Geared for the Grave (A Cycle Path Mystery) (3 page)

“But Nate can look around if he needs to,” Rudy said, innocent as a lamb to the slaughter. “Bunny and I had our differences, to be sure, and might have said we wanted each other dead and buried and out of the way and that I hoped she rotted in the depths of hell, but we—”

“Not now, Rudy,” I hissed in a listen-to-me voice, wagging my head back and forth to get his attention. Granted I’d just met Rudy and didn’t know him that well, but he let me sleep in, fixed me bacon and eggs and took my side in the black-cloud situation, and I was still hoping for the Betsy Ross position.

Sutter pulled a warrant from his jacket pocket and dropped it on the table. “You’re not helping things, Chicago,” he grumbled at me, then headed for the front of the shop.

“Depends what side of
help
you’re on,” I grumbled back while following him into the shop. He flipped on the light, the can of primer red right there on top of the workbench where I wrote the info for the bikes. Drat!

“You really think I’d do something like cut Bunny’s brakes?” Rudy took Bambino from the pocket in the pool table and stroked his little sleepy head.

Sutter searched the workbench and the tools hanging above it, my gut tying into knots over what he might find. The problem was that Rudy would have lost his business if Bunny had gotten her way with shutting him down, and where I came from people killed for way less than that. Rudy had motive, lots of it. Sutter heaved a toolbox from below the workbench, rifled through it, tools clanking together, then slid it back where it belonged. He stood, his mouth pulling into a defeated frown.

“See, no cutters, nothing here,” Rudy said. His wiry mustache tipped in a smile. “I’m sure not the only one on this island with red paint, and there’s a list a mile long of people who wanted the old bird dead.”

“And truer words were never spoken, me dear man,” Irish Donna called in from the kitchen. “Came to see how you’re getting on,” she added, her voice muffled as cabinet doors opened and closed. “Pleased as punch you must be. Bet you’ll be doing a jig at Bunny’s wake, crutch and all.”

Irish Donna sauntered into the shop, coffee mug in one hand and a pair of red-paint-splattered wire cutters in the other. Holy freaking heck!

“’Morning to you, Nate,” Donna said. “And see what I found when helping myself to a bit of the cinnamon for the coffee,” Donna went on. “Hiding there behind the spice rack, it was. Bet Rudy’d be looking himself blind when he went to fix up his bicycles. How’d these things wind up in the kitchen of all places?”

Rudy stumbled, and I smacked my hand flat against my forehead. Sutter took a plastic bag thing from his jacket and snagged the cutters right out of Donna’s fingers. “Rudy Randolph, you’re under arrest for the murder of Bunny Harrington.”

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Donna gasped, clutching her shamrock, her mug crashing to the concrete floor and splattering coffee everywhere. “Nate Sutter, have ye gone daft in the head? Why would you arrest Rudy of all people for doing in Bunny?”

Sutter slid the bag in his pocket. “My guess is these wire cutters are the ones that were used on Bunny’s brake cables, and we’ll find out soon enough when we examine the sever marks. Everyone knows Bunny was here last night raising hell. That gave Rudy the perfect opportunity to cut her brake cables.”

Irish Donna’s eyes went squinty. “Rubbish, nothing but rubbish! Rudy wouldn’t be doing in Bunny now when he’s held his temper all those many times in the town council meeting when he wanted nothing more than to strangle Bunny dead right there on the spot.”

I gave Donna the
finger to the lips
gesture to try and get her to stop talking.

“I used to babysit for ye, Nate Sutter,” Donna continued, not paying one bit of attention to me. She tapped her foot like Principal Lancaster had when I adorned my fourth grade math homework with Daffy Duck images. “Wait till I tell your ma what you’re up to this morning. She’s not going to be pleased one wee bit about you doing this, you know. “

Oh boy, and there was another person not being pleased one wee bit about all this. Abigail! Having her dad wind up the prime suspect in a murder less than twenty-four hours after I got here would not get me a promotion. It would get me instantly fired if she found out.

“You . . . You can’t arrest Rudy,” I blurted, my brain scrambling for some legal reason I’d heard over Thanksgiving turkey or opening Christmas presents. Bloomfield attorneys had a one-track mind no matter the occasion.

“Because . . . because of Labor Day.” I waved my hand toward Main Street. “If a dead person in the bushes is bad for business, what will a full-fledged, out-in-the-open murder do? This island will be a ghost town. All the stores will be empty, shop owners will bitch and complain and you’ll never get elected police chief again.”

“I didn’t get elected
this
time. I’m filling in for the chief of police ’cause he had back surgery last month over in Traverse City and is laid up for a while till he can get back on his feet.”

“That’s even worse!” I pushed on. “The island will go right down the toilet on your watch. Some legacy you’ll leave behind. All you have to do is wait till after the holiday to make the arrest.”

Sutter gave me the
you’re out of your flipping mind
look. “I uphold the law, Chicago. That means arrest the criminal when he commits the crime.”

“
Suspected
criminal,” I tossed in. “No eyewitnesses. No one saw anything. All speculation.”

“I have the smoking gun.”

“That be wire cutters, dearie,” Donna tossed in. “And we’re just saying you need to be delaying things a bit for the good of the island. What can another week matter? Bunny’s got all the time in heaven . . . or the other place, if truth be told. Believe me, the old girl doesn’t care if we be putting things off for a few days.”

“And you can put Rudy under island arrest,” I said, feeling instantly brilliant.

Sutter rubbed his forehead. “All right, sure, I’ll bite. What the heck’s island arrest?” His eyes started to cross.

“House arrest, but bigger. Like eight miles bigger. Just tell the ferry operators and the airport that Rudy can’t leave, and he sure can’t climb on a boat with that cast up to his thigh, so he’s stuck here. That gives the fudgies time to spend their money and it gives us time to find the real killer.”

“I have the real killer,” Sutter said.

Rudy looked pained, and I added, “Come on. You gotta see that Rudy wouldn’t hide the murder weapon in his own kitchen and that someone’s out to frame him.”

A devilish glint lit Donna’s green eyes. “Since there’s no refrigeration at the medical center, we’ll put body-bag Bunny in the freezer over there at Doud’s Market to keep her fresh as a daisy. She’ll be wrapped up nice and tight and not going anywhere and we can have a funeral later. We sure can’t have it this week—talk about killing a mood and bad for business. We’ll wedge Bonny Bunny behind the stacks of pizzas and ice cream Doud’s keeps on hand. Andrew will go along with the idea; his market will be suffering as much as anyone’s if this murder thing gets out.”

Rudy nodded in agreement and Sutter let out a long breath as he stared at the floor. “This was supposed to be a cushy temp job for four or five months,” he said, mostly to himself. “I take some time off, help Bernie while he’s on the mend, mind his house, water his philodendron, do some fishing, sail, drink beer and leave the crazies back in Detroit. But they migrated.”

Irish Donna patted his cheek. “’Tis the black cloud hanging over our Chicago girl here, is all. She brought it with her when she came across the lake, and it can’t be helped now and we need to be making the best of it.”

Irish Donna picked up the phone on the workbench. “I’ll give Andrew a jingle and tell him to be a’sending his dray over there to the medical center to pick up Bunny.”

She turned back to Sutter. “Don’t be so down in the mouth, me boy. Nothing to be gained by moping about like a redheaded stepchild. You best call Doc and tell him not to put Bunny on the ten o’clock flight but ship her carcass straight over to Doud’s. The back entrance be best if you ask me. Maybe you should be lending him a hand to make sure it’s done proper and take Chicago here with you, since she brought this on.”

“Me?”

“’Tis your cloud, dearie.”

Rudy shook his head. “Chicago doesn’t belong here.”

“She’s here now and seems to be on your side, and it’s looking like you need all the help you can get, my dear man.” Irish Donna hooked her arm through Rudy’s. “Well, now that we got that straightened out, it’s setting out to be a lovely day on the island, lovely indeed, just like it always is. Our job is making sure it stays that way, even with Bunny laying over in Doud’s freezer taking up space like a giant pink popsicle.”

“W
hatever you’re doing here, go do it somewhere else,” Sutter said to me as we crossed Main Street, heading for Doud’s Market on the opposite corner.

“I came here to help Rudy.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

“’Bout the same as being the local cop is working out for you.” We turned onto Fort Street, which led up, way up, to what looked like a fort plus country club, complete with yellow umbrellas flapping in the breeze, pristine clapboard houses and a white stockade fence. Lewis and Clark would have killed for a fort like this. We ducked into a back alley between Doud’s and Nadia’s Fashion Shop as a dray clip-clopped in behind us, a lone wood box in the middle of the flatbed wagon. A balding man in a faded blue polo sat next to the driver in a baseball cap looking as if dropping off bodies at the local market was an everyday occurrence. Polo Shirt climbed off his perch and parked his hands on his hips. He scowled at Sutter. “We could go to jail for this.”

“Around here I’m jail, and it’s either the freezer or getting lynched by the island’s Better Business Bureau.” Sutter nodded my way. “Doc Evers, meet Evie Bloomfield from Chicago. She’s here to help Rudy.”

He gave me a half-smile. “You’re off to a bang-up start, Chicago. Heard there’s something about a black cloud you got going on.”

“You believe in that stuff?”

“Lived here for forty years, life in the middle of a lake, everyone believes that stuff.”

I was so screwed. I held open the beat-up door with
Doud’s Market
stenciled in faded red, and the three men slid the box off the dray, carried it up the steps and through the door. A shiver snaked across my shoulders at the thought of Bunny inside in her little pink biker shorts and matching gym shoes.

“Shove her in the corner,” a man in a green Doud’s apron said, pointing to the open freezer in the back of the storage room. “If this gets out, I’ll be stuck with a gazillion cases of pizzas, fish sticks and tater tots. Fudgies really got a thing for tater tots.”

“Any idea who did this?” I asked, hoping for a lead.

“Rudy,” all four of them answered in unison.

So much for a lead, but camouflaging Bunny with stacks of frozen carbs didn’t seem like the best time to refute that statement. The men turned to leave, but I stood in the doorway blocking their path. “Don’t you think we should say a few words?”

Doc folded his hands and bowed his head. “Bunny, I should have told you this years ago, and I’m mighty sorry I didn’t. Let the doorknob hit ya where the good Lord split ya. Amen.” Doc looked up and found all of us staring at him wide-eyed.

“What?” Doc asked. “Bunny was a first-class pain in
my
butt for all the years I’ve been here. I said
amen
, didn’t I? What more do you want?”

“Dear Lord,” I started again, hoping we didn’t all get struck dead for the last comment, “Grant peace to Bunny in her temporary resting place.”

“And don’t let anyone find her sorry ass till after next weekend so Andrew can sell all his tater tots and fish sticks,” the dray driver added.

It wasn’t exactly high Mass at the Vatican, but it was better than the doorknob.

The dray and horses trotted back down the alley, and Doc trotted off to the Stang, my guess was to meet up with his good friend Jim Beam after our burial-at-freezer.

“You got a worried look, Chicago. What kind of trouble are you cooking up now?” Sutter asked as we stood alone in the alley.

“I need to find the real killer. So, besides Rudy, who has the most to gain with Bunny out of the way?”

“Why get involved in this?”

I wasn’t about to toss out the
I’ll get fired
motive. That was a whole other conversation. For the moment I went with, “Rudy’s a good guy and he’s innocent and you’re dead-set on finding him guilty and he’s not.”

Sutter raked his fingers through his hair and muttered a few colorful phrases. “All I’m doing is following the evidence and you’re going to stir up a bunch of trouble for nothing and everyone’s going to be pissed. You’re right that Rudy’s a great guy, but Bunny threatened his business and he snapped, end of story. Go back home.”

“What about the other bicycle shops on the island? With Rudy out of the picture, they get his business and—”

“You saw his shop. What business?”

“—and if Bunny’s pushing up daisies, or in this case sleeping with the fish sticks, there’re no regulations on their shops. Seems to me it’s a win-win for them, and they know all about wire cutters and brakes. Rudy’s not the only one with motive to do in Bunny.”

“This isn’t the inner city, it’s the land of milk and honey, and people don’t kill and frame someone over money and historical accuracy. The best thing you can do is help Rudy get his shop fixed up so he can sell it. He’ll need cash for the attorneys.”

“Holy cow, the paint. I have nine cans of beach-baby blue sitting on the docks to spruce up Rudy’s place.”

“Well, there it is. You can haul the cans in one of the bikes with the oversize baskets. You’re big enough to handle it. Then you can get painting and make yourself useful.”

Big enough
—gee, just what every girl wants to hear. Then again, at five-ten I’d left petite somewhere back in the fourth grade. Sutter took off for places unknown and I headed for Rudy’s. The basket idea would work except for the fact that I didn’t know how to ride a bike, a little something I’d kept from Abigail and saw no reason to ’fess up to now. My plan was to stay on the island, find the killer, save Rudy and save my job.

Sheldon buzzed my butt and I picked up a text from my older sister Lindsey. It read:
Made partner. Celebrate tomorrow Travelle @ 8.

I did a quick reply of:
On Mackinac for work. Major congrats. Well done. Catch up later.
Lindsey was brilliant and beautiful and deserved the promotion. If there was a poster child for most perfect daughter, Lindsey was it. I ordered her flowers online, figuring I’d pay for them with my new promotion when this all worked out, right?

Five minutes later, after snagging one of Rudy’s bikes, I was pushing the oxidized heap of brown metal down Main Street, dodging horses, wagons and tourists staring at my scraped and bloody knees.

“Well, my goodness, are you okay?” asked a woman in a white apron and flowered skirt as she hustled out of Irma’s Fudge Emporium. “I saw you take a tumble while I was making up a batch of chocolate-nut. If you haven’t ridden a bike in a while, it takes some practice to get the hang of it again. Just off the ferry, are you?”

“Came in last night. I’m helping Rudy fix up his shop, since he has a bum leg.” I swiped a trickle of red from my leg. “If I live that long.”

The woman pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “Why, I know who you are. You’re that fudgie girl from Chicago we’ve been hearing about. Come on inside and I’ll find the Band-Aids and patch you up. Can’t have you bleeding, it gives the island a bad name.”

She dropped her voice. “I’m Irma, and none of us here in town thinks Rudy’s responsible for the Bunny Festival. That’s code for Bunny’s little mishap last night so the fudgies don’t pick up on what we’re talking about. Since we’ve already got the Lilac Festival, the Fudge Festival, the Horse Festival and the Jazz Festival, a bunch of us doing breakfast down at the VI, that’s what we call Village Inn, decided the Bunny Festival fits in nice to what goes on around here. Personally I wanted to call it the Dust Bunny considering dust fits Bunny’s present set of circumstances, but I got outvoted.”

“Any idea who the grand marshal of the Bunny Festival might be?” I limped inside the empty emporium to find a decor of English pub meets Martha Stewart, with dark oak on one side and three long marble-top tables on the other. Wads of paper and cardboard littered the floor.

“There’s a list of folks wanting her out of the way.”

I sank down into a chair. “Always thought small towns were chicken soup, borrowing a cup of sugar and marrying the boy next door, not sending someone off a cliff.”

“There’s the soup side and then there’s the sending side. Last year when Big Ray won the Great Chili Cook-off we have every year, John from over at the VI objected and there was talk of a duel. Ray’s been walking with a limp ever since. People get feisty no matter where they live.”

So much for Sutter’s milk-and-honey theory. Irma headed for the old display case with enough fudge to give me a visual sugar high. “If you want my opinion on who gets top billing for doing in Bunny,” Irma said to me, “Dwight gets my vote. SeeFar has been their family cottage for over a hundred years and is worth a bundle. Dwight’s a screwup and always looking for a payday. He’s got a sister, but she married some gazillionaire in Florida. My guess, Dwight inherited the house all by himself and is happy as a clam right about now.”

“Think he’d talk to me?” I picked gravel out of my knee.

“If you dress like a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader and shake your pompoms—and I’m not talking about the ones at football games.” Irma made a gagging sound at the shaking part and handed me a box of Band-Aids and a wet towel.

I patted my knees. “What’s with all the paper on the floor? Redecorating?”

“My last batch of fudge was a total bust, just like every other batch I make, so I’m giving up, burning the place to the ground and collecting the insurance.”

Okay, Irma didn’t look crazy. No twitches, no evil glint in the eyes, no dagger strapped to her hip or snake tattooed on her forehead. She looked like someone who should have
Grandma
in front of her name. “All that over bad fudge?”

“Because I’m having a dreadful time making good fudge—any kind of good fudge.” Irma sat, shoulders sagging. “Dutchy swiped my husband’s fudge recipes and is now cohabiting with that two-bit Delong tramp on the next block, do you believe that? They opened Rita’s Fudge Shoppe and are getting rich off of what’s mine. I suppose they had this planned all along. My dear departed husband made the best fudge on the island. Then Dutchy made goo-goo eyes at me, the lonely widow, and I fell for it hook, line and sinker.”

“What about dropping your prices, running an ad and giving Rita and Dutchy some competition.”

“My dear husband did all the cooking, and so did Dutchy. Heaving those pots and flipping fudge takes lots of muscle. I took care of the customers and the books and now there isn’t any of either one.”

Irma waved her hand over the store, then pulled a box of matches from her apron. “So how much more paper do you think I need to get a nice hefty blaze going in here? And don’t worry about being a witness or tattling on me. You’re a fudgie, so no one will pay any attention.”

“But you can just sell the place.”

“There will be more gossip and I’ll feel stupid because I can’t get it right.” She nodded to a five-foot loaf of something chocolate on one of the marble tables. “Looks real good, doesn’t it? Tastes like roadkill with nuts. Takes years to perfect a big-batch recipe.”

Irma nibbled her bottom lip, glasses sliding down her nose. I knew this feeling of being double-crossed by a piece-of-dung guy and having your job in the toilet. My pocket buzzed and I yanked out Sheldon to find a text from Abigail.
Call me!
What was I going to say?
Hey, boss, your dad’s accused of murder and his shop could be a pile of cinders by noon thanks to the crazy lady next door starting a fire?

“Let’s go see this Dwight guy,” I blurted. I needed answers to the Bunny Festival and had to start somewhere, and a change of scenery might help Irma stay off the island’s most-wanted list.

“I wasn’t kidding about the pompoms.”

“I’m Evie Bloomfield from Chicago. I can handle anything Dwight the Third has to offer, and fresh air will make you feel better.”

“So will a match.”

Ten minutes later, Irma and I climbed the same steps I had come down the night before. In the light of day I could read the sign:
Crow’s Nest Trail
. The steps zigzagged up the hillside, leading from downtown up to Huron Street, and by the time we got to the top my lungs were on fire, and Irma not breaking a sweat. We could have taken Huron all the way around to Truscott Street, like Irish Donna and I did last night in the buggy, but it added twenty minutes to the commute. There were two directions on the island, up and down, and one was a heck of a lot easier than the other.

“These houses have some view,” I wheezed, staring out at Mackinac Bridge, boats bobbing at their moorings and rooster-plumes of spray behind the ferries whizzing fudgies to the mainland under a bright blue sky.

“And they sure pay dearly for it, I can tell you that.” We continued on up the road, one massive cottage bigger and grander than the next, with wide verandas, curved porches and flowers galore. We passed a cluster of concrete planters, purple and white petunias spilling over the top like a waterfall. We stopped in front of SeeFar, Fiona and her horse cart pulling up right beside us.

Fiona was a skinny Tina Fey, minus makeup. She leaned down from her perch, the sunlight bouncing off the purple sequins, a healthy blush to her cheeks—an obvious perk of driving a convertible around town and hunting island stories.