Murder Bites the Bullet: A Gertie Johnson Murder Mystery

by Deb Baker

  I spilled. “Harry Aho’s kids hired me to investigate Chet Hanson. They think he killed their dad. And since Frank Hanson was at the shooting range the day Harry died, I had Frank under surveillance. I didn’t expect bullets to fly. And I wish I could have helped Frank, but it was over before I knew it. And I couldn’t risk becoming a target too.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Blaze said. “That was a perfect head shot. Frank probably died instantly, never even knew what hit him.”

  “It might have had something to do with that moonshine business he was running.” I said.

  “Or retribution.”

  “Or that. The killer was a big pile of leaves.”

  “I’d use stronger language than that to describe somebody who shoots people in the head.”

  As usual, Blaze already had it wrong. “No, a pile of leaves got up and ran away. It reminded me of Kitty’s new housedress.”

  Blaze sighed. “I’ll make a note of it, but you’re stretching your credibility now.”

  “I’m not giving you everything all at once. We’ll take turns. Your turn. Tell me something useful.” I watched his lips tighten. I’d raised the boy, I knew the signs. He wasn’t going to leak a thing.

  “I’m working this case,” I added. “We need to stick together on the facts.”

  “No, Ma, I’m in charge, and this isn’t show and tell. Because of what happened here, I’m back to square one. Frank Hanson was my prime suspect in the Aho case.”

  “You’re not back to square one,” I said to him. “If Frank killed Harry, that case is closed. Now you’re after an Aho.”

  Frank really had been the perfect perp – opportunity, considering he was right there on the premises when Harry took the hit. He’d also had a rock solid longtime family feud motive and the means to plug his enemy. All those Hansons can shoot a dime off a fence post.

  Blaze muttered something to himself as he turned to go back inside Frank’s house.

  I called after him, keeping my tone neutral even though he hadn’t told me one single useful thing about either of the recent deaths. I couldn’t help feeling taken advantage of. “Would you believe me if I told you that Gus Aho was out at the still with Frank when the shot was fired?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Those two families have a long history of conflict. That’s just nuts talk.”

  “Fine then.”

  That’s how Blaze didn’t find out about Gus Aho being Frank’s partner from me. If the big buffoon wanted to play games, I held the world championship. He should know that by now.

  Although in regards to Gus, how did I know he was partnering with Frank. All I’d seen from him was a steady stream of urine and some unsteady posturing. And they hadn’t seemed to be arguing, which wasn’t typical of that bunch.

  My son had been a good cop at one time. And he’s still okay when all he has to do is deal with a couple local kids breaking into a deer camp and drinking up the booze. He handles these cases in his usual plodding way and sometimes even figures out who did it.

  But I had a business to run, and I was on the clock. I couldn’t waste my client’s money by lollygagging around. Anything I told Blaze would be used against me anyhow. Like the deer camera? Was what I’d done even legal?

  That’s also why I didn’t tell Blaze about lifting a notebook from a drawer in Frank Hanson’s kitchen. With a bit of luck it might turn out to be his moonshine distribution list, all his paying customers’ names written down in a little spiral notebook that fit into my pocket perfectly.

  *

  Word For The Day

  SHELLACK (shu lak)

  A sealant – varnish;

  To clobber an opponent in a sadistic way.

  The next morning Grandma and I did the two-step in the kitchen after I let Fred outside. She was using a butter knife to scrape the black part from a piece of toast she’d burnt to a crisp. She wielded the knife like that might stop me. Right as she opened her trap to dish dirt at me, both of us heard a car pull in. While she snooped out the window, I managed to pour a cup of her muddy coffee.

  Kitty stomped into the house wearing a dress the color of the coffee in my cup.

  “You look like a big dirt bag,” Grandma said to her.

  “She means a bag of dirt,” I tried to explain, but it didn’t come out sounding any better.

  “I heard what happened,” Kitty said, not even bothering to reply to Grandma’s dirt comment, which is the best way to handle her. “It’s all my fault for not keeping a better eye on you. Dang, you could have been killed out there.”

  “I told her to button up,” Grandma said. I could tell by her eyes, this wasn’t going to be one of her better days. “The thermometer says it’s fifty below. But will she listen! No!”

  Kitty looked over at my mother-in-law, then at me. She shrugged, because she’d been around for some of Grandma’s other episodes. If this kept up, I’d get my way about that nursing home. Grandma went on crabbing about the snow and ice when anybody with the worst possible vision could tell it was a nice warm summer day.

  At her insistence, I helped Grandma into her winter coat and let her lean on me to get her boots on. Then I called Blaze and told him to stop by and check out what was happening.

  “Here’s your broom,” I said, handing it to her. “Sweep the snow off the front porch.”

  “How come I have to do all the work around here?” she said, shuffling outside.

  “One day she’s sharp as a stick in the eye,” Kitty said. “The next she qualifies for the mental ward.”

  “I don’t get it either.” I poured coffee for Kitty and while we went over business, I watched Grandma out the window to make sure she wasn’t hurting anybody or anything. Fred stood at a healthy distance from her, watching the broom swish.

  “Nobody remembers seeing Diane Aho at the IGA when Harry was killed,” Kitty informed me.

  “They know her by sight, right?”

  “’Course they do.”

  Those checkers and baggers down at the IGA knew everybody. “That’s interesting,” I said.

  Then I gave her the details of my surveillance mission. While I filled her in, Blaze pulled into the driveway and was having some kind of conversation with Grandma.

  “The camera behind Frank’s didn’t give me a thing,” I said, starting with the small stuff before moving on to the big stuff. “It showed Frank coming out of his house and walking past it toward the state forest, but I already knew that.”

  “Nobody was with him?”

  I shook my head. “But I saw the shooter in real live action.” Then I described what happened, finishing with the pile of leaves.

  “That was a ghillie suit,” she said, a lot of awe in her voice. “It’s like a monkey suit or a clown outfit, only with leaves. Snipers wear them to blend in.”

  “This one sure did. I almost ran right into it.”

  I watched Blaze help Grandma out of her winter coat. Then he took the broom and her arm, and brought her back inside. It wasn’t cold outside like Grandma thought, but I shivered anyway at how close I’d come to a bad end last night.

  “You go have a nice rest,” Blaze said to Grandma. And without putting up a fight, off she went to her room.

  “Shame on you,” he said to me.

  “You know how she is about having her own way,” I argued back. Which was true. I couldn’t have stopped her if I’d tried.

  “How could you let her do that?” Blaze helped himself to a cup of coffee.

  “I’m not her keeper.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “She can pack right now and move in with you.”

  That always shut him up. And this time was no exception. Why is it that certain people are so critical of everybody else when they don’t know the half of it? Blaze should walk in my shoes for a day or two. Then he’d understand.

  He sat down next to Kitty at the table and grimaced when he tasted the coffee.

  “Welcome to my world,” I said, sitting down too.
“What I told you yesterday about working for the Hansons is classified information. Don’t spread it around. My clients wouldn’t appreciate it.”

  “Diane’s alibi doesn’t check out,” Kitty said to Blaze in a senior moment, letting him know we were hard at work on the case. I sent her a warning glance, but it was too late to stop her. “Nobody at the IGA remembers seeing her.”

  Blaze looked from Kitty to me, thinking it over. His nostrils threatened to flare. Then he said, “How the hell are you getting people to talk to you? If a nosy biddy came around asking me questions that were none of her business, I’d tell her to get lost.”

  “I resent that comment,” Kitty said.

  “Welcome to my world,” I said to her, then to Blaze. “You do your job your way, we’ll do ours our way.”

  “I suppose ordering you to stay out of this won’t work?” Blaze glanced at the kitchen counter. “Where are the doughnuts?”

  “Gone.”

  Kitty grinned. “I made a new batch. I’ll drop some off.”

  “Grandma wants hers heavier next time,” I couldn’t help saying, remembering her comments about sinkers.

  “Okay. I can do that.”

  “What’s your plan for the day?” I asked Blaze. “You should interrogate Diane, find out where she really was during that period of time when Harry was killed. And while you’re at it find out where she was last night.”

  My son raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Now why would Diane Aho shoot her own husband, then turn around and gun down Frank Hanson?”

  “That’s a really good question. So find out. And talk to Gus, too. He knows something.”

  It might sound like I was leading Blaze right to the water, but I knew he would never drink from the well if I suggested it. Or at least, he’d hold off till he was about to keel over from dehydration first. Instead he’d go in an entirely different direction just to prove to himself that he was the boss of him.

  Today, Diane and Gus were all mine.

  “By the way,” I finished. “The killer wore a guerilla suit.”

  “Ghillie suit,” Kitty corrected.

  “Either way, a pile of leaves really shellacked Frank.”

  *

  Kitty and I hit the road with Fred in his usual place in the middle. He’d eaten something nasty that didn’t agree with his digestive system, so we had to drive with the windows wide open.

  “Where is Cora Mae?” I asked Kitty.

  “Shacking up,” she said. “And don’t you think I should be driving? What if Blaze sees you?”

  “We made a deal. He won’t bother me.” Just in time, too, because I didn’t want Kitty messing up my truck.

  “Cora Mae has a way of gravitating toward bad boys,” Kitty pointed out.

  “She’s dated a killer or two,” I agreed.

  “So my bet is that Chet Hanson killed Harry Aho.”

  “I’m not so sure. The same person shellacked both Harry Aho and Frank Hanson,” I said, getting in my word for the second time in one day.

  “Indubitably,” my know-it-all friend said.

  “No conundrum here,” I answered. “And quit vaunting your vocabulary.”

  “I’m not bragging.”

  “You are too.”

  “I just think you should pick harder words to study. I mean, shellacking? Really?”

  I’ve never been able to figure out how Kitty gets a hold of the words I pick for my word of the day. I used to write them down on paper and thought she was finding them that way, but these days, they are all in my head. I don’t leave a trace of a clue for her to follow.

  “Shellacking,” she said with a snicker.

  “That is NOT my word for the day,” I lied. “Getting back to business, I’m not convinced that Frank killed Harry. Although it sure does look like the Hansons were getting payback.”

  “I took the liberty of calling the Ahos,” Kitty said. “To see if they still wanted us working on Chet. Martin said yes.”

  “Same killer both times,” I announced.

  “What makes you so sure there’s only one killer?” Kitty said over Fred’s head, rolling down her window a bit more. Fred turned and slurped her cheek.

  “Same MO. Sneaking up on his victims, headshots, dead-on aim.”

  “But everybody around here is a good shot, and we’re all sneaky.”

  “I just have a feeling it’s the same person.”

  “Then we better find a connection between the Hansons and Ahos, other than their ongoing feud. The only thing that could possibly bring them together would be money.”

  “You’re a smart woman, Kitty.”

  By then we were at Chet’s place. Cora Mae came trotting out with a big satisfied smile on her face. We managed to cram her in between Fred and Kitty. Good thing she’s a little thing and doesn’t take up much space.

  “We want details,” Kitty said to her the minute the door was closed. “And I don’t mean the personal stuff.”

  “You’ve had more of my personal information than you deserve,” Cora Mae said, putting some huff into her voice, but too content to really pull it off. “I think I’m in love.”

  “He’s the killer for sure,” Kitty said to me.

  Cora Mae was my all-time best friend and, as I mentioned before, she was always scouting for possibilities, but I’d only heard her mention love the three times she’d actually married the guys. The black widow had her sights on a possible keeper. I hoped he’d already lived a long, full life for both of their sakes. And I also really hoped they didn’t spend their lives together communicating through prison bars.

  “We better find a different suspect,” I said. “And fast.”

  “I didn’t say I was in love for sure. But I might be.”

  Then I told Cora Mae about last night, which she’d already heard about when Blaze came early in the morning to inform Chet. But now she had my side of it, a whole lot more information than she’d had before.

  “It couldn’t have been Chet,” she said. “And I told Blaze that. I’m Chet’s alibi.”

  “Aw, isn’t that sweet,” Kitty said. “Bet you’ve never been an alibi before.”

  “Besides, he wouldn’t kill his own cousin,” Cora Mae said.

  “Second cousin,” Kitty corrected her. “And he might have murdered him just for being in cahoots with an Aho.”

  “But I was with Chet the entire night.”

  I didn’t point out that Cora Mae slept like a hibernating she bear. Once she went to sleep, she was out for the night. A bomb couldn’t wake her. Instead I probed in a roundabout way, “Did you two get any sleep last night?”

  Cora Mae grinned. “A little.”

  “And what about an alibi for when Harry was killed?” I wanted to know. “Did you find out if your new honey has one?”

  “I sure did. Chet was nowhere near the scene of the crime.”

  “Well, then, where was he?”

  “He was at the IGA.”

  *

  While Kitty complained about how crowded the truck was and why couldn’t we drop Fred off at home, I headed for the IGA to follow up on where the heck everybody really was when Harry and Frank met their maker. At this point, the only one who had a solid alibi for at least one of the murders was Gus Aho, who I knew hadn’t shot Frank because he’d been peeing in the river at the time and had his hands full of something other than a killing machine.

  Besides, the shot came from in front of me, not anywhere near Gus.

  Kirby’s IGA is locally owned and operated just like all the IGAs and it’s been in the same family for three generations. Kirby isn’t around anymore. His grandkids take care of business and provide jobs for a lot of friends and neighbors and their kids.

  Marcy Linden was out in front of the store, standing behind a booth that was covered in red and white checkered oil cloth. I’d known Marcy my whole life. After all of us made the proper greetings and passed through the obvious weather observations, Marcy asked, “Did you sign up for the Hometown Swe
epstakes yet? You could win a thousand bucks. The winner will be announced on Sunday.”

  “I better,” Cora Mae said, grabbing up a piece of paper and a pen and writing down her name.

  “Write the date, too,” Marcy advised. “One a day is all you get and you have to buy something. You’re going in to shop, right Cora Mae?”

  “I need a few things,” she said, pushing the paper through a slit in a box. And with that, we lost our most problematic business partner to the hair and beauty aisle.

  Kitty signed up next.

  There’s something about freebies that has them running from all directions. Not to be left behind, I scribbled down my name and today’s date, gave it a kiss for luck, and stuffed it into the box along with the rest.

  “Is that Gertie Johnson under that ponytail?” Marcy said, squinting at me.

  “It is,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll be!”

  “Isn’t she cute?” Cora Mae said.

  I cut to the chase. Since everybody in the whole county knew exactly when and where the two murders occurred, thanks to a pipeline better than anything you’d find in Alaska, I didn’t have to cover old ground with Marcy. Frank’s death occurred during the night, after the store closed, so I left him out of the equation for now.