Murder Talks Turkey (15 page)

What they’ve done with cameras since my day is truly amazing.

Before she left, she gave me her business card.

Chapter 21

WHAT WAS TOODLES DOING with my Sweet Cheeks? To say I was jealous

and distrustful of Cora Mae would be a huge understatement. George Jack Erikson was going to get an earful from me, that was for sure. So was my best buddy, the man stalker.

Either she learned to drive alone pronto or she stayed home. No more teaming up with my man. It felt good to say that. My man. Barney had been my one and only until he drowned. It took me a long time to get past that, and I wasn’t going to blow it. And Cora Mae was going to keep her mitts to herself.

I felt bad about my feelings, but not bad enough to change them. Cora Mae had gone through every single man in the U.P. except the one she was out joy-riding with right this minute.

I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

“Toodles, where are you?” I said into my radio. “Big Ma and I are near the big city. And remember that other ears could be on our frequency.”

Toodles came back, “Sweet Cheeks is talking to me. Wait a sec.”

I regretted giving George that moniker. At the time it was great fun calling him Sweet Cheeks, but it sounded pornographic coming out of Cora Mae’s mouth.

“I’m back,” Cora Mae announced. “Stay where you are. Tigger’s heading your way. So are we.”

“We’re trading places as soon as possible,” I said into the radio. “We’ll wait in the pines near the cemetery and stay in touch with you until Tigger reaches his destination. Then you and Big Ma can team up, maybe get that manicure you’ve been talking about.”

“Roger and out, Muffy.”

__________

They came up around the bend into Escanaba so fast I had to run a red light to stay with them. Tony blew through the intersection with a speck of fading yellow showing on the traffic light overhead. George made it through on full yellow, and I squealed out trying to tuck the butt-end of Walter’s rust bucket in under the changing light. I didn’t make it. Solid red.

I checked my rear view mirror for cops. The coast was clear. Luck was on my side.

“He’s heading toward the hospital,” I guessed, turning onto Ludington at the next light.

At first I thought Tony must be visiting a patient, or maybe he did financial work for the hospital. But when he turned into a lane that ran around the back of the building, I spotted a hearse next to an unmarked door. Tony pulled into a small parking lot. George had no choice but to continue on.

I got a good look at the hearse. I looked like every other death mobile I’d ever seen. “That entrance leads to the morgue,” I said.

By the time we circled back around, Tony was standing by the door with a heavy set woman and a young guy wearing orange shoes.

I almost panicked until I remembered our disguises. We passed within three feet of Tony without drawing any attention from him. By the time we found parking spaces, the three of them had disappeared inside.

“Now what?” Cora Mae said out George’s passenger window. She looked way too comfy to me.

I yanked her door open and rearranged my envy-green face into a smile. “You and Kitty are through for the day. She’s going to give you a final driving lesson on the way back to Stonely.”

Cora Mae looked at Walter’s truck. “Not in that old thing?”

“A driver needs to know how to handle all kinds of vehicles. Up and out.”

We changed places and I watched Cora Mae jerk out of the parking lot, riding the brake all the way.

“I don’t know how you women roped me into this,” George said. “I’m losing a day’s work just to consort with criminals.” He had a grin on his face, so I knew he didn’t really mind. “I kind of like you as a blonde.”

As much as I wanted to stay with George and listen to his sweet talk, I had a mission to accomplish. Tony Lento was in the morgue with one of the members of the Orange Gang. “I’ll be right back,” I said, before slinking over to the entrance door and scouting for trouble. Then I heaved my shoulders back, raised my chin, and walked down an empty hall that smelled of disinfectant and something worse. Hushed voices ahead slowed me down. I slid to the side of the hall and pretended to look for something in my purse.

“I’ll give you fifty bucks,” Tony was saying, “if you give me a name.”

“Don’t got no name, Man.” I imagined those words came from the Orange member. He sounded hostile. “We pickin’ up one of our own. Leave us be.”

“A hundred. I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

“You want I should shoot you right here in the morgue. Then you wont have far to go to get youzself pumped up with preservatives. Save on the cost of the amblance.”

“God, jeez,” Tony said, sounding shocked. “Put that thing away. I’m going.”

I began walking slowly back the way I came. Tony breezed by me like a hound dog fleeing from a skunk. He glanced sharply at me, decided I wasn’t a threat, and kept going.

What was the name he had been hoping for? Did he want to find out who the leader of the gang was? But in the movies, gang leaders liked everyone to know who they were. They didn’t hide behind other member’s skirts. Or in this case, behind their shoes.

If Tony was trying to finger Shirley, like she said, why was he creeping around the hospital trying to collect information?

Tony? Angie? Shirley? We had some serious credulity going on here. I was pretty sure I’d used my word for the day incorrectly, but no one heard, since it was just a head thought.

After Tony drove away, George and I waited in the hospital parking lot while a casket was loaded into the back of the hearse. Then we walked over. I flashed my law badge. “Undercover,” I muttered.

“We ain’t talking to you,” Hostile Boy said.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to the heavy set woman. She nodded.

George strolled over to talk to the hearse driver. His job was to find out which one of the gang members was in the coffin. Kent Miller from the Soo? Or Bob Goodyear from Detroit? I had a pretty good idea judging by the speech patterns coming from the angry one.

Dialects are another thing a good private investor should be able to distinguish between. When George held up two fingers I knew I was right. Bob Goodyear. The shoe-less dead guy George and I had found behind my truck. The one wearing the Kromer who had picked off his own partner.

“Were Kent Miller and Bob good friends?” I asked, directing my question at the woman who must be Bob’s mother.

“I told your people already. I never heard of that other guy.”

“He wasn’t no real Orange,” Orange Shoe said.

“He was wearing your colors when he went down,” I said, rearranging a loose blond curl and readjusting the Blublocker sunglasses hiding my eyes.

“He was nobody and nothing. You have to concentrate you efforts on things that count. We wants to know who did Bobby.” He shoved a stiff finger into my shoulder and brought his face close to mine. I smelled fear and I was pretty sure it was mine. “We take care of our own. We be back.”

“Your guy killed Kent Miller. I saw him fire.” I could see the pores in his face.

“That was Bobby’s business. Not mine or yours. Bobby was set up. Come on, Ma, let’s get outta this place.”

Ma! I caught the connection between the dead man, the hostile Orange gang member, and the heavy set woman. “I didn’t get your name,” I said.

But Bobby’s brother had turned his back on me.

Chapter 22

“THIS IS THE DETROIT BANK calling,” I said into Walter’s phone. “Which one? Uh…Detroit Savings and Loan. I need to talk to Dave Nenonen. I’ll hold.”

Walter leaned against the kitchen sink drinking his version of a latte—half bottom-dregs coffee, half brandy. Five o’clock on Monday afternoon must be the start of happy hour at the Laakso household. Kitty had gone back to the hunting trailer to put pasties in the oven. Cora Mae was studying Walter’s dirty kitchen table for creepy crawlers.

“Mr. Nenonen,” I said when Dave came on the line. “I’m calling about Angie Gates. She has applied for a position with our bank. Can you give her a good reference? Um…that’s right. You didn’t know she was leaving? Well, this is awkward. Yes. Thank you.”

I hung up. Dave thought she was coming back to work on Thursday. As I suspected, she was slipping out of town without a goodbye party.

“Aren’t we supposed to be working for Shirley?” Cora Mae said. “Instead we’re tailing her and verifying the truthfulness of every word she utters.” Cora Mae studied her new manicure, the French thing with white tips. “Lyla does a nice job with nails,” she said. “And she’s got troubles at home again.”

“Happy ever after didn’t last too long,” I commented.

“Lyla thinks Tony found out she put us up to watching him.”

“Impossible,” I said, sheepishly remembering when the local warden had outed me in the woods right near Tony’s turkey blind.

“She thinks he was being nice to her just so she would call off the dogs.”

“Is that what she called us? Dogs?”

Cora Mae nodded.

I glanced down at Fred, who was lying at my feet, licking a paw. I decided to take that as a compliment. We could have been called much worse.

“Are we rehired?” I asked. That would be a bonus. We were trailing him anyway. Two paychecks for one job. One from Lyla, one from Shirley. I’d like that. We’d have the best fingernails in Stonely
and
have the money to pay for matching pedicures.

“No,” Cora Mae answered. “She says she doesn’t want to know what he’s up to. She’s fed up and thinking of leaving him.”

Serves the dallying fool right. Poor Lyla, though. Realizing you’re married to a cheating spouse has to be tough.

Walter had finished his second latte when he said, “Think I’ll go down to Herb’s Bar for awhile.”

Cora Mae, Fred, and I went to the trailer and sat down to dine on steaming hot pasties. Fred had one too.

“While Cora Mae had her nails done,” Kitty said, splashing ketchup on her pasty and handing the bottle to me. “I talked to Star.”

My baby girl. I had forgotten her in all the excitement. She must be worried sick about me.

“She says hi and will you hurry up and solve this case so she can quit babysitting Grandma Johnson.”

So much for family loyalty and concern. “I hope you didn’t tell her where we were,” I said. “She’d probably turn us in. I’m thinking Star might have more of her grandmother’s genes than she should.”

“‘Course I didn’t tell her. Star’s been to the jail to visit Blaze. So far he’s happy locked up. He’s bossing Snell around, trying to run the show. Blaze told Star a few things he overhead about the murders.”

“Like we can believe anything Blaze says,” Cora Mae added, truthfully. My son hadn’t been a natural born liar before the brain disease struck.

“It depends,” I said, ready to defend Blaze. I can say anything I want about him, good, bad, or terrible, but that doesn’t apply to other people, even friends. “You can judge by what comes out of his mouth. If he’s a five-star general in search of blue diamonds, or if he’s showing you his new dog and you can’t see the dog because it’s invisible, that’s made up.”

“In other words,” Kitty said. “If it’s far-fetched, don’t believe him.”

“Right,” I agreed. “So what did he hear?”

Kitty added more ketchup to her pasty. “The Detroit guy on the roof was wearing Onni Maki’s Kromer.”

“I thought the guy’s headdress was strange, considering he came from Detroit,” I said. A troll doesn’t usually wear a Yooper hat. I had rolled the stolen hat idea around inside my head earlier.

“He took it out of Onni’s car.”

Cora Mae made a face when she heard the name. Onni Maki is seventy years old. He wears gold chains around his neck, a pinky ring, and wraps his hair over a big bald spot. He’s also a widower and thinks he’s the hottest thing in the U.P. He was one of the first men in the county that Cora Mae rejected after only one date. Onni had made Cora Mae pay her own way. “Pond scum,” she said under her breath.

Kitty scraped her plate and looked around for more pasties. She knew there weren’t any left. It was just wishful thinking. “Onni was part of the posse outside the credit union. Bob Goodyear was trying to disguise himself with the hat.”

“Instead it made him stand out.”

“Blaze said Dickey’s been tracking the Orange Gang. I guess they’re a tough bunch. But none of them knows the first guy, the robber. Bob Goodyear must have hired Kent Miller to go in. Dickey thinks he shot him because the robbery went wrong and he was worried about being identified.”

“That’s the only reasonable part of the whole thing,” I said. “Bob and Kent decide to rob the credit union. Kent goes in, wearing orange shoes. He steals a pillowcase filled with paper. Angie, who is really Shirley, sounds the alarm. Bob kills Kent to conceal his identity. Then someone kills Bob just for grins. And, of yes, the credit union has been robbed, but at a different time than the robbery, and that money is still missing.”

“Right,” Kitty said.

“But,” Cora Mae asked. “Wasn’t it dumb to wear orange shoes? They led right to the Detroit gang.”

“Not to mention the stupidity of stealing paper,” I said. “Kent couldn’t have known he had a fistful of fake money. He had to have thought he had the real thing. And the orange shoes haven’t helped any of us solve the case. So maybe the shoes were a blind lead, meant to confuse us.”

“Well it worked,” Kitty said. “I’m confused. We have to straighten this out so we can quit hiding in this sorry excuse for a home.”

Cora Mae was thinking hard. “What if Bob set up Kent? He sent him in knowing he wouldn’t make it out alive. He and someone on the inside had already taken the money.”

“That won’t work,” I reasoned. “If Bob took the money, he wouldn’t want Kent to get caught holding paper. That would lead to a full investigation, which it did, and then everyone would know the money was missing, which they did.”