Murder Talks Turkey

Chapter 22

“THIS IS THE DETROIT BANK calling,” I said into Walter’s phone. “Which one? Uh…Detroit Savings and Loan. I need to talk to Dave Nenonen. I’ll hold.”

Walter leaned against the kitchen sink drinking his version of a latte-half bottom-dregs coffee, half brandy. Five o’clock on Monday afternoon must be the start of happy hour at the Laakso household. Kitty had gone back to the hunting trailer to put pasties in the oven. Cora Mae was studying Walter’s dirty kitchen table for creepy crawlers.

“Mr. Nenonen,” I said when Dave came on the line. “I’m calling about Angie Gates. She has applied for a position with our bank. Can you give her a good reference? Um…that’s right. You didn’t know she was leaving? Well, this is awkward. Yes. Thank you.”

I hung up. Dave thought she was coming back to work on Thursday. As I suspected, she was slipping out of town without a goodbye party.

“Aren’t we supposed to be working for Shirley?” Cora Mae said. “Instead we’re tailing her and verifying the truthfulness of every word she utters.” Cora Mae studied her new manicure, the French thing with white tips. “Lyla does a nice job with nails,” she said. “And she’s got troubles at home again.”

“Happy ever after didn’t last too long,” I commented.

“Lyla thinks Tony found out she put us up to watching him.”

“Impossible,” I said, sheepishly remembering when the local warden had outed me in the woods right near Tony’s turkey blind.

“She thinks he was being nice to her just so she would call off the dogs.”

“Is that what she called us? Dogs?”

Cora Mae nodded.

I glanced down at Fred, who was lying at my feet, licking a paw. I decided to take that as a compliment. We could have been called much worse.

“Are we rehired?” I asked. That would be a bonus. We were trailing him anyway. Two paychecks for one job. One from Lyla, one from Shirley. I’d like that. We’d have the best fingernails in Stonely and have the money to pay for matching pedicures.

“No,” Cora Mae answered. “She says she doesn’t want to know what he’s up to. She’s fed up and thinking of leaving him.”

Serves the dallying fool right. Poor Lyla, though. Realizing you’re married to a cheating spouse has to be tough.

Walter had finished his second latte when he said, “Think I’ll go down to Herb’s Bar for awhile.”

Cora Mae, Fred, and I went to the trailer and sat down to dine on steaming hot pasties. Fred had one too.

“While Cora Mae had her nails done,” Kitty said, splashing ketchup on her pasty and handing the bottle to me. “I talked to Star.”

My baby girl. I had forgotten her in all the excitement. She must be worried sick about me.

“She says hi and will you hurry up and solve this case so she can quit babysitting Grandma Johnson.”

So much for family loyalty and concern. “I hope you didn’t tell her where we were,” I said. “She’d probably turn us in. I’m thinking Star might have more of her grandmother’s genes than she should.”

“‘Course I didn’t tell her. Star’s been to the jail to visit Blaze. So far he’s happy locked up. He’s bossing Snell around, trying to run the show. Blaze told Star a few things he overhead about the murders.”

“Like we can believe anything Blaze says,” Cora Mae added, truthfully. My son hadn’t been a natural born liar before the brain disease struck.

“It depends,” I said, ready to defend Blaze. I can say anything I want about him, good, bad, or terrible, but that doesn’t apply to other people, even friends. “You can judge by what comes out of his mouth. If he’s a five-star general in search of blue diamonds, or if he’s showing you his new dog and you can’t see the dog because it’s invisible, that’s made up.”

“In other words,” Kitty said. “If it’s far-fetched, don’t believe him.”

“Right,” I agreed. “So what did he hear?”

Kitty added more ketchup to her pasty. “The Detroit guy on the roof was wearing Onni Maki’s Kromer.”

“I thought the guy’s headdress was strange, considering he came from Detroit,” I said. A troll doesn’t usually wear a Yooper hat. I had rolled the stolen hat idea around inside my head earlier.

“He took it out of Onni’s car.”

Cora Mae made a face when she heard the name. Onni Maki is seventy years old. He wears gold chains around his neck, a pinky ring, and wraps his hair over a big bald spot. He’s also a widower and thinks he’s the hottest thing in the U.P. He was one of the first men in the county that Cora Mae rejected after only one date. Onni had made Cora Mae pay her own way. “Pond scum,” she said under her breath.

Kitty scraped her plate and looked around for more pasties. She knew there weren’t any left. It was just wishful thinking. “Onni was part of the posse outside the credit union. Bob Goodyear was trying to disguise himself with the hat.”

“Instead it made him stand out.”

“Blaze said Dickey’s been tracking the Orange Gang. I guess they’re a tough bunch. But none of them knows the first guy, the robber. Bob Goodyear must have hired Kent Miller to go in. Dickey thinks he shot him because the robbery went wrong and he was worried about being identified.”

“That’s the only reasonable part of the whole thing,” I said. “Bob and Kent decide to rob the credit union. Kent goes in, wearing orange shoes. He steals a pillowcase filled with paper. Angie, who is really Shirley, sounds the alarm. Bob kills Kent to conceal his identity. Then someone kills Bob just for grins. And, of yes, the credit union has been robbed, but at a different time than the robbery, and that money is still missing.”

“Right,” Kitty said.

“But,” Cora Mae asked. “Wasn’t it dumb to wear orange shoes? They led right to the Detroit gang.”

“Not to mention the stupidity of stealing paper,” I said. “Kent couldn’t have known he had a fistful of fake money. He had to have thought he had the real thing. And the orange shoes haven’t helped any of us solve the case. So maybe the shoes were a blind lead, meant to confuse us.”

“Well it worked,” Kitty said. “I’m confused. We have to straighten this out so we can quit hiding in this sorry excuse for a home.”

Cora Mae was thinking hard. “What if Bob set up Kent? He sent him in knowing he wouldn’t make it out alive. He and someone on the inside had already taken the money.”

“That won’t work,” I reasoned. “If Bob took the money, he wouldn’t want Kent to get caught holding paper. That would lead to a full investigation, which it did, and then everyone would know the money was missing, which they did.”

The more I thought about it, the more confusing it became. “All we have to do,” I said, letting Fred out of the trailer to do his business, “is find out why Kent stole play money, find out why Bob killed him, figure out who killed Bob, and find the missing money.”

None of us said anything for awhile. We were out of ideas. The orange shoe business had preoccupied us for too long. During the robbery, I remembered thinking the robber was insane to wear orange shoes in a holdup, especially if they led somewhere. Maybe it was a ruse, after all.

Maybe we should concentrate on our own backyard a little more. That left Shirley, Tony, Dave, and Sue. All were insiders and had opportunities to steal from their employer.

I scrapped my plate and started a sink of hot sudsy water.

That’s when someone opened up on the trailer with an automatic weapon.

By the time I whirled around and realized what was happening, Kitty had blown off the chair she was sitting on. She hit the floor seconds before Cora Mae and I took a similar dive. Only ours was voluntary action, Kitty’s had external force behind it.

“I’ve been hit,” Kitty screamed, clutching her chest and rolling onto her side.

Frankly, I was relieved to hear her speaking even if I hated what she said. Blood seeped through her fingers where she clutched her chest. She looked down. Her hands weren’t staunching the flow.

“I never expected to go out like this,” she moaned. “I always thought it would be my heart that gave out, with the extra pounds and all.”

“Shush,” Cora Mae said, “You aren’t dead yet.”

Up until now, Cora Mae has been the one with all the questions and insecurities. What are we going to do next? How are we going to handle this mess? Why do we have to drive around in this cruddy vehicle? Why? Why? Why?

I’d never seen her react under real pressure, but I was witnessing it now.

“Nine-one-one,” she screamed into her radio, louder than she needed to. I assumed for our attacker’s benefit so he’d know we had contact with the outside world.

I threw the kitchen table on its side and scooted between it and the refrigerator, dragging Kitty with me the best I could, considering she outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds. Her legs were still exposed, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. Cora Mae was behind the wood-burning stove with her back up against the wall dividing the living room and bedroom. She continued to shout our emergency into her radio.

Where was Fred? At first, I thought he was inside with us, but then I remembered letting him out. Please Fred, be off chasing squirrels on the opposite side of Walter’s house.

Too bad Walter was down at Herb’s Bar or he would have taken care of the madman with his arsenal of stashed weapons. If only I could get to the house and find them. But I didn’t have a chance.

Another volley of firepower interrupted my thoughts. Windows blew out. Glass rained down. I had my radio out and changed the frequency to the one the local cops use. I screamed into it. “Machine-gun fire. One of us is down. Walter Laakso’s place. Ambulance. Help.”

Blood was draining from Kitty’s face and heading for the hole in her chest. I heard sirens wailing in downtown Stonely, calling in volunteers for an ambulance and the posse. Herb’s bar would be cleared out by now.

I hoped they wouldn’t be too late.

“Stay with us, Kitty,” I said. “Help is on the way.” Her eyes were fluttering. I wasn’t sure she heard me.

All was quiet outside. The shooter hadn’t anticipated our radios and our ability to contact outside help from the hunting trailer. He had to be gone by now. Only a fool would hang around until the entire town arrived.

“Go, Gertie,” Cora Mae said. “Get out of here. I’ll stay with Kitty. They’ll arrest you if they catch you here.”

I’d thought of that. If our local law enforcement found me here, they’d haul me in. I’d be behind bars with Blaze. Kitty would be in the hospital, and Cora Mae couldn’t even drive. Who would be left to save us?

“Go,” Cora Mae ordered. “I’ll tell them you ran after the person who shot Kitty.”

Another thought crossed my mind and that one got me fired up for flight. Cora Mae would have full access to George if I went to jail. Like I mentioned earlier, my mind does strange things under duress.

Sirens wailed and I estimated I had about two minutes, if that. I cautiously raised an empty gardening glove in one of the windows and waited. Nothing. I stuck out my left arm thinking if I had to lose one it might as well be the one I didn’t write with.

Nothing.

I grabbed my purse and glanced back at my friends down on the floor. Cora Mae was cradling Kitty’s head.

When I opened the trailer door, a note was taped to the outside of it. Just a warning it said.

I looked at the blood covering my two friends and thought it had been much more than a warning.