May Day (8 page)

Jeff had referred to the battle the town was named after as one of the most famous in Minnesota history. Now I wondered if these carvings were tied into that. Jeff must have found them after he came back on Saturday to do one more visual survey. That explained why it had taken him longer than he expected in the Twin Cities and why he couldn’t make our date last night, but why had he died? It occurred to me then that I had assumed Jeff had been killed recently, either late last night or early this morning. But he may have never reached the Cities, instead decomposing somewhere, his killer waiting to position his body in the back of the library at just the right time. Meanwhile, I had been going about my life thinking he was still alive.

I felt sick in my blood. It’s an unsettling feeling, the idea of waiting for the dead, believing that they’re alive and thinking of you. It’s mental grave robbery. I needed to find out exactly how long Jeff had been dead before I freaked myself out any more.

I walked back to my car, my head buzzing with new thoughts. I searched for the roughed-up digital camera the
Recall
had issued me and returned to snap photographs of the rock carvings from every angle. Then I gently replaced the sod and used a gardener’s touch to blend it back with the other prairie grass.

I returned to my car again, this time to begin some research. I had enough questions. Now I needed some answers, like what Jeff had found out in this field that was worth killing for. On a hunch, I decided to drive by Kennie’s house. She had the evil eye on me last night in the Stew, and with Jeff dead, I wanted to know why.

I swerved off the main road and onto the back streets to get to Kennie’s faster. Her house was in the residential area of Battle Lake, close to the base of the water tower. If Tammy Faye Baker made $27,000 a year, she would have a house just like Kennie’s. At some point it had been the standard fifties square, one-story house, but when Kennie moved in, her personality infected the entire quarter-acre lot. Her lawn was immaculately mowed and weed-whacked. The one pine tree in her yard was Christmas-hearth perfect and strung with pink flamingo and chili pepper lights. The bright plastic flowers in her window boxes and tracing her front walk would never die, but they could also never hope to outshine the acid-pink-with-lemon-yellow-trim electric box that was Kennie’s home. If that house had a smell, it would be strawberry soda mixed with Aqua Net. I had never been inside, and the Hallmark ceramic collectibles lining her windows told me that was just fine.

I spied the new police Jeep out front of Kennie’s house. Gary Wohnt had come a-calling. It occurred to me that there should be a better place for the law to be the night after a murder, and that further cemented my suspicions of Wohnt. Growing up in a small town where the only regular crime is being a teenager—breaking curfew, smoking, vandalizing—I had an inherent distrust of the law that was deepened by Wohnt’s greasy appearance and authoritative demeanor.

I parked my car at the water tower and strolled down the hill to Kennie’s, searching for a suitable lie should I get caught snooping. I wanted to peek in her windows, but it was barely dusk, and it was too likely that I’d be caught.

At the end of her walkway, I decided that people do talk to the law, especially if they found a dead body that day. I would sit on Kennie’s stoop, and if she or Wohnt came out, I would ask them something. What I would ask, well, that would have to come to me.

I scrunched into myself, looked left and right, and then floated down Kennie’s walk and parked my ass on her stoop. Voices drifted out at me, a man’s and a woman’s, but I couldn’t decipher their words. I stood up and leaned my back against Kennie’s door. That wasn’t much better, so I tipped my ear against the wood, cultivating a look of bored disinterest should a neighbor notice me. I was just a polite gal waiting for the Chief to come out. Ho hum.

“He didn’t come over here. Y’all know me better than that.”

My ears perked up, and I leaned toward the open window closest to the front step.

“Remember, I knew you back then, too.” The Chief.

Kennie giggled flirtatiously. “Better than most, and that and a buck’ll buy y’all a cup of coffee.”

There was a shuffling of furniture and clinking of glasses that obscured the next few exchanges. I pictured Kennie and the Chief inside, he in his uniform, she in a sheer chiffon robe and wearing those high-heeled shoes with bursts of feather over the toes, stirring their martinis and admiring one another. My throat tightened queasily, and the background noise inside quieted down.

“. . . told you this town isn’t ready for gambling. You know that.”

“If I knew that, y’all think I woulda ever brought it up? People don’t know what they’re ready for until I tell ’em. This town is full of sheep and hens.”

I wondered what sort of animal that made Kennie, being that she was the mayor of said sheep and hens. January of this year had marked the beginning of her third term as the town leader. She usually ran
unopposed, but last year the local militia started a movement to unseat her. Their candidate was named Les Pastner, and his campaign slogan was “Les Government Is More.” His campaign team, made up of four guys who spent most of their productive life in a fishing shack, went so far as to craft homemade buttons with Les’s picture over an eagle and two crisscrossed rifles. At the final count, Les received 97 votes to Kennie’s 392. Battle Lake clearly believed that the devil you knew was better than the one you didn’t, even if she was nosy and had big hair.

I leaned farther toward the window, pressing my hands into the vinyl siding to keep my body at the correct height. My calves creaked with the extension.

“You know that’s not why I came. I’m here about the murder. I’m wondering what I need to know.”

The Chief’s stern words made my stomach twist. They were talking about Jeff. I stretched my body out as far as it would reach and swiveled my ears forward, until I was all but sitting in the window.

“The only thing you needed to know I already told you. Jeff was in my . . .”

“Harumph.” The faux cough from directly over my shoulder startled me right off the wall, and I fell over into the bushes. I glanced up hurriedly to see one of Kennie’s neighbors, broom in hand, giving me the “should you really be doing that?” eyebrow lift. A chair screeched inside the house, and I darted away like an antelope.

What sort of person sweeps outside anyhow? How did he know when he was done? Damn neighbor. All the good reasons I had for lurking outside Kennie’s door whipped behind me with my hair. It was just as well. Lies only worked if I was caught spying, not spying and running. Running implied a certain level of guilt. That’s why I didn’t stop at my car and kept cruising through people’s yards and down the quiet streets. Logic told me the Chief would have no problem catching me if I was in my car. He had a radio, after all. If he caught me walking the streets, well then, I was just a citizen out on a nice night. I slowed to a stroll and regulated my breathing.

The school park seemed like a good place to stop, so I pulled up on a swing and studied the brick of the Battle Lake Public School, grades K–8. The rumors in town were that Kennie and the Chief were an item, but small-town rumors were notoriously noxious and exaggerated. Their conversation, at least what I had heard of it, had been official: police chief talking to mayor in the wake of a murder. But why had he thought Kennie would know something about the murder? And what was the talk of gambling? And why couldn’t I shake the feeling that jealousy had colored the Chief’s voice when he asked Kennie about Jeff? And what had Kennie been about to say about Jeff when I had fallen off her stoop? “Jeff was in my past”? “Jeff was in my spinning class”? “Jeff was in my closet right up until I put his mutilated body in the Pl–Sca aisle of the library and isn’t that good rich fun”?

Half an hour passed before I ambled back to my car. By the time I returned to the water tower, the Chief’s Jeep was gone and Kennie’s lights were extinguished. I would get no more information here tonight, but I knew where to go for the real dirt.

Anyone who is anyone
knows the best small-town information can be found in a local bar, and the best local bar in the county was Bonnie & Clyde’s. Ruby, the bartender and owner, used the four-finger rule when mixing her drinks—four fingers of alcohol with a soda spray for garnish. The pool tables were usually full, the jukebox slammed everything from Joan Jett to Metallica to Shania Twain, and everyone knew not to drink the water or eat the ice. Something about a cistern problem in Clitherall, the tiny town located a bunny jump from Battle Lake.

I had spent quite a few nights at Clyde’s, because it was a place where anyone could feel comfortable. People just didn’t care here, or they cared too much, but they never ignored you. On a Tuesday night, I didn’t expect to see much action. The karaoke machine in the bar across the street had drawn away the big dreamers, which was just fine by me. I was looking for pickled locals, the older the better. I had a hunch baking in my head about the Jorgensen land, and I wanted to knead it a bit.

The bell over the door probably jingled when I walked through, but I couldn’t hear it over Patsy Cline lamenting on the jukebox housed in the corner of the massive room. Hal Henricks was swaying next to it, a whiskey Coke more whiskey than pop three-quarters full in his hand and threatening to spill. He had his eyes closed and his mouth open, every other tooth standing proud. “I . . . falllll . . . to pieces!” He was actually doing a pretty good job backing up Patsy. The smell of GPC cigarettes, aged beer, and something that would make good mushroom fodder crept under my pants and stroked my thighs.

My eyes scanned the room, picking up the two epileptic dart machines against the wall, both empty except for plastic bar darts hanging from one. The two pristine pool tables, their surfaces a soft field of white-dotted green, dominated the bar, clearly the ruling gods of this space. In the rear, even more poorly lit section were the tertiary distractions—a foosball table, a Star Trek pinball machine (the genuine Star Trek, with Captain Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Bones lit up in all their campy glory), and a tabletop bowling machine that came with its own sawdust dispenser to make sure the bowling puck didn’t get hung up. At intermittent points, the bowling machine would flash the encouraging message “I owe you a pitcher, cowboy!” Tonight, only Captain Kirk, in his tight black Federation pants, paid attention.

The walls were a golden, polished knotty pine, looming around handmade tables and plastic elementary school chairs. The floor had once been high-gloss maple but had since lost its polish, and if you sat in the right spot, you could peek through the floorboards and watch Ruby switching kegs below. The tiny, dimly lit bathrooms in the back had locks that never worked, and those in the know could tell you that Ruby kept the spare toilet paper in the unused wood stove by the foosball table. The majesty of the place was the magnificent bar that ran the length of the left wall. The wood was a soft butter color that the leather bar stools matched.

All in all it was a perfect mix of comfortable and redneck. Tonight the bees on this flower were belly to the bar: Shmitty, Lena, and Ortis. Perfect. They were Bonnie & Clyde’s staples. Seeing them outside of the bar in Clitherall would have been like spotting Oscar outside of his garbage can on Sesame Street.

I knew at least Shmitty owned a car, the old blue Chevy Impala out front with the bumper sticker “Charleton Heston Is My President,” but I had never actually seen him drive it. Shmitty was one of those grumpy old guys for whom life is terminally unfair, who could have been great if only ever given the opportunity. I suppose if there were a place for career pessimists like him, it would be a bar in a town named Clitherall. He was harmless, though, and always kept the conversation lively.

Lena and Ortis, a married couple who lived in Clitherall, likely walked to and from the bar if they left at all. I had doubts. Rumor had it that they had been champion ballroom dancers back in the day,
and they were still in pretty good shape. I would put both of them at around five foot six, 130 pounds, but I hadn’t actually seen them off their bar stools, so I couldn’t be sure. They wore matching green Clitherall Sportsman’s Club jackets and blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up around brown leather work boots. Their short gray hair and round gray eyeglasses made them a matched pair. You could tell them apart because Lena smoked.

I purposely sat five spots down from the three stoolers because I didn’t want to seem nosy. I hung out for about four minutes before Ruby acknowledged me. I was pretty sure she liked me as much as anybody, but she was not one to hurry to help.

“Thirsty?” she said without coming to my end of the bar. Ortis looked my direction when Ruby talked and tipped his head when his eyes landed on me.

“I’ll take a Diet Coke, no ice.” I nodded back at Ortis. He winked.

“How’s Mira doing tonight?” he asked.

“I’m fine, Ortis,” I said, smiling at Lena. “How’re you and Lena doing on this beautiful spring evening?”

“I’d say I can’t complain, but you know that’d be a lie, hon,” Lena said, chuckling huskily as she tapped her Virginia Slim on the corner of an ashtray the shape and color of a liver. One of Ruby’s boys had made it in high school art class a million years ago.

“I hear ya,” I said, trading Ruby a dollar for a pop. Her dyed red hair was pulled back in a poufy bun, as always, and I could see a heart embroidered on the hip of her homemade blue jeans. I slid two quarters over the lip of the bar. I knew from experience that the tip would be gone within minutes, but I could never catch Ruby actually taking it. It was a game we played.

“Yah, but dose damn barnstormers are killin’ all da good walleye wid der spray, ya bet on it,” Shmitty said, apparently picking up the conversation where my entrance had interrupted it.

The more he drank, the more his Norwegian came out. The majority of the older folks in the area had traces of it, left over from their recent Scandinavian ancestors. The accent mostly manifested itself as a sharp, primary “t” where there should be a soft “th,” as in “He caught tree fingers in his combine’s uptake,” or if the “th” was hard or came at the end of a word, it was pronounced as “d,” as in “He hadta dial da phone wid his pinkie.” Throw in a conversational lilt where random words were drawn out, as in “I shuuurrrhuh know what ya mean,” and you had Shmitty after a six-pack. He took a pull on his tap beer and continued.

“Useta be, I put in my boat and get tree, four, five nice fish wid a couple good leeches. Now I sit out der for a day and get nuttin’. It’s dose damn barnstormers sprayin’ dem potatoes.”

“Whaddya think, Mira?” Ortis said, giving me a Lutheran invite
to join them. “You think the barnstormers are killin’ the fish, or you think old Shmitty forgot where the honey spot is over there on Clitrull Lake?”

I slid over to the empty stool next to Shmitty, smiling at the thick drawl. Even in Ortis’s watered-down version, “Clitherall” lost its soft “th” and a syllable. I also smiled at Ortis calling Shmitty “old.” None of the people at the bar were under seventy on a good day, Ruby
included.

“I think I know just enough about fishing and Shmitty not to get involved in this conversation,” I said, enjoying my pop. There were questionable things about Bonnie & Clyde’s, but the temperature of the beverages wasn’t one of them. They always tasted ice cold and clean.

“What
do
ya know ’bout?” Shmitty asked, obviously not ready to have the subject changed.

“I know there’s talk of sacred Indian monuments and burial grounds around here,” I said, stabbing into the thick. My heartbeat picked up, and I hoped my question sounded casual.

“Ach. You and da rest of da world know dat,” Shmitty said. “I can’t hardly turn da plow widout pullin’ up a leg bone here, an arm bone der. No herbicide’ll take care of dat. You don’t farm round here and not know dat.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Lena said, dragging on her white light. “That curse has hung on this town ever since the battle it was named after.”

“You wanna find out about the Indians, you go ask Curtis at the old folks’ home in town,” Ortis said. “He’ll help you.”

Ruby, Lena, and Shmitty laughed heartily at that. I smiled, confused. “Curtis?”

“Curtis Poling,” Ruby said, not looking at me as she took a draw off her dark drink. “Crazy as a loon, but he’s the town memory. He’s lived in Battle Lake nearly since it was named, and he knows everyone who’s worth knowing. If they don’t keep an eye on him at the Sunset, he’ll sneak up on the roof with his fishing pole and fish into the sky all livelong day. You want to talk to Curtis, you bring him a fish.”

There was another round of laughter at this, and I joined in. I didn’t know if they were serious or not, and I didn’t want to let on.

Sometime over the course of our conversation, Hal had dismounted the jukebox and sidled up next to me, eyeing the base of my neck with pure blue concentration. “Wanna dance?” he asked, all eighty-plus years of him meaning it.

“No thanks,” I said, turning back to Ortis. I wanted to ask what they knew about Jeff, but I had a hard time bringing it up. I couldn’t imagine that everyone in the county hadn’t heard, but I didn’t want their sympathy or questions. “What do you all think of the development on the Jorgensen land?”

Ruby rolled her eyes, and Shmitty set his drink down hard. “I tink dat land was meant to lie fallow, and fallow it should lie!” He picked his drink up again quickly.

Everyone but moon-eyed Hal seemed suddenly off, much like Kennie had at the Turtle Stew last night. Something about my newspaper article or Jeff’s return had set this town on its ear. I was starting to wonder what was really under the grass at the Jorgensen land. Maybe it was some sort of mass burial site for a town of serial killers and I was minutes away from being body-snatched for asking too many questions. I quietly clucked my tongue and wiggled my two little toes, my personal defense against evil.

Before I could follow the train any further, the door opened. In walked a group of Battle Lake High graduates from a few years earlier, their acne clearing but their cheeks still pink and tight. They looked around shiftily, too young to be used to getting into bars legally. Ruby shook her head but walked over to the corner of the bar.

“What do you kids want?” she barked. I wasn’t sure if she was taking their order or kicking them out. It’s hard to tell with Ruby.

“A Coke,” one said. Two more nodded in agreement, but the fourth asked for a beer. Ruby got them their order and set it on the corner of the bar. The four paid and set up on the back pool table. Soon the neat click of pool balls meeting created a backbeat, and the jukebox slid out some Kid Rock. The mood in the bar markedly changed, and the older crowd was not going to talk anymore. I slid my empty glass toward Ruby and stood up. Dirt on Kennie and the Chief would have to wait.

“It’s been nice talking,” I said to no one in particular. Ruby had gone back to studying the muted television mounted on the far wall, and Shmitty was on a new tirade. On my way out the door, I could hear him setting forth on the problems with the metric system as it related to the sizing of Wrangler jeans. Once outside, the cool spring air washed over me but wasn’t enough to kick out the bar smell. I could hear laughter and emphatic, off-key singing wafting from the karaoke bar across the street, and I made my lonely way back to my car. I heard the door to Bonnie & Clyde’s open and close behind me, and I wondered dimly if Hal was about to officially join my fan club.

“Hey,” one of the kids from the bar called over.

I turned and eyed the guy. He was twenty if he was a day, dark hair curling under his Nike cap, brown eyes looking me over foot to head and back again in an involuntary glance, hands shoved into his baggy jeans. I recognized him as Scott Benson, the son of the owner of the local bait shop, Ben’s Bait. That made him the closest thing to royalty in this land of fish worship. He was cute, in a little dude sort of way, and he had always been polite when I saw him around.

“Aren’t you, um, aren’t you the lady who works in the library, the one who wrote the article about that guy that was killed this morning?” he asked.

“I suppose,” I said. He called me “lady.” That’s the kiss of death to any chick nearing thirty. I sucked in my stomach and pushed my shoulders back, trying to look relaxed.

“They know who did it?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” I said brusquely. Since I wasn’t really getting any information tonight, I didn’t feel like giving any.

He pushed his baseball cap back on his head and then returned it to its starting point. “Me and some guys were partying out at the pit Saturday night,” he said. “You know, over on the edge of old lady Jorgensen’s land.”