Dead Body Language

by Penny Warner

  “Whiskey Slide. WHat are you nott elling me, Connor Westphal? Spit it out. OR should I say spell it out? GA.”

  “Nothing yet. Just trying to write a decent story about Lacy’s death for the paper. Was there anything else in her purse? GA.”

  “JUst a bunch of makeup, a roll of tickets to the frog-jumping contest, acouple more business cards, ssome cash, women’s stuff, you know. Thats about it. GA.”

  “Did the other business cards have anything written on them? GA.”

  “NOpe. 1 from a dr. Reed NIemi in Whiskey slide. 1 from dr. Enid SChantz here in town. 1 from a dr. KRistin Larsen in Sac. 1 from Beau’s B & B. Nothig on the back of them tho. Whats this all abuot? GA.”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll tell you if anything comes of it. Thanks for the info. GA. SK.”

  “COnn …”

  I hung up before he could continue. I was more than a little puzzled. Risa Longo’s name was written on a business card for a Memory Kingdom outlet in Whiskey Slide. The same town Dan Smith was headed for in search of his brother. The brother that Lacy hired to find her sister. The town that was written on the empty file folder.

  Risa Longo and Memory Kingdom?

  Maybe Risa Longo was dead too. Maybe Lacy Penzance discovered somehow that her sister had died—saw an obituary notice or something in one of the papers, and located her through the funeral home in Whiskey Slide. Maybe Lacy was overcome with grief at losing her only known relative and—

  Oh, get real, Connor. Lacy Penzance is not going to kill herself because of a sister she’s never known. Still, I had a feeling the sister had something to do with her death. And the only connection I had was the Memory Kingdom funeral home in Whiskey Slide.

  It was noon by the time I stopped puzzling over all the loose ends. So what was all this to me? I was curious, naturally. I am, after all, a newspaper reporter. And if I could find out something that wasn’t already common knowledge to the entire town, it would make an interesting story. Hell, let’s face it. I loved a mystery.

  But most of all I felt I had a little unfinished business. Yesterday I was taking Lacy Penzance’s ad. A few hours later I was seeing her on television—dead.

  I stretched my back, shook my hair, bent my fingers back to release some tension, and decided all this thinking was making me hungry. Time for a lunch break. I left a note for Miah, then stopped off at the Nugget for a BLT and a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

  On my way out I picked up the Tuesday edition of the Mother Lode Monitor to scope out the competition. I was halfway across the street when I saw Mickey Arnold coming out of Gold Dust Drugs wearing a new pair of motorcycle-cop sunglasses. I supposed he wanted to look the part of a tough cop, but the price tag dangling by one ear tempered the effect.

  “Deputy Arnold,” I said cautiously, after seeing his face light up. He was a likable kind of guy, but I didn’t want to lead him on. He wasn’t the type you’d want to French kiss in front of the fireplace. Still, he had his appeal—the enthusiasm for his work, the awkwardness of his flirtation, the genuine love for his hometown.

  The Terminator wannabee waved when he saw me, removed his glasses, and twirled them in his fingers while he played nervously with his gun belt. But the twirling was too great a task for his coordination and he fumbled them to the ground.

  After a quick rebound, he stiffly finger-spelled, “Hi, Connor,” then signed, “What’s new?” At this point he began to talk. “Learn anything more for your story?”

  “Not much. Just filling the pages with the same old fluff—ground-breakings, fund-raisers, frog profiles, cemetery suicides. The usual.”

  Mickey laughed, making one of those gagging motions that remind me of watching a cat choking on a furball. He brushed back a few wisps of moussed hair that had become dislodged from his slicked-back style.

  “Thanks for the guided tour through the cemetery this morning. Any news on Lacy yet?” I asked, as coyly as I could muster. Shame on me.

  “Not much.” He checked over his shoulder and stepped in closer, as if someone might hear us. “The report from the medical examiner came back. They don’t think that knife actually killed her.” He looked pleased with himself.

  “Really? You were right! So what do they think it was?” I leaned in too, even though I didn’t need to. Deputy Arnold looked around again for spies. No KGB in sight.

  “Well, this is strictly off the record so you can’t print it in the paper yet, but the M.E. couldn’t identify it. Said it was something …” He whipped out a tiny notebook, flipped a few pages, and read his scribbling. “… long, thin, and sharp.”

  “But not a knife.”

  Mickey shook his head and pursed his lips, dramatically.

  “What do you think it was?” I pumped away.

  He tried to look casual, dropping one shoulder and placing a hand on his gun belt. “Well, here’s what I think, but it’s only a theory I’m working on. She was found at the cemetery, right? There wasn’t a lot of blood, just that dark stain on her blouse and some on the stone, right? A person holds about five pints of blood, you know. And the thing that killed her was something long and sharp—”

  “Like an ice pick?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Something thicker, more like a …” He looked around. “… a knitting needle or maybe one of those things they use at the hospital—a catheter. But—” He pressed his lips together then mouthed the word so firmly his lips turned white. “The sheriff is fairly certain it’s not a suicide.”

  “What about the note they found?” I asked, leaning closer still. I hated myself when I used my feminine charms. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

  “I found it, actually,” he said humbly. “Anyway, it just didn’t sound right, you know. All that stuff about—well, I better not say. You know.”

  No, dammit, I didn’t know! Come on, Deputy, out with it!

  I waited but he said nothing more on the subject. “I gotta get back to work. Going to the Jubilee for a little frog-tasting this weekend?”

  It was hopeless. “Wouldn’t miss it,” I said with a sigh, and climbed on my bike.

  Mickey Arnold pointed to his eye, then to me. “See you,” he signed, crudely. I had to smile.

  “Oh, great!” I said, scanning the headline of a special edition of the competition when I got back to the office.

  DOWAGER DEATH STUNS SKUNK

  Another winning slug from those masterful wordsmiths at the Mother Lode Monitor. They even had a photo. The sheriff looked like a dweeb.

  The article was overwritten, ungrammatical, and full of hyperbole, but it had sure scooped the hell out of the Eureka! How did they manage to print the story so fast? The by-line read Harmony Blaine.

  Lacy Penzance, well-known philanthropist and widow of former Flat Skunk mayor, Reuben Penzance, died yesterday of an apparent stab wound in the local Pioneer Cemetery.

  Her body was found by ten-year-old Brian Hurley on his way to school at 7:05 A.M. this morning, and immediately reported to Deputy Mickey Arnold at the Flat Skunk Sheriff’s office.

  Initially labeled a self-inflicted knife wound, further investigation by this reporter has revealed there may have been a second weapon involved that caused Penzance’s death, laying question to the theory of suicide.

  At this point in Sheriff Elvis Mercer’s investigation no suspects have been identified. The sheriff is still pursuing a number of leads.

  Damn! Beat out by a throwaway bird-cage liner. I rolled up the paper and tossed it into the trash. It was time for a little old-fashioned newspaper war.

  I stopped down the hall at Miah’s comic book shop. Miah looked up from his Batman: The Death of Robin special edition and signed, “What’s up?” by shaking an upturned hand in the air.

  “Miah, I’m going to Whiskey Slide for a little while and I probably won’t be back until late. I need to finish that story on gourmet frog fare by tonight. Think you could do it for me?”

  I signed at a moderate speed and m
oved my lips to help him understand. He seemed to follow every word. I can tell when beginners don’t understand my signs. They just nod their heads rhythmically, then give me a blank stare at the end of my speech.

  Miah brushed his index finger up the front of his chin, for “Sure,” then shook his head while signing “problem,” meaning “No problem.”

  Since he owed me, I gave him two more assignments—one about the frog play given by Mrs. Stadelhofer’s fourth grade class, and one about the history of the Frog Jubilee in Calaveras County. In appeasement, I promised to look for a couple of Dark Man and The Stranger comics at Whiskey Slide’s Comic Central store.

  “By the way, someone called while you were out, but they hung up when I said hello. Happened twice,” Miah said, his fingers illustrating his statements.

  I responded with face language—a frown.

  “Oh,” he continued. “And that guy staying in Boone’s office left a note. It’s on your desk.”

  I returned to my office and picked up Dan’s note from the desk.

  “Connor, forgot to ask a favor. Would you feed my cat while I’m gone? Food is in the microwave. Thanks. Dan.”

  I tossed the note into the garbage can and gathered up a few things before heading out.

  I never saw it coming.

  I was halfway home, pedaling furiously on my all-terrain bike and no doubt looking like the demoniac Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard Of Oz, when a bright red Miata pulled out right in front of me.

  I grabbed the handlebars—I was riding with no hands, a skill I’d learned early so I could sign to my riding partners while biking—then jerked the bars sideways to avoid a collision, nearly swerving into a roadside ditch. It was the small pothole I didn’t see that caused me to kiss the pavement.

  I took the handlebars in the chest, knocking the wind out as I landed on the graveled red pavement, a pretzel of body and bike. For several seconds I lay on the ground, gasping for breath like a fish out of water. As soon as I could speak, I said only one word, unfit for print in my family newspaper.

  What I thought was pavement turned out to be red clay mixed with bits of rock. I stood up stiffly, brushing the crimson patina from my once-beige sweater and brown jeans, and surveyed the damage.

  At first glance it looked like I could ride the two-wheeler home, providing I didn’t need to sit on the crooked seat and I didn’t mind steering with reversed handlebars. I straddled the front wheel, twisted the bars into forward position an inch at a time, then checked the rims and wheels for further damage. Two popped tires clinched it. I wouldn’t be riding my bike home.

  Until this point I’d felt no real pain except for a tightness in my chest from getting the wind knocked out, and a little stinging on my legs. But my knees were starting to throb, so I took a moment to check them. Peeking through my newly shredded jeans were a pair of scarlet kneecaps glistening in the sunlight. The twin circles were bright red except for the small dark circles that dotted the circles. I bent over; a closer look revealed the horror I had feared. Tiny pebbles were embedded in my bloody knees.

  “Fuck!” was only one of the words I used while reviling the jerk who caused all the damage. That was followed by more creative language I had picked up at deaf camp as a kid.

  The car, nothing but dust on the horizon, had pulled out of the nearby parking lot of the Mark Twain Slept Here bed and breakfast inn, one of the most popular overnight lodges in the Mother Lode. I badly needed some clean water and a couple of hefty Band-Aids or I’d never make it home. Feeling a little dizzy and short of breath, I propped the bike against a nearby tree, and hobbled up the short flight of steps to the inn’s front door, trying not to imagine how bad I was going to feel when the numbness dissipated.

  The ten-room, trigabled Victorian mansion, which now took in honeymooners, traveling salesmen, and city-weary executives, had once been the boyhood home of Reuben Penzance. Built by his great-grandfather, Septimus, it had been passed on to his grandfather and later his father. According to a local guidebook, the home had finally been sold when Reuben was in elementary school, as the Penzance family prospered.

  The wrought-iron fence surrounding the grounds sported a bronze plaque that defined the architecture and gave the original date as 1853. Considering gold was discovered in 1848, it hadn’t taken old man Penzance long to build his first dream house.

  Now, standing among the lodgepole pines, the home had been renamed the Mark Twain Slept Here Inn, after the Mother Lode’s favorite historical character, who did in fact spend a night as a guest of the Penzance family. The mansion was now coated with what must have been a dozen layers of paint—this time a distracting shade of pink with lavender and blue gingerbread trim. The word “cute” didn’t do it justice. Cinderella could have worn a version of the monstrosity to the ball.

  I considered knocking on one of the two front doors. They both featured a pair of tole-painted old miners that had been added since I’d last been to the Mark Twain. I opted for the knob instead, after encouragement from both the “Welcome Forty-Niners” sign overhead and doormat beneath my feet.

  The door opened to a cozy foyer, where Beau Pascal, the current owner, had added a rolltop front desk. I tapped the summons bell, then placed my palm on the desk to feel the vibration. I’d once rung a doorbell for fifteen minutes before the occupant opened the door by chance and told me the bell had been disconnected.

  I was studying a wall display of miners’ picks, pans, and assorted tools when a wad of sticky paper, like a giant spit ball, bounced off my head, followed by another, and another.

  “You’ve got a serious termite problem here, mister,” I said, looking toward the assault weapon’s point of origin. Leaning over the upstairs railing was a slim, slightly balding man in a Bloomingdale’s T-shirt. Upside-down, his thinning hair hung in delicate wisps like spider webbing.

  “Hey, Connor. How you doin’?” I’m not entirely sure that’s what he said, since he was hanging upside-down over the balcony. Talk about a lipreading challenge.

  I met Beau when I’d first arrived in Flat Skunk. Needing a place to stay until I fixed up my own place, we’d struck up a bargain. He’d just reopened the inn and could use some publicity to get started, so he’d given me a cut-rate room in exchange for discount advertising in the Eureka!

  Beau bounded down the stairs in a kind of two-step manner. The man never seemed to run out of energy. I suspected a coffee addiction.

  “Finally ready to give up that Diner From Hell you poured your life savings into, Connor? Want to move back here ’til those condos are built over in Whiskey Slide?”

  The catty remarks about my home were part of a running joke between us, the old my-house-is-better-than-your-house routine. He was currently hanging new wallpaper, which gave him the lead for the moment.

  “The offer is tempting, but I’m not leaving the diner without a proper fight. And so far I’ve beat the electrical, the plumbing, and the dry rot.” I looked down at my knees. The stinging felt like a multiple needle attack.

  Beau followed my glance. “Whoa! Looks like you’ve lost the latest fight, Connor! What happened? Finally take a header on that bike of yours? I told you to keep your hands on the handlebars. But you have to be a show-off!”

  He pulled out a small first-aid kit from beneath the desk, made a close-up inspection, and grimaced.

  “Some idiot pulled out of your parking lot right in front of me as I was riding home.”

  “Well, looks like I’m gonna have to amputate,” Beau said, brandishing a mean pair of scissors and a reckless, evil grin. “The pants, that is. Hope you got them on sale.”

  Thirty minutes and several snips later I was wearing a pair of fifty-dollar cutoffs with dark red fringe. Beau had me sitting on the toilet seat with my legs propped up on an antique chair, while he performed surgery in the bathroom. A small pile of tiny rocks lay on a piece of paper toweling on the counter. The Mercurochrome covering my knees hadn’t kicked in yet, nor had the liquid anesthetic B
eau had offered from the minibar disguised as an old mining cart. My knees hurt like hell, not to mention my hands, my elbows, and my right shoulder.

  “You should have been a nurse,” I told Beau over a second glass of freshly squeezed orange juice when the surgery was over. I took it with another shot of whiskey for the pain.

  Beau grinned. “Always wanted to be a plastic surgeon. Then I could do a little surgery on myself and change my nose every time a new look comes along. Hope you don’t mind but I gave you a little knee-lift while I was digging out those boulders. Michael Jackson, eat your heart out.”

  As I finished my spiked juice, Beau and I talked about Lacy Penzance’s death. Of course he had heard about it—it was the topic of the hour, which reminded me of something the sheriff had said earlier.

  “Beau, Sheriff Mercer mentioned that Lacy had a business card from the Mark Twain in her purse. Did you give it to her?”

  Beau pressed his lips together, then said, “No. She’s never been here, as far as I know. Of course, the door’s always open during the daytime and anyone can walk in. Maybe she picked up a card to give to someone visiting the area when I wasn’t around.”

  “Who are your guests right now?”

  Beau pulled out his registration book from the rolltop desk. “The McDonalds have been here a couple of nights. They’re from San Francisco, getting away from it all. There are two women in the Roaring Camp room from Denver, here on vacation, Lucke and Richards. The Jacobs family are taking up two rooms—the Red Light room for the couple and the Claim Jumper room for their two teenage boys. They’re here for the frog festivities this weekend. The Jacobs boys won last year in two divisions: Best name for a frog—Ribbet. And cutest outfit—they made a little Superman suit. Then I’ve got a single guy in the Miner room. Name’s Russell. James Russell. In fact, he left just a few minutes before you—”

  “Red Miata, right?” I said, as I watched the recognition dawn on him.

  “Yeah! Was he the jerk that ran you down?” Beau asked. “He’s a looker. Dresses like one of those guys in the Aramis ads, you know. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much of him. Stays in his room mostly, then goes out late at night. But you know how I like the mysterious type,” he said with a mischievous grin.