Mind Your Own Beeswax (16 page)

“Here’s what’s going around,” he said, sticking a mirror into my mouth and poking around. “Some people think Johnny Jay became so angry when he found out Lauren was out of prison, so crazed to learn she was free as a bird, that he lost control and killed her.”

“Right. And everybody in town has seen him lose control of his temper at some point. He’s a hothead. A ticking bomb ready to explode. You have a tiny cavity in your right molar. Should I take care of it today?”

“Noth rith now.”

Just then I heard a ding as the outer door opened, and a moment later T. J.’s wife, Ali, came in. She helped out in the dental office a few hours every day, and I had been disappointed when she hadn’t been there when I arrived. She’d been out with her sister during all the earlier excitement, and I’d hoped to catch up with her before T. J. called me in.

“Sorry,” she said to her husband. “That took longer than I expected.” Then to me, “I heard about Lauren.” She shook her head. “What a mess.”

I would have liked to make a few comments, both to Ali and to T. J. regarding Johnny Jay as potential murder suspect, but T. J. still had my mouth out of service.

“Ali,” he said. “Set something up for Story. She has a small cavity.”

“Sure,” Ali said, leaving the room.

T. J. freed my mouth. “Rinse.” He handed me a paper cup.

Finally! “They think the police chief murdered Lauren and Hetty?” I said after swishing and spitting.

“That’s the word on the street. She
did
kill his dad. You know the guy as well as I do, he’s a bully and he has a mean temper. And a motive.”

“I haven’t heard a thing about that at the store.”

“Believe me,” he said, stripping off the protective gloves and tossing them in a trash can. “People talk in this chair.”

Yeah, right. How?

Ali walked in carrying a metal tray. I could see more dental equipment on it. One was a big honking syringe.

“Whoa,” I said. “That isn’t for me, is it?”

T. J. glanced at Ali. “I asked you to make another appointment for her.”

“Oh, sorry,” Ali said. “I thought you said set up to fill Story’s cavity. I misunderstood.”

T. J. picked up the syringe. It could’ve been my imagination, but I swear I saw a gleam of anticipation in his eyes. “How about it, Story? I can have you out of here in fifteen minutes and you won’t have to come back again for six months. Really, it’s a bitty baby cavity.”

I checked my cell for the time. It could work. That is, if I really wanted to be drilled and stabbed, which I didn’t. But why not get it over with?

“Do your thing,” I told him.

Fifteen minutes later, T. J. (aka mad torture dentist) was still trying to numb my mouth with a third application of the needle. He eyed up my chart. “I don’t get it. We’ve used this on you before without any problem.”

“I donth geth it, either.”

“You weren’t drinking alcohol recently, were you?”

“Vy?”

“Were you?”

“Vine las nith,” I said, remembering the bottle of wine Holly and I had shared. What did wine have to do with the current situation? My face felt like an overinflated balloon filled with helium. My lips and cheeks were missing in action. I couldn’t feel a thing. Nothing, that was, except the drill every time he thought I was numb enough to start. Each time he began drilling, a sharp nerve-racking pain shot through my head. “I quith. Leth me up.”

I ripped off the plastic bib. A long string of spit dribbled on the front of my shirt.

“I’ll have Ali call you at the store about rescheduling,” T. J. said. “And next time don’t drink alcohol the night before. I’m sure that’s where the problem comes in. That happens sometimes.”

Just like everybody else, T. J. had to blame what happened on something or someone else. In this case, me for drinking wine. Believe me, it would take an entire bottle of the stuff to get me back in that chair.

I bolted out the door and hustled down Main Street to meet Hunter. I waved at Ben, who sat in the passenger seat of Hunter’s SUV, waiting for his partner. His ears twitched slightly in greeting. Ben wasn’t big on public displays of affection.

Stu’s Bar and Grill was busy with the lunchtime crowd. Hunter waited at a table by the window where he had a clear view of his vehicle and police partner.

I tried to smile, but it didn’t happen. Or if it did, I couldn’t tell.

“I ordered for you,” Hunter said. “Hope you don’t mind. You’re running late and I know you’re crunched for time.”

“Tank ow.”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

“Dentith.”

One of Stu’s part-time waitresses came over with two baskets filled with burgers and fries and placed them on the table.

“I guess you won’t be eating that?” Hunter said.

I shook my head, holding my jaw.

“Okay, I’ll talk for a while. You listen.”

I nodded.

Here’s what Hunter told me between bites of burger while I alternated between sucking on French fries and swishing ice water in my mouth:

“Over the years, the local papers have run quite a few stories about Lantern Man,” Hunter said. “Especially after the camper attack. Then every time someone claimed a sighting, here came another article.”

One side of my face twitched in amazement at all the developing news. Moraine wasn’t exactly a hub of interest. That is until now.

Hunter continued, “Why would Norm save the articles and mount them on the wall unless they mean something to him?”

“Unlesh heesh Lantern Man!” If I spoke slowly, I almost sounded normal.

“That’s what I’m thinking. I suggested that to him this morning, but he denied it.”

“Of courth.”

“Get this part, though.” Hunter leaned over his plate, closer to me. “I also found a collection of lanterns in the same room.”

“No kiddin’.”

“He said he’d collected vintage lanterns for years.”

“Like Coleman lanternsh?”

“And railroad lanterns. I came on stronger, putting pressure on him, but he still denied any knowledge of Lantern Man’s identity.”

We thought about that for a while. Why couldn’t Norm be Lantern Man? His property abutted the state and county land and he’d told me just yesterday how much his wife hated having kids hang out in The Lost Mile. Maybe Norm hated them even more. Enough to terrorize anybody who ventured in there after dark, scaring them silly so they wouldn’t come back.

“Well, now we know,” I said, forming the words carefully and hearing them come out just right. “Even if we can’t prove it.”

“Remember the night the group of us went in there?”

“It’s not a nith I’ll ever forget.”

“Right. But Lantern Man didn’t make an appearance.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Busy doin’ somefin’ else?”

“I’m guessing we made plenty of noise.”

I shrugged. We’d been so bombed—or at least some of us had been—that we
would
have been really loud. “I dunno.”

“I think I’ll see if I can dig up police dispatch logs and records for that period of time.”

“Why?”

“This is a small community. What do you do when you’re going to be gone for a few days?”

“Tell one person, den everyone knows.”

“Exactly. Everybody finds out. Including Johnny Jay. And what does he do?”

“Nothin’.”

“I’ll rephrase that. What does he do as a service to everybody other than you?”

“I dunno.”

“He does drive-bys. Makes sure nothing is going on that shouldn’t be.”

“He does?”

“Sometimes residents even call in and ask him to check on their places. So if Norm was out of town during our walk in the woods, that’s just one more nail in Norm’s Lantern Man coffin.”

“But why go to all dat twouble?”

“Because Hetty Cross and Lauren Kerrigan are dead. And because Lantern Man was an unknown entity back then and still is. And because all our paths are converging in one place.”

“In Da Lost Mile.”

I couldn’t help being intrigued.

“What we talked about just now is private,” Hunter said. “Between me and you. If we’re wrong and this gets out, it wouldn’t be fair to Norm. He just lost his wife. He doesn’t need more troubles. And I know you can keep a secret. That’s why I came to you.”

That felt good. He trusted me. I spoke carefully, feeling little needles jabbing at my lips and cheek. “I’ll keep my ears open at the store.”

Hunter chuckled. “Anything coming from the store’s gab group can’t be taken too seriously. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but let me know what’s going around, okay?”

I gave him a lopsided grin at that, since normally Hunter hated gossip. His about-face could only be in the line of duty. “K,” I said.

By the time I got back to The Wild Clover, my mother had rearranged the shelves.

My mother hadn’t reorganized
all
of the shelves. Just the ones nearest the front of the store, those carefully and creatively designed by me. Shelf placement is a science in the grocery business and I’m constantly looking for creative ways to build displays, end caps, and case stacks into attractive sensory experiences that sell products.

As they say, retail is detail.

So the first things my customers encountered when they walked in the door of The Wild Clover were the hard-to-resist items like:

But now everything up front had been drastically changed, replaced with toilet tissue and laundry detergent. Talk about first impressions.

“It looks so much better now,” Mom said, dusting her hands, finished righting her world, forcing her unbending ideas into
my
world. “More functional.”

Adrenaline was unnumbing my face fast.

“I wasn’t going for functional,” I said with a neutral tone, proud of my self-control, although I had a twitchy left eye. “Where’s my honey?”

“With the peanut butter where it belongs.”

Carrie Ann shot me an amused glance. Holly had run for cover when she saw me coming in, probably hiding out in the back in case I blamed her for Mom’s actions. She should realize by now that I understood.

Nobody controls Mom.

Voices came floating down from the choir loft, reminding me that today was Sheepshead Day for the seniors at The Wild Clover, as it was every Monday, and the games were on. Sheepshead is Wisconsin’s official card game, ever since so many Germans settled here and brought the game over from the old country. It’s a trick-taking game and, when played five-handed, the way we like it best, the dealer’s partner is a big secret, even from the dealer.

I heard Grams say, “Pass,” meaning she was passing on the blind.

Mom pursed her lips, her eyes shifting upward. “Your grandmother gets very aggressive when she plays cards. You should hear some of the things coming out of her mouth.”

“She’s fun,” I said, defending Grams, as always. “She’s like the queen bee of her generation. Everybody likes to be around her.”

“Humph,” Mom said, since everybody knew there could only be one queen bee and she was it, not Grams. “If you girls can handle the store without me, I’m walking down to the library.”

A hoot sounded from up in the choir loft, and then someone said, “Thanks for taking me for a ride!”

With that, Mom rolled her eyeballs in disgust and left.

I surveyed the damage to my store.

Somebody rapped on an upstairs table, doubling the pot.

“I’ll help you put everything back,” Holly said from behind me, sounding apologetic. “SS (
So Sorry
), but she gets something in her head and nothing can change her mind. Believe me, I tried.”