Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4) (4 page)

“I got all the shots I need.” With a flick of his wrist, Pat removed the long lens from his Nikon and placed it in his backpack, smoothly switching the camera back to a smaller lens.

“Well, that’s all my questions. I guess we’re done here.” I reached out to shake Katya’s hand. “I’ll probably put this story in sometime in the next couple days, depending on what the other news is. Can we help you take your stuff back inside?”
“Oh, no. I can get it.” Bolodenka seemed not so much to stand as to unfold, swanlike, from the small stool she’d been seated on. “Thanks for coming.”

We exchanged goodbyes. Pat and I walked back to our cars parked in front of the farmhouse, close to Jerome Johnson’s cottage.

“That sure is a sad story, isn’t it?” I scuffed gravel from the driveway in front of me with each step.

“If you believe it, yeah. It’s pretty sad.”

I looked up sharply. “What’s that mean?”

“Turn around. Slowly.”

There in the front window stood a hard-eyed Johnson, his fists jammed hard into his jeans’ pockets. A small 35-mm camera hung on a thin back strap from his left shoulder.

I waved and nodded, then turned back to Pat.

“He’s watching us. That bastard’s been spying on us!”

“Yup.” Slowly, Pat opened the door of his Subaru and slid his backpack onto the front seat beside him. His movements were slow and certain and his eyes never left the black man in the window. “There’s something creepy about this guy, Addison.”

“I’m getting the hell out of here and I’m calling Gary McGinnis the first chance I get,” I said. “I’ve got to find out what this SOB is up to.”

Chapter 5 Katya

We Russians are a dark people, down deep, deep in our soul, but still the picture on the front page made me smile. I spread the newspaper across the tousled bedclothes.

“Look! Isn’t this wonderful picture?” I asked in my bad English. The newspaper article on my farm took up half of Saturday’s front page. I grinned broadly and pointed at the llama that dominated the photo. “See? Doesn’t Dolly look beautiful?”

“This is the kind of stuff that makes my job difficult. You know that, don’t you?” Jerome slipped a hand inside the loose gray tee shirt I wore, running his fingertips across the small of my back.

It was Saturday morning. We were in Jerome’s single bedroom in his home behind the barn. I smiled knowingly and pushed the newspaper to the floor. I slipped off my cotton pajama shorts and slid underneath the covers next to him, kissing his bare bronze chest and wrapping my arms around him.

“The picture or me?”

I knew the answer. I was temptation for him and he was for me. I couldn’t help it — and neither could Jerome. For once, I felt safe with a man. I knew I wouldn’t be struck, and I wouldn’t live in fear—mostly.

Jerome understood me. He spoke my language, understood my culture and my people. I could talk to him and he could talk to me.

I knew about the Moscow prostitutes where he sometimes found comfort as a young Marine, stationed at the American embassy. They cost him little more than a few American dollars and some vodka, but brought comfort to a lonely young man in a strange new country. When his commander caught wind of a possible romance, Jerome was sent back to the States before it could hurt his military career.

So women were his downfall. So what? Isn’t that true of most men? It was for all the men I had known. I didn’t care. We were together now and that was all that mattered, despite the professional relationship we were supposed to have and the difference in our skin color.

Jerome arrived on the farm the same time I did. I’d been so afraid to be alone that first night. The sounds of that old house creaking, the wind across the fields, they were new sounds and they terrified me. It was late at night when I knocked on the door of his little house, my eyes red with tears and vodka, still mourning the loss of little Nadya and the pain of yet another move under cover of darkness. He’d pulled me into his arms, meaning to be comforting, and a friend. We made love on his worn living room couch that night.

Jerome hated himself in the morning, and he promised me it wouldn’t happen again. I replied by pulling him back to the bedroom.

Right now, that first long ago night was far from our minds. I slid one leg across his naked body and nuzzled my face into his neck.

Before Jerome could speak, I slid on top of him, pinning his arms down and playfully biting his neck, then his shoulders and his chest, casting playful glances up at him. He moaned as I moved further down his stomach, kissing, then licking his skin, loosening my grip on his arms as I came closer to his tightly curled pubic hair.

Jerome groaned as he cupped his now-free hands around the back of my head as I took him briefly in my mouth. I sat up and straddled him, taking him inside me.

The crescendo built and built in the tiny room as our pleasure exploded together.

“Oh n’da, n’da, n’da!”
I moaned in Russian, collapsing against Jerome’s chest. He wrapped his arms around me and held me close.

“Mmmmm,’’ I purred. “Kolya…”

I gasped and rolled off of him, horrified at what I’d just said. Jerome clenched his fists and stared at the wall.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I laid my hand tentatively on his shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Pushing my hand away, Jerome sat up and reached for his bathrobe, folded precisely on the chair beside him.

“I’ve got to get down to the feed store,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

“Jerome, please—I’m sorry.”

“We’ve got a lot to do today. I suggest we get started.”

Chapter 6 Addison

“Oh for Christ sake, Penny, you’re supposed to put your cigarette out when you get a massage.” I propped myself up on Suzanne Porter’s portable massage table which this Saturday afternoon, was set up in her dining room.

I drew deeply on my cigarette then ferociously stubbed it out in the green Melamine ashtray Suzanne held indignantly in front of me.

“There. Happy now?” I exhaled toward the ceiling, and then lay down flat on my stomach again, my face resting in the massage table’s circular headrest.

“Yes.” I heard pages turn as Suzanne consulted the massage technique textbook on the dining room chair beside me and began to work the tension from my shoulders. “Now doesn’t that feel better?”

I grunted in reply.

“I appreciate you letting me practice on you like this. John and the boys won’t.”

“Ouch! Ease up, there, Brunhilda!” I said sarcastically. “I can’t understand why!”

Suzanne and I had been friends since childhood, back when my father could give me a quarter, and send my tall, skinny friend and me downtown on our bicycles without worrying if I didn’t come home until dinner.

We’d wander the downtown, walking our bikes along Jubilant Falls’ thriving Main Street, staring in the windows of Gabriel’s Jewelers or at the fancy women’s clothing and kitchen appliances in the window of Hawk’s Department Store. For a quarter, we could stop at Sven Olin’s drug store, scramble up onto the tall black metal stools at the soda fountain in the back and combine our quarters for a sundae or an order of French fries.

Much to Suzanne’s disgust, the bike ride home always had to include a stop in the shaded stone courtyard between the county jail and the tall Plummer County courthouse, so I could see the prisoners being escorted to court by sheriff’s deputies, or lawyers consulting with their clients.

Sometimes, I saw the men who worked for my father at the State Patrol post coming to testify in court in their sleek gray uniforms and wide-brimmed hats. They’d stop and pat me on the head.

I also watched the local newspaper reporters who congregated along this same stone walkway to get that one perfect quote from defendants on their way to face justice or newly-convicted felons, walking with shackles and handcuffs, back to jail, then, in a few days, into Ohio’s penitentiary system.

As a young girl, I wasn’t sure which of those scenes I enjoyed most, to Suzanne’s chagrin. Nearly forty years on, she was still my best friend.

“How are things between you and Porter?” I asked.

“He’s still coming home to me every night, and we’ve got everything we need and more,” Suzanne said, a lilt in her voice. “Can’t ask any more than that.”

Just a few years ago, Suzanne’s husband John Porter was the
Journal-Gazette’s
philandering court reporter. I fired him for screwing up stories, but he’d come up smelling like a rose, as he always did, landing a job as the vice president of public relations at the new Japanese auto parts plant.

Now he made enough money for Suzanne to work part-time as a cosmetologist at the Clip-N-Curl Salon and attend massage therapist training in the afternoons because she wanted to, not because she had to.

Since he’d managed to “get a real job,” as he’d snidely told me, after his unscheduled departure from the Journal-Gazette, there was plenty of money to let the five Porter boys join the YMCA swim team, play youth football in the fall and soccer in the spring.

Suzanne’s mother didn’t raise a fool. That was enough for Suzanne to keep the home fires burning.

“You two still as disgusting as ever?”

Suzanne giggled like a teenager; I rolled my eyes, my face hidden in the massage table’s headrest.

“That’s all I need to know,” I said.

I was silent for a few moments as Suzanne’s strong hands began to knead my calf muscles.

“You usually don’t ask about John or my marriage. What’s going on?” she asked.
“Suzanne, I hate to bring up bad times, but how did you know something was going on with Porter?”

Suzanne stopped working, her hands, coated in fragrant massage oil, rested on her bony hips. “Don’t tell me Dunk’s got some sort of middle-aged insanity going on. Not the last loyal husband in Plummer County.”

Clutching the bed sheet against myself, I rolled over and sat up.

“I don’t know what it is, Suzanne. I’ve been thinking about how much stress my job has placed on our family and, oh, I don’t know…”

“You don’t think he’s fooling around on you, do you?”

“No, but I wouldn’t blame him if he did.”

“The day Duncan McIntyre steps out on his wife is the day the world comes to an end,” Suzanne arched an eyebrow at me. “Don’t go jumping off that bridge before you come to it. You tell me all the time how tough things are on the farm. Didn’t you just tell me he’s got to sell some more heifers?”

“Yes.”

“He’s probably sick to death about that, Penny. Even I know how much he loves those cows. Can you look any further than the end of your own nose to see when somebody else is hurting?”

I sighed. “I suppose so.”

“Don’t think that man’s running around on you,” Suzanne said, shaking a fragrant finger at me. “Is he gone late at night?”

“No, but I can be sometimes.”

“When he is gone, does he come home smelling like someone else?”

“No, but he could, considering my job… I’m gone so many hours… He could be cleaned up long before I ever get home.”

“Oh, like every single woman in Plummer County is going to go search out some farmer up to his knees in cow shit for an affair. Be realistic, Penny, for God sake. Unless he’s meeting some honey at four in the morning inside the milking parlor, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I can’t call your house after ten without waking somebody up!”

“I guess so.” I slipped off the massage table, clutching the sheet firmly in front and behind me. Outside, an old truck pulled up to the curb in front of the Porter’s and cut its rackety engine. Suzanne looked outside.

“It’s Isabella,” she said.

“Yeah?” I moved toward the half-bath off the hallway where my clothing lay in a pile. “She was going to drop her dad off at the feed mill and run some other errands while you abused me. I didn’t expect her back so quickly.”

As I slipped into the half bath, I caught a glimpse of my tall redheaded daughter as Suzanne opened the door, giving her a quick hug and kiss as she entered.

“Aunt Suzanne, where’s my mom?” Isabella’s sounded panicked.

“Hey baby,” I heard Suzanne say. “She went to get dressed. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Dad. There’s been a big fight down at the feed store and the police have Dad in the back of a squad car.”

***

“I swear to God, Duncan, I never thought I’d see you here, of all places.”

I opened the back door of the police cruiser and leaned inside. Holding a blue reusable ice pack against his left eye, Duncan shrugged hopelessly.

“Dad! What happened?” Isabella peeked into the cruiser to look at her father. “Are you in trouble?”

“He’s not under arrest, Penny.” Jim McGinnis, youngest of the four McGinnis brothers on the Jubilant Falls Police Department, stepped away from a knot of men in the parking lot to call out this vital information to me. “We’re just asking a few questions.”

There weren’t very many officers with the JFPD who didn’t know me. I grew up with all four McGinnis boys and they, along with Suzanne, were among the few who still called me by my given name.

Chief Marvin was the oldest of “the McGinnis boys,” as locals still called them. A few years ahead of me in high school, Marvin was the star of the football team’s defensive line, glorified in the way that small towns glorify each fall’s young gridiron warriors, before an on-duty knee injury and a desk job turned his corn-fed muscular frame fat, sloppy and soft.

Gary, the assistant chief, graduated in my high school class. It was often Gary who provided my reporters and me with the information we needed to cover Jubilant Falls’ crime. Chatter from those in the know said when Marvin retired Gary would assume the police chief’s job.

Harold, a year younger than Gary, was next and one of the JFPD’s three detectives.

Seven years younger than Marvin, Jim was the youngest and the only one still on the beat.

“Duncan took a punch from that guy over there—” Jim used his pen to point toward the other squad car, where a gangly, young man I recognized as Doyle McMaster sat in the back seat. “We’re filing assault charges against him.”

McMaster’s green John Deere hat, its bill bent into a half-moon and smeared with black grease, was pulled low over his face as he slouched down in the back seat of Jim’s cruiser.

“You know how to pick ’em Duncan,” I said softly as I leaned into the cruiser.

“I’m sure you can tell me why, too,” Duncan answered.

“Doyle McMaster has been on the front page for everything short of homicide,” I whispered. “He’s a Class A creep with a record a mile long. The women who work at common pleas court even call him a frequent flyer.”

“Well, he certainly established that.”

“What’s that mean?”

“We were talking about how hard it is to run a dairy farm when McMaster starts shooting off his mouth about how the Mexicans are coming in and the blacks are taking all the jobs at the auto parts plant,” Duncan continued. “I guess he works for that big commercial hog plant east of Longfellow. He was pissed because he got his hours cut and he’s losing his house. Anyway, just as he’s starting to rant and rave about the blacks—and of course, he didn’t use that word— and this guy comes in—” Duncan jerked his thumb at the knot of men still telling Jim McGinnis what happened.

In the center of the group stood Jerome Johnson.

I gasped.

“What?” Duncan asked.

“Remember when I went over to the old Jensen farm yesterday and interviewed that Russian woman? That black guy is her farm manager!”

“Great. I get in a fight and my wife knows more about the participants than I do.”

“No—you don’t understand! As Pat and I were leaving the farm, we pass a little house she’s built on the property and this Johnson guy is standing there staring at us. It was like he thought we were trespassing or something. He had a camera, too—he’d been taking pictures of us. It was weird.”

“Well, Doyle was being a jerk and he called Johnson a nigger and Johnson threatened to hit him and Doyle swung and I stepped in between them, then all hell broke loose.” Duncan took the ice pack away from his eye and gazed at me. “How bad does it look?”

I grimaced. “Doyle did a good job. You’ve already got a shiner.”

Duncan groaned, sliding from the back of the police car. He handed me the ice pack. “We ought to do something nice for Jerome. He’s new in town, and he’s certainly not seen the best Jubilant Falls has to offer.”

“I’m not cooking dinner, not if you want to ever talk to them again.”

“I can fix steaks on the grill, baked potatoes are easy, and you can get some salad or something at the market.”

I rolled my eyes. My idea of entertaining involved beer and popcorn, maybe cards, and even that could be done badly enough to assure company wouldn’t come back.

Popcorn could be burned. Beer could be flat. And the jack of hearts could be missing from the euchre deck in the kitchen junk drawer. And who knows—the phone might ring in the middle of the evening and I’d have to leave my guests to go chase some story.

It would be easier if we went out to a restaurant. That way, at least the bad food wouldn’t be my fault.

I was also a little uncertain about inviting someone into my home who’d been surreptitiously photographing me.

Duncan walked into the knot of men around Johnson and extended his hand.

Behind me, Isabella sighed. I turned to see her standing with her hands on her hips.

“What is it?” I asked, exasperated.

“I guess this means we’re not going to go looking for a car for me today, then, huh?”

I stared at my daughter, incredulous. “Who said anything about buying you a car?”

“Dad.”

***

Silent on the ride home, I lit a cigarette as soon as the truck came to a stop, tossing the match into the gravel driveway. I let Isabella walk into the house before stopping Duncan on the porch.

“Can you answer me one goddamn thing?”

“What? I got you out of cooking. Jerome says he doesn’t feel much like going anywhere after this morning. I did invite him over Sunday afternoon, though.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What?”

“Why the hell did you tell Isabella you were going to go out and buy her a goddamned car? We’ve got bills, Dunk! We can’t turn around and buy Izzy a car! Why did you promise her that?”

Duncan placed a hand on my shoulder and sighed. “I know things have been crazy and I’m sorry. I got the bill paid today at the grain elevator and everything else is caught up. I’m not going to have to sell those heifers.”

“But, Dunk, a car?”

“This isn’t our cash. This is the money she’s put back from her fair animals every year.”

Like most Plummer County kids, Isabella was a member of 4H through school and, each year, raised one of the farm’s Holstein bull calves, along with a meat goat, to sell at the end of the county fair.

She’d scrupulously put the money aside since she was ten. That money ranged each year from a couple hundred to the several thousand the year she’d won reserve grand champion feeder calf.

“I thought that money was for college!”

Isabella appeared at the kitchen screen door.

“Mom, I’m in my second year of college. I’m living at home, commuting to community college. Grandpa’s old car is falling apart. I’m just asking to spend a little of my own money!”

She flapped her arms against her sides in exasperation. I caught a glimpse of the star tattoos that circled both wrists, covering scars from a suicide attempt in high school and stopped cold.

“I’m sorry baby. You’re right. Go ahead. It’s your money.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Inside, the kitchen phone rang. Duncan picked it up and handed it to me. It was Graham Kinnon.