January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries)

by Lourey, Jess

  “What do you think?”

  I thought it was time to beat cheeks. “I’ve got to get to work, that’s what. If you’re not going to tell me anything, I’ll be on my way.”

  He stooped as if to help me hoist the duffel, but his cane drew him up short. I lifted the bag myself, trying to flex my muscles only as much as would be required of a hockey stick.

  “That looks heavy,” he said suspiciously.

  “Back in the day, they built their sticks to last.” I didn’t look back as I scurried out the sliding doors, but I could feel his eyes boring into me. I’d have to return tomorrow with the gun and hope to high heaven I didn’t run into Gary again. For the moment, though, all I wanted was to put as much distance between the stolen item I was carrying and the Battle Lake Chief of Police as I could. The icy cold scratched at my cheeks.

  “Hey. Betty Fishbacher.”

  I turned toward the hoarse voice, resisting the urge to clutch the gun like the weapon it was. “Eric Offerdahl.”

  He had been standing behind a pylon but revealed himself when I passed. A lit cigarette dangled from his lip in a deliberate attempt at coolness. He kept running his hands through his hair and then patting his pockets like he was looking for his wallet. His eyes jittered, and his mask was gone, open anger laid across his face for all the world to see.

  “How’s your friend?” he asked.

  “You mean the Battle Lake Chief of Police whom you shot last week?” It was a blind stab. I knew he was talking about Curtis. The hit scored, though, and his face twisted even more darkly.

  “Hmm. So you did shoot the chief. Why?”

  He flicked his cigarette at me. I let it bounce off my shoulder. Gary was just inside the hospital doors, talking to the underskilled woman behind the information desk. I could yell for help, and he’d come. I ground out Eric’s cigarette with the toe of my winter boot.

  “I didn’t shoot anyone,” he snarled. “I’m here to tell you that Ray was arrested. Tell Taunita to watch her back, ’cause snitches get stitches.”

  He stared me down, shoving his hands into his pockets. My first instinct was to punch him in his throat, but then I thought of Timothy and Alessa. I did not want Eric any madder at us than he appeared. When Taunita had said she fed the justice machine, did she mean putting Ray in jail?

  “What’s he in jail for?”

  “Taunita knows.”

  The automatic doors of the hospital slid open. A nurse wearing a winter coat pushed a man in a wheelchair forward. A van pulled up at the end of the sidewalk. When I looked back to Eric, he’d vanished. I realized it didn’t matter why he was threatening Taunita. He knew she was staying with me, and that meant she and the babies were in danger.

  Forty-Five

  Sid and Nancy were happy to put up Taunita, Timothy, and Alessa in the spare apartment above the coffee shop. Taunita said it wasn’t necessary, that she could handle a dumb drug punk like Eric just fine, but I reminded her that the kids couldn’t. Once they were settled, I used Sid and Nancy’s home phone to call the hospital. They patched me through to Curtis, who sounded weak but like himself.

  “What were you doing scrapping in alleys anyhow?” I asked him, my eyes clouding with tears. I couldn’t believe I finally got to hear his voice.

  He coughed. “Gary told me to tell you not to mess with them. They’re rough people.”

  I knew he had been beaten up badly, but that didn’t sound at all like something Curtis would say. “Is Gary there right now?”

  “I told him you were smart enough to keep yourself safe.”

  Gary must be in the room with him, or Curtis would have answered me directly. “Don’t let Gary know what we’re talking about, but do you know anything about Civil War guns?”

  “Of course I like honey buns. I used to collect them.”

  I could hear his wink through the line, and it felt like a weight being lifted. They could beat up Curtis, but they could never diminish his humor or wits. “I have one I need you to look at. It might have something to do with all of this, though I have no idea what.”

  “Bring ’em by,” he said. “I’m sick of this hospital food. Now, I’ve got some people who want to talk to me. You won’t want to bring those buns until tomorrow because I’ll have a lot of company today.”

  Message received. “Love you, Curtis.”

  “That’s about right,” he said gruffly before hanging up.

  I rubbed the back of my hand against my wet eyes. Curtis was going to be okay. Now, I had to make sure the same could be said about me. Next stop, the Prospect House to discover what they knew about the break-in—and the idiots who had conducted it.

  Forty-Six

  Turns out, Carter didn’t know much, but he did know that the hanged man’s gun was missing. I had no choice but to play dumb as he showed me digital photographs of the footprints in the woods. He said the police had confiscated the mittens. The whole time we spoke, I could feel the gun burning a hole in the back seat of my car like only guilt and fear can do. At the end of the interview, I returned to run the library, type up the Eric Offerdahl report for Chuck Litchfield, and write a very brief article about the break-in.

  After the library closed, there was nothing to do but go home and wait. Curtis had warned me not to bring the gun to him until tomorrow. My head was too busy to deal with Johnny or Mrs. Berns. I considered sketching what I knew, but it was so little. Hard drugs had infiltrated Battle Lake about the same time Eric Offerdahl had arrived. Maurice, Ray, and Hammer followed shortly after, possibly to help Eric distribute the drugs. However, Maurice had told Taunita he’d come for a different reason—to claim his inheritance. If that was true, if there was an inheritance, the proof had fallen into my lap through a convoluted web of history. An inheritance wouldn’t erase any illegal activities Maurice had engaged in, but it might help out Taunita and the kids. Also, Eric had most certainly shot Gary, which made me believe he’d shot and killed Maurice as well. He was a loose cannon who was now gunning for Taunita because she’d turned in one of his lieutenants for beating up Curtis.

  It was danger and confusion, all tied in a bundle and set on fire. All I knew for sure was that I missed having the kids around. One of Alessa’s blankets had been left behind, a blue cotton square as soft as duck down. I smelled it. Sweet, clean baby. I couldn’t even clean house to pass the time because Taunita had scoured everything, even alphabetizing my seven spices. I finally read until I fell asleep.

  Under my bed.

  The next morning, I was up with the dawn, filled with a rare sense of purpose despite my shame at returning to my nest under the mattress. I was going to check on Taunita and the kids, then bring the gun to Curtis for help dismantling it. We’d find Orpheus’s final letter, which would lead us to the inheritance. I’d give it to Taunita, and I’d wash my hands of the entire ordeal.

  I was outside the coffee shop by 6:02 AM. It was already open. I walked in. Nancy smiled up at me, her eyes tired but bright.

  “No skolleboller today, but I’ve got coffee brewing.”

  “Can I just buy some Long Johns? I’m going to visit Curtis in the hospital.”

  She began packing them immediately. “Tell him these are on us.”

  “Will do. Don’t suppose Taunita is up?”

  “Wouldn’t know. She and the kids left with a friend last night.”

  A cold ball of lead dropped into my stomach. “What?”

  “Some old friend, he said. Looked like a punk with that barbell through his eyebrow, but who am I to judge?”

  “She took the babies, too? They all left without a fight?”

  “As far as I could tell. Taunita said she’d call you to let you know where she’s at. Everything okay?”

  I ran all the way to the police station. My chest ached, my lungs like two frozen balloons when I finally reached it. I pulled the d
oor open. Gary started to stand when he saw me, but his injury brought him up short. The bags under his eyes and the way his mouth was drawn suggested he had worked through the night.

  “Taunita. The babies. Eric Offerdahl has them!”

  I spilled the story of Taunita’s relationship to Maurice, and how she had narced on Stingray and maybe the whole gang and now Eric had taken her and her kids.

  “They left without a fight?” Gary’s eyebrows were arched so close together they were almost touching.

  “That’s what Nancy said.” I wasn’t going to cry in front of him.

  “Then there’s not much we can do.” He turned from me.

  “Offerdahl is crazy! I think he’s the one who shot you.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll look into it. That’s all I can promise.”

  Gary wrote down a description of Taunita and the kids and sent me on my way. Outside the police station, the cold air cut at my ice-burned lungs. I had no idea where to go. I certainly wasn’t going to drive home and wait. I could go to the microbrewery and search for Eric, but there was no way he’d hide out there with two little kids and a woman. I didn’t know where else to dig, so I decided to look online.

  I took off on foot, the brisk air cauterizing my nostrils.

  I was unlocking the library door when I felt the hand at my throat.

  I whipped around to face a very angry-looking Eric Offerdahl, his pupils the size of pinpricks.

  Forty-Seven

  “I will say this once.” His voice was low, dangerous, metal scraping against pavement. “I have Taunita and the kids. I will trade them for the gun.”

  “What gun?” I wasn’t playing stupid. I really was stupid. He couldn’t possibly be talking about the Civil War musket, which only me, Curtis, and Mrs. Berns knew about. What other gun was there?

  “I know about Maurice’s letters. I know the crazy shit thought he had an inheritance coming to him. I can’t take a chance that he might be right. When I heard the stolen gun called in on the police radio, I thought immediately of that damn ‘tunnel of justice.’ I figure you were thinking the same thing, after Taunita told me she’d asked you to look into the whole shitpile when she come to ask Ray to turn himself in.” He laughed, and it was a black sound. “Like Ray would be dumb enough to do that. But Taunita didn’t even give him a chance, did she? She went straight to the police.”

  “What?” I felt like the world had flipped me upside down and was going through my pockets for change.

  His shifty eyes landed on me. “Where exactly do you think this inheritance was gonna come from? Everyone in my family knows the story that a crazy black man showed up pretending to be a good friend of old Barnaby, claiming he had property rights if anything were to happen to Barnaby’s daughter. But Barnaby’s daughter didn’t live and the man disappeared, and so it all went to my great-great-great-grandpa. Not much of it left, but enough, and my dad isn’t going to live much longer.”

  It was falling into place, but into weird place. “You’re not here to deal drugs?”

  He laughed. “What is this, a Bond movie? You don’t need to know why I’m here. Suffice to say that it’s a happy coincidence that I first met Maurice Jackson a decade ago, when he was here visiting his grandma, and that we stayed in touch. And it’s an even happier one that he spilled to me about the inheritance he thought he had comin’. How could he know it was tied to the Prospect House? Only people born and raised in Battle Lake know those stories. Crazy world, isn’t it? But I need that gun, now, just in case there’s something to it all.”

  “It’s at home.”

  “Then you better get it. You think you can find the cabin on Silver Lake, Fire Number 23470?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. I’ll meet you there in thirty minutes. You better have the gun and no one else. You show up alone, you hand me the gun, and I hand you Taunita and the snot babies. You tell anyone what you’re up to, and the world has three less mouths to feed. And I’m watching you. Understand?”

  I nodded again, tongue-tied.

  Forty-Eight

  I raced back to my car outside the Fortune, pushing my sore lungs to take in more air. I didn’t see anyone watching me, yet I felt a million eyes crawling across my back as the morning dawned. Plus, Eric’s uncanny ability to anticipate where I was going to be made me feel as vulnerable as a cow in a slaughter chute. I reached my car and let myself in, trying to think things through as I drove. Thank goodness I’d walked to the library, or Eric would have spotted the gun in my back seat. My best bet was to drive home exactly as I’d promised him I would, charge inside, and call Gary immediately. Only in movies are people stupid enough to arrive at an isolated location alone for a trade. Who was I, Chuck Norris?

  I raced home and ran to the house. Luna and Tiger Pop were both outside, appearing miffed. One glance at them and I knew what I’d find on the other side of the door: destruction.

  All of Taunita’s cleaning was buried under ripped-up cushions and torn-open cupboards. Potato Buds and canned goods were strewn across the floor, furniture tipped over, everything in my bedroom closet thrown onto my bed. I ran from room to room, my breath jagged, but in every space, the story was the same.

  Eric had already visited, and he’d left no corner intact.

  That meant he knew I’d lied to him about the gun being here. My heart dipped. I hurried to the phone, fear crawling like cold-footed beetles across my skin.

  “Calling someone?”

  I turned. I hadn’t bothered to close the door behind me. Eric stood there, Timothy on his hip. He must have followed me, and I’d been too frantic inside the house to hear his car.

  “Mee-wa!” Timothy held his arms out to me. Dried tears caked his face, and he was sniffling.

  I ran forward, but Eric swiveled so his body was between me and Timothy. Luna stood just behind them both, her hackles raised and a low growl in her throat. She was confused. She liked Timothy but knew something wasn’t right here.

  “Thought I’d give you time to call the police, did you? What do you think this is, the movies?”

  I would have laughed at the irony if I wasn’t so scared. A fresh tear rolled through the crust on Timothy’s face, and he was trembling like a kitten, despite the winter jacket he wore. “The gun is in the back seat of my car.”

  “Get it.”

  I hurried past him, trying not to look at Timothy. He was leaning away from Eric like he wanted to push off him but was too terrified to do so. I returned in seconds hauling the black hockey duffel. Eric closed the house door behind me, trapping the animals outside.

  “Open it.”

  I followed his orders, pulling out the long gun.

  “Is there something inside of it?”

  “I can’t tell,” I said. “It looks like.”

  “Get it out.”

  “I can’t. If I could, I would have already. It’s shoved too far in there.”

  “Then smash it.”

  “I’m not strong enough.” I didn’t know if this was true or not. “Let me hold Timothy, and you can smash it.”

  Eric considered his options, and then tossed Timothy at me. I caught him just before he hit the floor. He clung to me like a baby monkey, trying to crawl inside my coat. I hugged him tight and whispered soothing words, all of them lies.

  Eric picked the gun off the floor and glanced down the barrel, presumably spotting the same shadow of paper that I had. He raised the gun above his head and smashed it into the doorway. The crash was deafening. Luna began barking. Eric swung at the door repeatedly until the barrel separated from the stock. He laughed in triumph when he ripped them apart, revealing a scroll of fragile yellow paper.

  He yanked it out and unrolled it, his hands shaking. His eyes moved as he read. He smiled. At least I thought he did.

  It took me a moment to realize it wa
s a grimace of fury. “It’s a goddamned letter from Orpheus to his wife. It says to look into the tunnel of justice, that she’ll find their due in there, just like the other letter.”

  He moved his glance to me, his eyes bright and dangerous. “You have five seconds to figure out what that tunnel of justice is.” He ripped Timothy out of my arms, dangling the boy by an arm. Timothy screamed and tried to kick at him with his tiny legs, but Eric didn’t flinch. I hated him with a rage I’d never felt toward anyone before. I lunged forward, but Eric balled his hand into a fist and held it over Timothy, his threat clear.

  I stopped, the rage burning through me with a white heat. I breathed deeply, forcing my mind to clear, thinking as I spoke. I needed to stall until I could think of a way out of this. “How do I know what the tunnel is? It might not even exist at all. Or it might be a place they traveled through, or a … ”

  My breath caught in my throat. I could read Libby’s inventory of belongings left with the hanged man as if the words were floating in the air. Musket 25A, a Bible, a wooden fife, and two quarters, two nickels, and a penny. The tunnel of justice wasn’t the gun, it was the fife—a battle instrument used to signal victory.

  “What is it?” Eric was eyeing me suspiciously, ignoring the squirming, sobbing child reaching out desperately for me.

  “If I tell you, you’ll let Taunita and both kids go?”

  “What do I want them for? I just need whatever Orpheus thought he had that would give him what’s mine.”

  I didn’t trust Eric, but what choice did I have? “I think it’s the fife. Orpheus was the hanged man they found by the Prospect House in 1865. The hanged man came back from the war with a fife, and I think that’s what he meant when he referred to the tunnel of justice.”

  Whether it would have anything in it, or whether it was what Eric and I were looking for, remained to be seen.

  “Take me to it.”

  Forty-Nine

  Which is how Timothy, Eric, and I found ourselves in the kitchen of the Prospect House, talking to Carter Stone. Eric had warned me that I better keep quiet and make sure the same was true of Timothy, or we’d never see Taunita and Alessa again.