January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) (2 page)

Two

“Hey, whatchu doin’ walking
down alleys? Didn’t your mama warn you?”

My heart was pounding on the back of my throat, looking for escape. Even in the dim light, I could see that the brute was younger than me, maybe early twenties, an ogre of a man with a heavy forehead and eyes that squinted under the weight of it. His jean jacket was far too light for the weather, even with the hoodie underneath. I sensed another person behind me, certainly male. I couldn’t see him, knew he was blocking my escape, but I was too scared to turn away from the ogre. The man behind me made a sound, a replica of the mewling that had drawn me into the alley in the first place.

“He breathes like that when he gets tweaked. Says he can’t hear it himself, but I tell him he sounds just like a damn trapped kitten.” He reached forward and plucked my hat off my head and shoved it onto his. “And that’s exactly what I feel like. This weather is inhumane, you got that? It’s like someone left the goddamn freezer door open in this state.”

White spots floated across my eyes. I wanted to look at who was behind me but couldn’t drag my eyes off the immediate threat. I prayed fervently that Mrs. Berns wouldn’t follow me down here, that she would instead intuit I needed help and take off for the police station. I considered yelling, but I knew she’d come if I did, and the only thing that would make this situation worse was if there were two of us stuck in it.

The ogre stared me down. I knew if there’d been more light, his flat black shark eyes would have just reflected it back at me. I could barely see around his hulking form, the back wall of the post office on one side of him, the three-story wall of an apartment building on the other. Behind him was the alley leading to the opposite street, a street light flickering at the end through the deepening snow, forty eternal feet away.

“How ’bout those mittens, baby? They look like they’d be mighty warm to slide into.”

Behind me, the soft animal cry took on a wheezing quality that made my stomach tighten. I was aware of each hair on my head.

I slipped off my mittens, every nerve in my body keening. I needed to escape. The guy behind me might be small enough to run through, but I couldn’t seem to pull my eyes off the beast I was facing. My best bet was to run through the ogre, but I’d have only one chance. I held the mittens out, visibly trembling. As he reached forward, I pretended to drop them. He bent down, and I charged to his right. I made it all of two feet before the person behind jumped onto my back and crashed us both into the icy ground.

The fall knocked the wind out of me and twisted the newly healed knife wound in my right arm. The pain burned all the way to my teeth. I so wanted to play possum until all this went away, until the bad guys were gone and I was back safe on a well-lit street, but I didn’t have that luxury. The man who’d dropped me rolled off, and I gasped for breath, taking stock of my ribs and wrists, feeling for breaks. The ogre toed me with his boot.

“Where were you going, baby? Doncha know there’s nothing to see around here? This place is about as interesting as bread. Everyone looks the same, nothin’ to do.”

I winced as I pulled myself into a sitting position. In a different life, I might have agreed with his assessment. I tried out my voice, not liking how small it sounded. “What are you doing here if you dislike it so much?”

“She talks!” said the ogre. “You hear that, Ray? She’s got a voice.”

My back to an apartment dumpster, I finally risked a look at the ogre’s partner, Ray. He was lean and hungry-looking, also underdressed for the weather, with a lick of a tattoo showing on his neck. Where the big one looked like he was from eastern European or Russian stock, Ray appeared Hispanic. Rather than answer, he kept glancing furtively down the alleyway behind him then over the other guy’s shoulder, as if expecting someone. Jumping on me had ramped up his baby-animal noises, and he seemed ready to crawl out of his own skin.

I pushed myself to my feet. My hands were ice-scraped from trying to brace my fall, and likely my knees were as well, but I was alive. From this angle, I noticed the crowbar and duffle bag at the ogre’s feet, and I added that to what I knew. That meant I now had three bits of knowledge, the other two being that the man who had pounced on me was quick and that running clearly wasn’t going to work. Which left talking. Mrs. Berns had surely gone for help, right? I just needed to keep them from hurting me until the police showed up. It was a long, desperate shot, which felt just about right.

I rubbed at the palms of my hands, checking for ice shards and gravel. “I have plenty of other hats and mittens. I could bring you some if you like.”

Ray’s fidgety glance stopped on me for a moment, then kept traveling.

The ogre tried to stretch one of my mittens over his meaty paw. It covered three fingers. “Naw, baby, I don’t think your winter gear is worth crap. What else you got that might be worth somethin’? You got a purse? Why don’t no ladies here carry purses?”

It was true. When the temperature dropped, Minnesota women tend to store everything close to their body. It just made sense. My money was housed in the interior pocket of my down jacket, along with peppermint lip balm, keys, and three pieces of cinnamon gum. I could live without any of it.

I held up my cold hands. “I’ve got about thirty bucks. You’re welcome to it. It’s inside my pocket.”

I started to reach in, but before I could unzip my jacket, Ray had me pinned to the icy ground again, this time flat on my back. Sharp air rushed out, scraping my lungs. And here I’d just gotten the hang of breathing again. I willed myself to keep calm, to ignore the hot trickle of blood that had begun seeping out of the freshly opened wound on my arm. If I didn’t have my wits, I had nothing.

“I don’t like this, Hammer! I don’t like her, I don’t like this town, I don’t like any of it.” The mewling was coming rapid, like a heartbeat.

The ogre named Hammer seemed unsurprised by his partner’s jittery outburst. “Do what you need to, man.”

“Wait, what?” I asked. “No one has to get hurt here.”

Ray leaned in. His shivering pupils were so dilated that his eyes looked like two bullet holes. His breath smelled cough-syrup sweet. His exact intentions were unclear, but he wore his unhinged state like a sign. A distant part of me could not believe this is how I was going to go, in a small-town alley, one block and a million miles away from friends and warm food. My eyes felt hot, but I was going to fight rather than cry.

Gathering my strength, I punched Ray’s stomach and twisted my hips at the same time, hoping to unbalance him and then buck him. The force of my thrust knocked him off, but he landed on his feet and clenched, ready to pounce back on me.

“What the goddamned hell is going on here?”

All three of us froze and turned to the voice.

It was Mrs. Bern. She was alone.

My heart plummeted.

Ray glanced from Mrs. Berns to Hammer, his eyes agitated, his fingers curled into claws. Mrs. Berns stood her ground, one hand on her hip and the other stuffed in her pocket as if she might be hiding a gun. She looked like the angriest grandma you ever met. Why had she come down here? Had she gone for help first?

“Run!” I yelled to her.

Too late.

Ray pounced.

Three

I lurched forward, my
strength superhuman. It’s one thing to hurt me, but it’s a whole ’nother to hurt my friends. I flew at Ray, who had Mrs. Berns’s beautiful bony arm twisted behind her back. I fully intended to take a pound of flesh. Before I had a chance, though, he was yanked backward, a shocked expression on his face. Free of his grip, Mrs. Berns fell forward and into my arms. I pulled her close.

Another man, a new one, had Ray pushed against the rear wall of what used to be the video rental store, his forearm against Ray’s throat. This third man wasn’t large, but Ray’s feet weren’t touching the ground. My eyes raced between the three strangers as I inched Mrs. Berns and myself toward escape.

“Whachu doin’, Maurice?” Hammer asked, not moving from his original position. “We were just having some fun.”

The man named Maurice shot me a dismissive glance, not letting go of Ray. I recognized him immediately. He was mid-twenties, African American, a cap pulled tight over his head. His jacket, gloves, and boots looked warm. He’d been in the library maybe a half dozen times in the past two weeks, spending a lot of time in the local history section but never checking anything out.

“Stupid whangsters,” he said. “I told you to sit tight. Why you have to make trouble?”

“Shit, we was only playing,” Hammer said, his voice whiny. “Killin’ time. When did you get so soft?”

Maurice stepped back. Ray dropped to the ground, his hand on his throat as if he hoped to reinflate it. His mewling returned to a steady rhythm, but his eyes grew busier. Hammer’s heavy brow drooped even farther.

“Go,” the man named Maurice ordered us. He flashed me another look, his expression indecipherable.

We didn’t need to be told twice. I pushed Mrs. Berns toward the light at the end of the alley, leaving my hat and mittens behind.

Four

“Tell me again why
the two of you went down an alley alone.”

I didn’t care for Battle Lake Police Chief Gary Wohnt’s tone of voice any more than I liked the way his deep blue uniform hugged his chest and arms. When Gary and I’d first crossed paths last May, he’d been paunchy, crabby, and perennially concealed behind mirrored sunglasses. We were instant enemies. I didn’t like him because he was arrogant and seemed always on the verge of catching me with my hand in the cookie jar. I had no idea why he disliked me.

I had him perfectly pigeon-holed until he left town with a born-again lady, got dumped, and returned to Battle Lake lean, dark, and handsome. My brain and heart knew the score. I was working on the other parts. When he made me this angry, though, all I wanted to do was fry him like an ant under a magnifying glass.

“Like I said, we thought we heard a hurt animal. Or a person. I went ahead to check, and when I didn’t come out after a few minutes, Mrs. Berns came in after me.”

“Definitely sounded like a baby,” Mrs. Berns hollered from the other side of the room, where the new deputy was examining her arm. He’d sworn there was no need for her to remove her sweater, but she’d demurred, arguing it was better to be thorough. She’d recently joked that her boobs were now 32 longs instead of 32 Cs, but they looked pretty good in the lavender silk bra she was wearing. It didn’t hurt that I’d already checked out her arm and knew it was fine, if a little bruised. My arm would also be all right. The fight had ripped the last scab off the scar, but the rest of the stitched skin had stayed intact. The only casualty was the tattered remnants of my personal security.

“That Maurice guy saved our biscuits,” Mrs. Berns continued loudly.

Gary ignored her and studied me over the steeple of his fingers. His eyes were inky, and they gave away nothing. They also made me want to blurt out the fact that I had stolen two pencils from work today and didn’t always wash my hands after using the bathroom.

“Look,” I said, when the silence became painful. “Am I the one on trial? Because last I checked, going down an alley intending to help the vulnerable is a
good
thing. It’s attacking people and stealing mittens that’s the crime.”

He leaned forward, grabbed a pen and a slip of official-looking paper off of his desk, and began writing. Finally, he was going to take me seriously. I sat forward.

“You say they stole your mittens,” he said with gravitas, “but were you able to get away with your lunch money intact?” He didn’t pause in his writing.

Was that a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth? I wanted to hit him so badly. But then, suddenly, I just wanted to cry. “The one guy was
huge
. The second one jumped me from behind. He was all hopped up, making the noises. Who knows what they would have done if that Maurice person hadn’t shown up? Do you really want these guys walking around in your town, robbing people or worse, right under your nose?”

He laid down the pen and paper, and his jaw clenched in a gesture I was familiar with. Any levity that might have been present was now completely erased. “I have all your information. Is there anything else?”

I studied him, noting the abrupt change in his demeanor. “You already knew about them, didn’t you?”

He opened a drawer, dropped the pen in, and closed it. “Like I said, is there anything else you want to tell me? If not, I’ve got work to do.”

I reflected on the men’s clothes, and the street rhythm of their language. They weren’t from this area, maybe not even from the Midwest. Hammer and Ray had
gang
written all over them, but Maurice seemed cut from different cloth. He’d still been rough around the edges, no doubt, but he’d saved us when he could have just as easily walked away. I shuddered to think what would have become of us if he hadn’t shown up when he did. “You’re watching them, aren’t you? Who are they? What are they doing in Battle Lake?”

He grabbed a brochure off the top of his desk and began reading it.

I leaned forward. “Minnesota Fishing Regulations? Fascinating. You’re not going to tell me anything about the hulk and his sidekick, are you?”

No answer. I scowled. I sat there for another full minute watching him pretend to read, then my stomach growled. I sighed. I knew Gary well enough to realize I wouldn’t get anything out of him that he didn’t want me to know. I also knew I would get even less sleep than usual unless I had some reassurance that he already had an eye on the bad guys. “Fine. I won’t tell you about their tattoos, then.”

“Hammerhead shark across the back and shoulders of the large one, stingray on the neck of the other.”

I grinned. I’d only been guessing about the ogre having a tattoo and hadn’t gotten a good look at Ray’s. “Thank you.”

He never removed his eyes from the brochure he was pretending to read, but a brief, rare smile moved across his face. “You’re welcome.”

Despite his apparent nonchalance, Gary had immediately sent a car to check the alley as soon as Mrs. Berns and I spilled into his station, out of breath and jabbering all at once. I was sure the thugs were long gone, and my hunch was confirmed when the police car rolled into the parking lot just as I exited the station without Mrs. Berns, who said she was going to stay and practice some “stretches” with the new deputy.

I waved at the officer to stop and jogged over. He rolled down his window as I approached. “Did you find anyone?”

“Nope. Just these.” He held up my hat and mittens. “Yours?”

I nodded and accepted them gratefully. “Gary seems to know the culprits. Have they been causing trouble around here lately?”

The officer, a bearded man named Victor who was the middle guy on the three-man force, glanced over my shoulder toward the cop shop. His breath puffed out in tiny cumulous clouds.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Gary told you not to tell anyone?”

He shrugged apologetically. “He specifically warned against saying anything to you. Said you stumble into enough trouble all on your own.”

I held up my hands. “I don’t go looking for it.”

All he had for me was a smile. I sighed. “Thanks for my hat and mittens, anyways.”

“Be safe.” He rolled up his window and pulled out of the lot.

I glanced toward the sky. Snow was still falling, but it had lost its magic. I was cold and tired and hungry. The library and therefore my car were nearer than the Fortune Café, and my craving for a bagel and chili had been replaced by a strong desire to be home, behind locked doors, under my bed with my cat and dog. I should have asked Victor to give me a ride to my car. It was only four blocks away, but in my current state of mind, that felt like four miles.

“Yoo-hoo!”

I immediately recognized the voice coming from the far end of the parking lot. I scrunched my shoulders and hoofed it in the opposite direction, toward the library and the relative safety of my car, following the tried and true axiom, “if you can’t see them, they can’t see you.”

“Mira James! I can see you plain as the nose on my face. Now turn around and say hi to my new sidekick.”

So help me, I was powerless to deny Kennie Rogers’s command, such was my complete submission to curiosity. I’d met Kennie about the same time I’d been introduced to Gary Wohnt—which was no coincidence, as they’d been dating at the time. Both were in their forties and graduates of Battle Lake High School. Neither had escaped their hometown, Gary becoming police chief and Kennie mayor. Their past was sordid, as far as I could suss out, and since Gary had left Kennie cold when he’d skipped town with his Jesus-loving floozy, their relationship had been strained, to say the least.

They had to work together, though, and both were masters of the passive-aggressive game, a skill most Midwesterners come by naturally but that the two of them elevated to an art form. It was funny, almost, to think that they had ever been a couple. Gary was stoic and Kennie pathologically outgoing with an intermittent Southern accent, despite being born and raised in west central Minnesota. Gary favored dark colors and Kennie was hard-pressed to leave the house without a tiara. Gary possessed all of two facial expressions—annoyed and suspicious—whereas Kennie wore make-up like a wedding cake wore frosting. My natural aversion to Kennie had been nearly as strong as my dislike of the police chief, but god help me, the woman had grown on me. She was a fighter, and I liked my women strong.

So I stopped.

And I turned.

Which is how I came to be face to face with Kennie jogging toward me in a sequined pink snowsuit, a wiener dog wearing a matching sweater trundling along behind her, his stubby legs pumping like pistons in the accumulating snow. The wiener dog also wore a pointy elf hat fastened under her neck, her ears poking out of the pink yarn. Her eyes were impossibly big, wet, and brown.

“Awwww,” I said. She really was that cute.

“Thank you,” Kennie said, stopping a few feet away. Her breath was short—it can’t be easy to jog across fresh-fallen snow in pink stiletto boots—but she covered by fluffing the crispy platinum hair that curled around her ear muffs. “I just got it done.”

“I was referring to the puppy. When did you get her?”

“Him,” she corrected. “His name is Peter. He’s been living with me for two weeks.”

“You named your wiener dog ‘Peter’?”

She ignored the question as Peter pitter-patted over to sniff my ankles. “I adopted him from the Humane Society. I stopped by to see if they had any teacup poodles because they’re the latest must-have fashion accessory. Lord knows if I don’t keep pushing the fashion envelope in Battle Lake, who will?”

I shrugged. It was one of those questions.

“Well of course they didn’t have anything cute and small, but then I met Peter. I didn’t think much of him at first, until he had one of his spells. That was when I heard The Calling.”

The capital letters were audible, but I stuffed fingers into curiosity’s ears and lalalala’d. Kennie was notorious for her start-up businesses, from coffin tables that could be converted to your place of eternal rest, to Come Again, her online used marital aids company. Just two months ago, she’d sold me questionable vitamins that had nearly destroyed my dating life. No thanks to finding out about her latest business, I say.

Instead, I knelt to pet Peter. “Hey, sweetie, come here. That’s right. Aren’t you a honey? Aren’t you a doll?” I started scratching his ears, and his back right leg thumped in joy. I reached under his chin to get at the sweet spot that my foster dog Luna loved. Peter’s eyes rolled up in ecstasy. I was smiling when he fell over on his side, stiff as a stick.

“Oh my god!” I put my hand on his chest, feeling for a pulse. “Did he have a heart attack? Did I kill your dog?”

“No, silly,” Kennie said, kneeling down to scoop him into her arms. “I was trying to tell you. I was in the kennel with Peter when he had a spell. He’s narcoleptic. That’s when the Lord came down and called me to help. He said I was to help the silent by becoming an animal and plant psychologist.”

“Animal
and
plant?” I asked, suspicious, and probably about the wrong thing.

“He works in mysterious ways,” Kennie said. “Who can explain His thoroughness?”

I suspected the dual-career idea had more to do with Kennie’s constant marketing machine than divine intervention. “Doesn’t that require some training?”

“Turns out it doesn’t,” she said. She whispered into Peter’s ear, and he began to wiggle. He blinked twice, and then sat up in her arms and began thumping his back right leg again, rejoining us exactly where he’d left off.

The mini-miracle gave me pause. Had Kennie finally discovered her real deal? Could she actually be an animal whisperer? I gave that line of thinking a full twenty seconds. Nope, not possible. Surely Peter had woken up on his own.

“How’s business?” I asked.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Can I put some flyers up in the library tomorrow? You know, spread the word?”

“Sure,” I said. It wouldn’t cost me anything.

“Can I also use you as a referral?”

“But I haven’t used your services.”

“Not yet, but I am offering you a free consultation.” She dug into her front pocket and came out with a business card that appeared printed from a home computer. The word
Serenity
was scrolled across the top in an ornate script, and below that in increasingly smaller print,
Pet and Plant Psychologist
, and underneath that,
Kennie Rogers, PHD
.

“You don’t have a PhD.”

She drew herself up. “I don’t
have
a PhD. I
am
a PHD. ‘Plant/
Pet
Helper and Doer.’” She winked. “So what do you say? I’ll come by
tomorrow morning, maybe around eight? I can visit with your pets, perk up your plants a little? While I’m there, I could give you make-up tips, too. You look like a potato farmer on a death march. That’s just my two cents, of course.”

I wanted to tell her I had change for her, but suddenly I was exhausted. The full stress of the evening had finally caught up with me, landing on my shoulders like vultures, digging into my flesh and pushing me into the ground. “Can I get back to you on that? It’s been a long day.”

“Fine. I’ll mark you down as ‘appointment pending.’”

Looking back, I still wouldn’t be sure if allowing her to come by that next morning would have made any difference, as the pawns leading to the latest and most brutal murder I was to uncover were already in play.