October Fest: A Murder-by-Month Mystery (15 page)

Most of them headed straight to the door and so were not present when Gary Wohnt strode through five minutes later in his civilian clothes, sans sunglasses. He could have been any townsperson off the street in to browse the periodicals except for the hell-bent-for-leather expression on his face. It made my chest flutter because I knew from experience that when he looked like that, he usually got what he wanted. Inside the door, he quickly scanned the room, his eyes brushing over me with an almost physical intensity before landing on Sarah Glokkmann, who was trading small talk with one of the few remaining reporters. I grabbed the counter for support, grateful that I wasn’t the object of his attention.

He stepped to the side to wait until Glokkmann was finished with her conversation, but he didn’t remove his eyes from her person. I took advantage of the rare chance to study him in profile from a safe distance. He had been sort of doughy and repellent before leaving with his born-again tart, but had returned hard and taut, a compact boxer’s body under jeans and a button-down white shirt that set off his skin tone beautifully. He reminded me of someone, and I couldn’t quite place it. Was it someone I had met in the Cities? Certainly not anyone I’d gone to high school with. Was it some actor?

“Oh my GOD!”

The scattering of people in the library halted their conversations to rubberneck me. I ripped my eyes away from Wohnt, but not before they snapped toward mine with a dangerous glint that spoke of irritation and something muskier.

“I can’t believe I forgot my lunch! I was so looking forward to that salad.” It was lame but I had to say something because everyone was staring at me and I couldn’t say what I was really thinking, which was that Deputy Gary Wohnt, from the side, looked. Exactly. Like. My. Hot Sexy. Unobtainable. Erotic-dream-driving. Chief Wenonga statue.

My ejaculation changed the
mood of the room, which I guess is their nature. The reporters still lingering gave me a wide berth, leaving only Glokkmann and Tanya to side-by-side stare disapprovingly at me. Kenya, I assumed, was off in the stacks along with several regulars who’d been thrilled to find the library open early. Gary took advantage of the break in conversation to stride over to Glokkmann and Tanya. He uttered a few quiet words to Tanya, who blanched before exiting with her purse clutched so tightly I wondered if she had her spare heart in it.

I doubted Glokkmann would pale in the presence of the Grim Reaper himself, but whatever Gary was telling her was making her body stiff. I grabbed the closest object to me, which happened to be a stapler, and strolled over to the table directly behind them and knelt underneath it, pretending to be busy. I presumed that the hair and shoe print in Webber’s room had been positively identified, and that Glokkmann was soon going to be kicked off her throne. I wanted to hear it firsthand, though. Unfortunately, Gary was speaking quietly and the only words I caught were “evidence,” “reason to believe,” and “a scene.”

“What’re you doing?”

I jumped, and the sudden movement caused me to bump my head on the bottom of the table. “Cleaning.”

Kenya crawled next to me and wrinkled her forehead. “With a stapler?”

“I found it under here.”

“No you didn’t. I saw you carry it over.”

“Then I’m stapling the carpet.”

“Why?”

For Pete’s sake, I couldn’t spy on Gary and Glokkmann as long as she was chattering. “Because it was coming loose under the table. Wanna go grab me some staples?”

“Not really. Wanna come by the hotel later and hang?” Her face had returned to its relaxed stage, open and confident.

“Not really.”

“Too bad,” she said, pulling herself out from under the table and tipping her head at the door. “Because that’s probably the only way you’ll find out what just happened.”

I crawled out from under the table, too, rubbing the goose egg forming on the side of my head. I was just in time to see Gary subtly yet physically escorting the Representative to a waiting unmarked police car.

“I’ll be there at seven,” I said.

“Great! See you then.”

And she skipped out, strangely perky for a woman whose mother has just been arrested. I stood and considered whether it was time to invest in fresh ibuprofen. And then I sneezed twice in rapid succession.

“Gesundheit!” Someone said from the back of the library.

“Thanks,” I replied, cursing the cold that was following hot on the heels of my stomach bug. That was all I needed. I blew my nose and made a note to buy myself orange juice and garlic after work. In the meanwhile, I wanted to know what the media knew.

I plunked down at the nearest terminal to see if the police had issued any announcements in the Webber murder and came up empty-handed. Next, I searched for Swydecker and found that the newspapers were reporting him as hospitalized without a specific reason, though the blogs were afire with rumors of a suicide attempt and a mistress. He had not yet officially withdrawn himself from the campaign.

Just to scratch an itch, I did a search on “Glokkmann,” “tomatoes,” and “Battle Lake” and found a comprehensive story about the drifter who’d pelted her. In a former life, Randall Martineau had been the owner of a small carpet-cleaning business in Glokkmann’s district. He’d been forced to close his business when he was struck with an unnamed lung disease and couldn’t afford to keep the business afloat and pay his medical bills. Not until he’d given up his business and plummeted to the poverty level did he qualify for state-subsidized health care. His disease was currently in remission and he devoted his time to raising awareness about the health care crisis in the United States. It was Glokkmann’s bad luck he and his troupe had landed in Battle Lake this week.

That was enough non-library work for the day. I spent the next several hours helping a young couple figure out how to use the computer to shop for homes in the Cities, locating Otter Tail County records for a researcher from Fargo who was writing his dissertation on Indian burial mounds, browsing
Library Journal
reviews to uncover which books to spend my meager acquisitions funds on, and creating promotional materials for the children’s author I had tracked down and booked for a presentation next week. I was about to close up shop at 6:00 when I became aware that I hadn’t had time to restack the huge pile of returned books that had accumulated over the day. Sighing deeply, I went to work and checked them in and shelved them in under an hour.

Since I was running late anyway, I stopped by Larry’s to buy garlic tabs and orange juice for me and dill pickle potato chips and mineral water for Kenya. Never show up empty-handed, my mother had always taught me. I drank half the carton of juice on the way to the motel and downed three garlic tabs, but the itch in my nose and fogginess in my head were getting worse instead of better. I should just become bubble girl and call it a life.

Pulling into the motel parking lot settled a cold stone in my stomach. I was sick of the place. It was jinxed forward, backward, square, and round, and I would have much rather gone straight home to feel sorry for myself. Unfortunately, my curiosity and obligation to Mrs. Berns were stronger than my self-pity. I trudged up to the lakeside second floor. The police tape was gone, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that neither Swydecker nor Webber’s rooms would be occupied anytime soon. In fact, the whole motel felt vacant, except for to my left, where I could hear Rage Against the Machine pumping out of the room that Kenya and Glokkmann shared.

I knocked, then knocked again. I sneezed three times in a row and was about to say “screw you” to my curiosity when the music quieted and the door opened. Kenya was dressed only in a towel, her hair wet. “You’re late.”

“I’m here now,” I said. She was younger than me if only by a year or two, and I wasn’t taking any sass from her.

“Hold on, I gotta get dressed.” She stepped back from the open door and dropped her towel, making certain to hold my eye contact. I sure wasn’t going to look anywhere else; I’d learned that lesson from Darcy. When I didn’t blush or acknowledge her nudity, she turned and strolled over to the dresser. She had a tramp stamp etched on her smooth lower back, ornate words that spelled out something that looked like “non duc duc.” I wondered if it was Korean. She had a beautiful body from behind, athletic with curves, but I wasn’t a fan of the single white female act. I set down the potato chips and water and walked over to the curtained window, pretending to look out at the lake.

“Tell me when you’re done,” I said.

She didn’t respond. I heard the soft slip of clothing, and then footsteps approaching from behind followed by something furry in my hand. I jumped, and she laughed.

“Don’t hurt it!”

I turned to see her holding a fuzzy rodent that she’d tried to slide into my palm. “What the hell is that?”

“A gerbil. His name is Hammy.” She set him on the ground and pulled a small gumball-sized rubber ball from the pocket of her silk robe. “Fetch, Hammy!”

“Can he play dead?” I liked rodents a little more than I liked birds.

“No, watch!” The ball disappeared under the bed, and ten seconds later, Hammy scurried out with one cheek bulging. He ran a circle around Kenya before spitting the red ball at her feet.

“Wow.” I actually was pretty impressed. I bet I couldn’t train my cat to do that, although he wouldn’t mind teaching Hammy a trick or two. Actually, just one probably, and it would be called, “tell me what color my stomach is.”

“I know! He’s my best friend.” The creepy seductress was gone and in her place was a young, fresh-faced girl. “He’s an absolute genius. Mom hates him. I wish I could bring him everywhere but she makes me leave him in his cage. He hates cages. Would you like living in a cage?”

“No.” Her rapid speech made me uncomfortable. “Speaking of your mom, where is she?”

“Grace said that you’re a reporter. Do you like reporting?”

“I wouldn’t do it for free,” I said. “Kenya, did your mom get arrested today?”

“I have a boyfriend, you know. His name is Brad. He’s in a rock band.”

I sat down across from her. “Kenya, where’s your dad at?” I’d initially put her at her mid to late twenties but up close, agitated and without makeup, I wondered if she was even old enough to vote.

“Home. Moorhead.”

“Does he know where your mom is?”

She crumpled to the floor and started crying, slow tears that doubled and tripled until she was sobbing. She looked tiny and fragile, and I leaned over to hug her. Hammy scurried up my leg and into her pocket.

“She’s in jail! They think she killed that guy, but I know she didn’t. She was with me that night. All night. In here.”

“All night?” That was what Glokkmann had told the police, but she had no one to corroborate it.

“Yeah.” She pulled away and rubbed her hand across her nose. “She was at the Octoberfest thingie for a while. She wanted me with her, you know, so she could do her rainbow nation deal. I played good daughter until I got bored, and then I went to check out the band. That’s when I met Brad. Anyhow, she had Grace track me down and said it was time to leave. We all headed back here. Mom took one of her sleeping pills, so an earthquake wouldn’t have woken her.”

Her story jibed with what Brad had told me. “Did you tell the police that?”

“No.” She hung her head. “I was mad at mom for dragging me to this podunk town. I wanted to make her squirm a little, so I told the police I was out all night partying so she wouldn’t have anyone to support her story.” Her words caught in her throat. “I didn’t know they’d arrest her.”

“That’s what happened today? Your mom was arrested for Bob Webber’s murder?”

“Yeah. They said they found some of her hair on the scene. And she didn’t have an alibi.”

“If you tell them the truth, it will help your mom.”

“And land me in jail!”

“It won’t look good, but lying to the police about your whereabouts isn’t illegal. Right?”

“Will you do it? Go to the police for me, I mean.”

“We could go together.”

“Haha! Look at Hammy!” He’d peeked out of her pocket and had a piece of lint perched on his nose like a tiny Hitler mustache. “
Sieg heil
, Hammy!”

Her gales of laughter on the heels of torrential tears had my head spinning. Talking to her reminded me of looking through the microscope in ninth grade biology. Everything—oak leaf scales, bacteria, blood platelets—looked like a blurry green eyelash to me. I had to fake it, just like I had to fake that she wasn’t screwy.

“Okay, I’ll do it, but only if you call your dad and let him know what’s up. Plus, the police are going to want to talk to you, so you’re only putting this off, not avoiding it altogether.”

“Thank you!” She lunged at me with a hug, and I could feel Hammy squirming between us. “I’ll call right now.” She went over to her purse and yanked out a sparkly pink cell phone.

“No messages,” I said.

She gave me the “shush” signal. “Daddy? It’s Kenya.” She paused, and then started crying again. “The police took her away. And it’s all my fault!”

The conversation devolved from there, but toward the end, he must have brought her back on track. She was wiping her eyes and sniffling but sounded okay. “I love you too, Daddy.” She hung up the phone. “He’s coming. He said he’ll be here before the morning to help with mom and to bring me home. I’m sorry I’m so difficult.”

“Your life can’t be easy.” It was the truth. My mother had been an enabler, but she was always there for me. I knew she loved me and was proud of me. Glokkmann had treated Kenya like a trophy when we first met, cutting her daughter down and raising herself in the same stroke. And Glokkmann’s treatment of Grace gave me good reason to believe that was just skimming the surface of Glokkmann’s dysfunction.

“I’m all right,” she said. “I’m just a big baby sometimes. That murder, and then the suicide attempt. And I’m sick of this town. I just want to go home.”

“I can sympathize.”

She shot me a grateful smile. “I’m fine. But you should probably go. You don’t look so good.”

I didn’t feel so good. My nose felt as red as a cherry, and I could feel a pressure on my lungs. This bug was hitting whatever body parts the previous one had overlooked. “OK. But here’s my phone number. Call me if you want me to come back after I talk to the police for your mom. I can stay with you until your dad gets here.” I sincerely hoped she didn’t call, but I wanted her to know she had options.