by Deb Baker
An investigator has to think fast. I knew Gus had been at the store. But if my memory served me, he hadn’t even filled out an entry for himself, let alone anybody else in his family. “Investigators,” I lied, “are bound by a strict ethics code. Just like attorneys. I can’t repeat anything you tell me.”
Gus looked relieved. “Me and my big mouth.”
“Tell me the rest. It might help against Chet.”
“I don’t see how. Ma just asked me to sneak in a few sweepstakes entries on the QT.”
“For her?”
“And a friend.”
Since I hadn’t seen an entry for Diane Aho, something must have gone wrong. “I had access to the entry box,” I said, which was the truth. “I didn’t see an entry for your mother.”
Gus looked blank. Then he dug around in his pockets for awhile and came up with a crumpled piece of paper. “Oh, man. I forgot to put hers in. Don’t tell her, okay?”
“I won’t.” I took a drink of my pop. “We’ll get back to that. Somebody said you were with Frank when he took that bullet.”
“Who said that?” Now Gus was angry, his face getting puffy and flushed.
“Can’t remember. Probably just a rumor, right?”
“That’s right.” Gus clamped his mouth in a hard line.
“Well, I better get back to work and earn my pay.” I stood up, called out a goodbye to Red and Ed, who were down at the other end of the bar, rounded up Fred, and walked to the door. Then I turned. “About that beverage in your truck.”
“Oh, yeah.”
We walked out to his truck. I waited while he furtively slid in. I heard the clinking and clanking of bottles. His truck must be like a traveling liquor store. He came out carrying a quart sized canning jar. “It’s on me,” he said. “After what you’re doing for the family and all.”
I took off for my own truck, then turned to use my best Columbo impression. “I almost forgot to ask you,” I said, “who your mom’s friend was, the one you were helping with entries.”
“Hunh?” Gus said.
“You only had one entry in that pocket of yours, and you said you were also helping a friend. You must have snuck that one in?”
“At least I got that part right. I just don’t understand how I missed Mom’s. Anyway, I put in a handful for her friend. But I shouldn’t tell you about that.”
“Your secret will go to the grave with me. I promise. So who was the friend?”
“You aren’t going to like it.”
“Try me.”
“Ida Johnson.”
*
Ida Johnson?
My old-lady-smelling, serpent-tongued, dog-hating mother-in-law?
So that’s how Grandma got four entries into the sweepstakes box without setting foot in the store.
But wait a minute, she never was, and isn’t now Diane Aho’s friend.
I know her friends. She doesn’t have any, except for a few other ancient women who attend funerals together. And Pearl.
Why was Diane doing Grandma’s dirty work?
I didn’t know which one to talk to first.
After pondering my next move, I drove over to Diane’s place, but no one was home. Being a thorough detective, I had to at least rattle the locked door.
Then, realizing it was getting late and I was hungry, I drove home and helped Fred make it to the house without any hen-pecking. I went through the house hunting for Grandma, then remembered she had mentioned a funeral over in Perkins. After a leftover pasty doused in ketchup, I stripped down in the sauna and leaned back to soak in the heat.
That’s where George found me.
Soon after that, I forgot about the case.
What case?
*
Word For The Day
MERCURIAL (murk er ē all)
containing the element mercury;
relating to the god Mercury;
Or the planet Mercury;
prone to sudden unpredictable change.
One of my first thoughts the next morning was, how come George and I have to sneak around? I’m sixty-six years old, for cripes sake. Don’t I deserve some privacy? Sure the sauna is smoking hot in more ways than one, but my bed is even better. And sure we can go over to George’s house, and that’s great too. But I feel like I’m in high school and Grandma is my mother, God rest my real mother’s kind soul. I should be begging forgiveness for even comparing the two women in the same breath.
“Where were you?” Grandma snapped at me while guarding the stupid kitchen. I’ll tell you, I woke up crabby, and my mother-in-law better not try to keep me from my coffee.
“None of your business,” I snapped right back, pushing through her wimpy line of defense. I didn’t even try that dishwater she called coffee. I started a fresh pot.
“Still bald, I see.”
I hurried back to my room, jammed the ponytail wig on my head, and started over.
“You could be nicer,” I said, wasting my breath.
“Somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed,” Grandma said.
“And somebody else is a big cheat.”
“Are you addressing me with that tone of voice?” Grandma shuffled over to the table, acting feebler than she really was just to play on my sympathies. She didn’t fool me one bit.
I didn’t let her old-lady act stop me. “I know what you did, talking Diane Aho into helping you cheat on the IGA sweepstakes. You, of all people! You should be ashamed!”
“Don’t you talk to me that way,” Grandma said, wrapping her hands around her coffee cup and glaring at me. “And Diane Aho is a blabbermouth. We had an agreement. She promised me she’d help me win, and I need that money bad.”
Okay, that last part surprised me. Grandma didn’t need much money. She mooched off of me for her room and board and collected her social security to spend like it was an expense-free bonus.
Grandma went on, “I wasn’t going to tell you, but Pearl and I went to the casino and I lost my drawers at black jack.”
“Black jack is a dealer’s game, you know that. You might as well have flushed it down the toilet.”
Grandma sucked on her teeth. “Diane watched me play the whole time. Afterwards she offered to help me get back on my feet by winning the sweepstakes. So she gave me a bunch of entries and I filled them out.”
“Four of them?”
Grandma squirmed. “More like forty. We wanted to make sure. We’re doing some every day.”
I couldn’t believe it. After all the flak I’ve taken from my mother-in-law regarding my own shady deals, and I’d caught her red-handed being just as bad or worse. “And why would Diane Aho do that for you?”
Grandma really squirmed now. “No reason. Being neighborly.”
I watched Fred lope across the yard toward the house, looking carefree and happy. At least someone was. The guineas must have found someone else to harass for the moment. “I’m turning you in to the authorities,” I bluffed.
“No you’re not. Because if you do, I’ll make you pay. And you know I’ll do it, too.”
Grandma had made me pay plenty in the past, so I knew she wasn’t making an idle threat. “Tell me anyway,” I said. “The scheme is over.”
“Fine. But you can’t use it against me.”
“Okay,” I lied.
“She said I’d owe her a favor. Then she called and said all I had to do was say I saw her at the IGA at a particular time.”
Bingo! “And what particular time would that have been?”
Grandma’s eyes grew shifty, but then they caught mine, and my eyes said I meant business and don’t even think of making something up.
“That morning her husband was killed.”
“And you never stopped to think she might have a reason for asking you to lie?”
“I didn’t lie.”
“You really saw her there?”
“Well, no, but I didn’t lie, yet. She’s already told Blaze about seeing me. All I have to do is go along with it. A dea
l is a deal and I’m following through. If I don’t win, that’s another matter.”
Blaze might not be the best cop in the world, but I had trouble believing he hadn’t already substantiated Diane’s alibi. Grandma was losing it. “You’ll be an accessory to murder,” I told her.
“She didn’t kill Harry.”
“And you know this because?”
“She said you were snooping around trying to pin his death on her, and I know how you get, like that vicious wolf-dog outside, tearing into innocent people, never letting go until you bring them down. That’s what you were doing to that poor grieving widow.”
I rolled my eyeballs to the ceiling and took several deep breaths.
“She isn’t poor and she isn’t grieving. Stay away from her.”
With that, I prepared to tackle the day. Diane Aho wouldn’t have roped Grandma in if she wasn’t desperate. She’d murdered her husband in cold blood, and she was using Grandma as a pawn.
But how to prove it? I wanted more than Grandma’s testimony. Her M.O. was to be lucid one day and out-to-lunch the next. Diane should have picked a different accomplice. Or maybe that’s why she picked her. For that exact reason.
*
Diane and I sat in the kitchen. This time she was in the death seat instead of me. Fred had his nose pressed against the screen door to watch my back.
“We documented Chet Hanson’s every move like Gus and Martin asked us to,” I said, handing her several sheets of paper, which she read through while I waited.
“Cora Mae?” she said, staring at me. “Chet is seeing Cora Mae?”
I hated to release names of my partners, although almost everybody in town must know that Cora Mae and Kitty work with me. We travel together in the Trouble Buster truck. It wouldn’t take much to find out. That is, if a person was paying attention.
“They’ve been getting cozy,” I said, deciding to keep her mission a secret.
Diane continued to study the sheets, then she put them down and addressed me. “You don’t have a single lead,” she said.
“We’re close.”
Diane leaned across the table, “You’re fired.”
“Things are heating up,” I said.
“Maybe in Hanson’s bed, but that’s about it. You’re still fired.”
“Okay, then, I’ll bill you for our work up until today.”
“Good luck with that.”
Please not another no-pay. “How about chickens?” I said. “Or manicures?” Looking down at her hands and nails, I realized that wasn’t going to be an option.
“You can go now,” Diane said, dismissing me.
I pressed on. Since I was just fired, I didn’t have to hold back out of respect for my employer. “Before I go, I have a few questions for you.”
Did I ever have questions for her! Like, where were you really when your husband was murdered? I could have said, because your IGA alibi went swirling down the toilet, thanks to your son and my mother-in-law. It’s your own fault for soliciting help from a drunk and a dementia patient. “Maybe Chet Hanson didn’t do it,” I said instead.
Diane stood up. “We’re done here.”
“Not quite yet,” I stood up too.”There’s the issue of your alibi.”
Diane Aho always struck me as an average-sized woman, but when we stood head to head, or rather my nose to her boobs, I realized that once the woman was out of her apron and away from the stove, she seemed to grow in stature. And attitude. Right now she wasn’t one bit mousy.
I flipped out my deputy credentials.
Then she flipped my arm behind my back and escorted me out the door. Where I stood, rumpled, wondering where Fred was when I needed him. And convinced that I had finally nailed our killer.
Fred came around a corner sniffing the ground. “About time,” I said.
*
Cora Mae is a late riser, and at the moment I didn’t know if she was sleeping at home or Chet’s house, so I headed for Kitty’s. Blaze came tooling down M35 toward me, so I swerved over in front of him to have a chat.
His reflexes could use some work. He almost didn’t stop.
“Ma!” he yelled scrambling out of his vehicle. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Letting you know I need to talk.”
“You almost hit me head-on.”
“Nonsense.” How in the world did I give birth to such an anal individual? “You have to go over to Diane Aho’s house and arrest her. She killed her husband and maybe Frank Hanson.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her IGA alibi fell through.”
“And how do you know that?” he asked. “And why are you interfering in police business again?”
By now I had my hands on my hips and my Blublockers on top of my head so he could see the glare I’d perfected when I started this business. “Diane wasn’t at the IGA,” I said through gritted teeth. “Have you tried to verify her alibi?”
“Of course. Maybe if you didn’t treat me like some kind of bumbling idiot and show a little respect--”
I interrupted. “So, did her alibi check out?”
“It did. Right from the start. Grandma ran into Diane at the IGA, and they had a long conversation. And it was right during the shooting. So there.”
“She told you this when?”
“The same day Harry died.”
That big liar. She’d just told me she hadn’t lied yet. She’d lied about lying! “Grandma is lying through her false teeth, and so is the widow Aho.”
“Get your truck out of my way.”
*
“Blaze doesn’t believe a thing I tell him,” I crabbed to Kitty after bringing her up to speed. “And Diane fired us for incompetence. And Grandma is collaborating with the killer. The only one getting anything out of all this is Cora Mae.”
“I finished up one of my online law classes, so I’m that much closer to a degree,” Kitty said brightly, pouring coffee for me. “And I have more info on Diane Aho, something that might show she had it in her to off both Harry and Frank.”
“Make my day,” I said. “Please.”
“She goes to boot camp.”
“Diane is in the military?
Kitty laughed. “No, she does a boot camp exercise class. It’s sort of like real boot camp because you do drills, like jumping jacks and push-ups and running miles while somebody yells at you.”
“Who would volunteer for a thing like that?”
Kitty looked shrewd. “Someone who wants strength and speed and stealth.”
More lightbulbs went on in my head. If this kept up, I’d be blinded by the light. “She could easily have killed Frank then. And she’d know about guerilla suits.”
“Ghillie suits,” Kitty corrected me.
“This whole thing is getting more mercurial by the moment,” I said, testing the word-of-the-day waters and finding them a bit murky.
“Good one,” Kitty said, showing approval for my word.
Then I gave her today’s assignment. “Find out where she goes to camp and when the next class is.”
“It’s in Escanaba. And there is a class today.”
“Guess who’s going to boot camp?”
Kitty stared at me. “You?”
I shook my head. “Not even close.” Then I gave Kitty the once-over. She’d never survive a senior citizen workout, let along boot camp. “Don’t actually exercise,” I advised her. “This is a fact gathering mission only.”
“Gotcha.”
“And while you’re there, work on a motive. Keep asking yourself why she would kill her husband.” I headed for the door. “Oh, and one more thing, find out if that boot camp owns any of those guerilla suits.”
*
Cora Mae was in her own bed, sound asleep. I woke her up, fed her a few cups of coffee and put a question to her.
“Who was Chet going with before you came into the picture?”
“We don’t talk about our pasts,” she said, looking sexy in some kind of silk black
thingee. While most of us wear T-shirts or flannel to bed, Cora Mae is always ready for action.
“Why haven’t you discussed it? Aren’t you interested in what came before?”
“First of all, there hasn’t been much talking going on. Second of all, I’m more interested in not telling what came before him.”
“So you think if you bring it up, you’ll have to share, too?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you have a clue? Any clue at all? Pictures? A casual comment made in passing? Intuition?”
“Not really.”
I gave her today’s assignment. “Find out every single female he came in contact with in the last few months. Send him out on an errand and search his place.”
“Do I have to?”
Some partner, always whining. “Or you can trade with Kitty. She’s tailing Diane at an exercise program called boot camp.”
“I’ll try to find out.”