Murder Talks Turkey (22 page)

“In the meantime,” George said to Laura. “You need to be extremely careful.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m a big girl.”

“Big men have been killed over this. Guns take down big girls, too,” he argued. “And your roommate is right in the middle of something nasty.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Shirley’s up to something.”

“If you think she was having an affair with a married man, you’re wrong,” Laura said. “She’s not like that.”

“Shirley had all of us fooled,” I said. “She must be part of the gang. Is she still at your house?”

Laura nodded. “She’s leaving for lower Michigan in the morning.”

Before we left the hunting blind, George and I convinced Laura to keep quiet about our discussion, at least until we had time to talk to Shirley. But she refused to take any personal precautions, arguing that she had been safe until now. There was no reason to believe anyone would harm her. “Especially,” she said, “not my friend Shirley.”

From the tree line, we watched her drive away. I felt shy, self-conscious about last night. George must have felt the same because he had his eyes planted on the ground at his feet.

“Do you want to go back to being friends?” I asked.

“We never stopped.” The snake on George’s cowboy hat watched me.

“You know what I mean?” What if he regretted our hot, passionate night together? If this new twist on our relationship didn’t work, could we go back to our easy friendship of yesterday? Somehow I doubted it.

George’s gaze lifted to me. “I had a wonderful time last night,” he said. “I’m in for the long haul. How about you?”

I nodded, hiding my relief. The long haul for us could end any time, if Dickey spotted me. George wrapped his arms around my neck and pulled me close. “Cora Mae’s home,” he said.

I squealed. “She’s sprung? What happened?”

“I called an attorney in Escanaba, and he worked out her release. Cora Mae’s never been in trouble before, so they didn’t consider her a flight risk.”

“What about Blaze?”

“They’re holding him in Escanaba. I stopped in at the jail. He’s doing okay.”

“And Kitty?”

“She isn’t doing so well. The doctors discovered internal bleeding and had to take her back into surgery through the night. She’s starting all over again in ICU with the same prognosis—wait and see.”

I fought back tears. While George and I had been experimenting with a new beginning, Kitty was fighting against the end.

“There’s more,” George said while we drove in his truck to pick up mine.

I sighed, feeling tired. “What else?”

“When I drove past the gas station on the outskirts of Stonely, I spotted a carload of guys at the pumps. The one pumping gas had on orange shoes.”

“The Orange Gang,” I said. “What are they doing in Stonely? That’s a long way from home.”

“Why don’t you go back to my place,” George said. “I’ll snoop around and see what I can come up with.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t be happy with my next move, if he found out. That’s the thing with men. They like you the way you are, until you commit to them. Then they want to change you. They like control.

George drove off.

I headed for Gladstone to confront Shirley.

Chapter 32

NO ONE WAS HOME AT Laura’s house. I looked in all the windows. Nothing. Then I drove to the Dairy Flo, ordered a giant pop and a vanilla cone, and planted myself in front of the house on Dakota Avenue to wait.

Idling away the time gave me space to think.

Shirley had played a starring role since the moment the robbery went down. She’d been behind the counter and sounded the alarm. After that something happened to scare her into abandoning her home. She told me Tony was after her. But my mini tape recorder proved she was having an affair with him. Had they been in it together? Had one of them double crossed the other?

I went over the robbery step by step, replaying the scene in my head. But I wasn’t as young as I used to be. Keep at it, I said to myself. What did the robber do? What had he said?

He had threatened the line of customers, warning us that his partner was outside. Once he realized he was trapped, he swore and clunked Shirley, who was masquerading as Angie, on the head, knocking her out cold.

Why did he hit her? She’d already ruined his plan.

Light bulbs lit up in my head. I’d missed an important clue that had been right in front of my nose from the very beginning. During the robber, I thought Kent Miller had been swearing. Well, he had. He’d said, crap. But then he said, Shi…. But he hadn’t been starting a new cuss word. He was going to say the name of one of the members of his team. But he caught himself in time. Kent Miller was going to call out to Shirley once he realized that she had double-crossed him by sending out for help.

Yes! I had my first direct tie-in between Shirley and the robbery, and I was excited.

Shirley had been part of the robbery! He knew who she really was, not Angie but Shirley.

I licked a circle around my ice cream cone, which was melting from lack of attention.

Okay, Kent, Shirley, and Bob were in it together. Shirley already had the money.

Wait. That wouldn’t work. If Shirley had the money, why rob the bank? And why rob fake money? And why sound the alarm?

The only thing for certain was that Shirley had alerted the sheriff. She wanted the authorities to apprehend the robbers. That would lead to an investigation of the credit union’s cash and the missing money would be discovered. A teller would know the sequence of events after any kind of robbery.

So Shirley wanted that to happen. Maybe she was setting up the entire gang to take the fall while she scooted off with the cash. What a feat! Was she really smart enough to point fingers at the two robbers and the inside thief, and walk away with the money?

I wiped ice cream from the front of my shirt with a paper napkin.

The inside thief. That’s where Tony came into her plan.

I knew this was all speculation, but I’d had a lot of days on the run to figure it out. For now I didn’t have to take care of Grandma or Blaze or cook meals or clean my house. The laundry didn’t need doing because I didn’t have any clothes to wash and I couldn’t work my Trouble Buster business for obvious reasons. That left plenty of time on my hands to play with different scenarios.

Tony was having an affair with Shirley. He also had been at the hospital, asking the Orange Shoe guy for some kind of information, and he’d practically admitted the robbery and killing to me. He knew I was following him, so using my Glock to kill Bob Goodyear would have taken me out of the picture.

It sort of had.

I’d never heard of so many bad eggs in the same carton before. Bob, Kent, Shirley, and Tony, all smelling like rotten eggs. Mr. Tony Lento, pillar of Stonely society, had let lust and greed destroy his comfortable rural life.

Tony and Shirley had been cozy in the woods, but something had happened to make Shirley run and hide. She claimed Tony was after her, trying to set her up. Maybe he wanted his share of the money. Maybe the orange shoes Shirley threw in the lake were hers. What if she had the money all along? Where would she hide it? And why was she still hanging around this neck of the woods?

I had so many more questions to answer, but the pop from the Dairy Flo was…well…flowing through me. I needed a bathroom quick. And Laura DeLand needed a better security system, because her back door lock sprung free on my first try. I put the fingernail file back in my purse and let myself in.

The house even sounded empty, if that’s possible. After tackling my bladder problem, I wandered down a short hallway and found Shirley’s room. Since she was in transition, there wasn’t much to see. A few things hanging in the closet. A top dresser drawer with articles of clothing. It didn’t take long to learn that she didn’t have a hundred thousand dollars lying around inside Laura’s spare bedroom.

When I peered through the front window to make sure the coast was clear, an old Cadillac with a bad muffler drove slowly past. Four punk types stared at the house through open car windows. I could see piercings and tattoos and ball caps flipped backwards. The car eased down the street and turned left.

I ran and jumped into my truck, thinking they might come around again. If they stopped out front, I didn’t want to be anywhere nearby. Too late, I heard the big car coming up behind Walter’s truck. I slunk down, one eye peeled to the rearview mirror. They parked right behind me.

The two guys in the front got out. I flattened into the seat, grateful to be small. They walked past my side of the truck. I held my breath and made like a seat cushion.

“Ain’t nobody around,” I heard one of them say from the other side of Walter’s rusted-out floor boards.

“What about that reporter chick?”

“I’ze tellin’you it’s safe. Let’s go.”

They headed around the back of Laura DeLand’s house. I couldn’t help noticing they both wore orange sneakers and looked like Big Bad Leroy Brown, only bigger and badder.

I snuck another peek in the rearview mirror. Two more of them were in the back seat. At first I thought they were making out, they were so close together. Then I heard an angry raised voice. “I’ll put your lights out,” a guy said with menace.

Walter’s bad truck body was turning into an asset. Better than a motorcycle for hearing outside conversation but without the visibility.

“I’m telling you, I don’t have it,” the other one said.

“Shut up.”

The car went silent. But I’d heard enough.

Shirley was in the back seat of the old Cadillac and from what I’d overheard, she wasn’t happy to be there.

A post office mail truck turned onto Dakota Avenue with its little flashing light mounted on the top. A female postal worker got out two doors down and strolled along the sidewalk leading to the house in front of her. She had a mail bag slung over her shoulder. She inserted a handful of letters into a mailbox mounted next to a neighbor’s front door. When she arrived at Laura’s house, she rummaged in her bag, pulled out a few letters, and left them in Laura’s black mail box. Before continuing her route, she tugged out a package about the size of a box of candy. It joined the other mail, but it was too large for her to close the lid.

The mail carrier left it open and continued down the row of houses.

I almost gave myself away to the characters in the car behind me. The temptation to snatch the package almost overcame my common sense.

At last, I was pretty sure I knew exactly where the stolen money had gone.

I should have figured it out much earlier. Shirley was hanging around waiting for something she’d purchased online? Yah, right. Had I seen a computer at her house? No, I hadn’t. So how had she ordered over the Internet? Didn’t she need a computer and an internet connection to do that?

Just as George and I had protected our tape recorded conversation by sending it to his house, Shirley had mailed the stolen money to herself at Laura’s house. That woman was two steps ahead of me all the time.

Or she had been until the Orange Gang nabbed her.

I had to get my hands on that package before the punks from lower Michigan got hold of it.

But how?

Chapter 33

I ZAPPED THE GUY IN the back seat of the Cadillac before he knew what was happening. One hit, then another with my trusty stun gun, just to make sure he wouldn’t give me any trouble. He flopped around half on the floor with both legs doing the turkey trot out the back door. I recognized him from the morgue. He was dead Bob’s brother.

Shirley took the opportunity to grab his gun. I didn’t think she was choosing my side of this war, so I gave her a zap, too, causing her to drop the weapon and join the dance. My aim hadn’t been quite as good with her as it had been with the guy, but I didn’t have time for a second round, if I wanted to get away in one piece.

I ran for the porch, grabbed the package from the mailbox, and beat it out of there as the other two Orange Gang members ran from the house. I dove into the truck and slapped down the door lock just in time, squealing away from the curb with one of them hanging onto the door handle. He dragged about a block before he decided it wasn’t such a good idea and let go. My fully-loaded, live-action stun gun dangling out the window helped him make the decision.

Walter’s truck didn’t have much zip, but I knew the territory, which I hoped would give me an advantage.

The Cadillac didn’t have any guts either, because it didn’t gain on me. It didn’t lose either. I blew out of Gladstone, on the lookout for one of our law enforcement officials. With any luck, one would stop both vehicles and I’d be saved. I didn’t see a squad car anywhere in sight. Where in the world are they when you really need them?

My plan, what little I had of one, was to race to the Stonely jail and turn myself in along with the package addressed to…I forgot to look. There it was, clear as day. The package was addressed to Shirley Hess. Before I came in from the cold, I really should look inside. So I worked on opening it while driving as fast as possible down Highway M35.

The package was lighter than I’d expect, if it really held as many bills as I thought it did. And I didn’t really know how thick a stack of money would have to be to make up enough to spell out one hundred thousand. Was the package too small?

By the time I got it open, I had had several close calls with the shoulder of the road and the substantial ditches the U.P. is known for.

I dug inside the package and pulled out a handful of hundred dollar bills. I almost left the road again.

Holy Smokes! I thought I knew what I’d find, but really finding it threw me off for a minute. Somebody better be at the jail to help me before the Orange Gang arrived hot on my tail.