dying. I twisted the skin under my arm to give me something to focus on other than the panic. “Let me get Taunita up. I’ll carry the baby. We can walk to the woods. It’ll be quicker.”

I hurried to Taunita’s side before he could argue. I was grateful to find that she was not only conscious, but had no visible wounds other than deep bruising over her right cheek and a black eye. I didn’t know how much longer we had, but her being unharmed increased our odds of survival from zero to around a tenth of a percent.

“Keep her hands tied,” Eric warned.

I unknotted the rope around her ankles and helped her to her feet. Her eyes were grateful but bruised. “The police have Timothy,” I whispered. “He’s safe.”

A sob escaped her, and she fell into me.

“Hurry up!” Eric pushed us with the butt of his gun.

I made sure Taunita could stand before I scooped up Alessa. She felt soggy and light, her tiny body hot and wiggly in my arms. “Hey, sweetheart,” I said. It was all I had. I opened my jacket and zipped her inside, where she squirmed and whimpered and stank, only her head visible through the neck of my coat.

I gently held Taunita’s elbow to steady her. “I’ll lead the way,” I told Eric.

My words sounded brave, but I felt like I was walking above myself, looking down to see our sad little trio marching to our death. I kissed the top of Alessa’s head and held her tight, the honey scent of her baby shampoo thick in my nostrils, laced with the sour reek of urine.

Taunita leaned into me. Alessa’s grubby little fists bunched up my shirt.

We stepped into the glare of the sunlight, the brightness blinding after the murk of the cabin.

Something even brighter than the diamond glint of the sun caught my eye, and then again, from a different angle, followed by a third glare from a new angle. I had only one second to guess what it was. I pushed Taunita down, curled Alessa into my arms, and fell over them both.

The raging thunder of a gunfight rained over our heads like judgment.

Fifty-One

“I knew she was
no good,” Mrs. Berns stage whispered. She was wearing her cap guns, had in fact told me she hadn’t taken them off except to sleep since her grandkids had arrived two days ago, coincidentally the same day I’d charged into the grow room. Apparently, they appreciated Mrs. Berns exactly as she was.

“You knew no such thing,” I argued. Because of her grandkids’ arrival, we hadn’t had a chance to speak since the shoot-out, an old-West style gunfight of Battle Lake’s finest against Hammerhead and Eric. Gary hadn’t seemed happy, exactly, when he’d first spotted me stepping outside of the cabin, but at least he hadn’t shot me. Eric had taken one in the elbow and another in the shoulder. Hammer had not been so lucky and was now sporting a toe tag. Vienna, using her finely honed hunting instincts, had ducked about the same time as me and gotten away without a scratch.

Once taken into custody, Eric refused to go on record for killing Maurice, though Kennie informed me that Stingray was in the middle of negotiating a deal, narcing on Eric, and admitting to robbing cabins and thrashing Curtis when the old man had caught him and Eric trying to rob the Apothecary. In return, he’d been offered leniency on drug possession charges.

Bill had already been extradited to Chicago for a whole raft of drug-related crimes he’d left behind. For now, the O’Callaghan’s brewery was set to re-open once the police were done thoroughly investigating the premises, but it remained to be seen whether anyone in the family knew about the drugs being dealt right under their noses. If O’Callaghan’s could be traced back to the influx of OxyContin and fentanyl into Otter Tail County, they would go down hard. I kind of hoped they weren’t in on it. The world needed more ice castles and chocolate stout.

“Did too,” Mrs. Berns said. “That’s why I dumped her. I don’t roll with criminals.”

“She’s not going to be rolling with anyone for a while.” Vienna was currently awaiting trial on assisted kidnapping charges. Her ties to the OxyContin trade were not yet clear, but it appeared as though Bill had hired her to be his eyes in the woods, keeping track of anyone who wandered the property. She may have done some dealing, too.

“Shh.”

I glanced down at Timothy, who was standing at the pew next to me, and I blushed. There’s something about having to be shushed by a toddler that truly mortifies, especially since we were likely at the funeral of his great-great-great-great-grandfather. It took Barnaby Offerdahl’s notarized will—retrieved from the hanged man’s fife and naming Orpheus Jackson executor of his estate should anything happen to Barnaby and heir to the estate should anything happen to Barnaby’s daughter—to convince the county coroner to exhume the hanged man’s grave. It would take weeks to verify through DNA that he was indeed Orpheus Jackson, and that Timothy and Alessa were direct descendants of his. My money was on a happy ending.

If all went as planned, the children stood to inherit the land surrounding the Prospect House. Given that most of it was lakefront property, it was worth at least half a million. At least that’s what Chuck Litchfield told me when I spilled the whole story. Turns out he’d hired me to find Eric because Eric’s father, Gregory, had been hospitalized for a stroke the previous week. Gregory was still hanging on but looked like he wouldn’t last through the month. As per his will, which Chuck Litchfield had drawn up, Eric was to be contacted and informed if his inheritance became imminent. Litchfield had kept his motives on the down-low because Gregory had stipulated that no one would know of the land changing hands except Chuck and Eric. I guess old habits die hard.

Because the Prospect House had been rightfully bought and sold at least four times since Gregory’s ancestors killed Orpheus to obtain it, it was unclear what would happen to the structure, though Taunita said she and the kids had no interest in it. If lineage was established, she would now be executor of the estate for her children, until they were old enough to decide if they wanted to sell the land or keep it in the family. In the meanwhile, Chuck Litchfield was able to uncover some liquid assets of the Offerdahl estate. He promised to work on obtaining a loan for Taunita with the assets as collateral so she had money to raise the kids until all the legal aspects were worked out. He was also the one who helped her to organize today’s funeral for Orpheus, and tomorrow’s for Maurice, both at the Battle Lake Lutheran Church. He said it was the least the town could do for the two men. I might have pegged Chuck wrong.

In the meanwhile, Sid and Nancy had offered Taunita and the babies the apartment over the coffee shop rent free and given her a temp job as a barista. She paid back the forty bucks she’d borrowed from me after her first shift. As a bonus, I’d agreed to watch the babies at night until she could make other arrangements. I sincerely hoped she would not be able to.

Taunita stood on the other side of Timothy during Orpheus’s service, bright tears streaming down her face, Alessa in her arms. She’d lost Maurice. He’d been her whole family, other than her kids. She didn’t have anywhere to go and I’m sure had mixed feelings about staying here until everything was straightened out. I wished I could ease her loss, but only time has that power.

At least there had been a good turnout for today’s funeral, and I knew there’d be even more tomorrow. A few of the attendees were ambulance-chasers, but most came because it was the right thing to do. Barnaby Offerdahl’s brother had stolen Orpheus’s inheritance and likely his life. His brother’s ancestor had then done the same to Orpheus’s ancestor, and very nearly gotten away with it. Justice had finally been done, possibly with the help of Elizabeth Offerdahl’s spirit. Carter and I had spoken about the opening attic door and the falling papers since Eric had been arrested. Neither of us had actually seen a ghost, but we weren’t willing to write off the possibility that the Prospect House had an otherworldly protector.

As my eyes took in the full pews, I couldn’t help but notice how ridiculously glossy and gorgeous the plants lining the window wells were looking. I felt the familiar jealousy burn.
Kennie
.

When the service was over, we filed toward the basement for the funeral meal and I passed Kennie talking to a particularly perky-
looking fern in the hallway. She was wearing all black, but Kennie-style: leather pants and a fur coat, plus sky-high stilettos. Atop her head rested a demure hat with netting and sleek black feathers.

“What’re you saying to that plant?” I demanded.

She turned, a guilty expression on her face. She quickly wiped it off. “Why, Mira! You just can’t accept that you’re not the only one in town with a green thumb.”

For some reason, her comment made me glance at her thumb, which was presently blue. I grabbed her wrist and yanked back the loose sleeve of her fur coat. There it was. A catheter bag strapped to her arm, the hose leading to her wrist. It was filled with a Smurf-blue liquid. I sniffed it.

“Miracle Gro! I knew you were up to no good.”

She put her hand over my mouth and dragged me into a corner, making smiling “everything is fine here” faces to the people walking past. “I am a plant healer,” she hissed into my ear.

“You’re a plant liar,” I squeaked through her fingers.

She pressed me against the wall, glancing right and left. Her expression grew calculated. “Have it your way. But if I’m not doing my plant and animal psychology, I might go back to renegade makeovers. Or home bikini waxes.” She glanced at my crotch area, her eyebrows raised. “You’ll never know when I might drop by.”

“Fine,” I said, exasperated. I didn’t want her to know I was actually happy. In fact, I was thrilled to find out she was not an actual plant whisperer. I still wore a smile on my face as I stepped down the church basement steps and smack into Johnny. And his blonde girlfriend. My heart cracked.

I glanced from one to the other, for some strange reason feeling guilty even though he was the one who’d technically cheated. Johnny was as gorgeous as ever, wearing a light green button-up shirt and dark tie. The woman I’d seen him embracing in Bonnie & Clyde’s alley was as strikingly blonde as him, her features carved out of ivory. Probably they were perfect for each other. I turned, ready to head back up the stairs. I’d taken about as much pain as I was willing to for the month. I didn’t want to be broken up with in a church basement.

I felt a gentle hand at my wrist.

“Mira, have you met my cousin Corinne? She was at my practice last week.”

Something in his voice made me turn. “She’s your cousin?” Up close, I could see the resemblance: the same hair, stunning blue eyes, and plump curving lips. She was a knock-out.

He nodded. I couldn’t read his expression. Was he mad? Disappointed? And why was he getting on one knee?

Before my thoughts could organize, he gently leaned his shoulder into my stomach and stood, hoisting me over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He began walking up the steps, and the entire basement erupted in a cheer. He kept walking, opening the door, stepping outside into the ice crystal-perfect day, away from the church, and toward his house. The smell of winter air filled my nostrils, and the cool lemon sun glowed overhead. People were staring, some of them laughing and pointing, others looking at me with something like admiration, still others acting like it was just another day in the life.

“I imagine you’ve guessed that Mrs. Berns told me what you thought you saw, and why you haven’t been returning my calls,” he finally said, only a little winded. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

I didn’t say anything, just enjoying the ride on his shoulders. It had been that sort of week.

“If one of us wants out of this relationship, we tell the other. No cheating. No lying. No drama. Because you know what? I’m always going to treat you well. But so help me, if you take me for granted, or assume the worst about me, I don’t know if we can make this work. Understood?”

He set me down on his front stoop two blocks from the church. Before I could answer, I felt his mouth on mine, hot and seeking. His hands followed, and then his hips pressed into me, pinning me against the door. He kissed me deeply, and then pulled back abruptly to open the door, throw me back over his shoulder, lock the door behind us, and carry me to the bedroom. His house was strong and neat, with guitars leaning against the wall and books lining the shelves. It smelled like vanilla.

Johnny threw me onto the bed. The down comforter held me like a cloud, and sparkling sunlight filtered in through the curtains. I’d been to his house a handful of times, but never in his bed. He tore off his jacket, and then stripped off his tie and shirt. He never dragged his eyes off of me except for the brief moments when cloth separated our gazes.

“I love you. I want to be with you. I want you always. Nod if you understand.”

I nodded. At least I think I did. My whole body had been taken over by a buzzing sound that started between my thighs but had since spread to every centimeter of my body, a warm, honey-liquid feeling that warned me I was about to have a really, really good time.

He kneeled on the bed. The sun shone behind him, lighting up his curly blonde hair like a halo, perfectly outlining his sculpted shoulders and arms. His hands were gripped into fists. He had been worried, angry even. But he hadn’t left me.

In fact, he’d come after me.

I sat up and yanked him on top of me, both of us falling back into the covers in a passionate, laughing, hopeful pile.

In that moment, I vowed to reconsider how much better it was on top of the bed than under it. And with Johnny than without.