November Hunt (2 page)

Three

“Need a lift?”

I refrained from asking him whether it was the thick white crust that had formed on the surface of my scarf or my frozen-open eyeballs that had tipped him off. “Please.”

“Not a great day for a jaunt,” he said lightly, leaning over to roll up his window and open his passenger-side door.

I stepped up into his truck, awash in the smell of cigarettes, fast food, and sweet heat. These basic human comforts tamed my smart-ass tongue. “I'm afraid to look whether or not my legs are still attached.”

He chuckled. His laugh was deep and out of place in his wiry body. I guessed he was in his early sixties and, judging by the rainbow pompom on his blue cap and smile lines creasing the corner of his eyes and mouth, not an immediate threat. I would have gotten into Satan's corduroys, though, if it'd rescued me from the deep freeze. “They're still attached, though I'm not sure they'd have taken you much farther. WCCO says it's supposed to drop to 40 below with windchill tonight.”

“Hmm. Sounds cold.” See? That's how we roll in Minnesota.

“That your empty car I passed at the Last Resort?” He aimed a thumb toward his rear window. My Toyota was a mile back. Not possessing a cell phone and having established that there was no
sense in staying in a heatless vehicle as dark fell, I had to choose from
which direction to seek help. I was equidistant from the intersection of the better-traveled county road on the left or an occupied-looking house on the right. Given the light traffic I'd witnessed tonight, I chose the right. Unfortunately, once I reached the driveway, I saw it was as drifted over as the resort's. It was too late to turn back and too cold to cry, so I'd put my head down and pushed on toward the next house. The only sound had been the chuffing of my boots on the snow and my ragged, cold-seared breath pushing through my iced-up scarf. The frozen moisture on my exhalations had turned the front of my scarf into a ragged, chafing patch of sodden, icy wool that scratched my face raw. I focused on that pain to take my mind off the humming numbness licking at my toes and fingertips. I'd constructed a mantra as I walked, a word for each step:
one, two, Jed I'll get to you, three, four, we'll be cold no more.

I nodded. “It's my car.” The warmth was awakening painfully frozen nerves in my outer perimeters. “It's stuck. You don't happen to have a tow rope, do you?”

“I do.” He executed a neat three-point turn with his old Ford.

“Then you're my winter angel.”

He smiled mighty cryptically for a man wearing a pompom hat. “Lucky timing and a tow cable don't make a man an angel.” His solid truck ate up the icy road in seconds. Just past the Last Resort driveway, he coaxed it into reverse and backed in behind my car, requesting my keys and hopping out before I had an opportunity to ask if he needed help. That's okay. I wouldn't have. The ache of sensation returning to my fingers and toes was agonizing.

I swiveled in my seat and watched him yank a thick nylon rope with an evil-looking hook on each end out of the bed of the truck. He disappeared for a moment into the space between our vehicles. I heard the scrape of metal on metal before he popped back into view. He walked around the side of my Toyota, slid in quickly, and started her up. Doubtless he was putting it in neutral and warming her for me. I could have saved him the trouble, but it would have only stolen the shine off his kindness. He returned to the cab of the truck, bringing a wall of cold with him. Tiny icicles decorated his beard and mustache like tinsel. “You're lucky you weren't out here any longer. It's cold enough to freeze the smile off a clown.”

He accelerated the truck and freed my girl without any fanfare beyond the solid thump of iced wheels releasing. I thanked him sincerely and left the heated glow of his cab for the rock-cold seat of my Toyota. I grimaced. My thawing tips were immediately refreezing. I slid her into first gear and sped away like a fox from a trap.

I was closer to town than home and chose the former. The Fortune Café on the north side of Battle Lake not only had the nearest phone but was owned by my good friends Sid and Nancy. I didn't want to be alone if Jed didn't answer. I parked the car and limped through the ice-crystalled door of the Café.

It was late for the Fortune, a retrofitted 1920s house turned bakery that now specialized in coffees and teas, and homemade bagels, pastries, and soups. The air smelled of roasting coffee beans and cinnamon. Except for the owners and a smattering of customers playing Scrabble at a round table, the restaurant was empty. “Mira! Is that you?”

I unwrapped my frozen scarf. “Parts of me. I might have lost my nose and a toe or two, but I'm hopeful I've still got the big ones.”

“Oh my God! It's freezing out there! Come over here and sit by the fire. Sid, get her some hot tea.”

The fireplace tempted me obscenely, but I held out my hand. “First I need to find out where Jed is. I was supposed to meet him tonight, and no one's at the resort. It doesn't look like anyone's been there for a week.” I kept my voice even.

Nancy took in my pink cheeks, glossy eyes, and tight mouth. She shook her head and clucked. “Didn't Jed tell you? He's moved next to Kathy's Klassy Kwilts. You know, where Herb's Wienery used to be?”

I melted, relief warming me faster than any fire. Jed's body wasn't rotting within inches of the phone he'd tried to crawl to after slipping and breaking both legs and one arm. I took a deep breath and redirected my brain. It liked to spend a questionable amount of time picking over gruesome possibilities when left to its own devices. Instead, I pictured the building Nancy was referring to. Herb's had lasted all of three months. I think it was the owner's unfortunate resemblance to a cow, from his big brown eyes and his droopy jowls to his tassly brown hair. It made you feel bad to eat a hot dog in front of him. Whatever the reason, Herb had packed up his saddlebags and moved the wienery to greener pastures last spring, the third restaurant in as many years to go under in that location.

“Jed's drained all the water from the resort's pipes and moved out for the winter. Too expensive to heat.” She pushed me onto the couch and pulled off my boots to bring my toes closer to the fire. “He didn't tell you, did he? And you went out there and saw the driveway was unplowed, most likely, and figured he'd died in his sleep or maybe been eaten by bears and no one else had noticed?”

It's weird how your worries sound stupid when someone else says them out loud. Weird and annoying as hell. “He told me to meet him at his place,” I said, a little defensively. “You'd think he'd have mentioned he'd moved.”

Nancy nodded agreeably. “You'd sure think he would have. You going to leave your snowpants on? You'll warm up quicker if you get your skin closer to the fire.”

Her kindness worked, and my peevishness began to melt incrementally. Tiny increments. I'm no quitter. “I thought he might be hurt out at the resort, maybe dead.”

She clucked again and took the tea Sid had brought over. “I'm sorry.”

Sid perched herself on the edge of the couch. “What's this? Jed forgot to tell someone something important? Next you'll be trying to tell me that a skunk stinks.”

She was right. It was completely in character for him to invite me over but forget to tell me where he was living. It wasn't his fault I'd driven into a snowbank or that my thawing extremities felt like they were simultaneously on fire and frozen. I sighed and made a conscious choice to let go of stress at the exact moment that the door chime jingled. We all swiveled our heads to see who had entered, and I cursed under my breath. It appeared that stress wasn't ready to let go of me.

Four

Mrs. Berns was my
best friend. She was also in her eighties and a beautiful package of white curls, deep wrinkles, and saucy wit. When her husband passed a decade earlier, she'd thrown off her housewife shackles and become a skilled cougar, chasing men half her age and catching her fair share. I loved her to death and back, but the expression on her face revealed that something was seriously wrong. I shot to my feet, disregarding the bone-deep pain of frozen toe tips. “What is it?”

“I need a seat.”

I led her over to the couch with Nancy's help. Mrs. Berns was still sporting a light scar on her face and a limp, markers of the life-threatening car accident she'd been in five weeks earlier. This close, she felt frail.

“Can we get you some tea?” Nancy asked. Sid was already on her way to the kitchen.

“Not unless that's lesbian for ‘brandy,'” Mrs. Berns said, settling into the sofa.

Nancy smiled. “'Fraid not. We've got a chocolate croissant with your name on it, however.”

“Now you're talking some sense.” Mrs. Berns stretched her feet toward the fire and took stock of me, her eyes squinting as she looked me up and down. “Went for a walk in this beautiful weather, by the looks of you.”

“Forget about me. I haven't seen you this stressed since, well … ever.”

She harrumphed, her face dropping back into the peaks and valleys of strain. “You know that funeral I attended this afternoon?”

“Tom Kicker's?” Nancy asked. “Sad situation.”

I nodded in agreement. Everyone in the county knew Tom, or at least knew of him. He'd founded Battle Sacks thirty years earlier. The business had started, legend had it, when he couldn't find a knapsack sturdy enough and with enough pockets to hold all his hunting gear. Swearing he could do better, he'd cut up an old canvas tarp and created the first Battle Sack. Since that time, the name had become synonymous with quality outdoor gear, and he'd expanded the line to include sleeping bags, hiking and camping equipment, and even a line of high-quality bows. The company had quickly outgrown the shed he'd originally started it in, and he'd constructed a factory on the outskirts of Battle Lake two decades earlier. Battle Sacks was the largest employer in the five-county area. All had been golden until last Saturday, when its founder had been shot and killed in a tragic hunting accident. The story had even made the
St. Paul Pioneer Press
. “I bet there were a lot of people at the funeral.”

“The church was full to the top. Really good food, too. You know those First Lutheran ladies make the best bars. I've got some extra here, if you're interested.”

I tried to stop her from digging in her purse. “I'm good. So you're stressed about the funeral?”

She almost had her head fully tucked inside her grocery-bag-sized purse. Her voice was muffled. “Not that so much. Funerals can be a good time, depending on who you sit by. It's the meeting with his daughter that's set me off kilter.”

“Hallie?” Nancy asked.

Mrs. Berns pulled her head out of her purse. “That's her. She's my goddaughter, you might know. And she's as convinced as the nose on her face that it wasn't an accident that killed her father.”

Five

This brought Sid back
from behind the counter. “What? But he was out hunting with Clive. Those two have been friends since high school.”

Mrs. Berns made a dismissive sound. “I know that, you know that, the whole county knows that.”

“So why does she think he was murdered?” I asked. Clive was actually my neighbor, in a country-mile sort of way, and a recluse as far as I could tell. There was a rumor among the high school crowd that he'd murdered his wife and children and fed them to the pigs years ago. I'd never put much stock in it. Every small town in Minnesota has an aging bachelor who's been designated as either the fed-his-wife-to-the-pigs man or the trap-and-eat-children-for-fun guy. It's just one more way we punish the single in society. Clive was gainfully employed, and on the rare occasions when our paths crossed, his hunched body language and smell labeled him a loner with a borderline drinking problem, not a murderer. As far as I knew, Tom was his only friend, and I think Clive liked it that way. In fact, I'd wondered if he'd started the pig-feeding rumor himself to keep people away.

“That's for you to find out,” she said.

I coughed involuntarily. “What?”

“I told her you'd talk to her. Said you'd come over tonight, as a matter of fact.”

“What?”

“You already said that.”

Feeling had finally returned to all the previously frozen parts of my body. Problem was, it was that high-pitched nerve pain that your body doles out as it decides whether or not you have frostbite. I tried to ignore it. “It was relevant both times. Why on earth would you tell Hallie that I'd talk to her?”

“You're a private dick, aren't you?” She smiled innocently. She'd been tickled when I'd agreed to seek out my investigator's license because it gave her countless legitimate opportunities to say “dick” in mixed company.

“We've talked about this. I don't have my license yet, it'll be years before I do, and you don't get to call me a dick. Besides, what is there to detect? A man was shot by his friend while they were hunting. He died, and the friend claimed it was an accident. If that's good enough for the police, it's gonna have to be good enough for Hallie.”

“How many murders have you solved in the last six months? Seven? Eight?”

“And not a one of them on purpose.”

“Well, now you've got some purpose.”

I shook my head. “I want to be a small-town investigator. You know, the boring stuff. Online research, credit checks, maybe a cheating scandal or two. Nice and safe.”

She changed tack. “You won't talk to a grieving woman on the night of her father's funeral?”

I groaned. Guilt was my kryptonite. “Why do you do this to me?”

“You love it, and you know it.”

“It won't do any good, me talking to her.” I was already caving.

“We'll see.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I'll only consider it if you'll come with me.” I wasn't very good at dealing with emotions, mine or others. I guessed there would be a lot of the latter.

“Wouldn't miss it for the world.”

“Fine. I'll do it. It shouldn't take long to convince her that a librarian isn't her best bet if she wants to prove a murder.”

“Right. Or for her to convince you that she might be on to something.” She indicated my hands, which I'd begun flexing to burn off the last of the frost-stiffening. “Now that I've spilled, why don't you explain why you looked like you'd been shat out a snowman when I came in.”

I updated her on my afternoon—no Jed, got stuck, walked across the tundra, rescued by a stranger, found out Jed moved.

She nodded as if it all made perfect sense and then zeroed in on the part that affected her. “You better get that heat in your car fixed soon. I need you to drive me to Minneapolis on Wednesday.”

“What for?”

She returned to her purse and came out with a pair of sunglasses as big as dinner plates. “Gonna visit my daughter in Sedona.” She enunciated every syllable:
C-doe-nuh
.

I'd met her daughter, Elizabeth, at the hospital after the car accident. She was good people. “What time's your plane leave?”

“Nine p.m. I scheduled the flight so you'd have just enough time to close up the library before driving me down.”

“Very thoughtful,” I said. “When're we leaving for Hallie's?”

She looked over her shoulder, her expression annoyed. “As soon as I get that chocolate croissant I was promised.”

———

I knew who Tom Kicker was, of course, and had seen him around town. The same was true of Hallie. I could have picked them both out of a crowd, though I'd never exchanged more than a few words with either of them. “How do you know the Kicker family?”

Mrs. Berns sat next to me, furiously scraping the inside of the windshield as I drove. Dancing ice shavings turned the inside of the Toyota into a roving snowglobe. “That's a potentially interesting question, but how's this for a better one? What sort of goat-roping idiot drives a car without heat in Minnesota at the end of November? I'm just curious, mind you. Making conversation, if you will.” She was shivering so violently that her teeth clattered like castanets.

“I'll get it fixed. I just haven't had time.” I shot her a sideways glance to see if she was buying it. Not only was she not in for a penny, she looked ready to whack me with the scraper.

“You wet-pantsed chicken. You're afraid of what the mechanic is going to tell you, aren't you?”

“Unh unh. Just busy.” I steered the conversation back to the Kickers. “You must be 20 years older than Tom, and I never heard you talk about him. How'd you get to be Hallie's godmother?”

She returned to her scraping. “I didn't know Tom that well, tell you the truth. Hallie joined my church while she was still in high school. She was having some problems at home but was never too specific about them. Her family wasn't religious, so Sundays were her excuse to get away. She and I hit it off, and when she decided forever ago to get baptized, I agreed to be her spiritual guide.”

I snorted. Talk about letting the wolf guard the sheep.

“I'm multi-faceted,” she huffed. “Now step on it before my niblets freeze off.”

Hallie lived in the rich part of town, which, given the size of Battle Lake, was right next to every other part of town. Her house was an old Victorian, the kind with a four-season porch, gingerbreading on the outside, and lots of turrets and crannies.
I bet a person could get a lot of thinking done in a house like that
, I thought, following Mrs. Berns up the well-traveled front walk. A soft snow had crept in and the streetlights were lit, imparting a faded, Norman Rockwell feel to the block of grand old houses.

The stampede of footprints leading to Hallie's front door suggested she'd entertained a traveling army recently, which made sense given her father's death and funeral. They must have all gone home because only one light shone in the window. The door was answered before Mrs. Berns finished knocking.

“You came. I wasn't sure if you would.” Hallie was in her late
forties, and because she was a little short and a lot round, I'd
always assumed she'd be nice to hug and smell like fresh-baked cookies up close. Right now, though, the pinched look around her eyes and mouth suggested the only thing she wanted to hug was her pillow and a bottle of Valium.

“I said I would. Now let me in. I'm so cold I can't feel my liver.” Mrs. Berns pushed her way inside.

“Hi,” I said, holding out my hand. The growl of a car coming to life rumbled from the end of the block, followed by the sound of a windshield being scraped. “I'm Mira. I don't know if we've ever been formally introduced. I'm sorry about your loss.”

She smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. “Thank you for coming. You probably think I'm ridiculous, asking you here to talk about my dad's shooting. The police are certain it's an accident.”

The car at the end of the block took off, its tires making a crunching cornflakes sound on the newly fallen snow. I tried to keep my shivering within the myoclonic range. “But you're not?”

“Where are my manners? Come in and have a seat. Can I get you
something to drink?” She closed the door behind me and led us into a grand den stuffed with soporific-looking sofas and velvet-backed chairs. My second fire of the evening crackled in the fireplace, and through the heat-tempered glass shielding the front and the back of the fire, I could see into the room on the other side.

“Brandy,” said Mrs. Berns. “And Mira gave up drinking a month
or two ago, but I predict she'll be back in the bottle soon. Want to start tonight, dear?”

I shot her the stink eye. Her social filter, flimsy under the best of circumstances, must have frozen entirely on the way over. “I'd take some hot chocolate, if you have it.”

“Of course. I'll be right back.”

She turned a corner and a light illuminated the glass on the other side of the fireplace. I realized it was the kitchen I was seeing through there. Suddenly, I was dying to explore this majestic house. “How much do you think a place like this costs?” I whispered to Mrs. Berns.

“Less than it would in Minneapolis. You're going to snoop, aren't you?”

Bugger that she knew me so well. I'd always struggled to pass a closed door without at least jiggling the knob. If it was unlocked, a peek couldn't hurt anyone, could it? It was an affliction, but there were worse ones. “No. I need to use the bathroom.”

“Okay. It's the third door on your left down that hallway. Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

I stuck my tongue out at her and left the warm firelight. The hallway was graced with what I assumed were the original tin ceilings and elaborate crown molding. I stretched my hands as high as they would go, and the ceiling was still seven feet away. The walls were decorated with dark wood chair rails and dozens of family photos. Most of them were of Hallie when she was younger, standing alone or with a dark-haired version of her father and the woman I guessed was her mother. I couldn't remember if Tom Kicker had been divorced or widowed. I'd ask Mrs. Berns later.

Whenever the three of them were posed together, they looked happy, all sunburned noses and wide smiles. I recognized Minnesota landmarks in many of their photos—the Paul Bunyan statue in Brainerd, Split Rock lighthouse in Two Harbors—looming behind a grinning Hallie who in the earliest photos was missing teeth. As the photographic timeline progressed, she grew taller and then rounder, and by the end of the line-up, she'd graduated to curled hair, bell bottoms, and the large eyeglasses favored by shop teachers and fans of the Bay City Rollers.

Tom must have snapped most of the photos because he appeared only in a handful, though at the end of the wall, he was front and center in a fishing shot. I recognized Clive. The other two men were strangers to me. The photo appeared about five years old, judging by their clothes and the gray peppering their hair. The four of them stood on a dock, holding a muskie so huge they each had two hands on it. Tom was laughing, mouth open, and the much-older man immediately to his right seemed to be sharing the joke. Clive and the other fellow looked stiff, but it might have been the way the late afternoon light fell on their faces.

I heard Hallie return to Mrs. Berns and pulled myself away from the photos. I really did need to use the bathroom. I hurried to the end of the hall. All the doors on my way were open, so I could see right into an office and a neatly kept spare bedroom on my right and a fabulously oaky and well-stocked private library on my left. I steered into the bathroom and did my business, forgoing opening any of the cabinets. I actually do have a curiosity line that I won't cross.

My hot cocoa was waiting for me when I returned. “Thank you,” I said, accepting the steaming mug. I dipped my pinkie in the liquid, felt it was exactly the right temperature, and took a big swallow.

I opened my eyes and saw Hallie smiling at me, this time from her eyes. “Good stuff ?”

“You have no idea. This is the first time I've been completely warm in hours.”

“I'm glad.” She sat in the love seat at an angle from the sofa. We could all converse with one another comfortably, but she seemed not to know where to start.

Mrs. Berns, however, didn't suffer from that affliction. “So you think Tom was murdered.”

I choked on my hot chocolate, but Hallie took it in stride. “I do. I know it sounds crazy, which is why I haven't told anyone but you, and now Mira. It's just a feeling I can't shake. Well, that and the fight.”

“Fight?” I asked, against my better judgment.

Hallie nodded and took a deep slug of her drink. It was also in a mug, but I'd wager twenty dollars it wasn't hot chocolate. “I don't think they wanted anyone to hear it. I'd stopped in late at the plant last Friday to pick up some work—I've been the bookkeeper for twenty years, my first and only job, really—and saw my dad's truck out front. I was surprised because he was supposed to be hunting with Clive for the weekend. I walked to the main office and was going to go in when I heard the voices. It was Clive and my dad, arguing.”

I placed my empty mug on the end table, wondering if maybe I should have paced myself. I was starting to feel sleepy, like a well-fed kitten. “How do you know it was Clive?”

She shot me a glance I couldn't read. “Clive has been in my life forever. I'd recognize his voice anywhere.”

“What were they arguing about?” Mrs. Berns asked.

“That's just it.” Hallie sat forward in her chair, her face haggard. “I don't know. Clive yelled something about nobody finding out, and my dad said something back, too quiet for me to hear. He wasn't a yeller, never had been,” she added, almost as a plea. “Then Clive yelled at him to wait just a week. Well, as soon as I realized it was those two, I didn't want to be a busybody. I left.”