Stranded (13 page)

B-r-i-b-e. Now I understood what Kelli had been getting at. Under a ruse of civic generosity, Hiram had been bribing the town to go along with his huge project.

“But you can’t bribe everyone,” I protested. “Surely some people are immune.”

“Uncle Hiram certainly tried. Although I’m not sure he had enough money to live up to all the promises he made, such as restoring the old hotel.” She frowned slightly but didn’t elaborate. “And he had plenty of other pie-in-the-sky promises. He convinced everyone the mine would bring economic sunshine and blessings to Hello. There would be jobs, and businesses would prosper. Everyone would benefit. He got a state senator to come and give a glowing endorsement. The good times would roll. Dale Halburton saw dollar signs on big new profits at his hardware store. The bank president saw deposits rolling in. One of the town councilmen saw Uncle Hiram backing him for a state political office. New industries would move in. Property values would soar. Practically everyone saw advantages for themselves personally.”

“Would that have happened?”

“I think at least some of it would,” Kelli agreed reluctantly. “There surely would have been jobs at the mine. And I can see that the town desperately needs an economic boost. I just didn’t think that what reopening the mine might do for the town was worth the destruction it would cause.”

“There are a lot more environmental laws and restrictions now that they’d have to follow.”

“Money talks,” she repeated grimly. “And people saw whatever damage the mine would cause as way out here, not right in town where they’d have to see and live with it.”

“People knew how strongly you opposed reopening the mine?”

“Oh yeah. Shortly after I came, Uncle Hiram gave a talk at a big town council meeting to give the project another boost. He had all these statistics and wonderful reports about how the town would benefit, even hired some guy to come in with a Power Point presentation. He didn’t quite promise everyone would be driving BMWs and sending their kids to Harvard, but that’s what they got out of it. He had everyone all charged up. Then, during the question-and-answer period, I got up and spoke. I’m sure people at first assumed I meant to endorse everything Hiram wanted, so this big shock wave rolled through the crowd when I gave all the reasons the mine shouldn’t be reopened, that an ounce or two of gold wasn’t worth ripping up forty tons of ore. Forty tons multiplied many times over, of course.”

“This was not what people wanted to hear.”

“Not then, or at a couple of later meetings. From the reaction, you’d have thought I was opposing motherhood, apple pie, and the flag. People saw me as personally out to destroy their prosperity. People are not happy campers when they think you’re snatching away prosperity that’s within their reach.”

“And now, with Hiram dead, the mine will not be reopened.”

“Exactly. For which everyone blames me. And they’re right, of course. As long as I control the Lucky Queen, it will never be reopened. But I didn’t murder Uncle Hiram to keep it from happening, which is what some people think!”

“So, knowing you would inherit the mine if Hiram were dead, and also knowing you were against its reopening—”

“Vehemently against,” Kelli emphasized.

“So anyone who also objected to the reopening of the mine and wanted to stop it from happening could reasonably expect that if Hiram was dead it wouldn’t happen. All this person had to do was get Hiram out of the way so you’d be in control. And if you got blamed for the death, it was a ‘so what?’ as far as this person was concerned.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Kelli said. An exceptionally large chunk of mud flew up and clunked my window, and I automatically ducked. “But there weren’t all that many who opposed what Hiram wanted to do. And certainly no one I’d suspect of killing him to make certain the mine didn’t reopen.”

“So who did oppose it?”

“I was certainly the most vocal and loudest opponent. Lucinda was against it. Norman, too, here at the mine. A few newcomers in those big, new places on the hill above Hiram’s place. People who moved in with money, whose prosperity is independent of whatever happens with the town, and don’t want it to change. And one of Lucinda’s sons who lives out in California wrote several strong letters to the editor against it. He grew up here, but he’s an outsider now, someone with California ideas, and no one paid much attention to him.”

“Lucinda was opposed?” I asked, surprised.

“She never publicly came out against it, and I don’t think she ever would have. But I know she and Uncle Hiram argued about it in private.”

“And Norman was against it too?”

“He and Uncle Hiram butted heads about it all the time. Norman even went to a meeting once, and got up and talked. But not too much attention gets paid to the opinions of a man with spinach in his beard and pieces of tin can wrapped around his shoes to reinforce the soles.”

Understandable, I suppose.

“Norman’s lived out here for at least fifteen years, maybe twenty. It’s not really a caretaking job, mostly just a free place to live. Though Hiram gave him a few dollars now and then. He gets a little Social Security and manages to survive. Hiram assured him that he could keep on living here as long as he wanted, but it would change Norman’s entire life along with the landscape, of course, if the mine reopened. Huge equipment, people, noise, dust. His old shack might well have been swallowed up by the pit from which they’d be excavating the ore. Even if it weren’t, he likes his peace and quiet, and he doesn’t want to see the area devastated and the wildlife driven off any more than I do. Most people call him ‘Nutty Norman’ and consider him an environmental disaster of his own, but, in his own way, he really is an environmentalist.”

I thought about how Norman used to stay in that bedroom at Hiram’s house, how their arguments and drinking could have gotten out of control. “Maybe Norman felt even more strongly about all this than you realize,” I suggested.

“Strongly enough for him to hit Hiram on the head and push him out the window? Is that what you’re saying? Oh, Ivy . . .” Kelli shook her head and smiled. “Wait until you meet him. Wait until you see his cemetery. See what you think then.”

Up ahead I could see Norman’s shack sitting on the crest of a hill. A rusty metal roof topped walls of weathered, unpainted wood. A spiral of smoke drifted from a tall stovepipe. A wooden porch with ramshackle steps ran across the front, firewood stacked beside it. An honest-to-goodness outhouse stood off to one side, a shed that I guessed was a chicken house just beyond it. A rooster, crowing mightily, paraded on the roof of the house, and hens scratched where the ground wasn’t covered with snow. Norman had shoveled pathways to road, outhouse, and chicken house.

“Does he ever get snowed in?” I asked.

“Sometimes. This winter hasn’t been bad so far, but Uncle Hiram said Norman had to snowshoe to get to town some winters. When he did that, he’d sometimes stay at the house several weeks at a time. A bone of contention, I’d guess, if a wife happened to be in residence. But Hiram had his loyalties and wasn’t about to budge concerning Norman.”

An old pickup surrounded by snow stood a few feet from the house. The fenders were muddy brown, the hood a faded blue-green, the bumper a length of rusty metal pipe. It looked as if it had been cobbled together from stray parts of various other vehicles. A block of wood supported one wheel with no tire. A brown hen flapped her wings on the roof of the cab.

“That’s Norman’s Dorf,” Kelli said.

“Dorf?” I repeated, not certain if she meant the vehicle or the hen.

“It started out as a Ford, the hood anyway, but Norman rearranged the metal letters to turn Ford into Dorf.”

I suspected Ford would appreciate that. I doubt they’d want their name on this strange conglomeration of parts.

“I think the chicken on the pickup is Ginger, of Ginger Rogers fame. Marilyn is one of the other brown hens.”

I took a wild guess. “Marilyn as in Monroe?”

“Right. She’s one of Norman’s favorite actresses. Unfortunately, Julia died a while back.”

“Julia as in . . . ?”

“Julia Roberts. Norman’s favorites are not limited to long-ago ladies.”

I didn’t think we’d make it all the way to the house, but Kelli churned right on up the last steep section and slammed to a stop within a dozen feet of the porch.

Norman opened the door and stepped onto the porch, one hand lifted in greeting, big smile on his face. He had a bushy gray beard, a skimpy ponytail, dark pants held up with red suspenders, a plaid shirt of some indeterminate color, and unexpectedly, rather expensive-looking, sheepskin-lined leather slippers. A gift from Kelli or Hiram, I suspected.

“Kelli, halooo!”

Kelli slid out of the Bronco. “Hi, Norman,” she called. “I brought some feed for the chickens and some blackberry balsam for your stomach. How’s it feeling today?”

“Can’t complain.” He rubbed his skinny midsection.

She reached back in the Bronco for a sack. “And some reading material too.”

I didn’t know whether to stay in the Bronco or get out. Norman didn’t look like your average suburbanite, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the chickens wandered into the shack on occasion, but were there even more reasons why people called him Nutty Norman, reasons of which I should be wary?

Well, you know me. Too curious to just sit there, I slid out. Directly into a muddy puddle, of course.

“Norman, I brought someone along to meet you. This is—”

Kelli didn’t even have a chance to get to my name. Norman spotted me, and his eyes targeted me like a security camera in a parking garage. Paying no attention to the sloppy snow/mud mixture on the pathway, he bore down on me like a bearded freight train.

11

Norman had his own cemetery, Kelli had said. Who was in it? The last unwelcome visitor?

I caught a few more details as Norman thundered closer. A bit of egg caught in his whiskers. A few too few teeth in his yellow-stained smile. A grease stain the size of a handprint on his pants leg. Big, calloused hands.

Then I realized Norman wasn’t advancing on me in hostility. Norman was looking at me as if I were the biggest gold nugget he’d ever seen, his eyes lit up like Christmas lights, smile warm enough to boil the puddle around my feet.

“Glory be,” he breathed. “An angel is come among us.”

Norman was apparently pleased to see me, delighted even. A generous attitude, even a bit poetic with his angel statement. But I wasn’t sure but what hostility might be preferable, since I also wasn’t sure what he had in mind here. A big bear hug, at the very least. I thwarted that by stepping behind the Bronco door and thrusting my hand out for a shake.

He shook it enthusiastically. “I ain’t seen nothin’ the likes of you ’round here in twenty years.” He tilted his head, the egg in his beard undisturbed by the movement, and studied me with open admiration. “Glory be,” he repeated. He also continued to shake my hand. “I’ll have the Dorf runnin’ in a few days. I’ll drive into town, and maybe we can take us in a movie.”

“They tore the movie theater down several years ago, remember, Norman?” Kelli said gently.

“Oh yeah, I keep fergettin’. Well, maybe we could get us some dinner at that fancy Café Russo. Hiram and I been there. Last time I had me some fancy I-talion thing with everything but the kitchen sink in it. Anyway, I’m a-comin’ for you,” Norman assured me with a solemn nod. “You can count on that.”

Not a time waster, ol’ Norman. When he wanted something, he zeroed in on it. Unfortunately, at the moment, that something appeared to be me.

Kelli came to the rescue. “Now, Norman,” she chided, “Ivy just got into town a couple days ago, and she’s not even settled in yet. She’s living in Hiram’s house, and she’s going to be librarian for his new library at the Historical Society. She’s also done some private investigative work, and is looking into the circumstances of Hiram’s death, so she’s very busy.”

“Private investigative work” exaggerated my abilities, but I didn’t bother to correct her. I was mostly thinking uneasily about Norman’s obvious amorous attentions. But another glance at the pickup reassured me. The Dorf didn’t look capable of an excursion into town anytime soon.

“Ivy? That’s you? Ivy,” Norman repeated wonderingly. He was down to my fingertips now, but he wasn’t letting go. “Now ain’t that the prettiest durn name ever? I planted me some ivy once, right there by the side of the house, but I think maybe the chickens ate it.”

Ginger had jumped off the pickup and was now pecking at my shoelaces. I had the uneasy feeling she might have in mind eating this Ivy too. I don’t know all that much about chickens.

“Okay, let’s get these groceries and this chicken feed unloaded.” Kelli handed Norman and me each a sack and wrestled the bag of chicken feed to the door of the Bronco.

Norman looked at my plastic bag and said solicitously, “Now, that looks a mite heavy for a delicate little thing like you.” He took my moderately sized bag as we headed for the house, ignoring Kelli struggling along behind with the fifty-pound bag of feed slung over her shoulder.

I tried to protest, but Norman was having none of it. He gave me a little elbow push toward the porch. I remembered that unwashed-body-cigarette-smoke-and-garlic odor on the sheets at Hiram’s house, and here I was getting the full-strength, original version of it. The inside of the shack smelled even more strongly of garlic.