Geared for the Grave (A Cycle Path Mystery) (2 page)

A nearly full moon lit the street, which had huge Victorians standing guard on one side and the town stretching out below the cliff on the other, and me contemplating the fact that they should make Pampers for horses. Amazing what you think about when dead tired, the minutes ticking away like hours and the business end of a large animal swaying in front of you. I was suffering from car withdrawal. “What do you do on the island?” I asked Donna, to keep awake and get my mind off giant-size Pampers.

“Shamus and I run the Blarney Scone over there on Market Street, and I be helping answering the phones with Fiona at the
Town Crier
on occasion. It gives me dear husband and myself a break from each other and we don’t end up in screaming matches over how much butter to put in the pastries and what to charge for Earl Grey
.
I’m working my way up to reporter. Lucky for you, Paddy here and me were out delivering the newspapers and could lend a hand with the bikes.

“You know,” Irish Donna went on. “While we’re riding along like we are, ye can be telling me all about your lovely self so I can be working on your obituary for when things take a turn for the bad as I figure they might anytime now. A touch of autumn in the air, did ye notice, just a touch.”

I was with her till
obituary
. Donna nodded up ahead. “Well fancy that, will ye, it be Bunny’s yellow bike all by itself. On her way to the euchre tournament be my guess.” Donna pulled the reins and our four-legged engine shifted into neutral beside the yellow three-wheeler. “And will ye look at this.” Donna clutched her shamrock. “The front’s all mashed in, the light’s busted out and the handlebar’s twisted up like a giant pretzel, it is. Yoo-hoo,” Donna called out. “Bunny me dear. Are ye in need of a wee bit of assistance this fine evening?”

“There,” I said, seeing the moonlight hitting Bunny’s electric pink shorts. “She’s sitting by those two trees.”

“More a’leaning if you ask me,” Donna said on a quick intake of breath. She gave a nudge. “Go have a look-see?”

“Me?”

“I need to be minding Paddy here.”

Right. Paddy was a thousand years old and asleep where he stood, and after the hill he had just climbed I couldn’t blame him. I stepped down from the carriage, the sound of crickets and night stuff I didn’t know everywhere. I crawled between the wood fence slats, hoping that something with wiggling antennae didn’t land on me. “Bunny?”

Heart rattling around in my chest, I crept through the bushes. Leaves crunched underfoot, moonlight weaved between the overhead branches and I tried to remember to breathe. Maybe Bunny had fallen asleep on her perch and didn’t hear Donna calling, or maybe she was just enjoying the view.

Bunny’s eyes were wide open all right, but they weren’t taking in the view. They weren’t taking in anything. They were cold; vacant; dead.

My legs went to jelly and I crumpled to the ground. I’d lived all my life in Chicago and had never come across a dead person. A few bar fights when the Bulls lost or shoving matches at a Bloomingdale’s sale, but that was it. Yet here I was in the middle of freaking nowhere sitting next to a corpse named Bunny. Next time I wanted to impress my parents I’d buy them theater tickets.

“W
ell?” Donna called to me through the dark.

Yelling
dead as a doornail
seemed a little insensitive. Instead I punched up 911 and some dude answered, happy noises in the background.

“What?”

“Dead person on hill,” I said, my brain in acute meltdown.

He disconnected.

I stared at the phone. What the heck! Since when did 911 disconnect! Pissed-off Chicago Evie elbowed scared-spitless Evie out of the way and repunched the numbers. “Look, you jackass,” I growled into the phone. “There’s a dead woman on Huron Road by some steps, so put down the brewski, drag your sorry self off your bar stool and get your big fat island butt up here now.” I was from Chicago. I knew a bar when I heard one. I disconnected.

“Glory be,” Irish Donna gasped from behind. “That someone would be a putting a well-aimed bullet in the old biddy at a council meeting wouldn’t have surprised me. Never dreamed she’d be having herself an accident on a road she traveled all her life. Looks to me like she crashed herself head-on into the fence, then went airborne, wedging her bony body between the trees. Bet she was tearing down the hill like a bat out of hell to get up that much speed.”

“I take it Bunny wasn’t one of your favorite people.”

“Slept with me husband, she did.” Irish Donna slapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes huge. “That was twenty years ago and I never told that to another living soul, not a one.”

“Your secret’s safe with me. Is this the turn for the bad you mentioned?”

“Bunny would be thinking so.”

Rustling sounded in the bushes. “Holy crap, there really is a body,” came a deep male I-just-ran-the-steps huffing and puffing voice.

“Duh.” I glared up at a guy, fortyish, tall, dark and handsome, not that looks mattered, especially at that age. I had the younger version of TD&H once, and once was enough. At present I belonged to the Single and Loving It Club and intended to be president.

TD&H hunkered down beside me, favoring one knee, absently rubbing the other one. There was an official-looking police patch on the sleeve of his black Windbreaker and a slight bulge underneath. Either he was packing a gun even here in the land of make-believe or he’d brought along his brewski. A thin scar crossed his jawline, his left eyelid drooped slightly and his nose was less than perfect. The man hadn’t spent all his life sitting at a bar on Mackinac Island.

He closed Bunny’s eyes like someone who’d performed the ritual more than once. “Figured you were drunk-dialing,” he said without looking at me. “It happens around here. What doesn’t happen is dead in the bushes.”

“Hey, Nate? Are you back there?” It was Fiona coming our way. The bushes rustled and I could see the purple sequins in the moonlight. “What’s going on? You ran out of the Stang without finishing your beer, and that never happens, so I knew something important was up and—yikes!”

“It looks to me like Bunny hit the fence,” Irish Donna said to Fiona. “’Course, the trees stopped her from winding up downtown.” Donna peered over the edge of the cliff. “A few feet more to the right and she’d have made it all the way to Saint Ann’s down below. Hard to tell for sure. Would have saved us a bit of transport time, it would.”

We all stared at Donna, and she gave a little shrug. “Just making a friendly observation.”

I wobbled to my feet and TD&H stood, pulling out his phone. “I’ll call Doc Evers to meet us at his office, then get the ambulance up here to take the body and—”

Fiona yanked the phone right out of his hand. “No way. You can’t do that. Not that I care the nasty old bat’s dead and finally quiet for once, but we all know that dragging out an ambulance and a body bag is bad for business, and Labor Day is a week away. People are already pouring in and having a good time. The town merchants will string you up by your toenails if you mess with that, and with the late spring it’s already been a lean year.”

“Fine. What should I do, Fiona?” TD&H asked. “Take Bunny piggyback down the hill?”

“That would probably be the most exciting thing to happen to her in ages, dead or alive, but what if we use Donna’s carriage to take Bunny to the medical center and then in the morning we airlift her off to Mourning Meadows Mortuary on Saint Ignace? We need to keep this on the down-low, and I’ll keep it out of the paper. Any hint of dead will kill the fun around here for sure.”

Fiona smirked at her
kill
crack, and TD&H rolled his eyes as Donna added, “She’s right as rain, she is. Fudgies are a touchy lot. The least bad thing a’brewing is like a curse from the Great Beyond. They’ll all be a’scurrying off to Canada, spending their money there and not be a’coming here like they planned to partake of our life of peace, tranquility and days gone by. Now if Bunny could have bought the farm in the wintertime or early spring, the news would get itself buried and out of the way by summer when the crowds come and all would be well. The old meddling blabbermouth never did consider anyone but herself.”

TD&H rubbed the back of his neck, muttering something about the effects of a full moon, and added, “Fine. I’ll take Bunny in the buggy so the business district doesn’t blow a gasket, but someone has to tell Dwight that his mother’s not coming home tonight, or any other night. Bet he’ll throw a party.”

“I be knowing Dwight Harrington the Third well enough,” Donna huffed. “Not that he cares what Bunny does as long as she pays his bills.”

TD&H looked at me with midnight blue eyes, putting my
single and loving it
status in serious jeopardy. “Well, Chicago, what’s it going to be? A ride with the corpse into town, or delivering the news?”

Twenty minutes later Irish Donna and I watched the cop, Fiona and Bunny—wrapped in a blanket and strapped in the backseat of the buggy—trot off. We pushed the bikes the rest of the way up the hill to a big Colonial Revival; least that was my best guess, since I mostly slept through art history class. We parked the bikes that had been ordered at the back door, then continued on, the clouds skating across the moon. If the Headless Horseman galloped by, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“There’s Bunny’s cottage, pretty as ye please,” Irish Donna said to me in a normal voice, as if we’d only walked a few feet on flat ground instead of hiking up a blasted mountain. We stood in front of a grand white Victorian that looked out over the lake, two lighthouses blinking in the distance.

“Where I come from,” I huffed and puffed, bent over at the waist to catch my breath. “A cottage is where Red Riding Hood visited Grandma. This is more where the Rockefellers swill brandy with their cronies.”

“It’s the rich and their ways. They understate everything and be all snooty about it to boot.” Donna glanced to the second floor. “Well, there be no lights a’blazing at Bunny’s place this night, so it be my guess Dwight’s not at home, but we’ll give it a try.”

Leaves tumbled across our path as we squeaked opened the rusting wrought iron gate and took the steps to the weathered front porch. A plaque with
SeeFar
stenciled in faded yellow hung next to the door. Donna rang the bell and rapped down the heavy brass lion’s-head knocker, the only other sound the breeze whistling through the pines. How did people live with so much quiet? It was . . . deafening.

“Dwight’s off-island and hiding out just like I thought,” Donna said after one more rap. “The Seniority is a scary lot from what I hear. I’d be hiding myself out too if they were hot on my heels.”

We started down Huron and I glanced back to the cottage. Was that a curtain closing in an upstairs window? “What’s the Seniority?”

“A bunch of trouble from what I hear. Dwight’s been nipped by the good life, he has: fast cars, fast boats and lots of fast women. The word is he swindled some old folks with serious connections out of money to pay for his fun and now they be coming after him. He probably didn’t know about the connections part or he would have picked some other oldsters to swindle. The island’s a good place to lie low for a bit, but he can’t do that forever now, can he?”

We reached the lit wood staircase leading to town, my gaze taking in the bazillion steps in front of me. Next time I saw my little blue Honda Civic I’d kiss it. We started down, our footfalls the only sound, a damp fog circling in the trees and around our ankles. Irish Donna gave me a sideways glance when we reached the bottom. “Been a strange night it has.”

“Because of the black cloud?”

“First ferry be leaving at seven.”

*   *   *

Sheldon’s alarm of
“Penny.”
Knock, knock, knock.
“Penny.”
Knock, knock, knock.
“Penny.”
Knock, knock, knock,
jarred me awake, sun slipping through the window. I bolted upright to the sound of clip-clopping outside. Now what? The frat boys next to my apartment swiped somebody’s mascot again? Last time it was a monkey; it fit right in with the frat boys, except the monkey was cleaner.

The aroma of bacon and coffee drifted into the room, caffeine vapors rousing memories of a ferry ride, fudge shops, horses and a dead Bunny. I suddenly had a new appreciation for the frat boys. I pulled on shorts and a sweatshirt, tied back my hair and ran a toothbrush around my mouth. Any day that started off with shorts and bare feet instead of heels and a skirt had to be a good one, right? I followed my nose down the narrow stairway to the kitchen, a low fire crackling in the small hearth chasing off the morning chill. A tabby lounged on a wide windowsill that overlooked a lazy harbor with sailboats, cruisers, blue water and a bright blue sky.
Definitely
not my apartment in Chicago.

Rudy had on a crumpled shirt and pants slit up to his thigh to accommodate the cast. His hair stuck out in Twain tufts as he sat at a blue Formica table older than me, devouring bacon and eggs. He nodded to a plate of the same across the table.

“Eat this stuff and you die,” I said, plopping a chunk of eggs into my mouth.

“So far I just broke a leg. Heard you had yourself quite a night. Thought I’d let you sleep in before you got that ferry out of here.”

I sank into a chair and picked up a strip of bacon as Rudy passed me a mug of coffee. “I think I killed Bunny. Irish Donna says I have a black cloud. Maybe I should wear garlic or find some eye of newt or toe of frog.”

“Ever since the old battle-ax got those biker-babe shorts she’s been riding around here like a maniac thinking she’s sweet sixteen. Twain says,
In all lies there is wheat among the chaff.
That Bunny is dead as a duck and never been sweet a day in her life is a pure fact. That some cloud had anything to do with her present situation is a big bucket-load of horse manure. You can take that to the bank.”

I wanted to believe Rudy, I really did, but something was sure messing up my life. I chomped the bacon. “So why Twain? Why not Washington? You could ride around on a horse and you’d have money with your own picture. That’s kind of cool.”

“We already had a George Washington when I came here five years ago. This whole island is eighteen hundreds—God, mother and apple pie—and we have lots of parades and demonstrations and events for the tourists to go along with the theme. It’s kind of a time warp here, and we play to it by each of us assuming important historical figures to add to the fun. Up at the fort there’re soldiers in uniforms with muskets and cannons. We even got a blacksmith with his own forge. Some gal with a spinning wheel weaves cloth, and the coach drivers for the Big House dress in top hats and tails and act all snooty.”

“Big House as in jail?”

“Big House as in the Grand Hotel up there on the hill. I got to be Twain, including the cats, since Twain spent some time here.” Rudy nodded to the windowsill. “That there’s Cleveland, and you met Bambino. Our Betsy Ross ran off to Lauderdale last year after a particularly bad winter. Her arthritis just couldn’t take the cold anymore. I hear she’s been arrested twice down there in Naples for prancing around in her birthday suit saying she needs her vitamin D after years of deprivation.”

“Maybe I could do Betsy in the parade?” I said, trying to think of a reason to keep me around. “Thread, needle, up-down-up-down. I’ve got good credentials. I did a sheep once in a nativity play. What do you say?”

“I say you should go back to drawing pretty pictures in Chicago.”

A knock came from the back door. “Well, if it isn’t Nate Sutter,” Rudy said around a mouthful of egg. Sutter had on a black T-shirt, the same police jacket as last night and soft jeans molded over sexy, lean hips and other fine male body parts.

“Help yourself to coffee,” Rudy offered as Sutter came in. “Hard stuff’s in the cabinet—you could stand a good belt after chauffeuring a dead body around town in a buggy. Bet that was some sight. Dang shame I missed it.”

Sutter shoved his hands in his pockets, standing on one foot, then the other, favoring the other. “We got a problem, Rudy. Bunny’s bike was tampered with, the brake cable cut. I found a red paint smear on the wire, and you’re painting bikes red. Mind if I take a look around?”

Rudy sloshed his coffee and stared, bug-eyed. Finally he managed, “You think Bunny died on purpose and that I—”

“Got a warrant?” The words just popped right out of my mouth. All that legal blah-blah-blah stuff over family dinners that made me crazy had had more of an impact than I thought and finally did me some good. I pointed to Rudy. “Don’t say anything.”