by Jan Dunlap
All right, I admit it: I’m tenacious. I’m a birder, what can I say?
“I don’t usually like to talk about it,” Boo said. “I figure the past is best left in the past. Take another right, right here.”
I spun the wheel and checked my rear-view mirror to see Boo’s dad following us into town.
“I spent a decade traveling with the circus,” Boo said.
Okay, so that was totally not what I was expecting him to say. I slid a quick look at the man in my passenger seat.
Boo’s face was serious.
“I was the Strongest Man Alive,” he confessed.
An image of a bare-chested, big-muscled Boo in a side-show booth, lifting weights, popped into my head. I could almost smell the cotton candy and popcorn and hear the calliope music of the merry-go-round.
Boo Metternick, the Strongest Man Alive.
Actually, that worked for me.
“You don’t say,” I replied. “I can see it, Boo. Really, I can. But I have to admit, I was a little concerned there for a second that you were going to say you were the Bearded Lady.”
Boo laughed. “Believe it or not, she was a real fox under that beard.”
“I don’t want to know,” I laughed back.
“You’re going to want to park on the left side of the street up there,” he said, pointing towards the small shopping area that was coming into view. “Betty’s Beauty Spot and Nails is just around the corner, but you don’t want to park in front of the salon if Dad’s going to be tossing tomatoes anywhere near there.”
“Is he sure he isn’t going to get arrested for assault, or for damaging property?” I asked Boo.
When his dad had laid out the plan, Vern had assured us he wasn’t going to get in trouble with local law enforcement, but I wasn’t convinced. Pelting a truck with tomatoes to get a confession from a woman had to be violating some kind of law, even if it was only a law of simple courtesy.
You know what I mean: don’t stare, don’t eavesdrop, don’t kick your sister under the table, don’t throw tomatoes at people on Main Street.
“Dad will be fine,” Boo said. “He knows the one police officer in town—Maggie Fleming—and her mother is Dad’s second cousin. I think I also heard that Arlene was hitting on Maggie’s husband a while back, so I can’t imagine that Maggie wouldn’t conveniently look the other way if Dad got Arlene riled up over a tomato attack on her pickup.”
Ah, yes, frontier justice still exists, especially in small towns where almost everyone is related.
I pulled a U-turn at the end of the shopping block and took a parking slot where Boo suggested. Vern, meanwhile, had taken a left turn onto the street that fronted Betty’s salon.
“Last chance,” Boo offered me. “You can sit this out right here and avoid the ugly stigma of being a participant in a tomato fight.”
“No way,” I insisted. “This is my big chance. Bigmouth Rick isn’t around to see this, and nobody here knows me, so I can, for once, indulge in complete immaturity and not worry about the consequences.”
“You don’t think I’m going to tell everyone at the high school that you helped plan a tomato fight? Your students would love that.”
“So would yours,” I reminded him.
“Touche.”
We got out of the car and started toward the corner of the block.
“Bob, you won’t mention my circus gig to anyone, will you?” Boo asked. “I’d rather it not get around at the high school. I had to put up with a lot of grief at my last school when the kids found out, and I don’t want to have to go through that again. It wreaked havoc with classroom discipline for a while.”
I looked Boo over. The man was huge. How he could ever have a problem with student discipline was beyond me. He could squish a student under the palm of his hand, for crying out loud. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t the Crusher after all, but …
“I know,” I said. “How about I spread the rumor that you’re a famous former wrestler, by the name of the Bonecrusher? I could say you got kicked out of the ring for losing your temper one too many times and maiming your opponents, and the one thing that really ticks you off is when anyone mentions your wrestling past. That should take care of any discipline problems, don’t you think?”
Boo smiled. “Yeah, that might do it. As long as the real Bonecrusher doesn’t come after me for impersonation, that is. I wouldn’t want my wrists—or any other part of me—slapped by the Crusher.”
I frowned, trying to imagine our new art teacher Paul Brand throwing Boo to the canvas.
It would be like knocking over a refrigerator.
Paul would have to have some serious muscle, and moves, to do that. I tried to picture it, I really did, but for some reason, I was still having trouble putting that black leotard on Savage’s new art teacher.
It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, the only canvas that came to mind when I thought of Paul was one stretched on a frame.
For painting.
Or scrapbooking.
Or whatever the heck it was that they did in Paul’s art class.
So unless Boo had a paralyzing fear of glue guns, I had no doubt that Boo could hold his own against Paul Brand any day.
Speaking of guns …
We turned the corner just as Vern was loading his first volley of tomatoes into the bazooka. Across the street, a dirty pink pickup truck was parked at a diagonal to the curb in front of Betty’s Beauty Spot and Nails. Boo started for the salon’s front door. Vern pulled on a helmet and heavy leather gloves. On the back of his windbreaker, the old Looney Tunes character, Wile E. Coyote, grinned knowingly.
It occurred to me that if I’d grown up with Vern for a dad, maybe I would have joined the circus, too.
I sat down on an old iron bench not far from Vern’s base of operations.
Let the cartoon begin, I thought.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Arlene! I think you better come out here!” Boo shouted into the beauty salon, holding the door wide open.
I couldn’t make out Arlene’s response, but since no one appeared in the doorway, I guessed she’d refused.
Boo hollered again.
“I’m giving you fair warning, Arlene! Dad’s on the rampage, and I won’t be held responsible for him!”
Still no Arlene.
Boo nodded at his dad, and Vern shot off a salvo of tomatoes into the side of Arlene’s pickup.
“I gotta talk with you, Arlene!” Vern shouted.
Two white heads of hair poked out of the salon door.
“It’s Vern, all right!” an elderly lady in a blue plastic smock cried.
“He’s got a weapon!” yelled the other, equally draped in blue.
With a squeal, the women ducked back inside Betty’s.
“I got a bone to pick with you, Arlene!” Vern shouted, and let loose with another round of tomatoes.
Boo stood back on the sidewalk out of the tomato splash zone. In a tree in front of a store a few doors down from Betty’s, I noticed a trio of crows perched in the branches. Could three crows be considered a murder, or was that term only applied to larger groups of the birds?
How about two by the names of Prudence and Red?
Yeah, that could definitely be a murder, I decided.
“Arlene, it’s your last chance!” Boo called into the salon.
Vern loaded up the bazooka again.
Even if Arlene had been blackmailing Sonny, I mused, that didn’t make her an accessory to his murder. I supposed it provided a possible motive that the police would want to investigate, but generally the person being blackmailed wasn’t the one who ended up dead, according to any television show I’d seen. It was the person doing the blackmailing who got knocked off in prime time.
Vern shot more tomatoes at Arlene’s pickup.
I watched the juice and pulp run down the side panels of the truck.
Not that this was anything near a prime-time murder mystery, mind you.
This was real l
ife.
Ridiculous maybe, but still real life.
And then Arlene finally came out of the salon’s front door.
I assumed it was Arlene. Since I’d never met her, I couldn’t recognize her.
Then again, I wondered if either Boo or Vern could recognize the woman underneath the towel headwrap whose face was covered in green foam and whose hands were wrapped in plastic bags.
“You’re a crazy old man!” the Thing from Betty’s shouted at Vern.
“You’re lying about my land!” Vern yelled back. “Admit it!”
“Your father belongs in a nuthouse!” Arlene shouted at Boo.
“Hand me that crate of tomatoes, Bob,” Vern pointed at a crate in the back of his truck that he couldn’t quite reach from his station with the bazooka.
I got up from the bench and leaned into the truck. When I lifted the case out and turned to hand it to Vern, I almost rammed it into a girl who had suddenly appeared next to me.
“Mr. White?”
“Sara?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Are you shooting tomatoes at that truck?” Sara Schiller asked, her eyes wide and a grin spreading over her face. “And here I thought you were such a dud! Wait till I tell everyone back at school!”
“I … I … no!” I told her, stammering around my surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked back. “It looks to me like you’re helping this old guy fire tomatoes at a truck. Isn’t that, like, illegal or something?”
“Bob! I need more ammunition!”
I set the crate on the ground near Vern’s feet, and took Sara’s arm to pull her over to the iron bench.
“Sara, you don’t know what’s going on here. And you don’t need to know,” I quickly added. “What are you doing in Spinit?”
“I’m on fall break, Mr. White. I don’t have to answer to you,” she retorted.
Splat! Splat! Splat!
More tomatoes hit the pink pickup.
Arlene screamed at Vern.
Boo crossed his arms over his big chest and leaned back against Betty’s big plate window. He said something to Arlene, but I couldn’t hear it.
Arlene stopped shouting and glared at Boo. A moment later, her green foam beginning to slide off her face and onto the blue-striped apron that covered her front, she yelled a single word to Vern.
“Yes!”
Vern lowered his bazooka and frowned at me.
“Shoot,” he complained, “I still had another crate of tomatoes to get rid of. Tillie’s going to throw a fit if she has to can any more tomatoes.”
“Is that Mr. Metternick over there?” Sara asked, looking across the street. “Wow. I didn’t know he had abs like that. You can’t tell with those dress shirts and ties he wears at school.”
She stared at Boo another minute.
“Wow,” she said again, then turned to me. “Is it too late to transfer into one of his classes this term?”
“Sara,” I said, “Why are you here?”
She shrugged. “I felt like taking a drive.”
“To downtown Spinit?”
“I’ve already been to Wisconsin,” she reminded me.
I opened my mouth to tell her to go home, when she suddenly became very focused on what was going on across the street. I followed her glance and saw another man speaking with Boo and Arlene. He was almost as tall as Boo and just as muscular. I could practically feel the rush of hormone waves rolling off Sara.
“Let me guess,” I said. “That’s Noah Knorsen, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she breathed, completely mesmerized by Noah’s presence. “Isn’t he wonderful?”
I waved my hand in front of her eyes, but she didn’t even blink.
“At the count of three, you will act like a chicken,” I intoned.
Sara cocked her head at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Just wondering,” I told her. “I wanted to see if I could be the Amazing Mr. Wist. The hypnotist who came to school the other day.”
Sara gave me another odd look. “I skipped school during the assembly. You are so weird, Mr. White.”
“Gee, Sara, thanks,” I said. “That means a lot coming from a high school student who’s a habitual delinquent and happens to be stalking a man twice her age.”
“He is not twice my age,” she insisted. She threw another glance of longing at Noah, who appeared to be helping Boo calm Arlene down. A note of disillusionment crept into her voice. “Is he?”
“He’s old enough to be your father, Sara.”
Okay, that might have been a lie, but the math could work. If Noah was in his early thirties as I guessed him to be, he was chronologically old enough to have fathered a child who would now be sixteen. Heck, I was old enough to be Sara’s dad, for that matter.
That was a terrifying thought.
“For all you know, maybe he drinks Metamucil every morning,” I threw in for good measure.
Sara was silent for a moment, apparently considering what I’d said.
“Eeuw,” she decided. She gave Noah one last stare, then sighed. “Okay, I’m going home now. I can probably find something better to do in Savage than look at old guys.”
I was about to agree when I noticed something about Noah Knorsen that had me staring at him with almost the same intensity Sara had exhibited.
Except I wasn’t admiring his abs.
I was studying the sweatshirt he was wearing. It was dark green, and it had the logo for the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on it.
My brain flashed back to Sunday morning at the Arb.
Just before we found Sonny Delite’s body, Luce and I had encountered a man on the path. He’d been going in the opposite direction, away from where Sonny was doing his dead scarecrow imitation. The guy had been big, I remembered, and he was wearing the same Arb sweatshirt as Noah Knorsen had on now.
And he’d had red hair. A whole headful of it.
My eyes jumped to Noah’s hair.
Red. Bushy.
And then I recalled one more detail about the man Luce and I had passed on the trail.
He carried a thermos of coffee.
At least, I had assumed it was coffee.
But maybe it had been tea instead … hemlock tea.
Gee, I bet someone who worked in the Education Center at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum would be able to recognize lots of plants.
Someone like Noah Knorsen, who was very recently employed at that very same Education Center until he decided to quit because Sonny Delite, whom he despised, was going to be speaking at the sustainable sources conference on Sunday.
My, my, what a lot of coincidences: Noah quitting his job at the Arb, Sonny’s death at the Arb, Gina being upset at the Arb after seeing Noah the same morning I found Sonny dead, me running into Noah on the same path at the Arb where I found Sonny dead, and Noah having two really good reasons to make Sonny dead … at the Arb.
Call me crazy, but that seemed to suggest one of two things: either the Arb was giving off a lot of really bad vibes these days, or Noah had killed Sonny … at the Arb.
And just when I thought I’d had Sonny’s murder all solved.
Maybe I was just a high school counselor.
“Yeah, Sara, that’s probably a good idea to go home,” I said, still watching Boo and Noah as they talked with Arlene across the street.
Actually, I wanted to go home, too. I needed to let Rick and the police know that I could place Noah Knorsen on the trail—literally—that led to a dead man. That should gain a reprieve for Rick as a murder suspect, though it would probably make the situation a lot worse for Gina, not to mention for her brother. Before I even did that, though, I felt obligated out of respect for Boo to share my conclusions with him about the longtime friend he regarded as a little brother.
“So, Boo, I’m going to head on back early, but before I go, I wanted to tell you that Noah’s a cold-blooded killer. Enjoy the rest of our fall break.”
Geez. Could today get any worse?
“Hey, Mr. White! Watch this!”
I turned around just in time to see Sara, with Vern’s help, sighting along the top of his refurbished bazooka.
A volley of tomatoes burst forth from the end of the barrel, landing just in front of Boo, Noah, and Arlene. Tomato juice gushed up at their clothes, Arlene yelled a few choice words at Sara, and Boo and Noah just shook their heads.
Vern clapped Sara on the shoulder with pride. “You’ve got an eagle eye, girl,” he told her. “That was a fine shot for your first try. You ever think about going into ordnance operations as a career?”
“What’s ordnance?” Sara asked.
“Weapons,” Vern said. “Ammunition, bombs, explosive devices. You come on out to my place, and I’ll show you what I’ve got. I’ll even let you try out a few, if you want.”
I watched Sara’s eyes study Vern, clearly trying to gauge the old man’s sincerity. A moment later, a slow smile spread across her face.
“Okay,” she accepted. “I think I’d like that.”
Well, that sure answered my question.
Yes, today could get worse.
Sara Schiller was going to get armed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We made a parade back to the Metternick homestead.
Sara followed Vern’s truck in her Ford Escort, and Boo and I followed Sara. Noah had taken Arlene’s keys to run the pickup through the sole carwash in town and had promised to meet us all back at the farm within the hour.
“So what did Arlene say to you about Sonny?” I asked Boo as soon as we were on the road back to his parents’ place.
Boo shrugged. “What we had suspected. She was trying to blackmail Sonny into fixing the wind turbine deal for her parents. Apparently, he’d been leading her along—just like he did with Gina during the Henderson utility fight—and when Arlene found out, she decided he could make up for his lying to her by guaranteeing her parents got the energy lease.”
“But he couldn’t do that,” I reminded him. “They had no proof your land was critical for birds, whereas it sounds like everyone out here knew the Weebler’s property had nesting colonies on it.”