Murder Talks Turkey (25 page)

Cora Mae, my best friend and one of my two business partners, barely made it out of her side of the truck without him, slamming the door shut just in time to keep Fred safe from the potential of getting riddled with bullets.

Crawling on her belly, she inched toward me.

That’s exactly how I became ensnarled in the first place - crawling to make my getaway. “Watch out for the fence,” I said, seeing that Cora Mae’s jet black mane of hair was dangerously close to the barbs.

“Holy cripes,” she muttered when she reached me and assessed the tangled situation. Then she began whacking at my imprisoned hair with a buck knife she’d grabbed from the glove compartment of my truck.

“Fudge,” I said, finding an appropriate use for my word of the day without any effort at all. Tears of pain welled in my eyes. If a bullet pierced my body at that exact moment, it couldn’t hurt any worse. As I was starting to imagine actually
wanting
a rifle shot to my brain, the wire gave.

I was free.

We crawled away, digging our elbows into the ground, twisting along like caterpillars. Then we climbed into the truck. I squealed out onto Highway M35 with Fred practically on top of me, showing his relief for my narrow escape by giving me a slurpy face wash. I pushed him back into his proper place in the middle and wiped dog drool away with my hand.

That’s when I realized there wasn’t a bit of hair left on the side of my head. Two fingers even came away tinged with blood.

“Cora Mae,” I roared in a mix of pain and anguish. “You didn’t have to scalp me!”

“No, I didn’t,” she replied, putting the buck knife away and slamming the glove compartment shut. “I could have left you stuck to the fence to take your chances with Harry Aho’s rifle range shooters. Would that have been a better idea?”

Because Cora Mae still had the buck knife in her hand, I decided to thank her for the rescue instead of complaining any further.

Besides, I’d done it again. Put a friend in a dangerous situation.

“Don’t worry. I can fix you up good as new,” Cora Mae went on. “I have a doll with hair almost the same shade of red as yours. I hate to do it to her, but what are friends for? I’ll cut off some of her hair and superglue it to your head. No one will know the difference.”

Inwardly, I groaned.

Cora Mae has taken care of my hair needs for as long as I can remember. And I never have had the heart to tell her what an awful beautician she is, in spite of the fact that her own hair is hot-mama stuff ever since she’s grown it out longer. Although now that I think back, when she accidentally dyed my hair red, I liked it enough to keep the color, so it isn’t all bad.

By the way, my name is Gertie Johnson. And I’m here to tell you that aging isn’t anything to be afraid of. Being young isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. As I age, or rather mature, I get quite a few interesting surprises along the way. For example, at sixty-six yearsold, I’m getting a new investigative business off the ground with the help of Cora Mae and Kitty, another of my best friends, the one who got shot up on our last assignment. That was during the year-long manicure case that wasn’t worth what we went through. Thankfully, Kitty has recovered and is as good as new.

Another pleasant surprise as I head for the big seven-oh is that, after being left a widow by Barney when his waders filled up with water in the Escanaba River and he went under for good, I’m in a relationship with a hot sexy man. George and I go together like bread and butter, or like biscuits and gravy.

Life is almost perfect. Or it would be perfect if I had all my hair.

And if I could get Grandma Johnson out of my house. On that blackest of black days, when I saw her standing outside my house, wearing her favorite pillbox hat and surrounded by mismatched suitcases, why had I been foolish enough to open the door?

Normally, it isn’t in my nature to dwell on the past, so I snapped back into the present and found myself still driving along M35 with my best dog friend and my partner, who was blowing bubble gum bubbles and filing her nails. Isn’t that something, how you can get inside your head, thinking thoughts, and pretty soon you’re where you were going without really remembering how you got there?

I slowed down, turned, and made a quick stop at Cora Mae’s house to pick up a few hair supplies and the doll that was about to improve my looks at the expense of hers. Then we took off again for my house.

As soon as I pulled into the driveway, guinea hens came running from all directions. In the beginning, I kept a few around to help keep the bug population down, which tends to mushroom out of control at certain times of the year in the small town of Stonely, Michigan where I live. The guineas do a good job of keeping ticks and ants under control, but now I have more hens than I know what to do with.
They’ve
become the overpopulated pests.

Not only do they make a ton of racket, acting as guards against any invading vehicles, but they hate Fred, who was looking out the front window at the moment, watching them surround the truck. Then his eyes swung to Grandma Johnson, who was waiting at the door with her nasty little flyswatter, the one she uses to ‘keep that wild wolf dog in line’.

Fred is a big bad retired police dog, but he’s henpecked by Grandma and the guineas, and he actually puts up with their abuse. I try to tell him he could get the upper hand with a little growling and tooth snapping, but he hasn’t listened so far.

I spotted George’s truck behind the barn, parked near my sauna. He’d offered to repair a hole in the outer wall of my sauna. Saunas are popular in this part of the country. Sometimes we use our saunas as social events, getting all our friends together to sweat it out. Other times we use it as a romantic interlude. George and I like to meet there at the end of the day. But the damage to its wall was deterring us from one of our favorite pastimes.

I couldn’t see my main man from the driveway, but he knew I was back because he whistled for Fred, having seen the poor guy’s ongoing plight many times. When I opened the truck door, Fred soared out and hightailed it in George’s direction with the hens running full out right behind him.

“Let’s get this hair repair job over with,” I said to Cora Mae. “Before George sees me.”

Grandma Johnson hid the flyswatter behind her back, because she knew I hated that thing and would throw it away given half a chance.

I still haven’t forgiven Barney for dying and leaving his mother for me to handle alone. She’s ninety-two, with skin as shriveled as a mummy’s, and a mind that stopped firing on all cylinders a long time ago. She and I are locked in a war over kitchen dominance, since everybody knows whoever controls the stove rules the entire roost.

“What happened to your head?” she said, taking a step back to let us in. “And is that Cora Mae with you? You know I don’t like that hussy.”

“She can hear you, you know,” I pointed out, since Cora Mae was less than two steps behind me. Actually I was relieved to have any kind of respite from the old woman’s biting tongue. Cora Mae could handle Grandma’s verbal poison. She was almost as used to it as I was. As useless as the gesture was, I said, “And Cora Mae is a guest in our home, so mind your manners.”

“I called the dog catcher to pick up that violent dog,” Grandma announced, which didn’t mean a thing. George was the town’s official dog catcher, so he would have ignored her call. She’d probably forgotten that in the last round of escaping brain cells.

Thinking Fred was moments away from a catcher’s net, she smugly shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee, which was one of the few things she was still capable of handling.

While Cora Mae superglued doll hair to my head, Kitty arrived with homemade doughnuts and a whopping cackle when she saw what we were up to. She stopped laughing though when she learned I’d almost been killed.

“I should have been there for you,” she said. “I’m going to have to resurrect my bodyguard role for this case.”

That was the last thing I wanted. Kitty can be really annoying when she’s trying to watch over me. It cramps my style. “We did alright without you,” I said, “but next time we need a better plan going in. Getting shot at isn’t fun.”

Grandma sloshed coffee in the general vicinity of our coffee cups, about a quarter of the liquid landing where it was supposed to. I tried to take the pot from her to help, but she jerked it away, spilling even more. “I don’t need help in my own kitchen,” she said.

“It’s not your kitchen,” I said back.

“We’ll see about that.” Grandma snapped her false teeth at me.

“What’s going on with you two?” Kitty wanted to know.

“Kitchen war,” I answered. “No big deal.”

Cora Mae glued another chunk to my head, and I felt a bolt of pain. “Ouch, Cora Mae, geez that hurt. Try not to glue over the raw parts.”

“Looks like Grandma won the war,” Kitty observed, watching my mother-in-law putter.

Before I could set Kitty right and let her know this was a small battle, not the whole war, my police scanner went off. We all piped down to listen. What we heard wasn’t good news.

The Trouble Busters wouldn’t be digging up any more dirt on Harry Aho. At this point, we could relinquish the shovel to the undertaker.

Because Harry Aho was dead as a doornail.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deb Baker grew up in the Michigan Upper Peninsula with the Finns and Swedes portrayed in
The Gertie Johnson Murder Mysteries.
She makes her home in Wisconsin now, but visits her family “camp” as often as possible. Visit
Deb’s Website

Books by Deb (in order):

Gertie Johnson Murder Mysteries

Murder Passes the Buck
- When her neighbor is shot and killed, Gertie investigates his death, even though it’s been ruled an accident by Gertie’s son, the sheriff.

Murder Grins and Bears It
- a game warden is murdered right under Little Donny’s tree stand. Little Donny disappears into the backwoods, forcing sixty-six-year-old Gertie to use her “unique” investigative techniques to find her favorite grandson.

Murder Talks Turkey
- Gertie Johnson, is standing in line at the bank when it gets robbed. The robber doesn’t make it out alive, but the money is missing.

Murder Bites the Bullet – 7/2011, Gertie and the Trouble Busters get caught in the crosshairs of a long standing family feud.

Cooking Can Be Murder
– 100 tasty recipes from Gertie’s kitchen

Gretchen Birch Suspense Series

Dolled Up For Murder – back in print 8/2011 - For Gretchen Birch, her mother Caroline, and her aunt Nina, doll restoration is a family affair. But they have never imagined a valuable doll could lead to murder.

Goodbye Dolly
- Gretchen is at her first major doll show, praying she doesn’t botch any repair job. But glue-gun glitches turn out to be the least of her worries when a sleazy reporter is found dead with Gretchen’s craft knife stuck in his back.

Dolly Departed
-Gretchen answers an invitation to a party at an unfamiliar dollhouse shop - and winds up in the thick of a murder mystery of miniature proportions.

Guise and Dolls
-An anonymous donor…murder in a cemetery…a haunted house with hidden secrets. Someone’s dream come true will soon prove more of a nightmare. Gretchen better solve the mystery, or it’ll be her and her friends who are history.

Queen Bee Mysteries (as Hannah Reed)

Buzz Off
- It’s September - National Honey Month - in Moraine, Wisconsin and life seems pretty sweet for Story Fischer…until her bee mentor is found dead in his apiary. Now Story has to find her way out of a very sticky situation.

Mind Your Own Beeswax
- Story Fischer has a successful local market, her Queen Bee Honey business, and a new boyfriend. Then she finds the dead body of local woman with a checkered past right near her hive and things get sticky.

Plan Bee – available 2/2012

A Sticky Situation – available 2/2013

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Murder Talks Turkey,
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Deb Baker. All rights reserved.

Cover Art Design: Patricia Ryan