June Bug (7 page)

After I clicked on “Send,” I ran a search on “Taser.” I didn’t really know what they were beyond a legal way for me to defend myself without having to go through five years of tae kwon do. Turns out they shot little electric bullets, nonlethal and nonpenetrating, which resulted in “Electro-Muscular Disruption.” I gathered this was cop-speak for “You’ll be so buggered by electricity that it’ll be half an hour before you can slap a mosquito off your own ass.”

Unfortunately, the gun-like Tasers were out of my price range, so I opted for a fifty-five-dollar Z-Force stun gun, which promised to deliver 300,000 volts to any creep who got within arm’s reach. It looked like a mean black vibrator with two metal prongs at the end. I knew I’d have a hard time not testing it out, but I had a feeling fate would provide me with that opportunity soon, and I was old enough to know you should always listen to your hunches. I paid twenty-five extra bucks for same-day shipping on my order, shut down the computer, and took off for Bonnie & Clyde’s.

Once on the road, I cranked my window as far open as it would go to let the frog songs and sweet green breeze wash in. Minnesota is an incredible place to live, but we natives learn at a very young age that for this privilege we must pay a tithe, usually in blood. We’re first indoctrinated while we’re still in diapers. A summer day spent in the shallow, still part of the lake results in a chocolate-chip-shaped leech nesting between our peas-in-a-pod toes. This leads to the wood tick that attaches itself to the front of our ear lobe when we’re five. We think it’s the closest we’ll come to an earring for many years, so through luck and cunning we manage to hide it from our mom until it’s a corpulent gray blob, its legs ridiculously small on its blood-stressed body.

Interspersed with all of this are the mosquitoes, which are there when the snow isn’t, and when winter arrives, it brings with it winds so fierce that school is sometimes canceled simply because it’s too cold to step outside. We learn the price of Minnesota’s beauty at an early age. It’s not a place for the faint of heart, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s a quiet understanding of these dynamics that makes every native Minnesotan welcome at Bonnie & Clyde’s, one of two bars and four total businesses in Clitherall, if you count the post office as a business.

It was only a seven-minute ride from Battle Lake to Clitherall, and I went sixty the whole way. The only time I slowed was when I passed Delbert Larsen on the shoulder of Highway 210 driving his riding lawn mower to the bar. He had gotten his license revoked after his fifth DWI in May, but he wasn’t letting that put a dent in his good times. I waved as I passed, and he made the classic “old man shaking his fist in the air” gesture back at me. Crabby bastard.

When I entered Clyde’s, the cigarette smoke and pounding notes of Kid Rock raced for purchase in all my orifices big and small. The smoke won, but the music got my hips moving. I tried to look cool, staring back at all those who glanced at the jangling of the door opening, but I needn’t have bothered. The place was empty except for Ruby, who was the bartender and owner, Jedediah Heike, and Johnny Leeson.

My heart pumped some extra blood to my cooter at the sight of Johnny, and I took a hard left to the bar instead of saying hi. I envied those women who could flirt—those easy-smiling, hair-flipping, ass-shaking sirens. I just wasn’t comfortable putting myself out there like that. The best I could rustle up, when confronted by an attractive male, was an attention-deflecting sarcastic remark and a stiff smile. If my dating track record was any indication, this was exactly the mating dance of the emotionally unavailable male for whom foreplay is a card game. I needed to find a guy who could see past my social ineptitude to the magnificent me, like Jeff Wilson had done. “Hi, Ruby. Got any specials tonight?”

Ruby ignored me like she ignored all her customers. She shoved beer glasses upside down on the rotating scrubbers in the first of three sinks she used to wash barware. The second sink rinsed the soap off, and the third sink sanitized with some blue cleansing agent. Or at least it would have, if the toxicity of Clitherall’s water didn’t create a chemical reaction that made the blue tablet black and the water smell like old broccoli.

Two years earlier, a sales rep had come to Clyde’s trying to sell a gross of cocktail napkins that patrons could splash a drop or two of their drink onto to see if it had been spiked with any date-rape drugs. That was the only time I had ever seen Ruby laugh out loud. She knew the nitrates in the town water neutralized everything but alcohol, for good or bad. It was part of the charm of the place, and besides, Clitherall was the home of the oldest married couple in the five-state area. The water couldn’t be all bad.

Ruby swiped her wet hands on her jeans, tipped up one of the still-dripping beer glasses, and poured me a Lite draft. I thanked her, slid two singles onto the low spot of the bar, and watched her hands carefully. She had a way of taking my money and assuming her tip without me ever seeing it. The game was worth the 80 percent gratuity.

Ruby was in her early seventies and had owned Bonnie & Clyde’s for decades. Her husband had built the place, and she’d kept it running herself after he died. The inside was a visual disharmony of wood and lights, with holes in the floor that allowed customers to watch Ruby change kegs below, and bathroom doors that didn’t lock. The chairs were plastic, elementary-school style, and the tables were mismatched, some of them handmade and some of them folding card tables. This comfortable rot was contrasted with a sparkly, modern jukebox, pristine pool tables, and a buttery, elegant main bar.

I was considering how long I should let the beer sit in my glass before the alcohol killed the nitrates, or vice versa, when there was a tap on my shoulder.

“Mira, hey, cool. Why don’t you come hang out with me and Johnny?”

I smiled at Jed, thinking I’d like to hang
off
of Johnny for a while. For a minute, I was worried that Johnny must be a pothead if he hung around with Jed, but then I remembered I hung out with Jed sometimes, too. I think the three of us didn’t bump into one another more often because Johnny spent most nights playing in a local band and giving piano lessons to old ladies and young girls. He was a Battle Lake native, and he had left for college in Wisconsin to study plant biology about five years earlier. I don’t know if he finished his degree or not, but I did know he returned to his hometown the summer before under less-than-happy circumstances. My local friend Gina said he got kicked out of college for knifing a guy or stealing rare plants from the college greenhouse, she wasn’t sure which. I refused to believe either.

I leaned over to check out the man for all seasons over by the pool table, admiring the thick ropes in his neck and arm as he tipped his head back to finish his beer. Johnny was bright and healthy and open. Clearly, he was not my type. With the exception of my short tryst with Jeff, I went for the dark brooders, the guys who disguised vapidity as introspection.

I even went out with one attractive slacker because he liked dark chocolate and I wanted to believe that was proof of his intelligence. I could no longer buy that illusion after he let me read his poetry. It all rhymed, and every poem was about the band Van Halen. The only one that I can remember specifically was titled “David Lee Roth, Thou Art the Flame to My Moth.”

No, Johnny would definitely stand out in the short lineup of my past loves, but I couldn’t deny his earthy appeal. I wanted to get down and dirty with him, literally. I decided to take this bull by the horns as I followed Jed back to the table. Seeing Johnny twice in one day without having to stalk him must be a sign. I could be cool. Right?

“Hey, Jay, you see Mira was here?” Jed said.

I held out my hand and smiled into Johnny’s eyes. “Twice in one day. It must be fate.”

At least, that’s what I swear to God I meant to say. Unfortunately, it came out as, “Twice in one day. This lust can’t wait.”

I honestly shouldn’t be let out of the house some days. Thank God I’m a mumbler when I’m nervous. It’s nature’s way of balancing out the fact that dorky stuff rushes out of my mouth like vomit when I’m feeling awkward.

Johnny held on to my hand and leaned his ear close to my mouth. “What?”

I breathed the clean spice of his thick, sun-lightened hair, and lightning bolts shot out of my crotch. If smoke started rising from my nether region, I would never be able to look him in the eye again.

“I just said it’s nice to see you again. You know, here at Bonnie & Clyde’s, where before it was at the Last Resort.” Hmm. That put me one sentence past cool.

He nodded. “Yah. Say, I enjoyed that article on Jeff Wilson.”

Jesus. He gardened, smoldered,
and
read. I was way out of my league.

“And I plant your stuff in my garden.” I followed this with a twinkly guffaw and filled my mouth with beer before I said something else stupid.

For his part, Johnny smiled brilliantly and turned back to the pool game. When he was out of earshot, I turned to Jed. “Why am I such a dork?”

“Dorks rule, man. Wanna get high?”

“No thanks, Jed. How’re you doing tonight?”

“Except for a little too much time with the Man, I’m good. Shit, I thought they were coming for me.”

I pulled my attention from Johnny, who was leaning provocatively into the pool table as he lined up the purple four ball with the corner pocket. “The cops?”

“The cop,” Jed corrected me, running his hand nervously through his curly hair. I noticed he was wearing a black Pink Floyd T-shirt with a rainbow prism etched on the front. “Chief Gary Wohnt came by the Last Resort, dude, and his cherries were on. I had my stash flushed before he got to the main office. Good thing I only had a dime bag.”

“He came to bust you?”

“Naw, and that’s the kicker!” Jed slapped his knee. “He wanted a list of who we rented dive gear to. That fake body they found in Whiskey? It was wearing a Last Resort wetsuit. We stamp the name on every one of ’em. Right on the butt.”

I wanted to laugh with Jed, but every time someone talked about that body, I fumed. I felt like it was a big joke at my expense, and somebody needed to pay. “So who
did
you provide gear for?”

“Aw, some tourists staying at Shangri-La, a couple staying at the Last Resort, and you.”

“No one you recognized?”

“No one except Jason Blunt. You know him, don’t you? I think he used to date Sunny back in the day. Boy, could that dude put away a bong. He had a mean streak like a mule if you crossed him, though.”

My heart made its way out of my chest and lumped in my throat. “Jason rented a dive suit from you?”

“Three dive suits, three BCs, three of everything, the day before you got yours. Why? You think he planted the body?”

I suddenly felt very tired. My cocky spell had passed, and I had had enough Jason Blunt for one day. “That’s totally possible, Jed.” The question was, why? It must be connected to the jewels he was after. I had to find out more.

I brought my unfinished beer up to the counter and saw that my two dollars had disappeared even though Ruby had been at the far end of the bar the entire time I’d been talking to Johnny and Jed. I said a quick goodbye to both, and thought for a moment that Johnny’s eyes lingered on my mouth as he smiled at me. No, must have been the lighting. Anyhow, I was too concerned about Jason’s current mischief to have more than a parting lustful thought about Johnny Leeson.

I slept fitfully that night and woke at least four times, wishing I had my stun gun under my pillow. On the fifth wake-up, I seriously considered moving myself to a corner of the spare room under all of Sunny’s stored junk. An intruder would not look for me there, and I could catch some hidden z’s. I quickly discarded that idea, though, refusing to be scared in my own bed in my own home.

At four a.m., I gave up on wrestling with the sandman and took my knotty head outside. The air was hot on cool, the leftovers of a ninety-degree day losing out to the quiet morning chill. I could feel the repercussions of the previous day’s heat in the tightness of my sunburned nose and shoulders as I stretched. Outside, the animals didn’t know whether to make night or morning sounds, and my presence threw another wrench into their song. I sat on the front deck, closing my eyes so I could better hear the rustlings in the woods and smell the mystery of Whiskey Lake and an early summer morning.

I soon realized I wasn’t comfortable sitting, either. I had too much nervous energy. I got off my butt, the sweat shorts I had thrown on wet from the dew, and walked past the barn down to my vegetable garden near the lake. I had tilled this area in April, and though I still had to fight the pigweed and thistle for ownership, it was turning out to be a good location with a full day of sun.

The marigolds I had recently planted were the tallest growths in the garden. I could smell their acridness even with their orange and yellow heads closed to the bright moon. I traditionally planted a thick square of marigolds and catnip first thing around all my vegetable gardens. With their natural insecticide properties, they were soldiers guarding the hairy innocence of my zucchini, carrot, bean, pea, and corn sprouts.

This year I had also planted dill, for two reasons. First, Johnny had told me it would repel aphids as well as the spider mites attracted by my marigolds and would draw the tomato worms away from my heirloom Red Brandywines. Second, although I had a pretty green thumb, I could not grow cucumbers to save my soul. Try as I might in many different soils with many different varieties, from Tendergreen Burpless to White Spineless, I couldn’t get the seedlings to grow much past germination. I figured the dill would serve as an enticement, like, “If you grow, I’ll let you be a pickle.” Pickling was the Valhalla of the vegetable world.

It was my mom who had turned me on to gardening. Every summer, she tilled up a huge section of open land between the outbuildings on the hobby farm and planted every vegetable that would grow in west central Minnesota—and some, like garlic and sweet potatoes, that wouldn’t. She was a gifted and optimistic gardener, and although I hated planting and weeding when I was younger, I loved to watch her face when she worked. All the lines left her forehead and around her mouth, and although she never looked happy, she looked peaceful, like she was in the right place at the right time. I only saw her look like that when she was in her garden.

I stepped through the opening I had left in my bug-fighting border and mucked over to the far side of the garden. The black dirt was speckled with dew and still warm from the sun rays of the day before. My toes squished through the top layer of light dew-mud and into the looser earth below. I kneeled at my row of carrots, one knee on each side. The shaggy sprouts were thick; I didn’t have enough patience to plant the microscopic seeds carefully or the heart to thin them after they sprouted, so I treated carrots as an ornamental crop.

The moon was full enough for me to distinguish carrot from weed, and I quickly got my patter down, popping the thistle and leafy spurge easily from the moist ground. As I worked, my knees sank into the dirt and my mind focused. Jason was back in town, and he had brought with him Samantha Krupps, a bleached blonde with a Jersey accent who was likely related to the woman who “lost” the necklace in Whiskey Lake decades ago.

I was sure there was more to the original Krupps story than simply a lost necklace, and overhearing Jason in the master bedroom at Shangri-La had confirmed my hunch that there was something hidden in that room. Maybe it was the missing necklace, along with the rest of the jewels that had gone missing that summer eighty and some odd years ago.

I was sure if I got in the bedroom I could find the jewels. This feeling was probably tied to my childhood as a stasher. Back then, hiding my valuables had given me a feeling of control over my life. I hid flattened money in the cracks in my window sash, sea glass in the knothole in my closet, and my diary under my bedsprings. My favorite hoard was a cache of glittering rhinestones that I had started collecting at garage sales when I was six. I would save up my allowance to scour the old jewelry piled on the front card table of every rummage sale. After many years, I had acquired quite a collection, and it was still hidden in the floorboards of my old bedroom. I wanted something to return home to, something that consistently made me happy, and I wondered if Mrs. Krupps had had the same urge all those years ago.

I just didn’t know how the
Star Tribune
article tied into the return of Jason and appearance of Samantha Krupps. Was it coincidence that the newspaper article ran at the same general time they’d arrived looking for lost jewels, or was there a bigger plan unfolding here, one beyond my vision?

And what would Jason and Samantha have to gain by outfitting and planting a fake dead body in Whiskey Lake? If they hoped to scare off people looking for the contest’s necklace early, their time would have been better spent searching for the real necklace themselves, since they obviously knew about the real diamond long before the rest of the world. This made me wonder whether the Gibsons were in on all this. Kellie said she had tipped the newspaper to the whole necklace story. Clearly, I would have to do some investigative reporting at the Romanov show at Shangri-La that evening, despite my misgivings about crowds and theater types. And I needed to sneak into the master bedroom to find out what was going on.

I was weeding the peas by now. The vines were so extensive I had to flip them side to side like long green hair over dirt shoulders to reach the weeds underneath. I would have kept weeding, ignoring the pinks of the rising sun, if the melancholy cry of a loon on the lake hadn’t pulled me out of my thoughts. I sat back on my heels and looked for the bird, but the shadows played tricks on my eyes. I brushed off my knees and went inside.

After a long, refreshing shower, I slapped on some ChapStick, made a yogurt, frozen berry, and banana smoothie, and headed to town to get the
Recall
and open up the library.

My article was on the front page. I had titled it “Find One Diamond Today” because it sort of rhymed in the middle, and I hoped the “Today” made it sound fresh:

A day in paradise could end up being a week in Shangri-La for the lucky finder of the fake diamond planted in Whiskey Lake. The
Star Tribune
, tipped off to a local legend, has placed a weighted box containing a paste diamond into Whiskey Lake, south of town on Highway 78. People may begin diving for it today, and whoever finds it first will receive $5,000 and a paid week at Shangri-La, the Whiskey Lake–based resort owned by Kellie and Bing Gibson.

“[The contest] was actually my idea,” Kellie Gibson said modestly. “I have a friend at the newspaper, and she passed the idea on to the woman who wrote the article.”

Gibson’s idea had such appeal because of the deep history of the area. According to Shirly Tolverson, local historian, Randolph Addams built Shangri-La in the 1920s to be his summer home. When it was complete, he had a beautiful main lodge (what Addams called his “little cabin”) and four cabins for the help, all nestled on the six-acre peninsula jutting into Whiskey Lake. During the summer of 1929, a Ms. Krupps from New York was a guest at the Addamses’ lodge. While swimming, she lost her necklace, an enormous dewdrop diamond hung on a gold chain.

According to Tolverson, who was working at Shangri-La the summer the necklace disappeared, “I saw her go into the water with a diamond the size of a caramel around her neck. I saw her walk out of the water without it.” The guests and staff, including Tolverson, searched frantically. The diamond was never found, and local legend has it that it is still in the lake, waiting to be discovered.

The
Star Tribune
contest, designed to bring attention to Battle Lake’s beautiful topography and tourist appeal, is about finding a fake diamond, but who knows? Maybe some lucky diver will find the real thing.

I folded the paper, not entirely happy with my article because I knew there was some big picture I was missing. All I could do now, though, was wait for the morning crowd to arrive for Monday Madness. That’s what I called the children’s reading hour I hosted every Monday morning at ten. I thought it was a funny name, what with all the kids screaming and picking and scratching at themselves as I tried to imitate perkiness while reading
The Paper Bag Princess
.

This was my one shot to infiltrate their young minds, though, and I enjoyed it. The kids liked books for all the right reasons, and they were mostly cute, even if they had the attention span of hair on fire. The only thing I dreaded about Monday Madness was dealing with Leylanda Wilson, who brought her seven-year-old daughter, Peyton, to every reading. Peyton was put upon by the constant demands of the non-princess existence she was forced to live, which was cute on a little girl. Unfortunately, her mother had the same attitude. She always complained that I only chose books about independent girls (she was right) who usually defied society’s rules (right again) and that I didn’t give enough time to the “classics” like
Snow White
and
Cinderella
. This Monday, she walked in dressed in an immaculate and stiff dress suit, carrying her purse as if she had her spare heart in it, Peyton dragging behind her.

“Peyton, we will stay for one half of an hour if Ms. James is reading good stories. If not, I will read you one story of your choosing no longer than seven minutes in length, and then we will go to Meadow Farm Foods to buy some free-range chicken and delicious whole grains.”

Peyton rolled her eyes at me, and I nodded and rolled mine back. Leylanda was the most horrible kind of creature—a right-wing traditionalist who disguised herself as a granola to deflect personal criticism from her ravaging narrow-mindedness. She even wore Birkenstocks with her pressed Tommy Hilfiger jeans and polos.

“Hey, Leylanda, today I’m going to read a book about a little boy and a princess who fall in love and get married.”

Leylanda eyed me suspiciously from behind her trendy, dark-rimmed glasses. “What’s it called?”

“
Prince Cinders
. I think Peyton’ll like it.” I grabbed Peyton’s hand and pulled her to the front of the yammering crowd of kids before her mom could object. The story was one of my favorites, about a prince with three cheesy brothers who think they’re studs. Prince Cinders gets dumped on until his fairy godmother grants his wish to be big and hairy like his brothers. She turns him into an ape. After he turns back into himself, he and the princess fall for each other, and they live happily ever after in the castle.

I read a couple more keepers and then sent the kids back to their parents, who were scattered around the library reading paperbacks and magazines. Back at the front desk, I sorted through the books that had been returned. A lot of people were streaming through already, which was unusual for ten-thirty on a Monday. I counted heads and wondered how many were here because of the diamond necklace contest. That’s when Kennie walked in.

“Hey shug doll, what’s up?”

Kennie was dressed and shaped like the sun. She wore acid-yellow jelly shoes, yellow-striped pedal pushers, a plastic yellow belt with a brass buckle, and a yellow tank top made of some water-, flame-, and possibly bulletproof material. Her canary-colored sunglasses were perched on her head, but they weren’t bright enough to distract from her lemon-shaded earrings that looked to be taken straight out of a blind man’s tackle box. All this splendor was arranged around a camel toe the size of Egypt. And just like that, I had an idea.

“Not much, Kennie. Say, you still doing that Minnesota Nice business?”

She scrabbled over to me like I was the last krumkake at a church bake sale. “Why, yes I am, honey! In fact, I’m here now to drop off some flyers. Do y’all know someone who needs the hard truth?”

I smiled so broadly that the corners of my mouth got my eyes wet. “Sort of. It’s more about justice than honesty. You free tonight?”

“Hmm. Let me see.” From her yellow plastic tote bag, she pulled out a cardboard folder with a picture of two adorable kittens on the front, one sleeping on a branch and the other one clinging to the wood by one slipping claw. Underneath the photo were the words “Only the Strong Survive.”