by Jess Lourey
I scowled at the weak logic of a guilty man. So he was an honest cheater? Give me a faithful liar any day. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Who’s it with?”
“He wouldn’t give me a name. Some ice-fishing hussy, I suppose. I knew I should have gone ice fishing with him when he asked. It’s just so damn boring.” She threw her head back, shaking tendrils of yellow hair loose from their tie, and sobbed like a three-year-old. I let her, even though every bellow dragged through my bug-bashed head like a rusty fishhook. When she calmed down, I asked her what she was going to do.
She sniffled on a bucket of snot and reached for the box of Kleenex. “What can I do, Mira? I love him. He’s my husband, and we’re together for better or worse.”
Her words ignited a sudden white anger in me. That had been my mother’s attitude during her entire tumultuous relationship with my father—he’s my husband, and I have to stay. I had no time for this way of thinking. There was a misconception that bad people walked around with knives and guns, yelling expletives, and so were easy to distinguish from good people. The truth was that bad people looked just like the rest of us, and they could bring you a flower on your birthday or call you to find out how your day went or come to your basketball game. Then, when you were fooled into relaxing, they’d get drunk or have sex with a stranger after they’d pledged their heart, body, and mind to you. I believed that when someone showed their true colors, and those colors were black and gray, you needed to act accordingly and cut them out of your life.
I looked at Gina with her stringy blonde hair, runny nose, and puffy eyes. She didn’t want to hear my theory on bad people. She wanted her husband to love her like mad. “Well, G, if you’re going to stick it out, take advantage of your current position.”
“Huh?” Another snort into her squelchy tissue.
“He’s got his tail between his legs, so you take what you need right now. Get him to agree to marriage counseling and to take you out for a nice night at a fancy restaurant, if nothing else.”
Her soggy green eyes stared into mine. “It can work, can’t it, Mira? People can move past this stuff, right?”
I grimaced. “Anything is possible. Now I need some ibuprofen before my head rolls off and under the couch.”
Gina provided the medicine, Sid and Nancy gave me a coffee and cinnamon scone on the house after they saw my green and purple forehead (“No shit. A June bug?”), and I met up with Ron Sims at the Recall office. It still smelled like ink and the walls were still tan, but something about the office hinted at excitement. This was a good time to own a newspaper in Battle Lake.
“Mira James! Just the person I was looking for. I’ve got two stories for you to write. Shoot, we might need a special edition!”
I could feel the ibuprofen kicking in and the caffeine stroking my serotonin levels nicely. Gina’s sadness had painted a gray spot in me, but I could do this. “Fine, Ron. First, I need help with a puzzle. What language does this look like to you?”
He glanced over the top of his bifocals at the fragile paper and yanked it out of my hand. “English.”
I pulled it back gently and tried to wipe off the glazed-donut fingerprints he had left. “In case you haven’t noticed, I am somewhat familiar with the predominant language of North America. This isn’t English.”
“It’s a cryptogram, James. Substitution cipher. Look at the numbers, syntax, and primary repetition of letters. Third-grade stuff. Now, if you want a real challenge, what you do is pull out the Sunday New York Times puzzle and settle back for a full, sweaty day of word wrestling. I remember—”
“Can you unjumble this?”
“Do fat men make the best lovers?”
Oh Christ! I hated trick questions. I copied the code onto his pink “While You Were Out” pad and returned the original to the silk wrap. “Just tell me what this says, okay?”
“Business before pleasure, James. Since you are the award-winning homicide writer, I want you to find out what you can about that midget who was shot last night at Shangri-La.”
“I don’t think they like to be called midgets, Ron.”
“Well, make that part of your research. I need the scoop on him—his name, where he was from, how long he had been with the traveling theater, how he’s doing—”
I wiped off my coffee mustache. “You mean he’s still alive?”
“Last I heard over the police radio. He was alive when they brought him to Lake Region, anyhow. I need that article ASAP. Also, Chief Wohnt dropped off this press release. Make sure it’s clean before we run it.”
I looked at the paper Ron shoved in my hand. It was short and typed in an austere, sans serif font with zero formatting:
“Field drinking down 43%”
Otter Tail County teenagers are gathering and imbibing in local corn and soybean fields 43% less than they were a year ago. “We have only received three complaints about teenagers drinking in the fields, down from seven this time last year,” according to Battle Lake Police Chief Gary Wohnt. “We attribute the decrease in outdoor, underage partying to the increase in random patrols, the DARE campaign, and the Olsen boys going off to college.” The Battle Lake Police Department will continue to focus on fields as a source of trouble but will expand their efforts to parked cars, abandoned silos, and public beaches after hours.
Hallelujah. I needed to fact-check an article on field drinking, rural Minnesota’s favorite youth sport, and write an article on a potentially murdered little person. Just another day at the office. “If I do this, you’ll solve the puzzle? I’ll throw in fresh hot scones from the Fortune for a full week.”
He nodded and waved without looking up at me, his head buried in the puzzle and his glasses threatening to fall off his nose. “I need another recipe, too. Make it a dessert this time. Too many main dishes lately.”
I nodded at his bald spot, pocketed the field-drinking press release, and headed to the back room. I knew the Recall had been around since the early 1900s, and I also knew Ron had paid big bucks to have a California-based document-scanning business convert all the microfiche archives to searchable PDF file format. This meant that I would be able to complete the background investigation I should have done on Shangri-La and its main players from the moment I had been handed the story.
I fired up the newspaper’s Mac and searched editions from the 1920s. Back then, the newspaper only came out once a month, and it was mostly filled with crop information and sensationalistic stories on the dangers of immigrants and Indians. I was surprised to see a lot of pictures and ads, mostly for radios. An October 1923 ad promised to provide “a radio that can catch the waves out of Yankton, South Dakota!”
The August 1924 issue of the Recall featured a full page on the building of Shangri-La, but it didn’t tell me anything new. It wasn’t until the June 1929 issue that I hit pay dirt—a full-length article on the suspicious disappearance of jewelry at the Addamses’ house. It listed these missing items: a Victorian lava cameo bracelet; two hematite intaglio rings; a coral, platinum, and diamond double-clip brooch; a black pearl sautoir; two sapphire, seven emerald, and twelve diamond rings; assorted diamond earrings; a diamond and emerald tiara; and a diamond pendant necklace. I whistled. That was quite a haul, and I didn’t even know what a sautoir was. If the thief was half the stasher I was, Shangri-La was lousy with hidden bling.
I dug in my purse for paper to copy the list on. I shut down the computer and was out the door, hollering at Ron on my way past. “You call the minute you get that solved. Fresh scones ...”
“Go! I’m not paying you to nag me!”
“Please. You couldn’t get a high school student to work the fryer at the Dairy Queen for what you pay me. Call me, okay?”
“I’ll call. If I don’t get bogged down with more work, I’ll have this solved within the hour.”
And then my treasure hunt would truly begin, bringing me that much closer to tying up the loose ends and making Jason’s life miserable.
I stepped into the blinding
light of Main Street and pulled my gas-station-rack sunglasses over my eyes. It was nine-fifteen in the morning, and I wasn’t sure where to go next. I wanted to talk to Shirly to ferret into what he had left out of his Shangri-La story, and I needed to interview Chief Wohnt, but I only had forty-five minutes until I was supposed to have the library unlocked and open for business. I shirked certain areas of my life, like forming relationships with other humans, and occasionally personal hygiene, but I had a strong work ethic, and the idea of not fulfilling my duties rankled.
I decided to visit the Senior Sunset first, because I could always phone Gary Wohnt for the information I needed. Shirly, however, needed to be talked to in person. I wanted to be able to read his face.
There is only one main street through Battle Lake, so everything is technically around the corner from something else. It would take me all of six minutes to walk to the nursing home. I counted six Ford and five Dodge pickup trucks on the way and walked past a crowd gathering in the First National Bank parking lot. Families had come out in droves to partake in and cheer on the turtle races, held every Tuesday during the summer months. A bank employee was hosing down the already-steaming pavement so the creatures didn’t melt their mitts right into the black tar, and there were loads of brightly clothed kids painting numbers on the backs of the turtles.
I spotted Peyton standing alone off to the side of the crowd, wearing a bright pink sundress and matching hat, and I waved at her. She waved back with both skinny hands. I was not surprised to see her turtle-free. Technically, they were pretty dirty creatures with a tendency to pee like a river when alarmed. Leylanda would not allow Peyton to touch one of those. I was actually surprised Leylanda had retracted her meat hooks far enough to let Peyton stand in the parking lot out of smothering distance. She must be nearby.
I swiveled my head, looking for her, and was shocked to see her talking animatedly with Jason. The sight of him made me feel like I had cement hardening in my stomach. He had buzzed off his hair between last night and now, and the severe cut drew attention to the slant of his dark, restless eyes. I instinctively ducked behind a Ford F-150 and watched the two interact. Leylanda was laughing and he was nodding at her, ogling her boobs whenever she’d toss her head back to giggle. I hadn’t been aware that they knew each other, though it made sense because they were about the same age and had both grown up in Battle Lake. I wondered if the two were hooking up. They didn’t seem to have much in common on the surface, but I knew Jason could be charming when he wanted to, and I guessed Leylanda was lonely. She was divorced, her husband long gone, and Jason considered himself single no matter who he was seeing, so I suppose the two were free to date.
I was too far away to hear what they were talking about, but I saw their faces change as they both glanced toward Jason’s crotch. They must have been reacting to a noise, because he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. He winked at Leylanda and turned away. I was the only one who saw how dark and still his face became as he continued the conversation. Abruptly, he jerked the phone from his ear, fished in his front pants pocket, pulled out a few green bills, and handed them to Leylanda, who was standing directly behind him. He pointed across the street at Granny’s Pantry. Leylanda made a motion toward Peyton, who was watching the turtle races hypnotically.
Jason waved his hand in an “It’ll be fine” manner and walked over to Peyton, effectively dismissing her mother. Leylanda watched him uncertainly, looked back at Granny’s Pantry, and back at Peyton. She squeezed the money in her hand and walked to the candy store, going as fast as she could without looking like she was running.
Jason, for his part, strode stiffly to the rear of the parking lot. The kiddie crowd cheered as the first turtle crossed the line, and I saw Peyton break out of her trance and look around. She didn’t see her mom, so she skipped over to Jason, who had his back to her and the crowd as he continued his animated phone conversation. Meanwhile, Leylanda ran into and popped out of Granny’s in record time. She must have grabbed whatever was closest to the door, thrown her money at the cash register, and dashed out.
That four seconds was probably the longest Peyton had ever been out of Leylanda’s sight. As soon as Peyton spotted her mom hurrying around the side of the bank, she ran to her and grabbed at the bag in her hand. I couldn’t see Peyton’s face, but I imagine she was miserably disappointed when she pulled out the Red Delicious apple. I didn’t even know Granny’s sold fruit. It should be illegal for a candy and ice cream shop to sell healthy things. Is nothing sacred?
Jason clicked his phone shut, and even from my hidden location I could feel his icy rage. Apparently, whoever had called Jason had given him some very bad news. This was my cue to flee the scene. I curved my shoulders and tried to turn myself inside out so he wouldn’t see me, and I strode swiftly away from the bank. I was a block from the turtle races and in sight of the nursing home when his brawny hand clamped down on my shoulder and made me jump like a squirrel.
“Hello, Mira.”
I shrugged his paw off and tried to walk away, but he wrapped his arm around my waist and led me behind Walvatne’s Dentistry in a vicious two-step. I looked back at the turtle races, but no one was facing our direction save a wistful-looking Leylanda. I considered yelling, but I didn’t think Jason would hurt me in public and I didn’t want to scare the kids.
“I saw you made it to the show last night,” he whispered into my ear.
I pushed myself away from him, and he let me go now that we were out of sight. “I saw you, too. It looked like you and Kennie were having a blast. Are you going steady, or was it just a heat-of-the-moment thing?”
He swelled up like a premenstrual salt lick, and his fingers twitched at his sides. Then, just like that, he was calm. “Yeah, that was pretty funny. I’m glad the guys didn’t see me with her. I’d never hear the end of it, being hit on by a big nasty skank like Kennie Rogers.”
I was speechless. Suddenly, I was talking with the easygoing Jason that Sunny called one of her best friends. Hello, bipolar.
“Say, Mira, funniest thing.” He laughed here to illustrate his point, a warm, companionable laugh that made my lips twitch against my better judgment. “Someone took something very special from me last night. Could you help me find it?”
I was certain Jason hadn’t seen me clearly last night when I fled his room, so I had nothing to lose by acting helpful now. “Sure, Jason. Meet me at the library in about half an hour to tell me how I can help. Really though, man, I need to go.”
I turned to leave and he wrenched the hobo purse I was still carrying off my shoulder. I grabbed at it, but he was too quick. “Golly, Mira, I don’t think you need to go yet.” His tone was the same, but his eyes were sharp and black, his pupils eerily swollen in the light.
The purple-silk-wrapped message was on the top, and he grabbed it easily and tossed my brown crocheted purse to the ground. “You’re a real pal, Mira. Thanks! I’ve been looking everywhere for this!” He punched my shoulder hard enough to knock me to the ground and laughed sharply.
As he walked away, he said, “Ignore the message I left at your place. We’re cool now.”
I watched his broad back turn the corner. Tears came to my eyes as I thought about my cat and dog, vulnerable, spending the night alone at my house. If Jason had hurt Tiger Pop or Luna, I was going to Z-Force zap him until he spoke French.
“Are you okay, honey?”
I turned quickly at the voice and wiped the tears from my eyes. “Hi, Mrs. Berns. Yeah, I just fell on the ground.”
“No shit. Pretty hard to fall anywhere else.” She helped me up and brushed the dirt off me. “How come you’re not opening up the library?”
“I don’t feel very well, Mrs. Berns.” I was grateful that she ignored my tears.
“Well, give me the damn keys. I’ll open her up.”
“Really?”
“Honey, I raised twelve children, ran a farm and a business, and sewed all my own clothes. I think I
can boot up a computer and scan some codes.”
I had no doubt. However, being fertile and good with a needle didn’t necessarily translate into good public relations skills. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any other option if the library was going to be opened on time. I handed her the keys and considered hugging her, but I needed to get back to my place and make sure Tiger Pop and Luna were alive and healthy. I jogged back to my car, feeling tightness in the knee I scraped when Jason pushed me.
I sped the whole way home and up my driveway and ran into the house. There was not a clean surface to be found, and the house smelled like sewage and rotten fruit. The bookshelf was on its side, books ripped apart and pages scattered. The kitchen cupboards had been ripped open, and the food inside of them had been dumped or tossed. My bedroom was the worst. The quilt and pillows were shredded, and my drawers and closets were pulled apart, clothes scattered and torn everywhere. The bathroom wasn’t as bad, but in the middle of the extra-large tub was a bear-sized poop. Jason wasn’t lacking for fiber in his diet.
He clearly knew, or had assumed, it was me who was in the hidden room last night, and he must have had an idea of what he was looking for. I wondered if Jason would be as disappointed with the code in the purple cloth as I was.
“Meow.”
Really. That’s how he said it. I ran into the laundry room and saw him stretching in a sunbeam. I buried my face in his fur and grabbed some catnip to reward him for being alive. Then, out of paranoia, I dashed out to my garden and was relieved to see it was untouched. When Luna loped out of her shaded house to walk me to the garden, I finally relaxed. Jason thought he was getting at me, but he hadn’t even recognized the things that mattered. Both animals still had dishes full of food, but I got them fresh water and sat outside with them for a half an hour, telling them what had transpired the past twelve hours and how happy I was that they were all right.