A Murderous Yarn

by Monica Ferris

  “You want to know the truth? I didn’t. My mother didn’t like dolls that looked like miniature grownups, and anyway, I preferred baby dolls or little kid dolls. My favorite doll was Poor Pitiful Pearl—remember her?”

  “Gosh, yes! She made me think of Wednesday Addams. Remember the old television show? Biddle-dee-boop!” She snapped her fingers twice. “Biddle-dee-boop!” Snap, snap.

  Jill smiled. “Did you get to ride with Adam Smith?”

  “Yes, from Pine Grove to here. Jill, you should see his car, it’s a 1911 Renault sport touring car seventeen feet long. Gorgeous, gorgeous car, rides like a limo. It’s right out front, he parked behind the Stanley.”

  “How fast does it go?”

  “Around fifty.”

  “Rats, we’d better get back to Lars.” Jill started for the stairs.

  “Why?” asked Betsy, hurrying to keep up.

  “Because when he finds out how fast that car is, he’ll go nuts waiting for us. Let’s go!”

  Sure enough, Lars was in a fever to be gone. “Smith already left in his blue yacht. That Renault’s hot, and he doesn’t have to stop for water.”

  “You got steam?” asked Jill.

  “Yes, yes, yes, let’s go!”

  Betsy grumbled, climbing into the back seat, “This is not a race, you know.”

  “Well, of course it isn’t!” said Lars. “Otherwise we’d be lined up at a starting line so’s everyone would leave at the same time. Which way out of town?”

  “We’re not going out of town, we’re supposed to go someplace around here for lunch.”

  “Jill, we don’t have time for lunch!”

  Betsy said, “But I’m hungry.”

  Jill said, “Me, too. And anyway, it’s included in the entry fee.”

  Jill was not a little woman, but Lars was very large, and when he turned toward her, his expression angry, he seemed very intimidating. But she had that special look of her own, one that simply absorbed his anger and frustration, giving nothing back and leaving him deflated. He sighed, “Oh, well, what the hell. Which way?”

  “Go to the corner and turn right. Go one block and turn left on Sibley.”

  “Right,” said Lars, settling himself in the driver’s seat. He opened the throttle about a third of the way, and the Stanley obediently pulled smoothly away. Lars appeared resigned to lunch, but as they rounded the corner at the end of the block, the car let loose a loud and angry Whooooo, whoo-whoo!, making pedestrians jump and stare. Some waved, laughing at their own surprise. One exception was a young man standing in the dark, wet ruins of a two-liter bottle of Coke. His gesture was unkind.

  Jill read instructions until they were safely parked at Peters on the Lake. “ ‘Please remember to order from the Antique Car menu,’ ” she concluded.

  “Hey, Smith is here, too,” said Lars, nodding at the long and beautiful Renault parked in a distant and shady corner.

  “Wow,” said Jill, pausing to stare.

  “Come on,” said Lars. “Let’s order sandwiches to go.”

  “We will sit at a table and eat like civilized persons,” said Jill.

  Lars sighed, but said nothing, not even when Jill asked for soup and a salad.

  They joined Adam Smith, who greeted Betsy warmly and shook hands with Lars and Jill. Betsy said, “Are you giving someone a ride back?”

  Adam said, “No, but if you’d care to join me again, that would be great.”

  Jill gave Betsy an encouraging look, but Betsy said, “No, I think I’ll stay with the Stanley.” The fact that he was unafraid to answer more of her questions meant either that he had no guilty knowledge or was very confident of his answers.

  In another few minutes more people joined them, and the talk became strictly about the cars. Betsy listened anyway, hoping to pick up something useful.

  Mike Jimson grumped to Adam, “I took your advice and resleeved the number two cylinder. I thought the rod was rapping, but you were right, it was the piston slapping. The clearance was great. I don’t know why it was doing that.”

  The man beside Mike was saying, “That damn foot brake locks. I use it and I got to stop and release it by hand, so I was taking my foot off the gas and yanking on the hand brake, and be dipped if it don’t work like a charm, finished the run, and got my fourth medallion.”

  The woman beside him said, “I told Frank he ought to soak that Caddy in LokTite and see if that won’t keep parts from falling off. Sometimes I think I spend half our time on the road stopping to run back and pick something up. Today it was the license plate and one of the bolts off a fender.”

  Adam told Jill, “It was Leland and Falkner got Henry Ford’s second failure at car making to run, you know.”

  Betsy had taken only a few bites of her sandwich when Lars stood. “Come on,” he said, dropping a heavy damask napkin on his empty plate, having inhaled the roast beef sandwich that ornamented it only minutes before. “See you in New London,” he said to the table, a wicked glint in his eye.

  “This isn’t a race, Mr. Larson,” said a woman, glinting back.

  “No, it sure isn’t,” agreed Lars. “But I left the pilot light burning, so I should get back out there. Come on, you two.”

  Betsy brought the uneaten portion of her sandwich with her.

  Jill got them out onto Meeker County 31, where there was a straight run of several miles, before turning to Betsy to ask something about Adam Smith. Betsy couldn’t understand half the words, even though Jill was shouting. Once Lars got out on the highway, he had opened the throttle, and there was a mad tumble of wind over the upright windshield that tangled Jill’s ash-blond hair and lifted Betsy’s dress indecently.

  Betsy, trying to eat her tuna fish sandwich with one hand and hold her dress down with the other, said, “I can’t hear you,” mouthing the words elaborately.

  Jill turned to shout at Lars, “Slow down, for heaven’s sake!”

  “And let that lah-dee-dah French car pass me?” Lars replied, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

  So Jill sat down again. Betsy gave up on her sandwich to exalt in the smooth, fast run, and waved at the occasional car or pedestrian or bicyclist as the Steamer rushed past them.

  Lars pulled into a gas station at the intersection with Tri-County Road. “We’re just over twenty-one miles from Litchfield, so this is placed perfect for us to stop and take on water.”

  He steered over to the side of the building and this time ignored the instant crowd his car attracted. Jill got out so he could get out. “Have you got a water hose I can use?” he asked the man who came out of the station to stare.

  Jill climbed into the back seat and said to Betsy, “Talk fast.”

  “Adam said Bill was angry with him over the car, but even angrier because Adam beat him in a race to be president of the Antique Car Club.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, Adam didn’t seem angry himself, but of course he wouldn’t, he knows he’s a suspect. And he hasn’t got an alibi. What I don’t like is that he was late getting to St. Paul, arriving way behind Mildred Feeney, who is very elderly and therefore hardly a speed demon.”

  “So you think he’s the one?”

  “I don’t know. He said if Minnesota had the death penalty, he’d be living in Costa Rica right now.”

  “Let’s go!” said Lars, and Jill got out to follow Lars back into the front seat. “Got the route sheet?” he asked, checking his gauges.

  “Right here,” said Jill. “We need to get an odometer on this thing. The directions keep telling us how many miles to turnoffs and I can’t estimate mileage. And another thing, we made that twenty-one miles in something less than twenty minutes. The speed limit out here is fifty-five. If you don’t drive slower, we’re going to get a speeding ticket, and think how that poor schnook of a trooper is going to feel testifying how he wrote up a 1912 automobile?”

  “He won’t have to testify, I’ll plead guilty!” said Lars proudly, and Jill sighed.

&n
bsp; But he did slow down a bit. Still, they arrived at the American Legion building in New London well ahead of the others. The downstairs of the new-looking building was mostly a wide and low barroom, the decor heavily patriotic. It was well lit and deliciously cool. Betsy went to the rest room to find a comb and spend several minutes wrenching it through her hair. Those long veils women wore when riding in these cars seemed a lot less ridiculous now, especially considering that they wore their hair long. She went back out and ordered a Diet Coke at the bar.

  It was fifteen minutes before Adam Smith came in, and forty minutes before the Winton’s owner and his wife showed up. Adam smiled at Lars and greeted him, but said nothing about coming in second, nor did the Winton’s owners say anything about finishing third. Then again, only the first-place driver had a mayonnaise stain on his shirt from hurtling through his lunch.

  Betsy allowed Mike to buy her a refill and sat down at a little round table with a big bowl of pretzels on it to talk with him and Dorothy.

  “I understand Bill Birmingham ran against Adam for the presidency of your club,” she said after pleasantries had been exchanged.

  Dorothy nodded, but said, “It was more like Adam ran against Bill, wasn’t it, Mike?”

  Mike said, “Sort of. Our outgoing president was moving to Arizona as soon as his term was up, and Bill, who was vice president, kind of thought the office was his by right. He was an effective VP, and since he’d cut back to half-time at his company, he had the time. Adam was route manager, you know, getting out maps and driving the back roads, laying out the runs. Important, but not management. And no one knew at the time he was about to retire, not even him, we think.”

  Dorothy put in, “Also right about then, their youngest went off to college and Adam’s wife, who probably had been waiting for that to happen, divorced him. That was last fall, and he suddenly had all the time in the world to devote to his cars and the club.”

  “What did he do for a living?”

  “Upper management,” said Mike. “CEO, in fact. Only been there six or seven years.”

  Dorothy said with a significant eyebrow lift, “But they gave him one heck of a golden parachute, and he’d been given stock options in lieu of cash bonuses the whole time he’d been there, so he is simply rolling in it. So it doesn’t matter that he can’t find another job in his field.” Again the eyebrow lifted and she nodded weightily.

  Mike said, “He didn’t do anything dishonest. From what I’ve heard, he had a theory of management that made him a lot of enemies. Plus the last company he was with . . . Well, it’s going to take them a few years to get back on course.” He looked at his wife. “He’s like Bill was, in some respects. When he thinks he’s right, he goes full out for it, and hang the consequences.”

  They talked awhile longer, then Betsy went back to Jill. The place had filled up with antique car owners, their spouses and even some children, other friends and passengers, and townsfolk wanting to meet the owners of those strange old cars. “Where’s Lars?” asked Betsy, unable to spot him in the crowd.

  “He’s here, making the rounds, talking cars and engines and the run tomorrow.”

  “Jill, are you okay with this new interest of his?”

  Jill sighed. “I guess so. The cars are beautiful, and the people who own them seem nice enough. And now that I’m more confident that Lars knows what he’s doing with the Stanley, I enjoy riding around in it. On the other hand, this is a very expensive hobby he’s gotten into. It’s a comfort to know that while Lars can get very crazy about something, it never lasts forever.”

  “Except you?” asked Betsy with a smile.

  “Okay, except me.”

  Lars circulated for a while, finished his third beer, and came back to ask Jill, “Are we staying here for dinner? They’re setting up a big grill outside, and I hear their burgers are great.”

  Betsy said, “How about I take you and Jill to the Blue Heron in Willmar? It’s supposed to be very nice. I left my copy of the Excelsior Bay Times at the motel, and it has a nice picture of you and your Steamer in it.”

  “Really? Well, sure, I wouldn’t mind having a look at it. How about you, Jill?”

  “Fine. We can’t talk here, anyhow. How about we follow you in my car, Betsy, so you don’t have to drive us back.”

  The Blue Heron was a Frank Lloyd Wright–style building on top of a hill overlooking Lake Willmar. It was the clubhouse of a private golf course, but the restaurant on the second floor was open to the public. The far wall and the long adjacent wall were made of panes of thermal glass and overlooked a putting green and the lake.

  The hostess at first said there would be a wait, but when Betsy gave her name, she said, “Oh, there’s someone from your party here already, holding a table for you.”

  Betsy followed her to a table by the longer wall, where Sergeant Morrie Steffans rose to his considerable height as they approached. He looked pleased, or perhaps amused, at her surprise.

  “How did you know we’d be coming here?” asked Betsy as he came around to hold her chair for her.

  “I’m a detective, remember?”

  She frowned at him, so he elaborated. “One of your employees told me where you were staying. I drove out here and had a talk with the manager. He told me he always recommended the Blue Heron to those guests who like poached salmon and the Ramble Inn to those who like deep-fried perch. Somehow you struck me as a salmon person so, like the salmon, I swam upstream to here.” He smiled at Betsy, who, rather to her surprise, found herself smiling back.

  She introduced Jill and Lars, and he said, “What, you collect cops as a hobby?”

  “No, Jill was my sister’s best friend and I guess I sort of inherited her. Lars is Jill’s steady. He’s the reason we’re here for the run. He owns a Stanley Steamer.”

  “Yes, I guessed that by the scorch marks,” said Steffans.

  Lars put the hand with the scald into his lap. “These things happen until you learn the tricks of the boiler,” he said.

  “There must be compensations, then,” said Steffans and he listened with apparent interest while Lars rode his hobby horse for a while. When the waitress arrived with the menus, Steffans said, “I understand you do a beautiful poached salmon here.”

  “We do,” she said, “but we had a big crowd at lunch and they all ordered it, so we’re out until Sunday,” and looked confused when this amused everyone at the table. “We have some very nice lamb chops,” she offered and was reassured when this didn’t set off another round of laughter.

  Betsy and Steffans had the lamb, Lars ordered a porterhouse steak, and Jill decided to try the stuffed chicken breast, another specialty of the house. No one wanted a predinner drink, so the waitress went to fetch their salads.

  • • •

  Marvin and Charlotte watched Betsy go into the restaurant from the bar. “Who are those two with her?” asked Marvin.

  “I don’t know—wait, that man was driving the Stanley last Saturday, and Betsy told me she was sponsoring the Stanley. I don’t remember his name. He’s new to the Antique Car Club.”

  “So he’s not a cop.”

  “I don’t know what he does, she didn’t say.”

  “Who’s the other woman?”

  “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is they didn’t stay for the barbecue in New London, so we can talk to them about Adam without anyone else in the club seeing us and telling him about it.”

  They gave Betsy and her friends a few minutes, then strolled casually into the dining room. They were halfway across when they saw Betsy and then the fourth person at her table. “Oh, my God, it’s that Minnetonka detective!” murmured Charlotte, gripping Marvin’s arm to bring him to a halt. She would have turned around except the detective had already seen her. His look of surprise brought the attention of the others.

  Betsy lifted a hand and said, “Well, hello, what are you doing here?”

  Charlotte led Marvin to the table. “I was feeling caged,”
she said, “and I just wanted to go for a long drive. Marvin has a convertible, and the night was warm, and before we realized it, we were nearly to Willmar. Then I remembered this as a nice place, and we decided to stop in.”

  Steffans, with old-fashioned manners, had risen to his feet as Charlotte came to them, and after a puzzled moment, so did Lars. Betsy performed the introductions. Charlotte said, a trifle dryly, “Yes, Sergeant Steffans and I have already met. And he’s talked with Marvin Pierce, too.” To Lars: “That’s a beautiful Stanley you bought. I hope you have many happy miles in her.” To Jill: “I think Betsy mentioned you to me. It’s needlepoint you do? I’m a counted cross stitcher.”

  “Won’t you join us?” said Steffans. “We just placed our order, but we can get the waitress back, I’m sure.”

  “No, no,” said Marvin, beginning to turn away. “We don’t want to interrupt your conversation.”

  Charlotte added, “Besides, there’s no room.”

  But Steffans was already moving his chair to one side so he could bring the small table behind him up. “See how easy it is to fix that? Now, Mrs. Birmingham, you sit right here, and Marvin, you sit there, and I’ll just go find our waitress.” He gave a sort of bow, and was halfway across the room in a couple of long-legged strides.

  Charlotte looked around the table with an uncomfortable smile. “Goodness, isn’t he the managing kind? He must have been terrific at directing traffic!”

  Betsy, laughing with the others, said, “I hope you don’t mind. By the way, have you seen this week’s Excelsior Bay Times? I brought it along because there’s a a beautiful photograph of Lars with his Stanley. But there’s a photograph of Bill, too, working on his Maxwell.”

  “There is?” said Charlotte. “Well, isn’t that interesting. I remember you saying there was a reporter in Excelsior covering the run, but I didn’t see him. May I see it?”

  Betsy handed it across to her. “It’s in the middle, lots of pictures.”

  Charlotte opened the paper and ran her eyes quickly over the photographs. She gave a little scream when she saw the Maxwell with a white flannel rump hiding most of the hood and engine. “Oh, my God, Bill would have hated to see that!” she said, and handed it to Marvin. “Isn’t that just awful?” she said, and laughed. But she felt her lips twist and her eyes began to sting. “Excuse me, I’m sorry,” she said and fished in her purse for a handkerchief. “I had to dig this old thing out,” she said, waving it in her hand before dabbing her eyes. “My mother always carried one, but I never did until this happened to Bill. The oddest things set me off crying, and I just hate those wads of Kleenex.” She touched her nose but didn’t blow it. “I’m sorry,” she said again.