Blow Up on Murder

by Linda Townsdin

  Ben came up beside me, his eyes extra squinty, a sign he’d had no sleep. My heart always did a little flip on first sighting. But there was no kiss. We were together in our professional capacities. “What’s happening?”

  He squatted and scratched Rock’s ears. “Officers are interviewing the few people left on campus, K-9 teams are going through the classrooms and dorms for additional explosives. The FBI and BCA are still in the preliminary investigation stage. Homeland’s coming.”

  “I was with the BCA all day yesterday. I didn’t see you.”

  “We were interviewing campus Islamic organizations to ferret out any radicals. That created a profiling outcry and we’re dealing with that. Tensions are high. A guy whose girlfriend was hurt in the blast attacked a Muslim kid. Everyone’s freaked out, parents are pulling their kids out and the semester’s just beginning. It’s a mess.”

  “What Islamic organizations?”

  “There’s a bunch of them—Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), University Professors for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to name a few. Not that they embrace terrorism, but we have to check them out.”

  “Any leads?”

  He stretched his arms over his head and yawned. “BCA’s running down more info on that explosion at Summer Fest over in Bleecher County last summer. They never caught the guy.”

  “Bella was just telling me about that.”

  “It was a similar type of blast.” Ben’s phone rang, he listened for a minute and said he had to go. He hesitated, “Are you staying in town?”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  He leaned in and his lips brushed my ear. “Always.”

  “I would, but you’re going to be tied up and I promised Bella I’d keep an eye on Violet.”

  He did an eye roll-head shake combo. “Violet’s a forty-year-old woman.”

  “She and her mom have never been separated before. They worry about each other.”

  He touched my cheek and then was gone.

  I wandered back through the campus, which was strangely quiet after yesterday’s turmoil. The early fall brought a quickening in the air. A wintry Canadian wind rustled the birches, golden leaves blew toward the sky. I walked across the street and squinted into the storefront window at Robyn Barry. She saw me and continued moving a pointer across a white board.

  “C’mon Rock, I’m not needed here.”

  Driving down a Northern Minnesota highway—hardly any traffic, trees in full fall color lining each side of the road—brought up a bittersweet sort of nostalgia and by the time I made it back to Little’s I was practically weepy. Not sad, but aware of time passing, people gone, youth disappearing. Those college kids, the ones who were and weren’t hurt would never be the same. Innocence lost, the world more dangerous to them than it had been yesterday.

  *

  Violet frowned over the register, reading glasses perched on her blip of a nose. I said, “Bella’s doing fine. She had control of the remote when I was there.”

  “She’s a pistol. I’m heading up there now.”

  “Why don’t you come to Little’s with me, have something to eat first?” Violet’s pink cheeks had lost their luster. My brother’s gift was in feeding people just what their bodies and souls needed most. He’d fix her up and I wasn’t about to go another full day without eating a decent meal.

  “Just let me finish tallying up the register. It takes me longer than Mom.”

  Always restless, I wandered around and picked up a vial from a display. The label said it was a natural sleep aid. I opened it and sniffed. Would it ward off nightmares?

  Violet glanced up from her laptop. “That’s another of Emmaline’s Organics. I know Mom wouldn’t approve of my selling them in the salon, but Emmaline’s new around here. She lives way out in the country and doesn’t have her own business space.” Violet lifted a shoulder. “She sort of asked.”

  “It smells okay.”

  Violet’s Cupid’s bow mouth puckered and she glanced at my hands. “How are they, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  I held them out for her to see. “I have full dexterity now, but I’ll never be a hand model.” They were discolored from the burns I’d gotten fighting for my life with a vengeance-seeking psychopath last summer. But I was grateful to still have them and treated them as precious gifts. The issue now was my mind—how to rehab the tricky grey matter that presided over my body, giving me shakes and twitches whenever a loud noise startled me. I hadn’t slept a full night since Nigeria, not even in Ben’s comforting arms. But the shadow of Chloe’s much worse experience put my problems into perspective.

  “They look so much better than before, but dry.” Violet held out a trial-size container. “This sample has shea butter and wild blueberry essence. Take it.”

  I stuck the vial in my jeans pocket and moved away from the display before Violet loaded me up with more stuff.

  When she was ready, I said, “Let’s walk over. You’ve been standing in one place all day.”

  She checked the window. “It’s blustery, but if you want to...”

  Not a small woman, Violet’s was a classic pear shape and she wasn’t big on exercise. Once we stepped outside, a gust of wind swept my hair across my face and set Violet’s curls dancing. She pulled her sweater around her. “There’s something witchy about fall.”

  That night my phone pinged with a text from Robyn Barry. “Can you meet us at the Bleecher County Sheriff’s Office in Medicine Falls at eight tomorrow?”

  I tapped out a reply. “Should I bring our reporter?”

  “No.”

  Little said I had an exaggerated sense of curiosity. Our friend Edgar once told me I was a hunter. They could call it what they wanted, but my ears perked up and my nostrils quivered.

  *

  Dragging myself out of bed after another night of fitful sleep, I stopped at the café for a giant coffee and a quick chat with my brother before heading to Medicine Falls.

  On my way out the door, Little popped out of the kitchen and handed me a bulging bag. I peeked inside. “How many muffins do you think I can eat on a twenty-mile drive?”

  “There’s enough for the BCA folks you’re meeting.”

  I grabbed my little brother in a headlock. “You are the sweetest.”

  He squirmed and blushed. “I’m too old for you to keep doing that.”

  He’d turned thirty this year and still looked twenty. He’d also inherited our mother’s pale silky hair and winged brows. Only Violet’s diligence kept my eyebrows from taking over the upper section of my face. My hair was dishwater blond, although Violet assured me it was the color of honey.

  Bleecher County seat was the town of Medicine Falls, population three thousand and thirty-three. Robyn Barry, the sneering young agent Cory Tremont, and grey-haired Micah Carpenter stood in front of the brick building that housed the sheriff’s office and jail. Barry signaled to me.

  “We’re looking into that bombing last year at Summer Fest. It exploded behind the bandstand and a few people who were setting up were hurt, but no fatalities. There was speculation it might have been a prank or initiated by an irate person who lived in the neighborhood and didn’t like the noise. They never arrested anyone.”

  She marched up the walk still talking and we followed. “The BCA wasn’t called in on this when it happened because no one was killed and the locals downplayed it. We’ll be lucky if we find anything at this late stage.”

  Sheriff Anderson stood in his office doorway saying goodbye to an athletic blond kid in a Branson State University sweatshirt. The kid left and the sheriff ushered us inside. “That was my boy, Hunter. I hope you find whoever bombed the college real soon. Hunter wasn’t hurt but might have been. He was right there on the steps.” He stuck out his hand to Barry. “Call me Andy.”

  After the rest of the introductions and a hard stare at my camera, Sheriff Anderson hooked his thumbs in his belt, although his paunch didn’t leave much room. “Well now, I un
derstand you intend to dig back into that Summer Fest explosion. Damn shame, the event never picked back up after that. Huge loss for this town. But I can tell you you’re wasting your time.”

  Barry sat across from the sheriff, the two agents next to her and I leaned against a wall at the back. She asked, “What makes you say that, Sheriff?”

  Impatience hovered behind his cordial smile. “It was kids—a prank. It sounded like a firecracker, a big one. A few people who were still in the bandstand changing the stage for the next act got cuts and bruises, that’s all.”

  Barry stood. “My team is going to talk to all the people who live near where the event was held. I just stopped by as a courtesy to let you know what we are doing.”

  His jaw stiffened. “We already did that. No one suspicious turned up. Hell, nobody who lived nearby liked the noise but the event is only once a year and brought a lot of revenue to the county. We’d like to get that event restarted and now you’re going to upset those folks all over again for nothing.”

  She reached over and pumped his hand. That was my cue. I photographed the pair and we left. That’s all she’d wanted, to show how the BCA and local authorities worked together.

  On the way to our cars, I caught up to Barry, a fast walker for a short person. “What makes you believe there’s a connection between the two events?”

  “Bombs are uncommon for one thing. Just because there were no deaths doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant to kill. Maybe the bomber didn’t know what he was doing the first time.” She got into their rented SUV. “Follow us.”

  They drove down a two-lane road to the Summer Fest location. I pulled up behind them and the four of us stood in a semicircle staring at a giant overgrown field. Weather had bleached the sign, the bandstand was gone. I took a few photos to contrast with past pictures I’d located of the event. At most, the paper might run a few lines in the regional section if it fit into the story.

  About a dozen homes along the road leading to the Summer Fest site were close enough to have been disturbed by the noise of five thousand revelers and rockers. We parked at the first driveway and Barry rounded us up. “Let’s see if any neighbors were angry enough to set off a bomb.”

  We began at one end and worked our way around. The homes were a quarter to half mile from each other, separated by woods.

  I wasn’t invited into the homes and after a couple of hours of driving from house to house, I asked to be excused. Boredom didn’t suit me.

  Barry said, “I want you here if we find anything. We’ll be done by mid-afternoon.”

  I leaned against my SUV and waited. I’d forgotten to offer Little’s muffins to the group and ate one out of spite.

  At one o’clock I checked in with Little, who said he was just leaving the hospital. “Ray was here and talked to her. She’s sleeping now.”

  Sick of hanging around with nothing to do, even though Barry asked me to stay, I reminded myself that I was an independent contractor. There were things I wanted to check out in Branson. I pushed away from my SUV, ready to hit the road, but stopped short. Behind the house Barry’s team had just entered was a stand of birch trees bathed in a beam of sunlight. The leaves on the ground sparkled like a carpet of gold. Camera strap hanging from one shoulder, I moved toward the grove.

  An unattached garage was behind the house, the side door double padlocked. That struck me as odd. No one locked their houses, cars or garages around here unless they were going on a long trip, and maybe not then. What if a neighbor wanted to borrow a tool?

  I angled toward it. A side window was covered. The back door was padlocked and cheap plastic blinds covered the window. I leaned in to peer through the opening made by a bent blind, but stepped away when I heard voices from the front of the house.

  I hustled to the team as they thanked the homeowner for his time. An old guy’s chin jutted at me. “What were you nosing around back there for?”

  “That gorgeous grove of birches was begging for me to photograph it.” I held up my camera.

  Barry said, “Britt, this is Duane Weldon. Mr. Weldon, Britt’s with us. We were just leaving.” She shot an irritated frown at me. “We’re sorry to have trespassed.”

  Weldon went back inside and Barry said, “Do you mind giving me a ride back to Branson?”

  “Sure.” She must want to talk to me about more assignments. Or give me a hard time about my snooping.

  She told the guys she was riding back with me and wanted them to stay and re-interview everyone in the neighborhood, specifically to ask their opinion of Duane Weldon. “Grab something to eat and get back to it. He’s probably just a crotchety old man, but it’s possible he’s hiding something.”

  The two agents raised eyebrows at each other behind her back. If she’d asked me, I’d have told her the agents were wasting their time. No one would talk to them about their neighbors, even if they hated them. People from small towns liked to gossip about everyone and wouldn’t hesitate to make up what they didn’t know, but only among themselves, never to outsiders. I kept my mouth shut for the moment about Weldon’s garage being locked up tight. She wouldn’t get the significance and would disapprove of my actions.

  She climbed into my SUV, still crisp after a morning of tramping through the neighborhood talking to people. “I’m starving. Do you know of any good places to eat?”

  “I’ll take you to a great place in Spirit Lake.”

  “Sounds fine.” She lowered her head and scrolled through her phone.

  Something had been nagging at me. “Why do you want me photographing the investigation?”

  She looked up, head cocked. “You don’t want to do it?”

  “I do, but it’s not every day law enforcement invites me along. You people usually try to get rid of me.”

  She raised her shoulders. “I want the media to get it right this time. The BCA gets stuck with the unsolved cases and then receives bad publicity when we can’t close them because local law enforcement screws it up. I want to document everything I’m doing and everything they’ve done wrong.”

  “I get that.” Covering her ass.

  She hesitated as if sizing me up before saying what was on her mind. “Just between us women and off the record, I’m still proving myself. They kept me stuck as an analyst for five years before letting me in as an investigator and I’ve had to close every single one of my cases since then, but it was worth it. Now I’m a supervisor. I admit I’m ambitious and I’m not stopping until I’m director.”

  My guess was it wouldn’t take her that long. Our arrangement suited me. She was using me to show the BCA that she was the best at cracking cases, and I needed her to stay close to the investigation.

  Chapter 5

  “Pretty little town.” Barry got out of the car and arched her back in a long stretch. “Big lake. I can’t even see across it.”

  “It’s medium-sized for the state, around twenty-six miles of shoreline.” I puffed up a bit.

  She took in the restaurant façade, bank of windows facing the lake, south side nestled into a woodsy grove, modest sign above the door. A corner of her mouth raised. “Little’s?”

  “My brother’s name is Little. He and his partner own it.”

  Sometimes I took the time to explain my brother’s nickname—he was named Jan, Jr. after our father, and called Little Jan, then just Little—but this time I didn’t make the effort.

  I ushered her inside, grabbed menus and led her to a knotty pine booth facing the lake, prime seating. In the center, glass-covered tabletops displayed maps of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes, and stuffed prize-winning bass decorated the walls.

  Lars and Little drifted to our booth and I introduced them.

  Barry said, “I’ve heard of your restaurant, even in Branson.” That was an insult to Little. People from the Twin Cities and as far as Chicago were regular customers when in the region. She said, “Britt’s lucky to have a brother who runs a restaurant.”

  Little said, “She doesn’t come home
often enough, but we keep trying to get her to stay.”

  Lars said, “Jayzus, the truth is we might not be here without her.” He excused himself and went to seat a family who had just arrived.

  Barry’s eyebrow raised.

  I said, “Long story.” Then to Little, “What’s special today, bro?”

  His eyes twinkled. “I’ll bring a surprise.”

  When he left, Barry said, “Your life here, family, all that, it wouldn’t work for me.”

  One of the wait staff brought steaming bowls of fragrant mushroom barley soup and warm homemade bread. Barry made appreciative noises and I followed up on her earlier revelation that she wanted to be director. “Why did you choose the BCA? Why not FBI?”

  “I wanted to stay in Minnesota. My dad was from Mankato. He was my hero.” She used her soup spoon to point at her bowl and grinned. “This is really good.”

  Little’s lunch put her in an expansive mood. I probed a bit more. “What’s with Cory?”

  “He hates me and I think he’s a jerk.”

  “Why keep him?” I tore off a chunk of bread.

  “He’s going to try to undermine me no matter what, so I’d rather keep my eye on him.”

  “The old ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’”

  She flashed the wide grin again. “Exactly.”

  Barry’s obsidian eyes bored into me, her turn to interrogate. “I know about your last assignment—the explosion in Nigeria. What motivates you to keep going back for more? A need to see justice done?”

  It wasn’t that simple. “Anger is what motivates me.”

  She waited, but I didn’t expand on it. Instead, I picked up my camera. “Let me take a picture of you.”

  Barry waved her hand in front of the camera. “I need action photos with people like Sheriff Anderson and my team on site doing our jobs, not portraits of myself.”

  The camera clicked. “I won’t print it.”

  *

  Barry jumped out of the SUV at BCA headquarters in Branson with a cursory thank you and a warning. “We hardly know each other, but as one professional to another, you seem too attached to the people in Spirit Lake. That can keep you from getting ahead.”