Murder Talks Turkey (3 page)

“You have to keep Blaze out of the office,” he said, watching Blaze fiddle with a ball of fuzz he’d picked off his sweater. “This is the fourth incident.”

“It’s like home to him,” I said. “Lighten up. Did you figure out who the robber was?”

“Kent Miller from the Soo.”

“Our side of the water?”

He nodded.

Sault Ste Marie, or The Soo as we call it, is at the northeastern-most tip of the Michigan Upper Peninsula and is connected by a bridge to its twin city on the Canadian side. Pronounced Su Saint Marie (not Salt Sty Marie), its home to the Soo Locks and is located a good two, two and a half hours, from Stonely.

“What else?” I asked.

“His wallet was in his pants, he didn’t have any priors, and he was the worst bank robber I’ve ever seen.”

As though Dickey had any experience with armed robbers. I could have yanked Dickey’s chain by saying that Miller
was
the worst robber, because the Stonely cops managed to catch him, but I kept quiet. I’m not one to cause a stir.

“Who shot him?” I said after a reasonable time, when Dickey didn’t offer it up.

Dickey straightened the lapels on his green jacket. “That’s yet to be ascertained. You’re the only one who witnessed the shooter.”

“I was on the floor of the credit union,” I said. “The guy on the roof wore the same kind of clothes we all wear.” I glanced at Dickey’s Joe Friday clothes. “The same as most of us, anyway. Jeans, brown jacket with a big hood bunched up at the back of his neck, black gloves.”

“Did you see his face?”

I sighed and thought back. “He was across the street, too far away for facial details.”

“Well?”

“I’m thinking. Let me think.” I snapped my fingers. “Okay, I know. He was wearing a black Kromer.”

Dickey glared at me. “That’s your contribution? A Kromer? Everybody in the U.P. owns one.”

I glared back. “You now have more information than you had before. You can’t even keep your deputies under control or you’d know who it was. You’re lucky to have what I just gave you.”

“A Kromer.” Dickey shook his head.

A Kromer is a special hat designed by George “Stormy” Kromer, a railroad engineer who lost his hat so many times he modified an old baseball cap with earbands that wrapped around the sides of the cap and tied in the front. In cold or windy conditions, the bands could be untied, wrapped around the ears, and tied under the chin. Michigan loggers and hunters have been wearing them for years.

“Which one of your Keystone cops,” I fairly shouted at Dickey, “was wearing a Kromer?”

“I’ll continue to interrogate residents until I find out.”

Fred sat down on my foot. With a little effort, I pulled it out. “How’s the teller?”

“An ambulance transported her to Escanaba. The hospital is keeping her overnight for observation. She’s the one who sounded the alarm.”

This Kent Miller really was a dumb bank robber. Not only did he have identification in his pocket and orange sneakers on his feet, he left the teller behind the counter with the alarm button, and he filled his pillowcase with play money.

“What’s the teller’s name,” I asked.

“Confidential, Mrs. Johnson. This is official law enforcement work. Please take your son and your old dog home.”

Fred stared at Dickey, and a soft but audible growl tickled his throat. What a dog!

“I’d like to send flowers to the injured woman,” I punted. “I need her name to do that. If you won’t tell me, I’ll have to talk to someone in the emergency room.”

Dickey pulled a notebook out of his pocket and flipped through it with a sigh. “Angie Gates,” he said.

“The case is closed, right?” I asked. If Blaze had been well and handling the case, he’d be all done. The distant glare of retirement had blinded my son, and he put most of his energy into making it to the social security line without breaking a sweat.

“An outside auditor is ascertaining the credit union’s cash. I demanded a full accounting. This investigation isn’t over until I have all the pertinent facts and feel comfortable with those facts.” I have to say this for him, he didn’t give up easily. There was more to learn than we knew at the moment. I was sure of it.

Fred plopped his head on the desk, causing Blaze to leap from the chair. “Get me a rifle! There’s a bear in here.”

“Time to go,” I said, steering Blaze out the door, to my truck, and coaxing him in. Fred rode in the back bed to keep my son from overreacting. We drove through our small town, headed south and turned, passing my house and following the gravel road that led to Blaze’s trailer home.

His wife Mary was at the kitchen table, sobbing her eyes out.

“What did they take?” Blaze demanded, when he saw her. “I knew it. The minute I turned my back. Did they get the money?”

“I can’t take it one more minute,” Mary sputtered. “He wanders around day and night. I can’t keep track of him.”

Blaze stormed down the hall.

“He’ll be back in a minute,” she said, “telling us someone stole his money.”

“Someone stole my five million dollars,” Blaze hollered.

“I moved the hiding place,” Mary shouted back, then turned to me with sad, puppy dog eyes. “See? It was a mistake to bring him home so soon.”

“He’s better than he was,” I said.

“That’s not saying much.”

“All you need is a good night’s sleep,” I suggested. “Why don’t you go visit your daughter at college? Go away for a few days and rest. I’ll take Blaze home with me.”

What was I saying? I could hardly handle what I had, let alone watch over my son.

Mary sniffed. “Really?” Her eyes shined with hope.

“Go pack,” I said to her back end.

She was already running down the hall.

Chapter 4

GRANDMA JOHNSON HAD ATTEMPTED TO heat up frozen pasties while I was gone. How many times have I asked her to stay out of the kitchen? A hundred times, at least, and that’s just this week.

Grandma is my ninety-two-year-old mother-in-law. After Barney died, I went through a typical grieving process, starting with anger and moving slowly through despair. Two years later, I’m still angry with him for leaving me alone to deal with his mother.

The worst part is, she moved in with me, and I can’t get rid of her. It’s still a mystery why she picked me, since we’ve never gotten along. Personally? I think she’s plotting to drive me insane.

“’Bout time you showed up,” she snapped “The oven is broken.” She pointed at the dishwasher. “My pasties are wet and soggy. Ruined!”

Grandma has been known to serve raw chicken to a table of guests. And she’s been known to blow out the stove’s pilot light and turn the burners on, causing deadly fumes to waft through the house. My home is going to explode one of these days, if I don’t get her into a nursing home.

“I’ll fix it,” Blaze offered, bending and squinting at the dishwasher. “Where’s the chain saw?”

“What are you doing here?” Grandma Johnson said. “I thought you were in a POW camp.”

Barney’s mother has hardening of the brain arteries, just enough to be dangerous. The next several days of living with her and Blaze would be more exciting than I could possibly handle alone.

“Cora Mae,” I said into the phone, after I had deposited the two kooks at the kitchen table with canned chicken noodle soup and saltines. Grandma was right for a change. The pasties hadn’t been dishwasher safe. They were ruined. “Can you come and stay with me? It’ll only be a couple days.”

“Fat chance,” my best friend said. “I know you have Blaze over there.”

“How did you find out so fast?”

“Scanner. Blaze announced it over the airwaves.”

I turned around and sure enough, he was in the next room on the radio, whispering coordinates to some imaginary ally. The police scanner Cora Mae gave me last year popped and crackled. We stopped talking on both ends of the phone line and listened in. I recognized Dickey Snell’s voice. He puffed and pontificated and coded this and ten-somethinged that. “That’s Blaze Johnson compromising the emergency channel again. Can someone remove him from the radio?”

Once Cora Mae and I realized Dickey had nothing useful to say we went back to business.

“I can’t come over,” Cora Mae continued, “but Kitty’s back and—

“I’ll be right there,” I heard Kitty shout from Cora Mae’s side of the phone.

Within minutes she was slamming through the front door. “Tony Lento got away from me this side of Paradise,” Kitty said, making herself at home at the kitchen table next to Grandma Johnson and Blaze, who had returned to his chair for more army rations.

“Hell,” Blaze said, picking at a cracker.

“No, I said Paradise,” Kitty answered.

“I like Climax best,” Grandma Johnson said, forgetting her table manners. She giggled.

“That’s under the bridge,” Kitty reminded her. “Quite a ways from Paradise.”

“What was Tony doing in Paradise?” I asked.

“Business, I guess. You’re next up to watch him. His wife says he’s going turkey hunting in the morning.”

“Lyla took me over behind Bear Creek. He has a ground blind set up.”

“Do you want company?”

“I’ll manage as long as you can watch Blaze and Grandma.”

“It must be icky for you, taking care of these two alone,” Kitty said, using the alternate word for the day, falling right into my trap.

__________

Icky!

I laughed out loud all the way to Escanaba. Kitty and I were in a big-word contest. She had a way of infiltrating my word of the day notes to discover my next word and then flaunting her assumed superior vocabulary abilities in my face by using the word first. Or, she’d use a humungous word and expect me to challenge her with an even larger word.

Those days are over. I made a “mistake” and left this week’s words where she could easily find them. However, she has her mitts the alternate list, which is nothing like the real word list. Icky was today’s alternate word.

The last thing I said to her before I left her in charge of Blaze and Grandma was, “Boondoggle.”

“What are friends for?” she had replied, looking a trifle confused.

I turned onto Ludington Street, parked the truck, and swung through the hospital’s revolving door. The gift shop was still open, so I purchased a small display of flowers, asked for Angie Gates’ room number, and took the elevator up.

She was asleep. I cleared my throat loud enough to wake her up and placed the flowers on her bed stand, busying myself with the arrangement while she blinked away the sandman.

“You were at the credit union this morning,” Angie said, her voice gravely. She scooted up into a sitting position, grimacing with pain and gingerly touching her head. “Thanks for the flowers.”

Angie Gates was a hard-baked thirty or thirty-five years old. Although she was pretty enough, she’d smoked and partied too much, and it showed. I’ve seen that a lot, people adrift, waiting out their time on earth to pass, trying to rush the end.

“How are you doing?” I asked. “That was quite a clonk to your head.”

“Concussion,” she said. “I’m quitting that job the minute I’m released.”

“Tough break. We never had a robbery before.”

“I didn’t like the work much anyway. I’m going back to waitressing. I can make more in tips in one day than I can all week counting out money that isn’t mine.”

“I wish you’d reconsider. Give it another chance.” I felt bad for the woman.

A nurse came in and fussed over Angie, taking her blood pressure and temperature and checking the IV. When she left the room, I said, “The robber’s name was Kent Miller.”

“Never heard of him, but I’ve only been in the U.P. about a year.”

“He was from the Soo. No one around here knew him. The pillowcase was full of Monopoly money.”

“I heard.”

“What do you make of that?”

Angie shrugged. “Someone was trying to cover up something.”

“A cover up?” I hadn’t thought of that.

“Sure. I saw it on TV. The money’s already gone due to an inside job, and the pressure’s on to account for it, so the real thief plans a robbery that isn’t really a robbery. In the television show, the fake robber got away.”

I thought over Angie’s theory and decided it had merit. If she ever wanted to work for manicures instead of money, I’d hire her in a minute.

“Who’d do a thing like that?” I asked. The credit union staff had been entrenched in Tamarack County forever. Except Angie. But she had sounded the alarm. Aside from Dave Nenonen, who managed the business, the only other employees besides Angie were two part-timers—Dave’s wife and June Hopala. June worked to supplement her social security. Both the Nenonens and the Hopalas went way back.

Angie must have thought my question was rhetorical, because she didn’t answer. Rhetorical was my word for tomorrow. I was one step ahead of myself, and I felt proud that I was doing my thinking in higher language.

“I heard you saved the day,” I said.

“I should get a medal for bravery,” she said, somewhat sarcastically. “Fat lot of good it did me. All I have to show for my effort is a big knot on my head and a huge hospital bill.”

“The credit union should pay your bills.”

She snorted like she didn’t believe it.

I drove home from the hospital with the pretend robbery theory rifling through my thoughts. But the credit union robbery wasn’t even my problem. Let Dickey figure it out. Tomorrow I would be on a surveillance run, tailing Tony Lento. The Trouble Busters had to bust this guy and prove our worth, if we wanted to stay in business.