Totally Buzzed (A Miller Sisters Mystery) (7 page)

With her nose in the air, Mom got up and moved over by Al, pretending to be concerned over her delicate constitution. Al smiled weakly at her and laid her head on Mom's shoulder, playing up the drama. It was all I could do to keep myself from strangling her.

"Well, I never!" Highly insulted and fit to be tied, Joy stomped over to the picnic table, picked up her seven-layer salad, which Bill was in the process of digging into. She snatched it, Dad's spoon and all. Lettuce flew and a pea bounced off Dad's bald head. Joy stalked over to her Bonneville and tossed the salad through the back window.

Mom said out of the side of her mouth, "Joy's going to regret
that
move in the morning!" Mary and Jane nodded their heads in agreement.

Revving the engine, Joy peeled out of the driveway, spraying gravel across the front fender of Dad's new truck.

Dad jumped out of his chair (although he more resembled a beetle trying to crawl up the inside of a glass jar), looking like he wanted to kill something. "Damn, damn, damn old women! I am tired of you all playing free and loose with my new truck! You all can learn how to drive or stop coming over here to wreck my stuff!" He attacked the nearest thing to him Unfortunately, it was Ted.

Arms flailed and sauerkraut flew out of the bun as Dad poked Ted in the chest with his bratwurst. "My truck! My damn truck! You! You little sawed-off excuse of a political hack! Do your job and arrest that old broad! Go on," he poked him again. "Go get her! She wrecked what you didn't of my poor new truck. Throw her in jail and throw away the key! Get that crazy broad off the streets!"

Ted stumbled backward, trying to avoid the attack of the now-krautless sausage. Heedless of how idiotic he looked, dripping mustard, and sauerkraut hanging off his tie tack, he began to backpedal away from the livid 80 year old man. "But Bill, wait! I'll pay, wait! Stop! Sheriff Green! Mrs. Miller! Call him off!"

Not knowing whether to scream or cry, he mewled like a wounded kitten while scrambling backward away from my father. We all watched helplessly while his butt hit the food-laden picnic table full force. He floundered and teetered, realized he was trapped. He tried to regain his balance, tripped over his feet, and fell face first into the potato salad.

"Two salads down, two to go," yelled Mary, as her son picked a piece of celery out of his ear. "I haven't had this much fun since me and the mister thought that the swinging singles ad we answered was a dance club! I remember when we walked into that place dressed in our square dance outfits; the place went up for grabs. That ruffled skirt of mine never got such a workout!"

"MARY," everyone yelled. She smiled her Mona Lisa smile and settled back into her chair, quiet for the first time all day.

Ted took advantage of the distraction and exited, stage left. He jumped into his squad and hightailed it out of there. Last seen was a cloud of dust settling in the driveway, and a trail of potato salad, kraut, and mustard scattered across the yard.

"Hey, Sheriff, we got everything all 'wrapped up' here!" Ivan waved his fifth brat in the air and smiled. He slammed the back of the ambulance closed.

J.J. scowled at him as he signed off on the paperwork. "Sick joke, Ivan. Get on downtown now so Malcolm can work his magic. Hey, Buzz, you're going in with me and Malcolm for the autopsy, aren't you?"

"Sure, J.J. You go ahead back to your office. Just let me make sure my folks are okay and I'll be right along."
 

"I don't think it's your folks you have to worry about. Ted just got beat up by an 80 year old man and a naked bratwurst."

"Uh, yeah, Dad's a little touchy about his truck."

J.J. ruffled the hair on top of my head. He knew I hated that. "See you later, pal. Thanks for the entertaining morning."

I sighed. "Later, J.J., Unfortunately it wasn't unusual by Miller standards."

J.J. smiled and shook his head. He pulled out behind Mee-Me's car. Moe, Larry, Curly, and Shemp quit the softball game they were involved in and sped off down the driveway after him. Mag printed the pictures she had taken on the computer and gave me a set for the investigation. I looked back on the scene as I pulled out of the driveway. Aside from the nasty smell hanging low in the air, it seemed like a friendly neighborhood gathering. If people only knew…

4

The unaccompanied drive back into town was the perfect way to restore the slim hold I had on my sanity. It gave me time to digest and disseminate the information I had gathered onto the whiteboard of my brain–not an easy task after just escaping the pandemonium of my parents' place. Something about the body tickled the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite grasp its significance. I decided to wait until after the autopsy to formulate a plan of action. I threw J.J.'s recorder and my notes into the investigation file (a.k.a. the glove box,) and continued on my way into town.

My timing was perfect because I pulled into the parking lot of the County Morgue just as the ambulance was leaving. Entering by the back door, I could see Mee-Me and Ivan finishing the prep work in the cold room. Autopsies never bothered me overmuch–some crimes scenes I'd been on were much worse–but I'm not a sandwich eater either. Ivan was, and took specific pleasure in grossing out some of the toughest he-men cops I ever worked with. I've watched Ivan perform his macabre magic on other cops many times. I remember when I worked with a fellow copper named Jeff Arsenal, chuckling along with him as some state boy barfed and fainted right there in the cold room.

Mee-Me offered to let me observe, but I declined, saying I'd rather check out the plastic I recovered from Carole's pocket. He suggested we look at it together while we had sole access to his lab. I agreed. Within five minutes we were both staring blankly at what appeared to be flower seeds wrapped in a paper towel. Under a microscope, we could see there were two kinds of seeds in the towel and neither resembled marijuana, but beyond that we were stumped. Malcolm folded his arms across his chest and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead.

"Why would Carole meticulously wrap a few seeds in her pocket? She owned a nursery with millions of seeds all over the place. Why would these be special?"

I went over a couple of possibilities. "Perhaps she was saving them to give to someone else. Maybe someone gave them to her. Let's try not to read anything into this that isn't there. She was a professional gardener, and probably had seeds in every room of the house."

I stared into the microscope again. "Look at the towel, Malcolm. Is that writing?"

The paper towel had striations on it, which could mean someone wrote on a piece of paper sitting on top of the towel at the time.

Malcolm peered through the scope and agreed. "It looks like a
u, t, h, e
, and maybe a capital
L
."

I wrote on a piece of paper:
luthier, lute, lutecium, Luther, Lutheran.

"Hey, Malcolm, maybe Carole is a Lutheran." He bobbed his head enthusiastically. I laughed, waving my hands and shaking my head. "Hey, I'm just kidding!"

He stared at me blankly and I sighed in exasperation. "Malcolm, I was being facetious. Carole is
not
a Lutheran! This might, however, be a name. 'Luther' could be a possibility. Perhaps Theo L. Maybe he was a contact, or who she got the seeds from. Could it be part of a name of a town? Maybe it's the name of the seeds. We'll let the crime lab figure it out." I made a notation to send along my ideas with the seed sample.

It's got to be the seeds. If we identify the seeds, we'll be on our way.

Why was I concentrating on the seeds? Why was I not zeroing in on the bullet wound? Probably because after looking at the shape the body was in, the bullet seemed like overkill.

"Maybe the reason I think Carole's murder is connected with the seeds is that Carole and Glenn do not have enemies in this town. They have a thriving business but are not millionaires.

"Their son does not get into trouble with the law, and there is no evidence that either Carole or Glenn was fooling around." In a small town in southeastern Wisconsin, we would know.

Between grapevine gossip and sauce talk at a local tavern, someone would have seen something and repeated it down at Sal's Diner.

"I don't know about life insurance or inheritances, but it looks, so far, like we have no other motive outside the business, so our next step is to look
inside
the business."

Malcolm looked up from his notes, "Yeah, you're right. Sorry I jumped the gun. Everyone wants to be a detective, you know."

I replied dryly, "It ain't as cool as it looks, Mal."

He looked like an eager puppy. "I'd really like to help, though. Maybe I can call the State of Wisconsin Crime Lab in Madison and ask if they know of anyone who could help us identify the seeds. I went to med school with the director up there." He jotted down another note to himself.

I cocked my head and thought a minute. "Do they really have guys that do that now? I would bet they don't have Forensic Botanists just lying around at the crime lab waiting for someone to call."

Malcolm sent me a telling look over the tops of his bifocals. I shut up. He continued. "We could also contact the university–they do everything there. In this day and age everyone borrows from everyone. I give the occasional lecture up there; they do some lab work for me that requires diagnostic capabilities, which are beyond my humble lab. The main thing is, we can't rule anything out, so if you agree this warrants a Forensic Botanist, I'll go ahead and try to find one. If this homicide involves the gardening industry, it would be good to make the acquaintance of the professional plant boys anyway."

Although J.J. was nowhere around, I gave Malcolm the go-ahead to make the calls and ship some of the samples if the state boys could identify them. I thanked him and told him to call me when he wanted me to pick up the autopsy report, and to let me know what the crime lab had to say.

"Oh, one more thing, Buzz. J.J. went out to the Graff place to break the news to Glenn. He said he'd call you later. Call me if you need me."

"Thanks Malcolm. Will do."

I was surprised to see Mag was in the parking lot, shifting back and forth on her feet next to my car, and looking grim.

I lifted a brow. "What's up, Magpie?"

She furrowed hers and glared at me. "Coffee," was all she said, and got into her car. 'Coffee' was a secret Miller Sisters word that was serious business. It could mean anything from, 'Yo Bitch, we have to talk', to 'I am devastated and need a shoulder', to 'I'm starving to death, let's eat'.

I thought I was probably the 'Yo Bitch' as we climbed into our respective vehicles. We automatically drove to the small diner a couple of blocks from the morgue. Actually, the place was a geographical oddity, in that Salvador's Diner (as it is called) is a couple of blocks from anywhere in White Bass Lake. It's the heart of the town in more ways than one.

The story goes that the owner, Sal Garcia, fell in love and married an American exchange student (Amy) twenty-some years ago. Sal always wanted to be a chef in a five-star restaurant, but after meeting up with prejudice and snobbery in the culinary world, he lowered his sights just a little. He and Amy settled in White Bass Lake, bought the diner, raised three kids, and they run the best little breakfast and lunch place in the Midwest. It is a standing-room-only gold mine, especially when the summer people invade our little hamlet.

Sal bakes all his own pastries and experiments with different dishes. In front of a grill he is second to none. He is so fast that at times his hands are a blur. People come into his place just to watch him cook.

We timed him once, and he cooked breakfast for six people in less than five minutes: we are talking pancakes, potatoes, French toast, and omelets. He is, in short, simply amazing.

We go to Sal's for a number of reasons. First, they are all great people. Second, they don't care how long we sit and have coffee. Third, Sal's is 'gossip central' in White Bass Lake, so if you want to know anything about anyone, you need to be at Sal's. Fourth, Al never goes there, so we do.