May Day (15 page)

Near the door was an open-air café featuring a waitress doll complete with apron and customer dolls talking and eating. One even had her head thrown back in an eerie imitation of laughter. Under the covered window was a dance club full of suggestively dressed dolls cutting a rug, drinking, or just being wallflowers. To my left was a baby doll beauty pageant, and it looked like they were currently judging the swimsuit competition. To my right was a strip club diorama set inside a glittery cardboard box with “Gentleman’s Club” written across the front with a Sharpie. Inside was a walkway with tiny metal poles that looked like they were made out of knitting needles. Dolls in bikinis straddled the shiny metal, and I marveled at the intricacy of the tables in front of the stage, little martini glasses and ashtrays glued to most of them. There were even stamp-sized posters on the wall of the strip club.

In the center of the room stood a miniature football field with white chalk lines traced across the green felt surface every ten centimeters or so. This was the only tableau with men in it, and there were only two of them: the first was a Ken doll standing tall in the center of the field, a baseball cap on his head and a coach’s whistle around his neck. He held the hand of a much shorter generic female doll in a cheerleader’s uniform. They both stood over the second male, an unidentified brand of doll lying on his back with one of his legs bent under and back, wearing a football uniform with the number 17 on it. At least I think that’s what number it was—it was hard to tell with the red paint splattered all over the front.

I was willing to bet my safe bed—the very bed I wished I was in now—that Jeff had been number 17 in high school. I felt narrow sheets of ice slip between my skin and muscles as I stared around the small room, beyond the doll fantasy world clamoring for my attention.

Where the wall showed through, I could see picture on top of picture of a woman who looked very familiar. It took me two blinks to realize they were all pictures of Kennie Rogers back when she was Kennie Jensen. She looked exactly the same as she had in the yearbook, perfect doll face and perfect doll hair. Some were publicity posters from her Miss Teen Minnesota and homecoming queen days, but most were obviously taken without her knowledge. A whole series on the far wall featured her and a man who looked like a young Jeff, though it was hard to tell because he was in the shadows of any photo he was in.

My stomach was in my throat and my ass was out the door.
Charlie’s Angels
had
not
prepared me for this. I took the stairs three at a time, which is never a good idea in an old house. I clipped my head on the overhang from the landing and found myself flat on my back on the nubby carpet of the dining room. The carpeting scratched at me, and I could feel cold cement under it. I heard the sound of thousands of mouse feet scurrying toward me and away from me as I stared at the smooth ceiling above, immobilized by fear and pain. I forced my body up, dazed, and ran through murky grayness, only to realize I had imagined my escape. The floor was still holding me. Blind, clawing hands pulled me down, and I couldn’t get a scream past the dark closing in. I thought I heard a creak at the top of the stairs, but it could have been the sound of the sealed door of my hysteria opening.

I thrashed at the paralysis tying me to the floor and pictured myself standing again, and again, until finally a scream broke free of my mouth and I was on my feet and running for real. And of course there’s nothing like running to make a person feel like they’re being chased, so I ran even faster, my only thought getting to my car safely.

I flew into my Toyota and locked every door hard before I turned the engine, refusing to look at the house. I was sure I would see dolls in the upstairs window beckoning for me to come back and play, their smiles serene and their waves beauty-queen perfect. The feeling that I was being watched was tangible, ghost hands stroking my neck and laughing at me.

I peeled out of Lartel’s driveway and drove so fast down the gravel that I didn’t need lights until I got back on County Road 78 and saw the normal traffic whizzing by. My hands were still shaking, and needles of nausea pricked my body. I felt my utility belt and was relieved to see that I had the flashlight and the knife. All I needed now was a really hot shower in a really safe place. I guess I now knew why Lartel made my skin crawl. And unless he had a room in one of the sheds, that first bedroom filled with dresses and ruffled bedding was where he slept.

My boss was a creepy, cross-dressing, doll-loving, Kennie-obsessed, superclean freak of nature. And it was looking more like he was also a murderer. Good Christ. This is what desolate, solitary winters do to a person. There was only one place I could go to cleanse myself.

Bonnie & Clyde’s was
jumping
. Thursday night is close to the weekend for a reason, was the saying. At least that’s what they were saying at the bar. I needed a crowd of people around me, so this was ideal. I wanted a vodka cranberry, but that meant that I would have to swallow some Clitherall ice, and besides, Ruby would probably have to go to the store to get the cranberry juice. I settled for a shot of tequila and a beer and leaned against the bar, wondering if people could tell where I had been. Something as dramatic as Lartel’s little doll shop of horrors should leave a mark.

“Hey, girl, drinking two days in a row! Welcome home!” Gina was loud enough to be heard from ten feet away, but nobody turned to look. Yelling was expected here. She pushed her ample girth through the crowd, her platinum hair glowing in the smoky light.

“Gina! Come with me,” I said urgently and pulled her toward the back.

“Hey, hey, heeeyyy now! Where’s a hi?” slurred a voice next to me.

“Hi, Hal.” I waited until we were in the relatively quiet recreation area, then told Gina what I had done. Spock looked down at me sagely from the back of the pinball machine as I filled her in. “I swear, Gina, it was the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen. Dolls everywhere, and they were
doing
stuff. I think I even saw a doll massage parlor in the corner of the room.”

Gina’s eyes were perfectly round. “Jesus H. Christ. You know, there’s been stories about Lartel, but he mostly keeps to himself.” She smacked my arm. “I can’t believe you snuck into his house! If you do that again, I’m going to fucking kick your ass.”

“I didn’t even tell you the worst part. There was a doll dressed up like a football coach, holding the hand of a cheerleader doll, standing over a murdered football player doll. Lartel used to coach Jeff in football in high school, and Karl told me Kennie used to be a cheerleader. What does all this mean?”

“I think it means he’s a freak,” Gina said. “And I’m a nurse, so that’s a medical diagnosis. Shit. He must have had something going on for Kennie back in the day. Were there any recent pictures of her?”

“None.”

“He must have coveted her pants right off.” Gina did a full body shudder like only wet dogs usually do. “You know who you should talk to is Bev Taylor. She works mornings at Ben’s Bait, and she used to be a cheerleader in the eighties. She for sure knows Kennie, and there’s no love lost between those two, so she could fill you in on all the dirt from back then.”

I was beginning to calm down, soothed by the safety of numbers. Lartel’s house started to feel like something I had imagined, light years away from the sounds of beer mugs clinking on tabletops, pool balls clacking together, and raucous bar laughter. “I wouldn’t mind making some sense of this.”

Gina nodded understandingly. “So you’re pretty sure Lartel had something to do with Jeff’s death?”

“I don’t know. His voodoo room is the definition of suspicious, but I don’t know how he could have, unless he came back from Mexico, killed his cousin, and then ran back to the beach.”

“Maybe he never went.”

I looked at her, but she was leering off in the distance, her eyes bouncing off her husband to the back end of the man he was talking to. “Do you see that tight ass on Tony? Too bad he still wears acid-washed jeans.”

“Do you think Lartel is still around, Gina?”

“I was just kidding, Mir. I’m sure Lartel went to Mexico. Why would he lie about that?”

“So he’d have an alibi while he killed Jeff.”

“How could he know Jeff was coming? Nobody knew.”

“But Lartel was family. Jeff might have told his family. For all I know, he’s the reason Jeff came to town. He had been looking up some info on Trillings online.”

“Maybe,” Gina said doubtfully. “But Lartel has been planning this trip for months. That’s why they hired you, you know. It’s the first vacation he’s taken since he started at the library. Besides, why would he want to kill his own cousin? Playing with dolls doesn’t make him a murderer.”

“I don’t know, Gina. Obviously he’s unstable, and he’s got a thing for Kennie. Maybe his perpetual jealousy finally snapped. Or maybe he is holding a grudge because Jeff wouldn’t play in the last football game at state.”

“A high school football game is not a reason to kill, Mira. Tony’s ass, on the other hand . . .” A smile played at the corner of her mouth.

I rolled my eyes. Gina had expended all of her available serious attention.

“Hey, Gina, you’re up!”

“Oops, back to darts. You wanna play?”

“No thanks. I think I’ll go home, take a shower with some steel wool and lye, and get some rest. I suddenly feel very exhausted.”

Gina gave me an impulsive hug. “Promise me you won’t go back to Lartel’s house. And you know, you should probably tell the police what you know.”

“Yeah, probably.” I gave her a wan smile. For all I knew, Gary Wohnt had made the death threat against me. I was going to lie low until I had something more substantial, something that I could take to the real
police.

“Bye, chickie!” Gina started to wander back into the writhing mass of beer-greased hormones, but I remembered something important and pulled her back.

“Not so fast, chickie.” I looked her in the eyes, and hers were bloodshot. “Don’t you want to know how my date with the Moorhead prof went?”

She didn’t even have the grace to act sheepish. “I know he wants
more head.
” She put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

“I think he’d have to ask his mother first. Do you know he mentioned her eleven times over lunch?
And
he talked about the diet he was on? What sort of man diets? He was not right.”

“Hmm. You’re so judgmental, Mira. Most people wouldn’t even notice that stuff. He’s a college professor, for gawd’s sake, and it’s not good for you to wallow in depression. Anyhow, you’ll have a chance to let him down easy over lunch on Saturday. He’ll pick you up at work at noon.” She winked at me, and as she walked away, she said over her shoulder, “He really likes you, Mir. You should see the e-mails he sent. You must remind him of his mother.”

I imagine she was cackling, but I couldn’t hear her over the bar din. I thought about navigating through the crowd to pull her hair, but I suppose this was my instant karma. I should have told Professor Jake that he wasn’t my type when I had the chance, and that would have been that. I pulled out Jeff’s field book and put “dump professor” on my Saturday to-do list.

I bought a bottle of vodka on my way out.

“Hello?” I had the cordless phone in my hand before I was fully awake. There was no immediate answer on the other end, and I felt a surreal jolt as I tried to place myself. For a second I thought I was still jammed to the thinly carpeted floor in Lartel’s house, struggling to pull myself upright. The obnoxious sound of birds singing, coupled with the squeaky springs of my bed, assured me that I was safe in Sunny’s doublewide. “Hello, hello, hello!” I said. I hate crank phone calls and usually just say my one hello and wait. It always throws freaks off. Their kick is altering the norm, so if you do it first, they have nothing left.

“You
are
still answering the phone, eh Mira?”

I sat back on the pillows. “Hi, Ron,” I said, recognizing the voice of the
Battle Lake Recall
’s editor in chief.

“Hello, Mira! So how about it? ‘Murder in the Midwest’? ‘Former Star Battler Loses the Big Game’?”

“Hunh?” I looked at the digital clock next to my bed. It wasn’t even six a.m.

“Your article! What are you going to call your article on the Wilson murder? It’s a scoop, you know. I have papers as far away as Duluth asking me what I know, asking to run whatever story we write.”

I ran my fingers through my hair until I got to the snarls. I must have tossed and turned all night. “I’m working on it, Ron. I’ve got some leads I’m following up on.”

“I have to have something by tonight for the Monday paper, Mira. We need to get something in the paper, some details. What luck, that you interviewed him before he died, and then his body turned up at your work! What luck!”

I scowled. “With luck like that, I should stay in bed most days, Ron. I’ll have something for you by tomorrow, ’kay?”

“OK,” Ron said, “but no later than tomorrow. I’m saving half the front page. And get me another recipe. That phony abalone was
delicious!”

I hung up without a goodbye. Ron wasn’t much for small talk and neither was I, which suited our relationship but didn’t really help us as reporters. Fortunately, the
Recall
was just a small paper. I thought about the article I was working on appearing in newspapers around the state. It didn’t excite me. At this point I needed to find out what happened for peace of mind.

I stretched and heaved myself out of bed. I hadn’t actually taken a shower last night because Lartel’s dolly land had rattled me enough that I didn’t want to be naked for a while. I still felt that way this morning, so in lieu of a shower I splashed water on my face and pulled my hair up and back in a ponytail bun. I darted a toothbrush over my teeth, dabbed some sandalwood oil in my armpits, got dressed, grabbed a banana, and was out the door.

I was in my car before I remembered that I hadn’t filled the bird feeders since last weekend, and here it was Friday. Now was not the time to let the bird kingdom turn against me. I walked back to the feeders, the frost-tipped grass crunching under my feet. I could actually see my breath this morning.

My poor garden. I had gambled that there wouldn’t be another freeze until fall, and I had lost. Tonight I would have to do some serious green nurturing.

Once in back of the house, I took the brick off the garbage can that held the feed and seed mix and hoisted the bag up to fill the feeders. I envisioned the birds watching me in the trees,
Godfather
-style, shaking their heads.

Back at my car, I had to use the side of my hand to scrape the rime off the window. I had an ice scraper in the back somewhere, but I was not going to use it out of principle. It was not unheard of for there to be a last frost or two in May, even snow in June, but I wasn’t going to legitimize it with an ice scraper.

My radio turned over with my engine and startled me. I must have left it cranked when I shut the car off last night, and now Robert Plant was trying to convince me that he really did have a whole lotta love.
I believed him, but I wasn’t in the mood. I clicked the radio off and headed out the driveway. I was actually just being proactive, as my radio has a tendency to pick up screeching static pockets on cold mornings, usually just as I envision myself slinking to the beat in a cat suit through an admiring crowd. I cranked the heat, putting the still-icy hand I used to scrape the windows in front of the registers.

It was early enough that I hoped I could catch Bev Taylor at Ben’s before she got busy. It was still a week shy of fishing opener, so the bait business would be pretty slow, but Ben’s rented videos and sold newspapers, tourist trap toys, T-shirts, souvenirs, and fishing and hunting gear, so they appealed to a diverse crowd. The danger of coming here over my lunch break was that the front would be lined up with old-timers or part-timers telling stories, and I didn’t want an audience for my questioning.

Fortunately, the only car in the parking lot when I got there was a battered Chevy pickup, the rust accenting the original green paint surprisingly evenly. I assumed this was Bev’s truck. I pulled my old Toyota in next to it, thinking the two vehicles would have a lot to talk about if they could get past the language barrier.

The bell tinkled merrily as I entered, and the unique and inviting smell of bait welcomed me. Fish stink; bait smells like a warm, clean aquarium. It’s one of the mysteries of Minnesota. I walked straight over to the bait tanks and peered at the wriggling sacrifices. The little minnows were my favorite. I couldn’t look at them without feeling a tickling flutter in my hand. Holding a minnow is like holding a butterfly with the lease to its life. I strolled to the end of the bait tanks, the denizens getting progressively larger until the bait began to look like keepers to me. I should have come here for Curtis Poling’s fish.

I always wondered what people caught with the big shiners. I looked around at the mounted fish lining the store, the muskies snapping their razor teeth into perpetuity, the walleye so big they looked like googly-orbed sea monsters, and even some sunnies that seemed ready to explode with their own superfish girth. I had never seen fish this big actually caught, so I preferred to view them as illusions to titillate the tourists, similar to the jackalopes at Wall Drug in South Dakota or the uni-goat at the Renaissance Festival. These glandular mounted fish, I surmised, were just the biggest bait in the store, set up to catch vacationers.