Murder Grins and Bears It (23 page)

That’s exactly what I planned on doing. I’d
exonerate Little Donny and drag the real killer in by his shorts.
Or rather, Fred, the private eye dog, could handle the back-end
work.

Tomorrow I’d pin on my new sheriff’s badge
and turn this town upside-down until I found the truth and the real
killer.

Deputized by the local sheriff or not.

chapter 18

Dickey and No-Neck banged on the door before
the sun crested the top of the pines. I still wore my robe and
hadn’t poured my first cup of coffee yet.

A roving band of guinea hens pecked at their
ankles as I peered out the window, reaffirming my birds’ ability to
sift through the dirt and find the biggest insects.

No-Neck had a big box under his arm.

I opened the door just enough for Fred to
stick his head out. I considered siccing Fred on them to assist the
hens, but after sniffing his former law-enforcement colleagues,
Fred plunked down and concentrated on licking his paws.

“
Ow,” Dickey said, raising
a leg. “Let us in. What’s wrong with these birds?”

I wanted to say that they knew fools when
they encountered them. Instead I said, “You can’t come in. Tell
Blaze that.”

“
He authorized us to use
reasonable force, if necessary,” Dickey said, with a militant gleam
in his eyes. “He warned us about you. We know you’re hostile to law
enforcement and to rules and regulations.”

“
What’s going on?” Grandma
Johnson mumbled from behind me. She didn’t have her teeth in yet
and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

“
Blaze’s deputies want to
fingerprint all members of our family,” I said.

“
Over my dead body,”
Grandma said. “You young puddle-jumpers aren’t telling me what to
do.” She waved a scrawny finger at the deputies.

“
We don’t need your prints,
ma’am,” Dickey explained. “Blaze said you haven’t vacated the
premises for weeks so yours aren’t required.”

“
Well, that’s different.
Come on in,” Grandma said. “I suppose you’re after Gertie.” She
gave me the evil eye. “Figures she’d be involved in something
bad.”

I didn’t know what to do. If I let them take
my fingerprints and Blaze discovered that I’d been driving Little
Donny’s car, he might arrest me just to keep me out of the way.
That’s one man who hates professional competition and will do
anything to quell it, even if it means jailing his own mother.

If I refused, these two clowns would be on
my tail all day and I wouldn’t be able to work the case.

Then I had an idea. An old idea but newly
remembered.

“
What are you waiting for?”
I said, backing up into Grandma. “Let’s get this over with. The
coffee’s almost ready by now.”

Everyone stepped gingerly around Fred.

No-Neck placed his box on the table, opened
it, and started sifting through the equipment while I set a heaping
plate of homemade sugar doughnuts on the table.

“
Let me change out of my
robe,” I said, palming a tube of super glue from my trusty junk
drawer. “I’ll be right back.”

I changed as quickly as
possible, then pierced the tube with a needle and ran a thin layer
of super glue across the fingers of my left hand, being extremely
careful not to touch them together. I’d done
that
once, by accident, before I
discovered that polish remover would unglue them. That time I ended
up at the Escanaba hospital.

I’ve been there, done that, and since I
didn’t have any polish remover in the house, I wasn’t taking
chances. After waving my fingers around and blowing on them until
they dried, I did the same thing to the fingers of my right
hand.

With any luck, the glue would fill in the
whorls in my fingertips and I’d beat Blaze at his own game.

I wondered if anyone had ever tried this
before.

“
They don’t need Heather’s
prints either, since she arrived after your shenanigans,” Grandma
said to me when I returned to the kitchen. She was in the process
of pouring coffee for the deputies, but most of it missed the cups,
puddled on the countertop, and ran down the cabinets.

Dickey Snell stood formally, awaiting my
return, but No-Neck had a sugar doughnut in each hand, and his
cheeks were packed like a squirrel stowing it away for the first
snowfall. Dickey was too anal-retentive to expose his human side,
but I caught him glancing longingly at the heaping plate.

“
There,” Grandma said,
sloshing the half-filled cups in front of them. “You can fancy it
up yourself. Cream and sugar’s on the table.” She pulled out a
chair and sat down. “Can you take that dog off our hands?” she
asked Dickey. “Before it bites somebody’s leg off.”

“
The dog stays,” I
said.

“
Suit yourself. It’s your
house. But the thing is vicious. I’m surprised it hasn’t eaten all
the guineas yet. It’s going to take a chunk out of someone and
you’ll be facing a lawsuit. Probably lose everything you have.” She
glanced around the room and humphed. “Not that you have anything
worth keeping. Barney’s turning in his grave for sure.”

I tried not to look at Grandma’s sunken
toothless mouth.

Dickey strutted around the room like a
rooster, wearing his green cat-hair-crusted jacket. My cat allergy
kicked in and I started sneezing. “You’ll have to wait outside,” I
told him between sneezes. “I’m allergic to you.”

He frowned, and I could see he was thinking
about protesting. After several more violent sneezes directed his
way, he reconsidered. “I’ll be outside,” he said to No-Neck. “Shout
if you need me.”

No-Neck nodded and picked up my wrist. “I’m
going to roll your fingers one at a time. Try to relax.”

Grandma Johnson watched the procedure with
great fascination. “Keep me posted when you get the results,” she
said. “I need to know what kind of person I’m living with.”

Five minutes later the deed was done.
No-Neck packed up his equipment and the two deputies disappeared
down the road, leaving angry guinea hens in their Chevy dust.

I called Cora Mae and asked her to bring
over a bottle of nail polish remover when she and Kitty picked me
up. After that I sorted through my weapons purse to make sure it
was fully loaded.

Today was the day I’d solve the crime. I
felt it deep in my bones the same way I could feel a gathering
thunderstorm.

****

“
Where are you going?”
Grandma shouted as I slid into the back seat of Kitty’s rusted-out
Lincoln because Cora Mae had the shotgun seat. Fred bounded across
the yard, leaped over my lap, and settled next to me, his tongue
hanging almost to the floor.

“
Here and there,” I shouted
back.

“
Billy Lundberg’s funeral
is starting at nine o’clock,” she said, shuffling toward Kitty’s
car. She had her purse in her hand and her best hat on her head.
“Drop me at Ed Lacken’s Funeral Home in Trenary. Heather will pick
me up if you can’t bring me back.”

“
Have Heather take you,” I
suggested.

“
She’s moping in her room
and won’t get dressed.”

“
I forgot all about the
funeral,” Cora Mae said from the passenger seat. “We should stop in
and pay our respects, too.”

“
We have something
important to do,” I said. “The interception, remember? We aren’t
going to Trenary.”

Ed Lacken operated the only funeral home in
our area. Everybody used him. My husband, Barney, and all three of
Cora Mae’s deceased husbands had been done up by Ed.

Grandma eyed Fred. “Get that mutt out of the
car.”

“
He’s coming along,” I
said, hoping that would dissuade her.

Kitty started the car and revved the engine.
“Trenary’s on the way. We can stop in for a minute. Hop in.”

Grandma couldn’t decide if a ride next to
Fred was worth the effort or not. Then she slid in, wary and alert
for trouble.

She should have been more worried about the
car’s driver.

Just as she closed the car door, Kitty
ripped out of the driveway. Grandma slid across the seat against
Fred, and Fred plowed into me. We all piled up on my side in a
bunch of flailing arms and legs.

Grandma smelled like cheap perfume and
dentures, and Fred smelled like…well…like ripe dog. If I ever smell
like either of them, I’ll expect Cora Mae to put me out of my
misery.

“
Holy cripes,” Cora Mae
said at the next turn.

“
Holy mackerel,” Grandma
yelled, trying to straighten herself up and get away from her
canine nemesis. “Where’s the fire?”

Fred, sensing Grandma’s discomfort and
wanting to help, licked her face, one long, dead-on slurp. Once she
recovered from the assault, she hit him with her purse and wiped
her face with her sleeve. “Worthless,” she muttered. “The whole
bunch.”

I imagined I was at the top of the worthless
bunch list, although Fred might have notched past me into first
place.

We got to the funeral home in breakneck
time. For once in her life, Grandma didn’t spew a continual stream
of verbal abuse. She gripped the seat with white knuckles and her
cheeks were sucked together like she’d licked a lemon. When we
stopped, she crawled out and examined Kitty’s car. “That was some
race car driving,” she said, straightening her hat. “Don’t bother
waiting for me. I’ll find another ride home. I’d rather walk than
go through that again.”

She shuffled off, wobbling slightly.

“
I thought you told me
George was out of town,” Cora Mae said when she spotted his truck
in the parking lot.

“
He must have decided to
come back early,” I said, watching her jump out of the car. She
hurried into the funeral home, actually elbowing past Grandma in
her haste and almost bowling the old prune over.

What was I going to do to keep Cora Mae and
her Wonderbra’d boobs away from George?

“
Two minutes and then we
leave,” I said to Kitty. “We don’t want to miss the
action.”

“
What are we looking for?”
Kitty wanted to know, hefting herself out from behind the steering
wheel.

“
I’m not sure exactly.
We’ll know it when we see it. Latvala promised someone a shipment
of something and that sounds big.”

Kitty gave me a piercing look. “Okayyyy,”
she said, doubtfully.

“
I didn’t get a chance to
check his largest outbuilding before the alarm went off. I’m
guessing it contained a white moving van.”

Fred had his nose plastered against the car
window and a dejected, poor-me ear tilt. The howling would commence
the minute we vanished from sight. I could tell.

“
I know,” I said, always
pleased when I thought of a solution. “We’ll take turns going in.
It’ll take longer, but that way, Fred won’t flip out. One of us can
stay out here and watch the road in case a moving van goes
by.”

“
Good idea,” Kitty said.
“You go first. I’ll stay with Fred.”

“
I’ll make it quick. If you
see anything suspicious, lay on the horn and I’ll run
out.”

Funerals are big in the U.P. Weddings,
funerals, and senior citizen potlucks are our main sources of
entertainment and they draw quite a crowd. Ed Lacken’s parking lot
was jammed full. Although we’d had to park farthest from the
funeral home, we were closest to the road. Perfect placement for a
stakeout.

Best of all, I hadn’t seen Blaze’s sheriff
truck, which meant he was watching his ward like he should be. I
didn’t think he’d get around to moving Little Donny until later in
the day. Blaze wasn’t exactly a high-octane performer. He’d take
his sweet time, which I was counting on.

I hustled into the funeral home.

George met me in the hallway. I scanned the
locals gathered in the green room without spotting Cora Mae.

“
She’s on the other side by
the casket smelling the flowers,” George said, as though reading my
mind. “I managed to slip away. That woman’s like a wood
tick.”

He grinned as we walked in together.

“
I only have a few
minutes,” I said. I’d missed George’s company. My new investigation
business was threatening to consume all my time. I smiled to
realize that now I actually had a personal life to occupy me after
spending the last few years deep in mourning. “In a day or two,” I
said, feeling awkward but determined to spit it out, “maybe we can
sit down someplace quiet and work on my written driving
test.”

I saw Cora Mae pushing her way over.

“
I’d like that,” he said,
following my gaze and tensing. “Gotta go. I’ll be over to work on
the sauna later and we can talk.” He gently squeezed my arm in
farewell.

George faded into the crowd and Cora Mae
abruptly changed direction like she had a Global Positioning System
unit lodged in her bosom.

Surveying the mourners, I saw Dickey and
No-Neck and several of Blaze’s other newly-sworn deputies.
Shouldn’t these so-called law-and-order protectors be surrounding
my grandson to keep him safe? Instead, they lounged around, waiting
for the snacks to come out after the funeral.

Onni Maki shouldered by, his hair wrapped
over his bald spot, a pinky ring on his little finger, his eyes
focused on Cora Mae. They’d dated briefly - but Cora Mae has dated
everybody in the county at one time or another and her territory
was widening.

I thought about offering to pay Onni to
distract her from George, but rejected the idea as pathetic.

Grandma Johnson had joined a group of old
battle-axes just like her. They huddled in a gossipy circle, an
assortment of outdated hats and flowery handbags, with every single
one of their mouths wagging simultaneously. I could only hope
today’s hot topic didn’t involve me.