Knee High by the 4th of July (12 page)

I followed the faint red tire tracks leading toward the cabin, careful to keep to the clear, dry sections of road. My senses were hyper-tuned. I was sure that whatever kids had been out here messing around were gone, but I didn’t know what they had left behind. The cabin itself looked small, maybe two big rooms inside, and the door must be facing the lake because I couldn’t see it. The outside was covered in stained wood siding with a brown shake roof. It blended in nicely with the forest and was probably a great place to sneak a party if a person didn’t know that Johnny was coming out here regularly.

I peered through the window closest to me, facing the driveway, and saw that there was in fact one big room inside, with a small kitchen, a bed, and steps to a loft. There was one door off the main room, and judging from the cabin’s dimensions, it could only be a small bathroom. The bed looked rumpled and muddy.

More pressing, however, was the amount of light being let in through the wide open door on the lakeside of the cabin. Johnny had been right to worry. Some kids had broken in. I made my way around the building through the raspberry brambles, wondering why it was that people never did for themselves—landscapers had the messiest yards, chefs rarely ate at home, and carpenters’ houses were never finished.

When I made it to the side of the cabin facing Silver Lake, the condition of the door startled me. It hung out, only one hinge left to secure it to the frame, and its lock and handle had been obliterated. Splinters of wood lay on the ground. I picked a chunk up, noting that it was quality wood, not the type I had in the double-wide. A pine scent laced with sawdust, mildew, and something disturbing that I couldn’t quite place washed out of the cabin. The trespassing partiers had probably peed in a corner.

I wiped at the mosquitoes I had stirred up, and took a deep breath before going in. The inside of the cabin was surprisingly neat, except for the lumpy bed in the shadows. The central room was maybe twenty feet by twenty feet, and all the kitchen cupboards were closed and there were no dishes in the sink. I figured the smell must be coming from the bathroom, but when I pushed open the door, careful not to leave prints, only a simple toilet, cover up and water clean, and a pedestal sink stared back at me.

I sighed. The smell must be coming from the bed. I had avoided looking too closely at it because my fear was that Johnny’s cabin bed had become the local lover’s lane, and I didn’t want to see that up close. I had come this far, though, and I might as well see her through. The rotten, coppery scent became overwhelming as I strode to the bed, and when I reached it, my brain didn’t know what to make of the sight.

The sheets and blankets were rumpled like waves on the ocean, and pools of maroon so dark it was almost black marred their soft green surface. Was this more paint? I walked to the far side, where a nightstand stood between the bed and the wall. A blanket had fallen in this space. When I leaned in, I saw that the blanket was wearing a blood-crusted T-shirt, blue jeans, and one shoe. The other foot was bare and stiff from death, it’s sheer whiteness the most disturbing sight. I couldn’t look at the head, my eyes unable to let go of the image of that icy pale foot, sprinkled with wiry black hair on the toes and top.

I covered my nose, trying to stem the tide of nausea surfing on the musty smell of cabin and woods mixed with the heavy iron scent of violent death. The room fell sideways, and I caught myself from falling by lurching the other way. The buzzing in my ears made it impossible to think, and I stumbled out of the cabin, swallowing furiously to keep from throwing up. I could not leave any trace of me in this butcher shop.

Outside, I gulped in the fresh air of the forest, tears streaming down my face. Had Johnny and Dolly set me up?

I biked home in
a daze, showered, scrubbing my skin until it was raw, and drove to my pay phone of choice for making 911 calls. I called in the body at Johnny’s cabin, giving the location but no details, not even my fake name. Afterward, I cruised to Gina’s house, no longer caring if Wohnt saw me. She wasn’t home, so I let myself in and helped myself to a glass of vodka on ice. That had been my dad’s favorite drink, minus the ice. I could see where a person could get used to it. The slightly antiseptic taste felt good going down, disinfecting your memories and blotting out dark thoughts.

By my second glass of vodka, I was beginning to feel in control again. So what if Johnny and Dolly had killed a guy, hid the corpse in his cabin, and set me up to take the fall? I had outsmarted them. No one knew I had been to the cabin, and now, the police were going to find the body and nail those two. You couldn’t really blame them for choosing me as their patsy, anyhow. Finding dead bodies had so far been one of my recurring occupations in Battle Lake, so I had good references. And what did I care? I didn’t need anybody. I was just fine being alone. You don’t get hurt if you’re alone.

I dozed off for a while and was awakened by the fierce growl of my stomach. Now that I had my life in order, going to the Fortune Café for a late lunch seemed like a grand idea. I stumbled out the door, wondering when it had gotten so damn hot outside. Certain that my car ignition had turned into the bake switch on an oven, I decided to walk. I had traipsed almost to the front door of the café when I felt an ominous presence loom behind me, blocking out the sweltering July sun. I turned to see a steely-eyed Gary Wohnt staring me down.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

I swayed slightly, then fixed him with an icy stare. I had to squint one eye a little to do it. “Gary.”

“Where are you going?”

Answer nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. “Where are
you
going?”

“I need you to come to the station to answer some questions, Ms. James.”

“OK, well I’m free later this afternoon, maybe around 4:00?”

“Now.”

“Can’t we just talk here?”

“I don’t think you want that.”

“Fine.” I tossed my head with what I hoped was arrogant innocence, but to tell the truth, I felt a little green around the gills. Gary Wohnt and I silently walked the two blocks to the Battle Lake Police Station. The three-room brick building was stifling. The open windows allowed in the pizza-oven hot air of the late morning, and the lazy ceiling fan circulated it down into my face.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Ms. James.” It was not a question.

I pulled up the metal chair with a screech and sat down so I was facing Gary Wohnt across his desk. I was going to outlast him. He had nothing on me. I would stare him down, one mask of control to another. We might be here for days, but I would not talk.

“I didn’t take Wenonga. I was only there on Friday morning because I noticed he was gone. I was going to tell you but I was worried you’d think I had something to do with stealing him. I wouldn’t steal him. I loved him. Those were my fingerprints on the one post, but that was just an accident.”
Dammit
.

Wohnt sighed and closed his eyes for ten long seconds, his fingers forming a teepee over the bridge of his nose. “That’s not why I asked you to come here today, Ms. James. You are here because two hours ago, a dead body was found in Jonathan Leeson’s cabin on Silver Lake, and you were the last confirmed person seen in Mr. Leeson’s company.”

Shit. He was up to date. “Why aren’t you out there now?”

“There are officers on the scene. In fact, the FBI has been called in. I would like to be able to present as much information as possible to them when they arrive. You can help me with that.” He leaned back in his chair, but his posture did not give an inch. “Do you know where Mr. Leeson is right now?”

I knew where he told me he was going to be. Visiting his grandma in Stevens Point. However, I was very sure that was not where he was. “Did you ask his mom?”

“Mrs. Leeson said she believed her son was staying at the cabin for the night and does not know his current whereabouts.”

“Do you know whose body it is?”

“We haven’t positively identified the body. What did you and Mr. Leeson visit about at Stub’s last night?”

“Ummm, gardening mostly.”

“Are you dating Mr. Leeson?”

I snorted involuntarily. “No.”

“I think it’d be best if you submitted a set of your fingerprints.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Do I have to?”

“We would look favorably upon it if you did.”

“Do I have to?”

“I highly recommend it.”

“Do I have to?”

“No.”

I took a deep breath. “Then I think I’ll go. OK?”

“Don’t go far.”

I was walking toward the door, worried that Wohnt was going to change his mind about letting me go but unable to stop the question leaking out my mouth. “The body you found. Was it missing part of its scalp?”

Gary Wohnt had closed his eyes again, so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but for a second, it sounded like there was humor in his voice. “Yes. It was.”

As I pushed outside into the hairy wall of heat, my head was reeling, and it didn’t stop until I entered the door of the Fortune Café. The cool air laced with ginger and chocolate brought my anxiety down a notch. I would get to the bottom of this. The whole Battle Lake world was in a steaming latrine, and I needed to fix it. Not to save anyone else, mind you, but for my own peace of mind and so the cops would leave me alone. I’d find the Chief, and Bill Myers, and discover why Dolly and Johnny had hidden a body in his cabin for me to find. Those who had messed up would pay. I squared my shoulders and walked up to the counter and directly into the lusty path of Brando Erikkson’s gaze. He stood from his two-chair table and strode toward me.

“Mira! Two run-ins in under twenty-four hours. Fate must be bringing us together.”

“It’s a small town,” I grumbled. “It’s gravity bringing us together.”

“Ha ha! Will you join me?”

I looked around the tiny café, dominated by a large glass display case leading to the kitchens in back. It was lunch rush, and there were no empty tables. I poked my head around the corner to the game room and library and still saw no place to sit. I considered getting some coffee to go, but reminded myself of my newfound commitment to get to the bottom of things. That included talking to Brando to find out what he knew. I might as well do it in public, in the daylight. “Sure.”

I started to walk toward the counter, but Brando put his arm on mine. “I’ll get it. What would you like?”

I sat down reluctantly. “An iced coffee and a cinnamon scone would be fine, thank you.” I grudgingly admired his very tight rear as he walked toward the counter. Too bad he gave me the creeps. My brain stayed quiet until he returned.

“Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

Brando set the coffee and scone in front of me, but instead of sitting at the chair across the table, he stood, leaning into it. “You didn’t come to my party last night.”

I sipped the sweet, cool coffee and felt it slice through some of the fog on my brain. “I was tired. I went home.”

“Too bad. It was a great time. Good music, good drinks, hot men.” He winked at me, and stretched his hands over his head like a cat in a sunbeam.

“Great.”

“Yes, this is a nice little town you have here. The woodchuck is going to fit in real nice.”

I coughed on a piece of scone. “I was going to ask you about that. Why a woodchuck?”

Brando smirked and ran a hand sinuously up his own thigh and stroked his chest through his shirt. He placed one foot on his chair, giving me a full view of his testicle cleavage. I was pretty sure he was about ready to ask me to cup his balls when I realized what he was doing. He was flirting with himself, with me as his audience.

“Can you please sit down? It’s hard to talk to you when you’re standing.”

Brando looked slightly taken aback, and then disappointed, but he plunked down. “You’re a feisty one.”

“Not so much. Bitter is probably a better word. So why the woodchuck? Why not another Chief Wenonga?”

He ran his fingers through his glossy black hair. “Indian chiefs are costly to make. It takes weeks to make any of the big men, but the Indians take even longer. We start out with a single statue mold for all of them, and from that, we create any variety of roadside art—Paul Bunyans, Muffler Men, Carolina Cowboy, Jesus Christ. For those guys, we just place different objects in the hands, like axes or crosses, but for the Indian line, we needed to build a whole new chest and arms for the mold. We don’t even make them anymore. In fact, we only made three statues out of that Chief Wenonga mold.”

“You’re in a weird line of work.”

Brando shook his head in disagreement, donning his salesman cap. “Not at all! My dad started out making boats in Wisconsin, but we needed something to do during the off-season, so we started making the big men. The work was crude at first, but now it’s art. I don’t sell anything that isn’t absolutely perfect.”

“Which is why you’re giving away the woodchuck?”

“It’s face melted a little. You can hardly tell when you’re driving past it.”

“When is Battle Lake getting the woodchuck?”

“It’s on its way as we speak, from Stevens Point, Wisconsin.”

Click. Last night Johnny told me he was visiting his grandma in Stevens Point. Brando’s company is in Stevens Point. Too much coincidence. “You know Johnny Leeson?”

“Oh yeah, he’s that albino guy in that band. The one with the brother. I like their stuff.” Brando took this opportunity to slide his hand across the table and onto my arm. I grabbed my coffee and brought it to my lips, slurping the last of it and wrenching my arm out of reach.

“Not Johnny Winter. Johnny Leeson. He’s from Battle Lake.”

“Never heard of him.”

I got the distinct impression Brando didn’t pay much attention to men. “So how long does it take to dismantle a statue like Chief Wenonga?”

Brando’s eyes flashed sharply, so quickly that I might have imagined it, and then went back to their half-lidded state. “I don’t know. I’m an artist, not a construction worker. That was before my modeling career, you know.”

If his reference to modeling was meant to impress me, it was a wasted effort. “If you make the statues, you have to have some idea of how they come apart.”

He sighed and leaned back heavily in his chair, looking bored. “You only have one-note women in this town? That Kennie Rogers is about as interesting as hemorrhoid surgery, too. Sloppy kisser, by the way.”

I clenched my fists. I wasn’t going to sign up for Kennie’s fan club anytime soon, but knocking her was my job, not his. “You can say a lot of things about Kennie, but the woman is not boring. And the only thing worse than a sloppy kisser is a man who kisses and tells. So what do you know about taking fiberglass statues apart?”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes, still pouting. “Like I said, the statues are made from fiberglass in open molds. Then we bond the seams together, and you’ve got a statue. We set them up; we don’t take them down.”

The bell on the front door twinkled, and Brittany and Heaven strolled in. Brando’s eyes were on them like metal on a magnet, and I was immediately invisible.

“Never? You never take them down?”

“Huh?”

Brittany and Heaven sauntered to the front and bent over the baked goods display case, their Daisy Dukes magically covering their lower ass shelf. Or maybe they didn’t have lower ass shelves. Suddenly angry myself, I grabbed my empty plate and glass and set them on the bus cart behind me. I flicked Brando on his head to get his attention. “You’ve
never
taken a statue down?”

He kept his gaze on the eye candy, a sneer on his well-formed lips. “No. You’d need a wrecking ball for that. There’s no way to take one of those statues down without destroying it.”