by Deb Baker
“Your family hired me to prove he did it. Any information you have would be helpful.”
“That’s what you’re being paid to find out. If we knew, we wouldn’t need you.”
I pressed on. “Where were you while all this was taking place?”
That got her attention. “My boys hired you to get the goods on Chet Hanson, not come around accusing me.”
“Nobody accused you of anything. I’m just gathering facts at this point. So tell me.”
I half expected her to throw me out, but she surprised me by answering. “At the IGA,” she said. “Grocery shopping.”
I nodded and thought that over. I’d check out her alibi later. I had one last question for the time being. “Do you really think Frank Hanson would commit murder for his cousin?”
“Second cousin,” Diane corrected me. “Family sticks together.”
What she said had some truth to it. Chet and Frank shared great-grandparents. That meant they had different parents and grandparents. The intricacies of blood relatives are an important part of our culture. Because the Finns and Swedes settled this territory, most of our residents are related somehow.
First cousins, half-cousins, step-cousins, cousins once or twice removed, cousins-in-law. They all count as close family or extended family.
“We’re assuming his death was the result of the feud over the shooting range,” I said. “But did Harry have any other issues? Anybody else he wasn’t getting along with who might have wanted him out of the way?”
“Harry got along with everybody.”
That statement was as far from the truth as Diane could get. Even I knew that. Harry was a stubborn old coot and didn’t care who he walked all over. Starting a public rifle range right next to his neighbor’s land was only one example of some of the things he’d pulled.
Right now we weren’t in the midst of an important hunting season but, knowing Harry, he would have kept the range open right into it and scared all the game into the next county. Not that I’m a big fan of sport hunting, but most of the locals count on wild game to make ends meet in this tough economy.
“Was he involved in any side businesses?” I asked Diane.
She shook her head. “Not that I know about.”
*
“Harry wasn’t easy to get along with,” Kitty said when we met back at my kitchen table, which was turning out to be our headquarters in spite of the annoying kitchen elf. “Remember when he ticked off everybody by dumping garbage in the Escanaba River?”
“Or the time he brought forty pounds of fireworks to a Fourth of July party,” Cora Mae said. “And blew up Finley’s garage, then refused to pay for the damage.”
I nodded, remembering those events.
“He was mean to his kids,” Kitty said. “They were always running away.”
“That has to be the ugliest dress I ever saw,” Grandma said to Kitty, apparently just noticing her camo tent dress.
“Thank you,” Kitty said. “It’s supposed to be.”
“What’s that on your head?” Grandma said to me regarding my ponytail wig. “You look like a dog’s backend.”
Grandma was making homemade noodles to go into a pot of soup brewing on the stove. Flour was everywhere. Pearl was helping her so at least I knew actual edible food was going into the pot. Grandma has been known to empty an entire bottle of vegetable oil into a soup thinking it was chicken stock.
George watched the activity from a stool as far away as possible. He had flour all over his face in spite of his distance and an entertained expression on his face. I went over and gave him a peck on the cheek and wiped some of the flour away.
“I like the look,” he said, studying my head, then going on to tell a whopping lie. “Reminds me of Grease. You’re as hot as Olivia Newton-John.”
“Before or after she transformed?”
“Both,” my smart man said. “How is work going?”
“We’re running in circles between the Johnsons and Ahos.” I plopped down in the mess.
“I’ll make coffee,” Kitty offered, moving toward the coffee pot.
“Stay outta my kitchen,” Grandma snapped back with her false teeth clacking. She raised an uncooked noodle like she might throw it like a spear.
“I’ll make coffee,” Pearl said, realizing she was the only one on the right side of Grandma, in the trenches, fighting a battle as comrades in arms.
“Everybody is staying low,” I said, getting back to business. “All the Hansons are hanging at home, not doing a single suspicious thing.”
Kitty nodded. “I planted that other camera at Frank’s,” she said, waving her camo-covered arms. “I floated into the back like leaves blowing in the wind.”
Somehow I couldn’t picture a woman of Kitty’s size ever floating.
Cora Mae said, “I can’t believe you put a surveillance camera at Chet’s without telling me what was going on.”
“You wouldn’t believe what we saw,” Kitty said to George.
“What did you see?” he wanted to know.
“Nothing much,” Kitty said, “And that’s an understatement.”
George glanced at me. “So that’s why you borrowed my cameras? To spy on the Hansons?”
Pearl piped up, “Speaking of Frank Hanson, I heard somebody’s making moonshine whisky back behind his property.
“So?” Grandma said. Since she’s as old as dirt, she was around for prohibition. To her generation making alcohol wasn’t a big deal. “Hooch is good stuff.” That is one of Grandma’s terms for moonshine. Sometimes she calls it creek water, depending on quality.
“This moonshiner is selling it though,” Pearl explained. “And that makes it illegal. One hundred proof stuff. Total rot-gut, but he has a large network of buyers according to my sources. I bet the shiner is Frank Hanson.”
“Let’s get in on it,” Grandma said. “I haven’t had good hooch for years.”
“Where is the still?” I asked. Not that I cared much about a distilling operation going. I was into bigger things, like murder and who waxed Harry, but I couldn’t afford to overlook a single important detail.
Pearl didn’t have any idea where the still was. But George did. “Probably in the state forest. That way if it’s found, nobody gets arrested.”
“Frank’s place butts right up to the state forest,” I said. No wonder he hadn’t noticed his truck had flat tires. He was busy working across his property line in the dead of night. All he had to do was walk to work. The illegal moonshine business was what had him nervous enough to shoot at me just for being in his yard. That explained a few things.
“Kitty,” I said. “Go down to the IGA and make sure Diane Aho was buying groceries around the time Harry died.”
“You suspect his widow?” George asked.
“Who knows at this point. But a good investigator eliminates suspects one at a time. After a while, only one person will be left standing.”
“I’m on it.” Kitty headed for the door.
“And change your clothes first,” I called out.
“And you,” I said to Cora Mae. “Get back over to Chet’s and find out where he was when Harry took the hit.”
“I could bring it up,” she answered. “See where it goes.”
“And keep your clothes on this time.”
“You took off your clothes?” George asked.
It’s amazing what a man hears when he wants to. “Never mind, George,” I said.
“A big tramp,” Grandma said to Pearl, right out loud while the two old bats launched noodles into the soup pot.
Cora Mae heard, but chose to ignore them. “What’s your plan?” she asked.
I locked eyes with George. “I have a few ideas of my own.”
George grinned.
*
Later, long after dark, with a sky full of stars riding high above the treeline, I slithered through Frank’s woods on a one-woman surveillance mission. I could have waited for morning and recovered the camera, but my
intuition was kicking in, and I never ignored it.
Earlier, I hadn’t thought much about Frank’s bootlegging activities. But then I decided to check it out. Tomorrow Kitty would make her report on Diane, and Cora Mae was working over Chet right now in more ways than one. I wanted to bring something to the table, too.
The most exciting thing to me was that my mark’s car was still parked where it had been earlier and, and judging by the lack of lights and activity, Frank wasn’t inside the house. He had to be out in the great beyond.
The woods were teeming with critters, big and small, short and tall. I heard rustling close by, but didn’t see a thing. Then coyotes started howling to each other. A few twigs snapped as a further reminder that I wasn’t as alone as I thought I was. I didn’t expect trouble from any of our wild creatures. But the last thing I wanted to do was surprise one with bigger and sharper teeth than mine.
Black bears liked to roam at night, and wolves had been spotted more than once in the vicinity. I felt my body tense and forced myself forward.
I didn’t know the exact location of the line that separated Frank’s land from the state forest but after a certain amount of creeping deeper into the woods, I suspected I had left Frank’s acreage.
He might be working tonight, brewing his hooch. I didn’t really care about Frank’s extracurricular activity. None of us did. Residents of the Michigan Upper Peninsula are united on our stance against government interference. If we want to drink alcohol that tastes like gasoline that rots out our guts, that’s our prerogative.
Anyway, what I really needed was leverage. Frank needed an incentive to open up about what he knew and what he might have seen. The man was holding out. I needed a bargaining chip.
This could be it.
And I couldn’t discount him as a suspect, either.
I heard something off to my right, up ahead, and it wasn’t an animal sound. More like a clanging of metals coming together. I crept on.
Then I smelled something horribly foul. Disgustingly, incredibly awful, like rotten eggs that were past rotten and into putrid. Piles and piles of really rotten eggs. The smell was so overpowering, I switched to breathing out of my mouth.
And in spite of the fumes, I couldn’t help feeling a little smug about my detective work.
I’d done my homework ahead of time as any good investigator would. That meant I’d questioned Grandma Johnson in depth. And Grandma’s friend Pearl, too. Pearl cooperated better than Grandma and even confessed that her family once had their own illegal moonshine operation going.
“It’s a mix of cornmeal,” Pearl had said, “sugar and yeast with just the right amount of water. That’s why shiners like to work near water.”
“Good stuff,” Grandma Johnson said.“We used to buy it in canning jars.”
Then Pearl warned me about the smell. “You can’t mistake it,” she said.
Only, actually experiencing it was much worse than I had imagined.
It had to be Frank’s hidden moonshine business, and that horrid smell had to be fermenting alcohol.
I continued on, stepping lightly.
More clattering.
And low voices, which meant more than one moonshiner. Frank and who else?
Then I spotted them in a clearing right next to a small creek, illuminated by a camping lantern. And they were surrounded by equipment that the federal government allows anyone to own as long as they don’t actually use it. The stars helped give me a good view of big oak barrels with hoses running from them into a large central metal canister.
I’d found Frank’s still.
Not only that, I was about to identify his partner, who at the moment had his back to me and was peeing into the creek. That’s one of my pet peeves--men urinating into bodies of water. Why are they so obsessed with polluting every single river and lake they get their hands on? Or in this case their extremities on? Marking their territory like a dog, that’s what. They ought to have to drink out that water after they’re done with it.
Anyway, this guy had a full bladder, judging by how long he was taking.
Frank was sitting next to the brew, looking off into the trees. I didn’t know how he stood the smell night after night, but figure he must have gotten used to it by now.
Another observation from this investigator - they must have been sampling their own toxic firewater, because the guy at the stream was swaying in place, taking a step back, then abruptly righting himself before swaying again.
When he turned around while zippering up I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Gus Aho.
Dead Harry Aho’s son.
Making moonshine with a Hanson?
Something wasn’t quite right about this scenario. I could feel it in my bones. And suddenly I didn’t feel all alone in the woods.
Then a shot rang out, loud enough to shake the ground under my feet. Way too close for comfort.
Worse, it came from right in front of me.
And a split second later, Frank Hanson keeled over.
*
I hit the ground faster than the speeding bullet. My heart was pumping blood so fast I could hear it rushing through my body. I should have ordered a night vision man-killer weapon instead of a pansy beanbag gun, which I had been dumb enough to leave in the truck anyway. So, of course, it was totally useless to me the minute I really needed it.
I flattened out, hoping the shooter hadn’t spotted me. Which would have been tough since everything about me was black – black pants, dark jacket, matching knit hat, charcoaled face. And I wasn’t wearing the blonde ponytail. At least I’d done something right.
I stayed where I was, trying to listen for sound over the drumming of my overzealous heart. If I was next on the hit list, as long as I stayed flat on the ground the shooter would have to get up and come for me.
When I heard rustling up ahead, I gulped and raised my head, surveying the scene. Frank had pitched over one of the barrels, taking it down with him. He wasn’t moving.
Gus Aho was nowhere in sight.
Then an enormous pile of leaves directly in front of me rose up from the ground like a volcanic eruption. It started moving off to my left. For a few seconds I thought I was losing my mind. Or the dark was playing tricks on me.
Then I thought, Tornado! Only the wind blew lightly and the air didn’t smell like storm weather.
The leaves kept moving away fast. I sprung up, not sure what to do. A fatal shot had come from that pile of debris, and I didn’t have matching fire power to protect myself. If I made any noise and the thing turned around, I was a dead woman.
Next, it broke into a run, heading away from me. Since I was still alive, I deduced that my presence had gone undetected. I didn’t want to change that precious fact.
I followed a little while, because that’s what investigators are supposed to do, but I was relieved when I realized I was alone in the woods. I’d lost the trail.
Earlier, when I’d decided to use the classic investigator’s process of eliminating suspects one by one, I hadn’t meant removing each of them individually from the earth. But apparently somebody else thought that was a sound method.
At the moment, the score for both sides was one and one. One Aho down. One Hanson down. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That thought came much later after I got up the courage to make my way back to Frank’s house and place the emergency call from his phone.
I remembered my deer camera just in the nick of time and retrieved it before the posse arrived.
*
Blaze wanted to negotiate.
“I’m willing to share information,” he said, hiking up his sheriff’s pants, which were riding dangerously low across his overextended stomach.
We were standing in front of Frank’s house next to the car he’d never drive again. He’d never get around to fixing those flat tires now.
For the record, my son has never, ever shown any desire to work with me. Ever. And now he was willing to share? That meant he had t
o be up to something. Or the lasting effects of his meningitis were taking a turn at that steering wheel inside his mind. Although he seemed lucid to me.
“Okay,” I said, swiping at the charcoal coating my face. Any lie I might concoct was going to seem mighty weak with that stuff all over it. I looked like a cat burglar. “Negotiate away.”
“You give me the whole truth,” he offered. “And I won’t get mad. I won’t even threaten you.”
“That’s the bargain? How pathetic.”
“What else do you want?”
“Information. And an extension on my license situation, too.”
“Two weeks to give me proof of registration instead of one.”
“Big deal. How about a month?”
“Fine!” Judging by the color of his face, he was already getting worked up, and we hadn’t even begun.
“And I’m going to get information in return?”
“I could arrest you for withholding evidence in a murder investigation.”
See, he was threatening me already. He whipped out a camera and took a picture of my stunned face. Then he showed it to me. “Your mug shot,” he said. I have to say it was not one of my most photogenic grandmotherly photographs.