Murder Talks Turkey

Chapter 12

THERE’S A GANG UNDER THE bridge,” Kitty said from the front porch of her dilapidated house. Kitty’s yard still looked like a junkyard, even after official town warning number three. But since she wanted to be a lawyer, I wasn’t about to interfere. “They call themselves the Orange Gang.”

Cora Mae guffawed. She had bobby pins stuck in her mouth while she wrapped Kitty’s wet head in pin curls. One of them flew out when she laughed. “The Orange Gang, what a name,” she said, talking out of the side of her mouth.

I sat down beside Kitty. It was the safest place to hide from the view up her house dress. I thought about the bridge Kitty had referred to, the Mackinac Bridge that connected the lower and upper peninsulas. “Tell me more.”

“All we got from Dickey was a name,” she said. “The dead guy behind your truck was Bob Goodyear.”

“Goodyear? Spelled like the Goodyear blimp?” I scribbled in a notebook, listing names and drawing arrows between possible connections. All the lines looped and crossed until my effort looked like toddler scribbling.

Kitty nodded.

“Quite moving your head,” Cora Mae complained. “Now I have to start that one over.”

“I got most of my information from an Internet search,” Kitty said. “In the 1920s, the Purples ran the rackets in lower Michigan. They were tough. Tough enough to stand up to Capone and Scarface. Goodyear’s gang comes from Grand Rapids and they’re trying to emulate the Purples-graffiti, symbols, tough talk, and a color all their own. Orange.”

“They probably picked orange because purple is its complementary color,” Cora Mae said.

“Blue is,” Kitty corrected her.

“Close enough,” Cora Mae said, smashing a strand of curled hair against Kitty’s head and anchoring it with two bobby pins.

“A gang,” I said, in awe. In the U.P. we know about gangs. As in “let’s take a picture of the whole gang in front of that wood pile.” Or “Let’s invite the whole gang over and polish off a case of Bud.”

One time, a motorcycle gang stopped at Ruthie’s on their way through Stonely. That scared a lot of residents that day, before moving on. Otis from the train is another gang member, the railroad gang.

But this was different. This was the real, mean, and ugly, inside and out.

“Why did Bob Goodyear extirpate Kent Miller in the first place?” I wondered out loud, getting a kick out of my word for the day. “They both wore orange shoes, so they were on the same team.”

Kitty shrugged, earning her a gentle slap on the top of the head from Cora Mae, the beautician.

I waited breathlessly for Kitty to use her word for the day again. I longed to watch her mouth form higgledy-piggledy.

“Just because they’re in the same gang,” she said, “doesn’t necessarily mean they were best buddies. After all, they came from a lumpen society, which is probably rife with internal problems.

Lumpen? Rife? Where was higgledy-piggledy?

I didn’t know what to say. Lumpen wasn’t on my radar.

“They’re riff-raff for sure,” Cora Mae said through the bobby pins.

“Besides,” Kitty said, “Dickey talked to Kent Miller’s mother. His whole family lives in the Soo. The mother said he’d just started going down to Grand Rapids recently. She didn’t know anything about orange shoes.”

“That’s a mother for you,” Cora Mae said. She glanced at me. “What have you been up to?”

“Chasing my family across the county,” I replied, giving them a short overview of my quest for the escapees. They laughed until tears ran down their faces. I guess you had to be there to appreciate the seriousness of the matter.

Then I got to the meat of the story. “Angie from the credit union was walking the Gladstone beach. When she saw us, she ran away.”

“If Grandma Johnson was anywhere nearby, I can see why,” Kitty said. “Don’t take it personally.”

“An orange sneaker washed up on shore,” I said.

“I’ll be dang,” Cora Mae said, while chewing a wad of gum. Her favorite exclamation is cripes, but recently she’s added dang to her developing vocabulary. “Where’s the shoe?”

“In my truck.”

“We have to tell Dickey,” Kitty said. I could hear the reluctance in her voice. Including the law in our operation was a last resort.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” I agreed, my feelings about involving the acting sheriff running along the same vein as Kitty’s. “I’m going to heat up pea soup for the family, since we didn’t have lunch. Unless you count the ice cream that I didn’t get any of, thanks to Blaze. Then the three of us should go find Dickey and tell him about Angie.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to scope out her place first,” Kitty said.

“After dark,” I agreed, starting to feel night’s chill crowding out the late afternoon air.

“What about Tony?” Kitty asked. “Ouch, Cora Mae, watch those pins. You’re digging into my scalp.”

“Lyla fired us,” I said, telling them about the phone call from Lyla and the cozy couple’s re-alliance. “We’re officially unemployed.”

“You did the right thing by keeping quiet about the other woman,” Cora Mae said. “You can’t get involved in their marriage.”

“Lyla hired us to get involved. I feel like I’m letting her down.”

“I hope she’s going to pay us for the work we did,” Kitty said.

Now was as good a time as any to break it to my partners. “We had a trade agreement. She’s giving us manicures.” I slung it out there, and it hovered in mid-air.

After a period of dead silence, Kitty exploded. “What! I don’t have any other job but this one! I was counting on cold cash in my hand.” She stood up, hands on hips, and stomped a foot.

“Oh goody,” Cora Mae said, holding one hand up for a quick assessment. “I want some of those acrylic nails, the French ones.”

Kitty held her hands in my face so I could see her nails. I never noticed before, but they were chewed down into the quick worse than I remembered. “Do I look like a woman who cares about her nails? Do I? I have to pay for my online legal course. How am I going to do that?”

I’d never seen Kitty so mad before. She must really be desperate for money.

“We could have another rummage sale,” I suggested, looking around Kitty’s private junkyard. “And Herb’s bar needs a part-time bartender. Since my grandsons own it, I can get you in.” I crossed my fingers and hoped that Red and Ed wouldn’t mind that I was doing a little hiring for them.

“How soon?” Her voice was still angry.

“Anytime. Want to work tonight?”

“Saturday night will be too busy at the bar for a training lesson. All I know how to do is pour beer.”

“That’s great, because that’s all anybody ever orders.”

“Not tonight. We have a surveillance run. And you know how I like those.”

Had Angie Gates killed Bob Goodyear behind the Trouble Buster truck with my Glock? Was she the third partner? Did she turn against the men, planning to keep all the money for herself? I thought about that while heating up pea soup.

It smelled delicious, and I realized how hungry I was. Pea soup is a traditional Swedish dish that I learned to make from Grandma Johnson, with a few minor revisions. She uses pig’s feet or pig knuckles in hers. Mine is made with ham hocks. I gave the soup a final stir and processed some more information about Angie.

I’d seen her at the dance. She looked a little fidgety. I thought she was waiting for someone who was running late. The only thing I knew for a fact was she hadn’t killed the credit union robber because she’d been on the floor behind the counter klonked out. And I’d seen the whole thing happen. Did the orange shoes she was throwing in the water belong to Bob? Or was she a member of the same gang and hiding the evidence?

“It’s ready,” I called out to the Bobbsey Twins, who were napping in the living room. Blaze’s large body covered the couch and Grandma slept upright in a side chair. Mary, who was watching the TV6 news, had to shake them awake.

Fred ate with us, only his meal was in a dish on the floor. Kibble and a crumbled piece of his favorite-bacon.

“Pea soup’s lots better made with pig’s feet,” Grandma said, before she even had the spoon to her mouth to taste it.

I sat down and ignored her while I ate.

Blaze hummed, carrying on our family tradition of humming when the grub was good. I smiled.

“Thanks for having us over,” Mary said.

“You shouldn’t have to come home from a trip and start cooking right away,” I said.

Grandma humpfed. “You women don’t know how good you have it.”

“Sure we do,” Mary answered, sweetly. That’s Mary, always smoothing ruffled feathers.

“Don’t patronize me,” said Grandma.

“After we eat, I’m going out for a little while,” I told them, confident that any trips they made would be on foot. Mary and I gave each other a conspiratorial glance. Mary had the keys tucked away in a safe place.

“Why don’t you come over to our house?” Mary said to Grandma. “We can play cribbage.”

Our family is a card-playing family. Anything we can deal out, we’ll play. Rummy, Poker, whatever.

“Fifteen-two?” Grandma perked up. “Better than sitting around in this mess.”