October Fest: A Murder-by-Month Mystery

by Jess Lourey

  On the surface, she bowed to his command. Behind the scenes, though, Mrs. Berns got right down to the business of circumventing the rules of the nursing home, sneaking out after hours to do as she pleased. Before long, she was the don of a profitable black market operation fencing cigarettes, airplane-sized bottles of liquor, and Tom Jones posters to those on the inside. After a near mutiny when he tried to crack the whip against these illicit antics, the director of the Senior Sunset chose to turn a blind eye to Mrs. Berns’ behavior on her word there would be no more public brawling.

  Mrs. Berns likely had her fingers crossed when she made that agreement. That’s about when I met her, all fluffy-haired, bobby-socked, capgun-toting (don’t ask), four-feet-eleven inches of her. Since then she’d taught me how to dirty dance, defend myself using moves not widely practiced outside of a pig-castrating shed, and live without regret. To be honest, I was still working on that last one. But as much as I loved her, she had a mischievous streak as wide as the Mississippi, and I smelled her fingerprints all over Johnny’s invitation.

  I signed in at the front desk. My lunch break was prime visiting hours and the check-in sheet was almost full. I smiled nervously at the nurse behind the desk, concealing the cloth bag I was carrying behind my back. It contained the secret to prying the truth out of Mrs. Berns: dark chocolate and a miniature bottle of red wine. I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that nursing home residents were not officially allowed liquor, which was the crime of the century as far as I was concerned. My visiting privileges would be revoked indefinitely if I got caught with it, but it was a risk I was willing to take to get the Oracle to speak.

  I wasn’t sneaking toward Mrs. Berns’ room, but I did stop when I heard the whispering inside. Followed by a giggle. That’s when I noticed the cross-stitched, “Bless this Home” circle hanging off the doorknob, the signal that if this was a van, it’d be rocking so don’t bother to come knocking. Glancing at the clock on the wall, I realized I didn’t have time to wait. Buying the chocolate and wine had eaten up almost half an hour, and I needed to reopen the library at one o’clock. I knocked at the door, delicately and with more than a little fear.

  The giggling stopped. “You knock like a girl.” This was followed by a rustle of fabric and light footsteps. “This better be an emergency,” she said on the other side of the door.

  Her orange-shaded head popped out looking inconvenienced.

  “Hi, Mrs. Berns.”

  “I made him write the invitation, it’s a surprise so I can’t tell you more, and it’s not what you think.” And she slammed the door in my face.

  She must have a steamy number in her room or she wouldn’t have passed up an opportunity to make me squirm, but curiosity was the one vice I consistently entertained. I knocked again, firmly.

  “That’s better, but it still doesn’t get you in.”

  I turned the knob and stepped inside.

  “That’ll get you in,” she said. And next to her, on her double GoldenRest Adjustable bed, was the Fergus Falls Register reporter with the soup-strainer mustache who’d sneered at me in the big tent earlier today. Small world. He didn’t stand at my entrance, and Mrs. Berns didn’t introduce him.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I presume you do,” she said, employing a slight British accent to mock my serious tone.

  “It’s really important.”

  She dropped the accent. “It’s not about Johnny?”

  “Well …”

  “Ach.” She turned to the man lounging on her bed. “Bernard, I need to talk to Mira. Shouldn’t take more’n a minute.”

  I stepped to the side so he could exit and leave us to our conversation, but he just loafed deeper into the bed, cranking the sound on the Discovery Channel, which was airing a show about the ancient mysteries of the Maya.

  “I’ll take a cherry cola while you’re out,” he said. “Not the barbaric kind. Thanks.”

  I wrinkled my nose at Mrs. Berns, but she shooed me out without making eye contact. In the hall, I asked, “Since when do you let someone kick you out of your own room? And what exactly is ‘barbaric’ soda?” That’s when I noticed that she was wearing creepily traditional grandmother clothes: a Branson T-shirt sent to her by one of her kids which she’d used as a dust rag until recently, elastic-waisted slacks sans her low-slung holster, and fuzzy slippers. She looked, well, old.

  “He means ‘generic,’ and I needed to go to the cafeteria, anyways,” she said.

  “Stop.” I grabbed her hand and rotated her toward me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been visiting regularly the last couple weeks. I’ve dropped the ball. I miss you. Now what is up with these clothes and that guy?”

  The uncensored Mrs. Berns broke through the grandma garments. “You didn’t drop nuthin’, and frankly, I haven’t missed that mopey need-to-get-laid look in your eyes. I’ve got to appear professional for a little while, is all.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “Is it because your son is around? Johnny told me.”

  “He’s a girl for gossiping. And it’s none of your business.”

  I knit my brows. “Since when?”

  “Since you should be busy worrying about whether or not you need to shave your legs for tonight.” She cackled at the expression on my face.

  I didn’t want to get off topic that easily, but there was no point in pretending I wasn’t outgunned. I sighed. “Do I?”

  “When it comes to being ready for lovin’, I think the Boy Scouts got it right: always be prepared.”

  “I don’t think that’s what they were referring to.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  I crossed my arms. “You’re not going to tell me anything more, are you?”

  She changed the subject as gracefully as a fish flew. “Nice T-shirt. Is that new?”

  “Thank you, and no.” I blew out angry and drew in happy. It sounded like an asthma attack. “When’re you coming back to the library?”

  “Don’t know that I am. Come here. I’ve got something to show you.” She detoured into the Sunset’s communications center, which she’d raised local money to outfit. It housed three desktop computers with word processing, scrapbooking, and desktop publishing software on each, plus a color printer, a fax, a scanner, and a copier. She’d talked me and a handful of others into teaching basic classes on using e-mail and “spoofing the net” as she called it, and now most of the residents were more computer-proficient than me.

  All three work stations were empty, so she plopped into the nearest chair and pulled me next to her. Clickety-clack, and she pointed proudly at the screen.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked.

  “My registration. Check out the evidence of Alexandria Technical College’s newest student.”

  “Johnny mentioned that. Good for you!”

  “Jesus, he’s weak. You sure you wouldn’t rather sleep with a real man? Whoops, didn’t mean to give anything away. Anyhow, I’m going to earn a degree in Fashion Management. The college started an Elder School this fall, and they offer new online classes every four weeks. I could have my degree within a year.”

  I leaned in closer to the screen and squinted to read the tiny black words. “You’re registered for one class, and it’s Human Sexuality. How does that connect to Fashion Management?”

  “Only elective available this late in the game. Class starts Monday.”

  I curled my lip doubtfully. “What could they possibly teach you that you don’t already know?”

  She clicked again, and the syllabus popped up. “Looks like we’ll be discussing our genitalia, sexual scripts whatever the moon those are, something called fellatio”—she pronounced it with a hard “t,” no pun intended—“sexual positions …”

  “Stop!” I had a lifetime membership in the club of girls who chose to believe Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical” was about the benefits of aerobic workouts. I liked having sex; I just didn’t like ta
lking about it. “I get the picture.”

  “Besides, it’ll be a great way to expand my horizons, get to know people on a new social landscape.”

  “That’s not a social landscape, that’s a mattress with textbooks,” I said, and then caught myself. I believed in the power of education. Plus, I did not want to witness her in granny pants again. What better way to kickstart the old Mrs. Berns than by putting her in an environment where she could, nay, where she’d be required to talk about copulation and hang out with young people? She’d have her own religion started before midterm. “I think it’s wonderful. I’m proud of you.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” she said. “And what chickenshit Johnny Leeson question do you have, anyhow?”

  She jarred me back to the dilemma that had brought me. She’d already admitted to making him send the invitation, so I cut to the chase. “Why did Johnny let you talk him into the invitation? He’s usually much more sensible. What does he want?”

  “Holy Mary, girl, do you want to audit the class? I’m sure they have diagrams.”

  I blushed, my head spinning from her runaround. “So that’s it? He just wants to get in my pants?”

  “Ah, no, he’s too nice a boy for that, dangit. You’ll have to go yourself to find out what it is he’s after.”

  “A hint?”

  “Look to the boy scouts.”

  Rich words of wisdom from my love mentor, the woman who saw more action in her eighties than I’d seen in my entire thirty years on the planet. I squelched the urge to pinch her and instead gave her a hug.

  _____

  My workday passed quickly but not particularly pleasantly as I ran through all the potential scenarios for the evening. I could bail, and Johnny would never want to see me again. I could go to the motel, and Johnny would never want to see me again. Or, he wasn’t who I thought he was at all and had some weird night of sex in mind. Or I did know him and he was going to ask for a commitment from me, some sort of official categorizing of our relationship. Agh. None of the options were good. I was so wound up when I closed the library and pulled into my driveway that even the sight of Luna bounding out to greet me didn’t cheer me up. Nor did the saucy disdain directed at me by calico cat, Tiger Pop.

  “Hi, babies,” I said, climbing out of the car. The fall air was brisk but not frosty, saturated with the earthy smell of leaves turning and far off, someone burning wood. I clutched my jacket tighter, staring down the sloping, brown front lawn to the big red barn and fenced pasture that used to hold horses when Sunny lived here as a child. On the other side was the sparkling blue-gray of Whiskey Lake. This spot was idyllic, the house and outbuildings nestled amongst wild acres of golden-grassed prairie, rolling hills, and hardwood forests. Except for the smell of wood smoke, I could have been the only person in the universe. I dragged in a deep breath, momentarily refreshed.

  Dog and cat followed me into the house where I rinsed out their water dishes and poured a fresh drink along with kibbles for the dog and pebble food for the kitty.

  “How was your day? Were you good to each other?” Luna looked at me hopefully, like if she played her cards right I might make her as smart as a cat for a day. Tiger Pop ignored us both. I scratched them until one rolled over in ecstasy and the other purred against his will.

  Animals sated, I cobbled together some vegetable soup to settle my sour stomach. I still hadn’t made up my mind whether or not I was going to the motel tonight, and the indecision was making me queasy.

  Crap. Who was I kidding? I’d made up my mind the minute I’d received the invitation. If only I was one of those women for whom good sense won out over inquisitiveness. Or, let’s face it, for whom dead bodies didn’t pile up like unwashed clothes. It occurred to me, then, that I hadn’t seen a dead body since the State Fair. Maybe October would be my first corpse-free month since May, I thought hopefully. If I’d known I was less than twelve hours shy of ending that good luck streak in a most gruesome fashion, I wouldn’t have bothered shaving.

  You’re stupid, you’re stupid, you’re stupid, I told myself as my Toyota hugged the corner into town, spraying gravel. When I was six years old, my mother took me to see a movie in St. Cloud, the closest town with a theater. I don’t remember where my dad was; probably my mom was trying to get us out of the house and away from him for a few hours. It was my first big screen experience: a remastered release of Bambi. The theater had also been updated, an old 1920s burlesque hall regilded, repainted, and recurtained to host modern film. I begged for seats in the balcony and was hypnotized when the theater went dark and the music came on, vibrating the chairs. Words appeared on the screen, followed by magical animation. We didn’t even own a television at the time, so this was heady stuff.

  For a while. Then, I spotted a group of boys a few years older than me on the main floor below giggling and passing something between them. I slid away from my mother—poor thing probably needed her own break—and over to the edge of the balcony. I could see that what they were passing was shiny, catching the glint when the screen went bright. Was it a knife? A metal bottle for drinking out of, like my dad had? A decoder ring? I couldn’t quite make it out through the intricately patterned wrought iron barrier. Lucky thing there was a hole just big enough to squeeze my head through, if I wiggled and pushed. So I did, and to my great satisfaction, I saw that they were passing candy back and forth, a mother lode of U-No bars. I smiled—they’d snuck those in. I knew this because I’d begged my mom to buy me a Caravelle bar and I would have begged her to buy me a U-No bar instead if they’d sold them—and I kept smiling even as my horrified mother realized first that I was no longer seated next to her and second, that my head was wedged in the wrought iron tighter than Excalibur in the stone. It took two firefighters, a tub of Noxema, and a lot of elbow, neck, and ear grease to free me. I’m pretty sure no one in that theater has but a secondhand idea how Bambi ends because watching the dumb girl with the brown braids wrestle with a wrought iron balcony was a much more riveting show.

  But I sure enough got to see what those boys were up to, and that made it fine that my ears were pink and raw for a week. You’d think curiosity of that magnitude, so powerful that it overrode common sense and maybe even the survival instinct, would have bred itself out of the gene pool by now, but I was evidence that it hadn’t. I was on my way to the Big Chief Motor Lodge smelling like sandalwood, wearing clean clothes, and maybe, just maybe, I’d applied a light coat of mascara and honey-flavored lip gloss.

  I hadn’t yet explored the new motel. My home-away-from-home in cases of extreme mosquito invasions at the house was the Battle Lake Motel, a cute and clean log-cabin-sided destination across the street from the Big Chief. It wasn’t directly on the banks of the lake, but it was friendly, family-owned, and hospitable. The Big Chief, on the other hand, was going for the sprawling resort look with its bland exterior and massive parking lot.

  I pulled into the crammed parking lot of the two-story motel, staying in my car for ten minutes, studying the cream-colored building. I could hear the oompa-whomp of polka music emanating from the football field at the other edge of town. Not With My Horse didn’t sound too bad from this distance. To my right was West Battle Lake and to my left was Highway 210. And in front of me was certainly my demise.

  Like most motels, this one had exterior entrances for all the rooms. I counted six doors on top and four on the bottom, the bottom ones spread on each side of the brightly lit lobby. I assumed there was the same arrangement of rooms on the other side, the side facing the lake. Why, if this was about sex, would Johnny bring me here? He lived with his mom, whom he was taking care of after his dad had passed suddenly, and so there wasn’t much privacy at his place, but why not come to mine?

  Only one way to find out.

  I sighed, left the safety of my car, and dragged my feet toward the lobby. I could see the full moon sparkling off the lake through the other side. The glass-sided lobby was a smart design choice. It made the place seem modern and stee
ped in nature at the same time. Room number 2 was immediately to the left of the main entrance and room number 3 was directly to the right. Above me, on the second floor, the rooms started at 5 and went to 10. It was a good bet room 20 was on the other side top floor, far right when facing the motel. I could walk through the lobby like I knew what I was doing, up the stairs, and knock confidently on the door. Or I could pee my pants and whistle Dixie. I decided on a compromise and went to the front desk, feeling like the Whore of Babylon.

  I waited my turn. The combination of the Octoberfest weekend and the political candidates and their entourages in town for the debate seemed to have filled the motel to its rafters. In fact, I recognized the emcee from this morning, Sarah Glokkmann’s redheaded assistant, Grace, in the front of the line. There appeared to be a mix-up in her room key because she was trading one plastic card for another. Seven minutes later, I was at the head of the line, still not sure what I was going to say.

  “Um, I have a … well, I’m meeting someone in room 20 tonight, and I’m wondering if he, I mean, if they have checked in yet.”

  Donning her best gynecologist’s face, the older woman behind the counter pressed a couple keys on her computer. I didn’t recognize her, which hopefully meant she also didn’t recognize me. “Ah yes, the Jacuzzi suite. Nicest room in the resort.” She smiled at me, and my cheeks blazed red. “There’s a fireplace in there, though it’s maybe too warm tonight. Let’s see. Yes. The other party checked in an hour ago.”

  “Thanks,” I croaked. A Jacuzzi suite? What the hell? Mrs. Berns must have lied to me about Johnny’s intentions, or she was blind to them herself. I lurched toward the lakeside door, my embarrassment turning to suspicion evolving to anger. Send me a fancy linen invitation booty call, my ass. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been fooled into believing some guy was a gentleman, and I knew exactly how to deal with this. I marched up the stairs, steaming past a vaguely familiar dark-haired man, down the cement walkway, and knocked loudly on the last door, number 20.