Death, Guns, and Sticky Buns

by Valerie S. Malmont

  She waited without saying anything, and after a minute my curiosity got the better of me. “What kind of difficulties?”

  “As I'm sure you know, this is the week we hold our annual fund-raising tour. It begins on Tuesday night and runs through Saturday.”

  “I didn't know.”

  “Silly me, I forgot you're not local.” She gave a little deprecating laugh, which made me want to slug her.

  Cassie piped in with an explanation. “People pay five dollars to have students dressed in costume take them through the oldest buildings on campus and tell them ghost stories. It's all done by candlelight and very spooky. It's an ‘old’ tradition that started about ten years ago. I think the college is trying to capitalize on the popular ghost tours of Gettysburg.”

  Helga took exception to that last statement. “Our campus has been haunted as long as the battlefield. We just haven't made a big deal out of it.”

  “I was mistaken for the ghost of a nun once,” I said.

  “I can't imagine why.” Helga stared pointedly at my jaunty red, white, and blue outfit with the nautical theme that had looked really cute in a Provincetown secondhand store window two summers ago.

  “So you're telling me that the college does a Halloween ghost tour to raise money, and…”

  Helga gasped. “Not Halloween! Lickin Creek does not, I repeat, does not celebrate that Satanic ritual.

  And, of course, we at the college respect that. We call it the Harvest Time Legend Tour.”

  Impatiently, I asked again, “What kind of difficulties?”

  “Lizzie Borden quit last Friday.”

  “You mean you now have no PR department?”

  “Not until Janet returns from maternity leave. And she says she's not coming back one day early! President Godlove suggested you might take over Lizzie's duties during the tour.”

  “Isn't it a little late to be organizing something that's taking place this week?”

  “Everything is ready to go. But we need someone in the administration building to supervise the students, make sure the ticket taker is on the job, keep things moving smoothly.”

  “So get a faculty member to do it,” I said, turning back to my desk.

  “We're spread as thin as butter on hot toast right now. There are no faculty members available.” She paused. “That does give me an idea. We like to have someone well known play a ghost every year. I suppose we could switch the head of the music department over to supervisor, and you could take her part. She wasn't keen on being in costume, anyway.”

  “Now you're talking. I was once the lead in Blithe Spirit in high school.”

  Helga stood up and brushed more imaginary dust from her skirt. “Then that's settled. I'll see you there Tuesday evening at six.”

  She'd outwitted me, I realized, and had gotten exactly what she'd come for. Flattery gets me every time, and I liked the idea of being “well known.”

  “I'll send a student over to your house with your costume. You'll probably have to shorten it.” She strode to the door, then paused and said, By the way, have you turned up anything new about Mack's death?”

  “No. President Godlove told me the investigation was over and I should stop looking into it.”

  “He doesn't really believe it was an accident, does he?”

  “I don't know what he really believes. All I know is what he told me, and that was he was satisfied with the coroner's report and Woody Woodruff's arrest.”

  “He's an idiot.”

  Cassie started to laugh, then covered her mouth.

  “He certainly is. I should have been named president. I'm far better at fund-raising than he will ever be. Besides, I'm a woman, and it's a women's college. The position should have been mine. Everybody knows that. I was next in line, and I was better qualified to run the college than the outsider they brought in.”

  “What happened?”

  “The trustees didn't show good judgment. That's what happened. I'll see you on Tuesday.”

  A few minutes after she left, I turned to Cassie and asked, “What's the real story?”

  “According to the Grapevine, Helga and Mack had a longtime relationship that ended abruptly when he went off to learn sign language and came back married to his teacher, Charlotte. In anger, Helga said some nasty things about his new wife, and they got back to him.”

  “Like what?”

  “She called Charlotte a gold digger. Said the only reason a young, attractive woman would marry an ‘old fart like him,’ her words, was to get her hands on his money.”

  “If Helga thought Mack was an old fart, why did she want him?”

  Cassie grinned. “Who knows? Besides, time has definitely proved her wrong. Charlotte has always been a devoted wife to Mack, even after he lost most of his money in that shopping center deal gone wrong last year. To me, that proves she married for love.

  “Anyway, when Helga's name came up as the perfect candidate for college president, Mack persuaded the board of trustees to look elsewhere. He said a lot of things about her that later proved not to be true, but it was too late. Godlove was already on the job.”

  “Do you think Helga was angry enough to want him dead?” I mused.

  “It happened a while back. I doubt she'd hold a grudge that long.”

  “From the way she talked, it sounded like more than a grudge, Cassie. I wonder what Helga knows about firearms.”

  “Really, Tori. You're beginning to sound obsessed. The college has moved on, Mack's family has moved on. Don't you think you should too?”

  I pushed my way through a jungle of helium-filled balloons and potted plants to find Ken Nakamura, pale and drawn, propped up in his hospital bed. Moonbeam was spoon-feeding him a creamy yellow substance.

  “You look wonderful,” I lied as I cleared some magazines off the only vacant chair. Why do I always feel it's necessary to say that to someone in the hospital? Usually they look like they're on their last legs. Ken wasn't quite that bad, but he didn't exactly look “wonderful,” either.

  His right arm was in a sling, his chest was wrapped up like a mummy.

  “I wish I could give you a hug,” he said, “but that'll have to wait. Moonbeam told me you saved my life.”

  “I didn't do anything,” I said truthfully.

  “No need to be modest, young lady. If you hadn't thrown me to the ground, the next shot could have been fatal.”

  Although I had no recollection of doing that, I decided to relax and enjoy the glory. There would be time later to tell him what really happened, that I'd bent over to pick something up, didn't recognize the sounds I heard as shots until I saw him drop to the ground covered with blood, and that someone else had called 911.

  A nurse bustled in, took his vital signs, told him he was “looking good,” but should not allow his visitors to wear him out. “You're the heroine who saved him, aren't you?” she said to me.

  I started to shake my head, but stopped when she continued, “The EMTs told us he'd have bled to death if you hadn't kept pressure on that chest wound. That was quick thinking on your part.”

  How about that? Maybe I did deserve some of that praise, after all.

  After Moonbeam had finished feeding him his tapioca, she turned the crank to lower the head of the bed, then said to Ken, “Dad, at your house I saw your family scrapbooks and a notebook with Japanese writing in it. Tori said you might have been interned during the Second World War. Is that true?”

  Ken sighed. “Yes, dear, it's true.”

  “Why didn't you ever tell me?”

  He closed his eyes, and I saw how frail he was. “For a long time I tried to forget. Now, I realize I am old, and Tamsin needs to know. That's why I got the books down from the attic—I plan to translate Masao's journal after I retire.”

  “Who is Masao?” Moonbeam asked.

  “My brother.”

  “I didn't know you had a—”

  Ken interrupted her. “Masao died in 1943. Time has blurred the details, but his jou
rnal brought back my memories of the most shameful chapter in our country's history.”

  He leaned back, eyes closed, and for a moment I thought he'd fallen asleep. Moonbeam looked question-ingly at me. I put my finger to my lips. “Wait,” I mouthed.

  With his eyes still closed, Ken began to speak. “My father came to America more than one hundred years ago after the Meiji government took his family's land. I'll tell you his story someday. After a series of adventures, he ended up in Long Beach, California, where there was an established nikkei community.”

  Moonbeam looked at me for translation. “People of Japanese ancestry,” I explained.

  “We had a good life there. My father owned several fishing boats. We were very comfortable. My mother never had to work in the canneries. There was even enough money to send Masao to Japan for his education. A child of ten when he left us, he returned a man of twenty, shortly before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was an American, but thought as a Japanese; he told me he felt like a stranger in his own land.”

  “I can understand that feeling,” I said.

  “Yes, I think you can. May I have a sip of water, please?”

  Moonbeam held the straw to his lips for a moment. He continued, “President Roosevelt signed an order in 1942, which gave the government the right to confine potentially dangerous people from military areas. That ‘military area’ ended up being the entire West Coast. Anyone of Japanese descent was considered to be a security risk and was ordered to report to a camp.”

  Moonbeam's voice was pitched high with indignation. “But you were American citizens.”

  “Masao and I were citizens because we were nisei, born in America, but our parents were issei, Japanese-born, and excluded by law from becoming citizens. Besides, citizenship made no difference. The order included anybody with even a drop of Japanese blood. More than a hundred and ten thousand of us on the West Coast were considered to be security risks, even the small babies. Some of them were actually sansei, the second generation of Americans, but we all were sent to relocation centers.”

  “How many camps were there?” I asked.

  “Ten, I think, not including some prisons. My family was sent to Topaz in Utah, a place that we called the ‘jewel of the desert.’ ”

  “Why didn't the Japanese Americans rise up in protest? Contact the media? Do something to stop it?” Moonbeam asked indignantly.

  Ken smiled. “We were loyal to our government, no matter how badly it treated us. It's a trait called on in Japanese. And there is also the Japanese belief that difficult situations must be endured, represented by the phrase shikata ga nai.”

  “It must have been awful for you, Dad.” Moonbeam stroked his good hand. “How long were you there?”

  “Myself—less than a month. The American Friends Service Committee arranged for some of us to go to eastern colleges, and I was one of the lucky ones. My brother couldn't go, because he was a kibei, a Japan-educated nisei, and considered to be a greater security risk. I joined the army in 1943.

  “I have felt great guilt over the years for leaving my family when I did—wondered if I'd stayed with them would things would have ended differently? You see, they were moved to Tule Lake in California when Masao became a ‘no-no man.’”

  “What was a no-no man?” I asked.

  “There was a questionnaire that all internees had to fill out, and everyone was expected to answer yes to two ambiguous questions at the end of it. The questions were ridiculous. They called upon the issei to swear allegiance to America, which had refused to give them citizenship. The kibei, like my brother, thought they were trick questions; if they answered yes, they would be acknowledging a prior allegiance to the Japanese emperor. If they said no, it would be considered an admission of disloyalty to America. My brother, like many of his Japanese-educated friends, and my father answered ‘no-no’ to the two questions to show their outrage at what America had done.”

  “How dreadful,” Moonbeam groaned. “I had no idea…”

  “Over eighteen thousand people were jammed into the Tule Lake camp. Soldiers with machines guns stood guard in turrets, and tanks patrolled the perimeter to prevent people from escaping.

  “The camp was overcrowded, the sanitation deplorable, the food insufficient, and the living conditions impossible. My mother tried hard to keep family customs alive. She even taught Japanese dancing to the little girls there. But my father lost the will to live. Masao's journal said he sat and smoked all day and wouldn't talk to anyone.

  “Finally, kibei youths rioted, and the army moved in to squelch them and took over the entire camp. The young rebels were locked up in the ‘stockade.’ They were cut off from their families by a twelve-foot-high wall and denied medical care. Masao died there, of pneumonia, after being beaten by the guard in charge of his barracks. Not long after, my father died of a broken heart.”

  “And your mother?” Moonbeam asked.

  “She stayed at Tule Lake until 1946, because she had nowhere else to go.”

  It was Ken who was now stroking Moonbeam's hand, trying to still her tears. “Don't cry, my dear. They are at peace. And you, my dear daughter, will share everything I tell you about them with your daughter, who will tell her children, and our ancestors will never be forgotten.”

  I grabbed a couple of tissues and walked over to the window looking out over the parking lot and blew my nose. After I'd regained my composure, I said, without turning around, “I'm very touched you shared this with me.”

  Ken answered in a tone of voice that chilled me to the bone. “I really don't want to see you. Please leave.”

  I spun around, thinking he was talking to me and wondering why he'd had such a sudden change of attitude. I quickly realized he wasn't speaking to me, but to Charlotte Macmillan, half hidden by balloons near the doorway, her mouth open in a little “oh” of surprise.

  “I wanted to see how you're feeling,” she said, without coming into the room.

  “Please leave,” Ken repeated in a firm voice. She stepped backward and was gone.

  “What was that about?” Moonbeam asked.

  “I think I know,” I said.

  “Do you?” Ken asked, staring intently at my face.

  “The guard responsible for your brother's death was Mack Macmillan, wasn't it?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “It just now came together. First, your refusal to work with Macmillan when he was made chairman of the college's board of trustees. And his wife's telling me a few days ago he'd been in the army during World War II, stationed out west somewhere. And third, the way you reacted to her presence.”

  “I don't think Macmillan was directly responsible. But he was mentioned in Masao's diary as being one of the cruelest and most sadistic guards in the camp. I learned that only a few months ago while skimming over the journal.”

  “And that's when you submitted your resignation to the college?”

  Ken yawned. “I could not work with a man for whom I had no respect.”

  I was able to ask no more questions. The old man, exhausted from telling his story, was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER 14

  Monday Evening

  I PURCHASED AN ADORABLE LITTLE TERRY CLOTH jump suit for Janet Margolies's baby and some wrapping supplies in the hospital gift shop just as the volunteer was closing up, then wrapped the present while sitting in the front seat of my car. That's when I noticed the pink and blue paper I'd selected had small gold writing all over it that said Get well soon. Too late to do anything about it now, I thought, and secured the paper with Scotch tape. If I didn't get to the elevator in Mountain View soon, I'd miss the event. I'd forgotten a card, so I tore a sheet of paper from my notebook and wrote, To Baby Margo-lies, with love from Tori, because I couldn't remember whether Janet's baby was a girl or a boy. I attached the note to the package top with a sticky-backed silver bow. A clumsy five-year-old could have done a better job, but I hoped Janet would be so thrilled with the gift that she'd over
look the messy covering.

  T o find Mountain View, I followed the map Cassie had drawn for me, which had me driving on mountain roads so twisty and narrow, I felt sure I would plunge to my death at any moment. Every now and then I'd come to a wide spot in the road where there would be a small outpost of civilization, usually a couple of trailers, a barn or two, a general store with an antique gas pump, and a hand-painted sign offering deer processing. And there was always a church, with a bulletin board out front. Although twilight was rapidly changing to nightfall, I could still see they carried homey messages like THE HARVEST IS RIPE, ARE YOU READY FOR THE PICKIN’? and ARE YOU READY FOR HEAVEN OR FOR HELL? My favorite was IF YOU GIVE THE DEVIL A RIDE, HE'LL SOON BE DRIVING. The many dire warnings about eternal damnation led me to believe that truly cheerless people must live in these desolate hamlets.

  Shortly after I passed a log cabin decorated with a banner that read GET US OUT OF THE U.N. NOW, I came to a sign that announced I was in the Village of Mountain View. The village was a metropolis compared to the places I'd just passed through. Large, well-maintained homes with wide porches faced each other across the road. The post office was in a lean-to attached to one of the houses, and I noticed a FOR SALE sign out front. Was the position of postmaster for sale along with the building?

  A large steel building at the crossroads in the center of the village housed the recreation center and municipal offices. Directly across from it was Foster's Elevator, Inc., a complex of buildings that was nearly a town in itself. Most of them were white and of the Victorian era. Behind these were huge towers, silos, I guessed, and ladders that seemed to reach to the sky. Some buildings were obviously barns and garages. The paved parking lot was large enough for a hundred cars and trucks. Tonight, it was nearly full.

  I parked on the edge of the lot in front of a sign that informed me that Nutro pet foods and lottery tickets were available here. Foster's Elevator, Inc., certainly looked like a prosperous, going concern, so I wondered why the bulletin board facing the road announced a going-out-of-business sale. I approached the front door of what appeared to be the main office building. Two porch lights on either side illuminated the front steps, which led to a wide veranda. The front door was slightly ajar, and a tattered poster advertising Vacation Bible School, apparently left over from last summer, flapped loosely in the evening breeze as I pushed open the door and entered the office. Inside, the office was deserted, except for some old oaken furniture, but I heard a lot of noise coming from the stairwell in the back of the room, indicating the party was being held upstairs.