by Jess Lourey
I bet none of this would have happened if I had on a Wonder Woman mask. When in doubt, attack. “What the hell kind of party is this, Kennie?”
“This is the only kind of party, sweetie. What you think, we all just fish and crochet around here? A person’s gotta stay warm. Better yet, a person’s gotta make money.” Her tone was beguiling and her smile was sly.
“Money? But I wasn’t charged anything.”
“That’s because you stole your invitation, now isn’t it? Everyone else here paid fifty dollars, and does for every party they go to.” She made a grandiose wave with her arm to indicate the house and its horny
inhabitants.
“Fifty dollars? Isn’t this illegal?”
“Not if you’re over twenty-one, my dear, as all my clientele are, and then some. What the adults do once they get to my party is their own business, though we like to provide various forms of entertainment so no one gets bored. I’ll give y’all the tour.”
If I didn’t know better, I would have said she was proud of all this. She grabbed my hand in her meaty paw and dragged me to the door across the hall. The runner on the floor was a flowered Victorian rug in pale creams and yellows. I felt like I was in my grandma’s house, but on the dark side. Or at least the lubricated side. I wondered whose house this was during the day and if they just rented it out for the parties or if it was just a dedicated orgy site.
This door opened to a shadowed room lit by candles and thick with Nag Champa incense. In the center a belly dancer in her mid-sixties gyrated suggestively. At least she had clothes on, as did everyone else in the room. They were all wearing belly dancer outfits, and they were all trying to follow the lead of the woman in the center, to varying degrees of success. The hairy guy I had seen peeing in the woods was directly in front. He had lost his transparent blouse and now looked like a gorilla in a bikini top and puffy pants. He danced the jerky, off-balance ballet of the white male farmer, but his concentration was admirable. Kennie shut the door and pulled me to the next one.
This door thankfully opened to a well-lit room. Unfortunately, there was wall-to-wall nudity, all the clothes in a heap by the door like coats on a bed at a dinner party. The ten or so elderly, masked inhabitants were all holding a piece of wood and sharing paints. The instructor at the center of the room was illustrating a technique while she spoke, her dried-up breasts resting against her stomach. “The definitive characteristic of rosemaling is its ability to blend colors while still making them distinct . . .”
Kennie shut that door as well and led me to the stairs. “Y’all are gonna see our newest room. It’s the first time it’s been at a class of ’82 party, and it’s a big hit.” She glared at masked Gary Wohnt when we passed him. He stared at her with a cock to his head that I recognized. He had been the audience for Kennie’s beauty pageant at the high school.
I followed her into the kitchen, preparing for the worst. But then, based on what I had seen so far this evening, I had redefined the word worst. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a homey kitchen with masked seniors playing bingo. A new game must have just started.
“B19!” the caller shouted. The twelve or so people at the card tables scoured their playing cards. Some of the players had as many as seven to look through. I heard a couple squeals of joy as people placed tokens on what must be B19. Then, to my horror, those same people took off an article of clothing and tossed it on a pile in the center. Strip bingo. Was this the gambling I had overheard Kennie mention to Gary Wohnt?
“The best part,” Kennie said into my ear, “is that the winner gets ten bucks and gets to put on someone else’s clothes.”
This was too much. In my world, old people come permanently clothed. You can’t undress them any more than you can remove their hair or teeth. I suppose, though, that pretty much everything comes off or out of an old person if you pull hard enough. Kennie grabbed my hand and pulled me back toward the stairs before I could finish my train of thought.
“That’s about all we have goin’ down this week, sweetcheeks. There’s a Nintendo room in the basement, and I think there’s a game of Twister goin’ on somewhere, but you seen the meat of it.”
I shook my head, unable to comprehend all of this in Otter Tail County, right under my nose. I probably passed these people in the grocery store. I wondered if I had gotten a contact high from all the smoke in the Red Room. “Why is everyone so old and naked?”
“Why shouldn’t they be, honey? Old people got a right to be naked, too. Besides, old is where the money’s at. You should see my business boom when the tourists start coming in. Whoo-eeee, it’s like greasin’ a pig! I’m an entrepreneur, doll, and this is where it’s at.” Kennie really did seem to be in her element here. Supreme cruise director—screw the shuffleboard and bring on the sex, drugs, and old folks.
“Why’d you give Jeff an invitation?”
Kennie’s shoulders slumped, and she sighed. “I don’t know, honey. I wanted him to see how successful I was, what I had made of myself. It doesn’t matter now, does it? Jeff is dead, and he never even knew what kind of party he was missing.”
Her eyes were sad, and I felt a connection to her for the first time. Maybe it was all the seasoned hormones floating through the house like pollen and bringing people together. But then I had a thought—the cutesy “CU there!” on the class of ’82 invitation, and the same annoying word abbreviation in my death threat: UR going to find the same trouble as Wilson. “Did you leave the note on my computer at the library, threatening me?”
She nodded her head dismissively. “I had hot flashes that day, honey chile. I don’t always think so clearly when I have hot flashes. No harm done, right? Just a little kitty fight.”
“What about the doll and the dead fish?”
She shook her head and smiled. “I don’t play with dolls, and the only dead fish I touch have tartar sauce on them.” She slapped her knee and laughed. “So you gonna stay, baby? You’re welcome to. Some of these old folk like fresh meat every now and again.” She winked.
I shuddered. “I don’t think it’s my crowd, Kennie. If you don’t mind, I’m going to make it an early night.” I turned and began to walk away. “Say,” I said, turning my head just enough so I could see her, “you see much of Chief Gary Wohnt around these days?”
To her credit, she did not look at the man at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m the mayor of a small town, hon. I see the police chief every day.”
I nodded my head. The door was held open for me as I walked out. “Thanks, Chief,” I said. I was going to visit the Senior Sunset. I had a very important question to ask my friend Curtis Poling.
I had a sinking suspicion Mr. Poling was back at the party, but I knew there was no way I was going to stay and start lifting masks. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and go to the nursing home in the hopes that he was sleeping. I parked a block up from the Senior Sunset. I was right by the police station, but I knew where the head cat was tonight, and it made me cocky. I strapped on my flashlight and made my way to the one-story Sunset. I counted off windows until I saw what I thought was 11A and peeked in. Through the cracked shades I saw Curtis Poling wrapped in a hospital blanket and sleeping like a baby. Or a really old guy.
I rapped my knuckles on the glass and waited. Nothing. It occurred to me that he might wear a hearing aid during the day that he took out at night, or that he maybe just slept really hard. I tapped the glass again, this time with a pebble I picked off the ground. Curtis opened one eye and looked toward the door. I waved my arms and he glanced toward the window. He squinted his eyes, nodded his head, and was out the door.
I strolled over to the garden and waited, enjoying the moonlight and the sound of crickets. Residential Battle Lake went to bed early, even on Fridays. I was wondering about old people. There was a lot about them that I didn’t know. I had previously viewed them as a sort of wrinkly garnish: I saw them around and didn’t mind that they were there, I appreciated their decorativ
e purpose, but I never really thought they had nutritional value. Here I was finding out they were as clever, horny, and inclined to party as the rest of us. It was a little reassuring and a little disturbing. Oh well, it gave me some hope for my future. If I couldn’t get laid again in what was left of my twenties, I still had another sixty or so years to work on it. Curtis was out in the blink of an eye, naked except for boxers and work boots. Given what I had seen tonight, I was grateful for the boxers.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked.
He pulled a cigarette out from behind his ear and a lighter from his boot. “Nah. It’s darn near fifty degrees out here! I got the blood of an ice fisherman.” He sparked the lighter and held the flame to his smoke. I could see a flash of his vivid blue eyes in the temporary light. “I was wondering when you’d be back.”
“Sorry to wake you up, Mr. Poling. Why did you think I’d come back?”
“You got curious eyes, missy, and they didn’t look satisfied when you left. I suppose you got the right questions to ask this time?”
I did. “Jeff came to talk to you on Saturday. You told him to watch out for the Jorgensen land. Did he tell you about the Indian etchings he found that morning?”
Curtis smiled. “That he did, missy. And that’s when I told him he can’t build there, no matter what, no matter how. I told him that Mrs. Jorgensen never did want that land sold, and it’s because she knew what was on it. You find her will, you find out all about that. That land is about as sacred as it comes to the native people.”
“And when Kennie talked to you later that day, did you tell her that Jeff needed to find some different land in this area to build on?”
I think Curtis may have blushed at the mention of Kennie, but given what I knew about him, it was probably just a trick of the moon. “That woman can make the dead talk, I tell you.” He shook his head in disgust. “I told her that Jeff was smart enough to figure out the Jorgensen land wasn’t no good. She asked me what I knew about Skinvold’s acreage over by Glendalough Park, and I told her I knew about as much as she did. And that was the end of that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Poling. You’ve been very helpful.” My head was dancing. I knew Herbert Skinvold was selling a good-sized chunk of prairie on the north side of town. I had seen the flyer on the library bulletin board.
“I believe you’re going to find who killed that Wilson boy, missy.”
“I believe I am too, Mr. Poling.” I smiled at him, took one last whiff of his Old Spice and tobacco smoke, and walked back to my car.
Talking to Bev that morning and then stumbling into the geriatric hedonism fest had clarified some things. The first was that Jeff was about as decent as they come. I had never wanted to believe that he would have OK’ed building on the Jorgensen land after he found the petroglyphs, and Curtis had proved my faith justified. A visit to the Skinvold farm would verify that Jeff never had any intention of approving the Jorgenson purchase for Trillings and that Trillings was never going to buy the Jorgensen land, which meant Jeff’s death was unrelated to his archaeology work.
His murderer was clearly someone with a grudge, and my guess was that it was either Lartel, who was also blackmailing Karl, or Gary Wohnt, who maybe loved Kennie enough to murder the man who had done her wrong in high school and could win her love back in the present. I didn’t have all the pieces yet, though. I was hoping Herbert Skinvold could fill some in for me the next morning. What he couldn’t tell me, a travel agent could.
Before the sun had fully risen on Saturday morning, I made a quick call to Ron’s machine telling him to hold the front page space for a last-minute article that revealed who Jeff’s killer was, and I hurried out to Skinvold’s. Based on the directions I picked up at Ben’s Bait on the way, the farm was close to Lartel’s house, which was also relatively close to the land over by Glendalough State Park that Skinvold was reportedly selling. That concentrated a lot of weirdness in one place, and I wondered how much time I had wasted barking up the wrong tree by focusing on the petroglyphs and the Jorgensen land.
When I turned west off 78, I found myself on a familiar dirt road. Blocking it were two pickup trucks, one pointing east and one pointing west. The drivers were holding a conversation that included leaning out their windows to make energetic one-armed gestures. I sat impatiently, knowing that it wouldn’t do any good to rush the road-exchange of farmers. After about four minutes, they waved at each other across the three-foot space between their vehicles and pulled forward in opposite directions. I drove through the middle and did the pointer-finger wave, avoiding eye contact. In my rearview mirror, I saw them back up to their original positions and begin conversing again.
I drove past Lartel’s and on to the Skinvold farm. Herbert Skinvold was a small-time dairy farmer, a dying breed. I knew he would be up bright and early; when animals are your business, there’s no such thing as time off. Sure enough, when I pulled into his bumpy, one-and-a-half mile driveway, I could see the barn lights in the dawn glow. I pulled up in front of the red building and inhaled the earthy smell of manure as I got out of my car. Before I knew it, three ratty dogs jumped at me and sniffed my crotch, and a mewling cat crawled into my tire well. I held my hands up so I didn’t get dog tongue germs and waded through the squirming bodies to the barn. I pulled the wooden door open and squeezed myself in while keeping the dogs out.
The interior was huge and stuffed with cows in stalls, some of them bawling but most of them eating hay and licking their snot with thick pink lizard tongues. A few looked at me with morose brown eyes, but most continued to contemplate their cowness and the far wall. The drone of machinery was pervasive, and I couldn’t see any humans.
“Mr. Skinvold?” I tried to stay equidistant from the rumps lining each side of the cement walkway. I wasn’t going to get kicked by a cow—it’d be a bad way to go.
Three cows up on my left, there was a black-and-white heifer pooping, and I was amazed to see the used food get carried away on a permanently turning belt housed in the trough behind the cow’s back legs. I wondered if I could get Tiger Pop to use one of those. I found a man I presumed to be Mr. Skinvold on the end of the row, hooking the shiniest metal tubes to the teats of a bored cow. Once on, they sucked her baby’s milk to a faraway place where it could be sanitized for human consumption.
I self-consciously adjusted my bra and made thanks that I hadn’t been born bovine. I also pledged to keep drinking soy milk and stop eating cheese. I wasn’t a big fan of the booger-eating poopers, but they deserved better than this.
I raised my voice to be heard over the humming of large machines and the muttering of cows. “Mr. Skinvold, I’m Mira James with the Battle Lake Recall, and I’d like to ask you a couple questions about the land you’re selling.”
The man glanced at me, nodded, and went back to what he was doing. He wore pinstriped Carhartt dungarees under a frayed denim jacket, knee-high green waders, and a feed cap with greasy salt-and-pepper hair curling up around the edges. I noticed the roughness and strength of his hands as he adjusted the suction tubes on the dangly cow boobs. I bet in the winter his hands got deep cracks from his hard, cold work. I turned my back to his cow molestation and feigned an interest in barn trusses.
“We can talk outside,” he yelled, then walked down the clean cement path that had led me to him. He even slapped a cow butt on the way. I cautiously followed him outside and was relieved at the noise reduction. Dog noses pushing between my legs quickly repelled my respite. I tried to pull my coat in front as a shield and wondered if I should consider douching. They were treating me like I was packing a Milk-Bone.
Herbert Skinvold spat on the ground. “What can I do ya for?” His brown eyes had pleasant crinkles around the corners, and his posture was relaxed.
“Like I said, I’m writing an article about Jeff Wilson for the Recall and was wondering about that land you’re selling over by Glendalough. I heard he looked at it on behalf of the company he was working for, Trillings Limited.”
“Damn shame about that boy. They know who killed him yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“Yes, ma’am, he was interested in that land. I got two-hundred-plus acres over there that I’m getting too old to farm. These cows keep me too busy, anyhow. Some of it’s flat farm land, been growing corn on it for years. The rest is woods and such. Part of it even touches on Blanche Lake. Right beautiful over there.”
“Did he say anything about not buying the Jorgensen land?”
“We didn’t talk specifically about that, but Ms. Rogers made mention that the Jorgensen land wasn’t going to work for what he had in mind. When we drove—”
“Kennie?”
“Yes, ma’am. Ms. Kennie Rogers, the mayor of Battle Lake. She and Jeff drove out here together. Then the three of us drove over to my land for sale. Spent a good three hours out there looking around. Jeff seemed pretty pleased when he left.”
“This was Sunday?”
“Sunday morning, bright and shiny. Jeff said he had to talk to his boss and tie up some loose ends but that my land was looking real favorable. Said he’d get back to me Tuesday. Of course, he wasn’t alive no more come Tuesday.”
“So you only had that one meeting with Jeff, and Kennie was there? You never heard from him before or after?”
“No, ma’am. George, down!” The black-and-white Springer-something cross continued to pump my leg, but I was too caught up in my thoughts to notice.
“Well, thank you, Mr. Skinvold. You’ve been very helpful. Can I call you if I have any more questions?”
“Sure you can. I got a phone in the barn, but sometimes you need to let it ring for a while before I hear it.” He smiled and tipped the corner of his feed cap.
“Will do. You have a good day.”