by J. J. Murray
When we arrive at the edge of where the lake was forty years ago, State Police Officer Davey Smith stops us, and I smell a rancid combination of decomposing fish, rotten eggs, and fresh manure. I look up and see three news helicopters and some turkey buzzards circling overhead.
“Hello, Miss Ferrari,” Officer Smith says. “Who’s this with you today?”
“I am Giovanna’s grandfather,” Nonno says, “and we must get through.”
“You’re …” Officer Smith blinks. “You’re her grandfather?”
“I am,” Nonno says.
Yes, Davey. Though I am five times darker, I am this wonderful man’s granddaughter.
Officer Smith turns his face into his shoulder mike. “They’re here, Captain Downs.” He smiles at me. “Y’all have a pleasant day down in the stink hole. It smells like a corpse sitting on a pile of rotten apples, doesn’t it? And you know what? They only found three fish after the lake flushed itself.”
Hot mud, hot day, hot stench in the summertime …
Hey, it’s a living.
Other officers direct Nonno to the rocky beach and force him to park behind a flapping wall of yellow police tape. I shade my eyes and peer out over the lakebed. I will have to wheel the Petrogen about two thousand feet to that refrigerator.
I am not happy.
While Nonno carries my gloves and helmet, I roll the heavy Petrogen across the dusty, cracked lakebed dodging stumps from trees that grew tall the last time the lake went dry. We pass something called “Jump Rock” that sits at least six hundred feet from anything remotely wet.
We walk around a rowboat with a gaping hole in the bow.
“A boat the lodge used to let guests rent,” Nonno says. “They could turn it into a sandbox now.”
Or a mud box.
Nonno points at a sewing machine half sunk into the dirt. “A Singer featherweight. Still sought after by collectors. Not much rust.”
“You could fix that.”
“Sure.”
He stops to catch his breath near an antique wooden icebox with three compartments. “Do you know what they insulated the interior walls with?”
“Cork,” I say.
“What else?”
“I have no idea.” I rub my right shoulder. We’re still five hundred feet away.
“They insulated it with seaweed,” Nonno says.
“Really.”
“It is great insulation,” Nonno says. “It keeps the ocean cold, yes?”
We continue as the stench increases and sweat pours down my back.
I nearly stumble over a Victor, what most people call a Victrola. Victors have a horn on the outside. A Victrola has the speaker inside. “Could you restore it?”
“It is doubtful,” Nonno says. “It might make a nice conversation piece.”
The debris field grows thicker and the foul smell thicker the closer we get to the refrigerator. A 3-D TV with a cracked screen. Lures from every generation snagged on a ball of fishing line. A wok. A hot air popcorn popper. A fondue pot. Several eight-tracks and cassettes sit inside a hula-hoop. A toilet seat holds down license plate. One wing tip shoe rests inside a Frisbee. A muddy Rubik’s Cube begs for someone to solve it.
“Is that a rototiller?” Nonno asks.
I stare at a brand new Troy-Bilt Super Bronco rototiller stuck deep in the muck as if someone had dropped it from the air. “It’s still shiny.”
“Why is this here?” Nonno asks. “The nearest farm is ten miles away.”
“I have no idea.”
Except for the rototiller, Blue Lake is a toilet bowl of fads.
Nonno’s eyes light up when he sees the metal frame of a long vehicle with scooped fenders, a tall radiator, wire wheels, and rusty wire springs where the front and back seats had been. “Oh my,” he says. “It is a Model A woody.”
Without the wood. Or the top. Or the doors.
“It could be early 1930s,” Nonno says. “It used to take resort guests from hotels to train depots. They were called ‘depot hacks’ then ‘depot wagons’ then ‘station wagons.’ It would have seated six comfortably. They were notoriously squeaky and had to be treated like furniture.”
I look at brown whitewalls, rusty wire wheels, and a greenish front. It should be treated like scrap now.
Nonno inspects the engine. “A three-point-three-liter, L-head four, three-speed. No more than forty horsepower, top speed sixty-five.”
“Look at the windshield, Nonno,” I say. The split, tilt-up windshield is gone, but only on the driver’s side.
“The safety glass is gone,” Nonno says. “This is the missing Model A, and something bad caused it to be here near the middle of the lake.”
This wreck could help solve the ancient mystery of heiress Daphne Carrington and 4-F hack driver Roddy McDougal, whom the press dubbed “The Beauty and the Beast.” Daphne and Roddy allegedly drowned in Blue Lake in 1944. The police dragged the lake but didn’t find this vehicle or their bodies. Most said they had to fake their deaths to get away from her father, an early captain of the railroad industry. Roddy was unfit for service in WWII, and Daphne was a guest at the lodge.
“The mystery is solved,” Nonno says.
“Not yet,” I say. “There are no cadaver dogs around it.” And there are plenty of cadaver dogs circling the refrigerator two hundred feet away.
“Miss Carrington and Mr. McDougal would be skeletons by now, yes?” Nonno asks.
“I’m sure,” I say, “but cadaver dogs can sense bone, too.”
Nonno scoops a Waltham pocket watch from the dirt. “My papa thought the driver and the young lady had gotten away. It is a shame they had to wreck such a fine vehicle.”
“They might still have gotten away, Nonno,” I say. “They could have staged it to look like an accidental drowning.”
I smell before I hear the huffing and puffing of Sheriff Buford Morris, who fits the Southern stereotype of a town sheriff to a T. Red-faced and corpulent from drinking too much and generally invisible from hangovers, Sheriff Morris is as longwinded as the average Republican, especially when a Democrat is in the White House. Big head, big mouth, big sweat stains—and a small mind. “It’s about time you got here, Ferrari,” Sheriff Morris says. “Over here.”
I roll the Petrogen toward the refrigerator surrounded by state police, deputies, photographers, news crews, and dogs and their handlers. It’s hard to believe Blue Lake was once one hundred feet deep here. Dr. Henritze, the short, geeky Calhoun coroner addresses the media nearby.
“You took your sweet time getting here, Ferrari,” Sheriff Morris says.
“And thank you all so much for helping me drag this across half a dead lake.” I wipe the sweat dripping from my forehead. “Why didn’t you move the refrigerator to shore?”
“Because it’s a crime scene, Ferrari,” a deep voice says.
I turn to see state police Captain Sam Downs sporting his bushy, trimmed black moustache and shiny, clean-shaven face. “Nice to see you again, Captain Downs.”
He nods. “The cadaver dogs were circling the fridge immediately.”
Dr. Henritze turns from the cameras and approaches us. “And it’s a crime scene you didn’t stumble upon this time.”
Dr. Henritze is still mad at me for solving Mr. Simmons’ murder. “You think it’s natural causes this time, Dr. Henritze?” I ask.
“No, obviously,” Dr. Henritze says.
“What if it’s a fridge full of venison?” I ask. “Or a fridge full of ground beef? Beef prices are so high I might chain up my refrigerator.”
“It’s obviously not,” Dr. Henritze says. “The dogs only respond to human remains.”
Sheriff Morris pulls up the back of his pants. “Sure you can cut that chain, Ferrari?”
I pull the Petrogen over to the refrigerator, wincing then relaxing because I don’t smell anything foul. “Yes, I can cut the chain.” Shouldn’t I be smelling something?
“What can you tell us about the refrigerator, Franco?”
Captain Downs asks.
Nonno approaches the refrigerator. “It is a Philco refrigerator approximately sixty years old.”
This refrigerator may have been at the landfill at one time. I’ll have to ask Delmer if he knows who took it since Delmer is occasionally our unpaid, unofficial landfill attendant.
“What about the padlock?” Captain Downs asks.
“It is one I have read about but have never seen before,” Nonno says. “It is made by Sargent and Greenleaf. This lock costs over one thousand dollars. You cannot use a grinder or liquid nitrogen to open it. It is virtually impossible to pick.”
Or shoot open. I wonder if these fools have tried.
“Just open the thing, Ferrari,” Sheriff Morris says. “It’s hot out here.”
You think?
“What can you tell us about the chain, Franco?” Captain Downs asks.
Sheriff Morris scowls and sighs.
“It looks like half-inch industrial grade one hundred or one hundred twenty steel,” Nonno says. “It has up to a nine-ton working load limit. It is very expensive, up to twenty dollars a foot.”
There must be fifty feet of chain here. Someone spent over $3,000 to turn this refrigerator into a safe.
“Could you please open it now?” Sheriff Morris whines.
I imagine Sheriff Morris has already lost twenty pounds. I won’t be that far behind.
I put on my Tillman 980 gloves, which are like oven mitts with fingers. These gloves can withstand up to two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. I fire up the Petrogen, which can burn at six thousand degrees or more—hotter than the exhaust from an Apollo rocket. The torch heats the metal to a kindling temperature and turns the metal cherry red. When I press the oxygen blast trigger, I train a stream of oxygen on the burning metal and turn it into a metal oxide that flows out of the slag. The Petrogen is a gas axe that melts metal like butter.
I finish one cut and tap out the slag with a screwdriver.
“Step aside,” Dr. Henritze says.
“I need to make two cuts to break the link,” I say.
“Oh,” Dr. Henritze says.
Duh. I make a second cut, tap out the slag, and step aside, powering down the Petrogen.
Gloved CSI techs remove the chain, and Dr. Henritze puts on latex gloves. “Let’s see what’s for dinner,” he says.
No one laughs.
Dr. Henritze tries to open the refrigerator’s door, but it won’t budge. “A little help here.”
Four CSI techs and Dr. Henritze can’t budge the door, and cameras capture every satisfying moment.
Some of the reporters are laughing.
Nonno pulls me aside. “The refrigerator is sealed tightly. I felt the cold from a foot away. As if what is inside is still frozen.”
“Or who,” I whisper.
Captain Downs moves closer to us. “Could you help them, please?”
Nonno hands me an antique Italian sailor’s pocketknife, and I approach the refrigerator. I see a thick coating of silicone along the door seal. “It’s only silicone caulk.” I cut the silicone from top to bottom, left to right at the bottom, and between the hinges on the right, expecting the door to spring open. “Restaurant grade silicone caulk.” I slice the seal above the door, and the door springs open in a burst of cold air and steam.
When the steam clears, I see Delmer Farley, frozen solid and hunched over with a smile on his face …
Look for Tuning up Daisies, the third installment in the Giovanna Ferrari Repair-it-all Mystery series, in the fall of 2015.