A Murder of Crows (21 page)

“If Arlene’s blackmailing somehow led to Mr. Delite’s death, she ought to face some kind of responsibility for her actions,” Tillie insisted.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out if Arlene was blackmailing Mr. Delite,” Vern replied. “Let’s ask her.”

“Right,” Boo said. “You’re just going to walk up to Arlene, ask her if she was having an affair with Sonny Delite, and if she was blackmailing him with that information. I don’t think so, Dad.”

“I don’t think so, either, son,” Vern grinned. “I’m not asking her anything. You are.”

Boo tipped back on his chair, his head shaking a clear refusal. “No, I’m not.”

“Just hear me out,” his dad told him. “Here’s what I’m thinking.”

I listened carefully as Vern outlined his plan to extract the truth from Arlene Weebler. It involved his vintage bazooka, surplus tomatoes, and Arlene’s pink pickup truck. Boo was going in as point man, and I was playing back-up. As long as we didn’t end up in jail for acting like a bunch of high school delinquents, I figured that Vern’s plan to get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about Sonny’s death was … well … better than nothing.

“Now we just have to find Arlene and get this show on the road,” Vern said.

“If it’s Thursday, I know where she is,” Tillie announced.

“It’s Thursday,” Boo, Vern, and I answered in chorus.

Twenty minutes later, Boo and I were back in my car. Behind us, Vern climbed into his truck, loaded for bear.

Well, maybe not bear, exactly. More like a supply run to the local farmers’ market.

Our mission: take down Arlene Weebler and convince her to spill her guts.

Our destination: Betty’s Beauty Spot and Nails on Third.

Our chance of success: I had no idea, but I was pretty sure it was going to be a lot more fun than cafeteria duty at work.

At least, I sure hoped so.

It was my day off, after all.

Chapter Twenty

The sky had cleared and the sun was out, quickly melting what little bits of snow had accumulated along the country roads. I hit the button to lower my window, and the honking racket of migrating Canada Geese filled the air. A moment later, the big V formation of the flying geese appeared as it passed high above us, heading south for its winter home. Not far behind, a smaller group of bigger birds was following the same direction.

“Tundra swans,” I told Boo, pointing to the white bodies. “Big white birds with black bills.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said. “Take a right at this next road.”

I threw him a quick look as I made the turn towards the tiny town of Spinit.

“Identifying birds? It’s sort of in my blood, Boo,” I replied. “I can’t go anywhere without noticing what birds are around and checking them against the lists I have in my head.”

“No, I don’t mean the birds,” he clarified. “I mean Arlene. Dad loves a hare-brained adventure, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it with him.”

“Are you kidding me?” I shot him another glance. “It’s not every day I get the chance to see tomatoes shooting out of a restored bazooka in the effort to secure justice.”

Boo laughed.

“Besides,” I added, “Sonny was my friend, and I want to know the sequence of events that led someone to kill him.”

I didn’t share with him my conclusion about Red and Prudence, however. After already admitting to Boo that I’d considered him a suspect, I was afraid he’d think I was paranoid, at best, if I told him I now had zeroed in on a new probable killer.

Or killers, as the case might well turn out to be, if I was right in my speculations about Prudence and Red.

“Not to mention that Rick is my friend, too,” I said, “and he’s been suspended from the police force as a primary suspect. Whatever Arlene can tell us can only help Rick’s situation. I’m the one who dragged you and your dad into this, remember.”

“It doesn’t take much to drag my dad into anything these days,” Boo said. “I think he still misses the action of combat, even after all these years. He must drive my mom crazy with all his war toys.”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” I reminded him. “I know that birding has saved my sanity more times than I can count.”

Like every time I was ready to pull my hair out after spending a few hours spinning my wheels with my problem children at the high school.

Sara Schiller came to mind.

“How long have you been teaching?” I asked Boo.

“Five years,” he answered. “Before coming to Savage, I taught for three years at a small school in New Mexico that served a lot of Native American and Hispanic students. My first job teaching was in Redwood Falls, not that far from here.”

I did the math in my head. Assuming Boo was somewhere in his late thirties, that still left about ten years of him doing something else, but he had yet to say what that something was.

“I can see you doing the math,” he said.

Geez Louise. Was he a mind reader, too? Or was it just that I was the only human on the planet who was incapable of having a private thought?

“I’m leaving out about ten years between college and my first teaching job.”

“Yeah, that occurred to me. Any particular reason for that?”

Like the fact that he really was the Bonecrusher, and he’d been lying to me earlier in a last-ditch effort to protect his secret identity?

All right, I admit it: I’m tenacious. I’m a birder, what can I say?

“I don’t usually like to talk about it,” Boo said. “I figure the past is best left in the past. Take another right, right here.”

I spun the wheel and checked my rear-view mirror to see Boo’s dad following us into town.

“I spent a decade traveling with the circus,” Boo said.

Okay, so that was totally not what I was expecting him to say. I slid a quick look at the man in my passenger seat.

Boo’s face was serious.

“I was the Strongest Man Alive,” he confessed.

An image of a bare-chested, big-muscled Boo in a side-show booth, lifting weights, popped into my head. I could almost smell the cotton candy and popcorn and hear the calliope music of the merry-go-round.

Boo Metternick, the Strongest Man Alive.

Actually, that worked for me.

“You don’t say,” I replied. “I can see it, Boo. Really, I can. But I have to admit, I was a little concerned there for a second that you were going to say you were the Bearded Lady.”

Boo laughed. “Believe it or not, she was a real fox under that beard.”

“I don’t want to know,” I laughed back.

“You’re going to want to park on the left side of the street up there,” he said, pointing towards the small shopping area that was coming into view. “Betty’s Beauty Spot and Nails is just around the corner, but you don’t want to park in front of the salon if Dad’s going to be tossing tomatoes anywhere near there.”

“Is he sure he isn’t going to get arrested for assault, or for damaging property?” I asked Boo.

When his dad had laid out the plan, Vern had assured us he wasn’t going to get in trouble with local law enforcement, but I wasn’t convinced. Pelting a truck with tomatoes to get a confession from a woman had to be violating some kind of law, even if it was only a law of simple courtesy.

You know what I mean: don’t stare, don’t eavesdrop, don’t kick your sister under the table, don’t throw tomatoes at people on Main Street.

“Dad will be fine,” Boo said. “He knows the one police officer in town—Maggie Fleming—and her mother is Dad’s second cousin. I think I also heard that Arlene was hitting on Maggie’s husband a while back, so I can’t imagine that Maggie wouldn’t conveniently look the other way if Dad got Arlene riled up over a tomato attack on her pickup.”

Ah, yes, frontier justice still exists, especially in small towns where almost everyone is related.

I pulled a U-turn at the end of the shopping block and took a parking slot where Boo suggested. Vern, meanwhile, had taken a left turn onto the street that fronted Betty’s salon.

“Last chance,” Boo offered me. “You can sit this out right here and avoid the ugly stigma of being a participant in a tomato fight.”

“No way,” I insisted. “This is my big chance. Bigmouth Rick isn’t around to see this, and nobody here knows me, so I can, for once, indulge in complete immaturity and not worry about the consequences.”

“You don’t think I’m going to tell everyone at the high school that you helped plan a tomato fight? Your students would love that.”

“So would yours,” I reminded him.

“Touche.”

We got out of the car and started toward the corner of the block.

“Bob, you won’t mention my circus gig to anyone, will you?” Boo asked. “I’d rather it not get around at the high school. I had to put up with a lot of grief at my last school when the kids found out, and I don’t want to have to go through that again. It wreaked havoc with classroom discipline for a while.”

I looked Boo over. The man was huge. How he could ever have a problem with student discipline was beyond me. He could squish a student under the palm of his hand, for crying out loud. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t the Crusher after all, but …

“I know,” I said. “How about I spread the rumor that you’re a famous former wrestler, by the name of the Bonecrusher? I could say you got kicked out of the ring for losing your temper one too many times and maiming your opponents, and the one thing that really ticks you off is when anyone mentions your wrestling past. That should take care of any discipline problems, don’t you think?”

Boo smiled. “Yeah, that might do it. As long as the real Bonecrusher doesn’t come after me for impersonation, that is. I wouldn’t want my wrists—or any other part of me—slapped by the Crusher.”

I frowned, trying to imagine our new art teacher Paul Brand throwing Boo to the canvas.

It would be like knocking over a refrigerator.

Paul would have to have some serious muscle, and moves, to do that. I tried to picture it, I really did, but for some reason, I was still having trouble putting that black leotard on Savage’s new art teacher.

It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, the only canvas that came to mind when I thought of Paul was one stretched on a frame.

For painting.

Or scrapbooking.

Or whatever the heck it was that they did in Paul’s art class.

So unless Boo had a paralyzing fear of glue guns, I had no doubt that Boo could hold his own against Paul Brand any day.

Speaking of guns …

We turned the corner just as Vern was loading his first volley of tomatoes into the bazooka. Across the street, a dirty pink pickup truck was parked at a diagonal to the curb in front of Betty’s Beauty Spot and Nails. Boo started for the salon’s front door. Vern pulled on a helmet and heavy leather gloves. On the back of his windbreaker, the old Looney Tunes character, Wile E. Coyote, grinned knowingly.

It occurred to me that if I’d grown up with Vern for a dad, maybe I would have joined the circus, too.

I sat down on an old iron bench not far from Vern’s base of operations.

Let the cartoon begin, I thought.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Arlene! I think you better come out here!” Boo shouted into the beauty salon, holding the door wide open.

I couldn’t make out Arlene’s response, but since no one appeared in the doorway, I guessed she’d refused.

Boo hollered again.

“I’m giving you fair warning, Arlene! Dad’s on the rampage, and I won’t be held responsible for him!”

Still no Arlene.

Boo nodded at his dad, and Vern shot off a salvo of tomatoes into the side of Arlene’s pickup.

“I gotta talk with you, Arlene!” Vern shouted.

Two white heads of hair poked out of the salon door.

“It’s Vern, all right!” an elderly lady in a blue plastic smock cried.

“He’s got a weapon!” yelled the other, equally draped in blue.

With a squeal, the women ducked back inside Betty’s.

“I got a bone to pick with you, Arlene!” Vern shouted, and let loose with another round of tomatoes.

Boo stood back on the sidewalk out of the tomato splash zone. In a tree in front of a store a few doors down from Betty’s, I noticed a trio of crows perched in the branches. Could three crows be considered a murder, or was that term only applied to larger groups of the birds?

How about two by the names of Prudence and Red?

Yeah, that could definitely be a murder, I decided.

“Arlene, it’s your last chance!” Boo called into the salon.

Vern loaded up the bazooka again.

Even if Arlene had been blackmailing Sonny, I mused, that didn’t make her an accessory to his murder. I supposed it provided a possible motive that the police would want to investigate, but generally the person being blackmailed wasn’t the one who ended up dead, according to any television show I’d seen. It was the person doing the blackmailing who got knocked off in prime time.

Vern shot more tomatoes at Arlene’s pickup.

I watched the juice and pulp run down the side panels of the truck.

Not that this was anything near a prime-time murder mystery, mind you.

This was real life.

Ridiculous maybe, but still real life.

And then Arlene finally came out of the salon’s front door.

I assumed it was Arlene. Since I’d never met her, I couldn’t recognize her.

Then again, I wondered if either Boo or Vern could recognize the woman underneath the towel headwrap whose face was covered in green foam and whose hands were wrapped in plastic bags.

“You’re a crazy old man!” the Thing from Betty’s shouted at Vern.

“You’re lying about my land!” Vern yelled back. “Admit it!”

“Your father belongs in a nuthouse!” Arlene shouted at Boo.

“Hand me that crate of tomatoes, Bob,” Vern pointed at a crate in the back of his truck that he couldn’t quite reach from his station with the bazooka.

I got up from the bench and leaned into the truck. When I lifted the case out and turned to hand it to Vern, I almost rammed it into a girl who had suddenly appeared next to me.