Murder Talks Turkey

Chapter 26

I HAVEN’T SEEN YOUR STORY in the paper yet,” I said first thing Tuesday morning to Laura DeLand over the motel phone.

“My boss killed it,” she said, with genuine regret in her voice. “I tried hard. Sorry.”

“Did he say why?”

“I have to substantiate the information you gave me before we can print it.”

“In other words, they don’t believe me.”

“That’s one way of putting it. I haven’t given up. I’ll keep working it.”

“How’s your houseguest?”

“She’s okay.”

“I’d like to come by and visit sometime soon.”

“Anytime. That’s the beauty of my job. I have the power to protect my sources.”

Laura DeLand was smart and sweet, but she was young and still had fantasy-land visions of how the world was supposed to work. She’d learn soon enough that no one was safe from suspicion or prosecution. Not even a news reporter. Not even a life-long sheriff like Blaze. Not even an innocent widow like me.

We still didn’t have a new update on Kitty, but we had one on Cora Mae.

“I have a date with Kitty’s doctor,” she said from the center of my bed, fluffing the pillow and grinning. “A doctor. Can you believe it?”

“Sure,” I said. “You’re hot. Why wouldn’t a doc want to go out with you?”

“We’re going to have dinner in Marquette, then David is taking me to the Ojibwa casino to teach me roulette.”

She bounced to a sitting position and rummaged through a tote bag. “I brought you more disguises.” Cora Mae held up one of her man-hunting stretch outfits. Spandex stuff looks great on her, but makes me feel like a stuffed sausage. “And heels.” She hauled out little strappy things.

I shot her a look.

“You have to play the part,” she advised. “What good is changing your hair color if you still look like Gertie Johnson from the neck down? I’ll paint your toenails for you.”

Fred chose that moment to leap on the bed and settle next to her. Blaze came out of the bathroom and plopped in a chair in front of the TV

“Glamorous life we’re leading,” I said, watching Cora Mae layer red polish on my toes. “Actually, it’s the pits. We have to sneak around. And we worry all the time about someone identifying us. We aren’t accomplishing a thing besides racking up more charges against us. It’s only a matter of time before we’re caught.”

“Quit whining,” Cora Mae said. “It could be worse. We could be lying in the hospital with Kitty, riddled with bullets.”

“Or in the morgue,” Blaze added.

In the bathroom, I changed into the clothes that were supposed to make me into someone new. Then Cora Mae and I drove to the grocery store. She went inside and purchased food from a list I had given her. After that, we went to the hospital to visit Kitty.

No question about it, I was taking a risk by going in, but I couldn’t stay away. The last image I had of my friend wasn’t a pleasant one. I needed to replace it with one of her on the way to a full recovery.

Cora Mae had been by her side through the entire tragedy, so the intensive care nurses didn’t pay any attention when we walked past the nurse’s station.

“She’s on a respirator,” I gasped when I saw Kitty. Tears were welling in my eyes. “No one told me that. Can’t she breathe on her own? You should have warned me.”

“I thought I had.” Screens were flashing numbers and squiggly lines, monitoring her life. We sat for awhile without any movement from Kitty, no sign that she was alive, the respirator wheezing away. Murderous thoughts replaced my sadness.

I had to stay free until the person who did this was brought to justice. I wanted to shoot his eyes out. “What kind of slime would do something like this?” I said. But it was just a rhetorical question. Cora Mae didn’t have an answer.

George came in a little later, grinning widely when he saw the new me. He opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head.

“Well, say it,” I said.

“I don’t know quite what to say.”

“Tell her she’s beautiful,” Cora Mae said. “A woman likes to hear that when she’s changed her style.”

“Almost didn’t recognize her. That’s for sure.”

“This isn’t permanent,” I said.

George gave me a hug. We stayed a little longer without detecting any changes in Kitty’s condition. Then we went our separate ways.

____________________

Blaze was pacing the floor like a madman when I got back from the hospital. His hair was standing on end and he really looked like he’d lost it. He reminded me of the threat some of the local parent’s used with their children when they were naughty. “Knock it off,” they’d warn them, “or I’ll send you to Newberry” Everyone knew what that meant. Until 1990, Newberry, the moose capital of Michigan, also was home to the U.P’s famous Newberry psychiatric hospital. Now it was a prison. Now that I thought about it, Blaze and I might end up in Newberry after all.

“They found the vehicle,” Blaze said. “It was on the news.”

I bit my lip. How did Dickey manage to find his truck so fast? We should have had months, maybe even years before anyone discovered it at the bottom of the lake. “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” I said.

He stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

That brought me up. I never told Blaze about the sheriff’s truck’s final resting place. “What are you taking about?” I shot back at him.

“Tony Lento’s car. They pulled it out of the Escanaba River right over where Pa died.”

“How do you know that?”

“The news.” Blaze jerked his head toward the television set and resumed pacing. “He went off the road. The car fell at least thirty-five feet.”

I cut the sound on the T.V. with the remote. “Did they find his body?”

“Not yet, but you know how the river is. They’re bringing in divers.”

The upper Escanaba River was wide and rocky. The current, especially now in the spring, was swift and strong. Tony’s body could have been carried downstream in the rapids.

I fell onto the sagging motel bed next to Fred, face first. I laid there motionless. My Barney used to fish for trout along that section of the river, hauling out browns, brooks, and rainbows. Everyone other than Blaze and me thought he’d died in his waders of a heart attack, because that’s what we told them. The truth was he’d stepped into a hole, his waders filled up, and he drowned. Barney was a proud man and would have been horrified if all of Tamarack County knew the truth.

I could hardly bear to think of Barney’s last moments under the high water or the terror he must have experienced when he realized he wouldn’t escape the death trap. I didn’t have quite the same compassionate thoughts for Two-Time Tony, but I still was shocked by the news.

Envisioning the bridge above the river was easy. I’d been back to the site several times, reliving the horror, talking to Barney.

Then I had another thought. What if Tony had faked his own death? Maybe he had the money and he wanted to make a clean start someplace warm with his little chickadee? He could have pushed the car over the top of the bridge and made his escape in a get-away car.

I rubbed Fred’s ears while I thought. Where did that leave Blaze and me? Up the creek without a paddle, so to speak. Tony was the sneakiest, snakiest man I’d ever had to deal with. What a way to throw the whole town into stunned mourning when all along they should have been building a hanging scaffold and tying a noose.

And what about Lyla? She was fed up, but she must still have feelings for him. How could he leave her like that, thinking he was dead? I had a repertoire of nasty names to call him. If only he was right in front of me.

I considered appealing to Dickey’s common sense, groveling at his feet, and hoping he’d listen. By the time I went to sleep, I decided it was the right thing to do. It was a good thing I waited until the next day to turn myself in. By then I’d changed my mind.