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Authors: Marlys Millhiser

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D
OLORES-THE-FAT, ALREADY IN a snit, took an instant dislike to the press and upchucked a hairball on the soon-to-be-talking head's shoe. “God, what's that? Its stomach? Get that off me.”
“Excuse me, ma'am, do you work here? We're having some trouble with the traffic—”
“No.” Charlie shoved Fatty Truex's wheelchair into Fatty Staudt's knees to get herself through the pileup in front of the cameras and caused a vituperative altercation in the process.
“Somebody stuff a sock in those geezers' beaks. We're about to go live.”
“Please, lady, could you tell our viewers a few facts about the series of murders occurring here?”
“No.”
“Can you send us some of the staff to interview? These people aren't really suitable.”
“Oh, really.” Charlie escaped behind the jam of wheelchairs and walkers and the nurses' station and around the curve in the back wall just as the reverse countdown for show-time began. Only to come up against Cousin Helen.
The nurse's tears dripped onto a thick sweater with subdued colors and rows of angry racoons duking it out like her Fatty grandpas back at the newscast. She stood next to the door to the smoker, looking down into the hazardous-waste storage area enclosed in chain-link fencing and drifted snow. “I don't see a push broom.”
“It's under one of the drifts. Helen, where is the staff? National news media with television cameras are blocked just inside the door to the hall here.”
“All hiding. Afraid it's an INS raid. What if you can't find my mother?”
“She's not going anywhere, trust me. Can you go and take care of the television crew? And have you seen Marlys? She stole my purse.”
“Everybody's looking for Marlys. What about my mother? It's all her fault anyway. Even you.” She slid the glass door open and walked out into the cold of the smoker to grieve in peace.
Charlie held the door from closing. “What's whose fault, your mother's?” Before she could get an answer, three things in close succession distracted her. The tomcat tore up the hall one way, fur all puffed like he had a Doberman on his tail. The naked Marlys tore down it the other way, chased by her own demons, without Charlie's purse, and headed straight for the photo op of the decade.
And Harvey Rochester with two other men, all bundled up and snow-crusted to the knees, appeared at a slower pace behind her. The helicopter, forced to set down out in the road, had brought the coroner and deputy sheriff. They'd walked around to a back door to avoid the public exposure Marlys Dittberner was about to garner in spades.
The coroner, who was really a mortician, was also something of a surprise, as were nearly all the people Charlie had met since she'd come to Iowa. He was jolly, for one thing—which didn't seem proper in either a mortician or a coroner. In fact, he was more than jolly. He cracked up at every other thing Charlie said. He'd probably heard she'd been between the sheets with Mitch Hilsten, which would make even more ridiculous her pronouncements on Marlys' running naked into the limelight and Dolores hacking up a fur ball and the Fatties
cursing and coming to blows for the cameras, as well as Rose reading deadpan and toneless immortal prose from one of the evangelical pamphlets from Elsina Miller's office in front of a national broadcast.
He stood over the expanding body of Doris Streblow Wyborny wiping laugh tears from his cheeks. “I always love to come to Myrtle. Okay, stand back, put up your masks—this is going to get messy.”
He stuck a small knife into a ballooning Doris, and the deputy sheriff took off gagging as Doris deflated in an audible hiss. The coroner's name was Leland Mosher. He was short and considerably overweight, with great jowls and belly and receding hair, and an expression that made hardened old Charlie even want to cuddle him—kind of like a koala the size of a polar bear. You just knew there was soft fuzz on him somewhere.
“Leland, are you certain that was necessary?” Mr. Rochester asked in his deep Broadway diction. “We have been through a great deal here, you realize.”
“Sorry. I just love working with the deputies. Expected your lovely detective here to be a little squeamish. Life should be more fun. Death sure isn't. Fun is where you find it. And in my profession—” He wore thick, dark-rimmed glasses, which he peered over now with a sigh that made Charlie laugh, too.
“My detective sees murder all the time,” Harvey proclaimed in a comic, prissy “So there.” “She works in Hollywood.”
“Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it? Do you know Dick Van Dyke?”
The comic coroner kept heaving belly laughs—literally, you'd have to see it for yourself—while cutting into a poor dead woman and sniffing stuff everybody in Bulgaria could smell by now. The deputy walked back in only to grab his mouth and run back out, leaving the mortician convulsed.
Charlie and Harvey raised eyebrows over their masks and shrugged.
Meanwhile, Marshal Delwood was busy digging through the drifts in the hazardous-waste compound for Ida Mae Staudt Truex, under the watchful if teary eye of her daughter Helen Truex Bartusek, still up in the smoker.
The jolly-ghoul coroner asked Charlie to relate her impressions of what was going on here.
“I'd rather not. I really am not qualified.”
“Would you rather be thrown to the network lions, Miss Greene? I'd like particularly to know if you see any similarities to the previous body you and Harvey here examined and took samples of for me.”
“Well, they both were lying on their backs with a sheet and light blanket pulled up to their chins. Doris's eyes were wide open. Ida Mae's had one eye half closed. There was no blood. They both appear to be very heavy for their age, but it's hard to tell how much of that is bloating. Like I've been telling everybody, they could have died because it was time, because someone felt sorry for them, by help from some medicine, or a pillow held over their heads to suffocate them. Both had defecated, which is not unusual in death.” Or anytime in this place. “If it was murder, it could have been done by anybody—the doors aren't locked.”
“She's even suggested that I might be knocking off the residents to make more beds available for those on the waiting list, Leland. Can you believe that? I, Harvey Rochester?”
“Now, let her finish. Time for your theatrics later. Go on, Miss Charlie. Let's pretend we all know these are premeditated murders. They will be seven, a sizable number for this community.”
“Until Doris here, there was a pattern. The victims were all women who had been born Staudts. What if somebody made a mistake? Thought she was born Staudt? Or what if this is all getting out of hand? I think that the deputy and the marshal should spend the night here.”
Everyone but Doris stared at her. The coroner/mortician had sobered up.
“Now stop that,” Charlie said.
“This has got to be the nuttiest place on the planet,” Charlie complained to Kenny Cowper, cum Kenneth Cooper. “No wonder you're writing a book about it. It's too unbelievable for fiction, good thing you're doing it nonfiction. Everybody bugs me to find out what I think—Harvey, Cousin Helen, even the coroner, and then when I tell them, they make fun of me.”
Marshal Del finally found Ida Mae, and she and Doris Wyborny were air-lifted with Coroner Leland to Charles City and the mortuary/funeral home, leaving a very morose deputy behind to protect the patients. You could hear the marshal's dump truck roaring around town, clearing the streets with a vengeance. He'd caught hell from Cousin Helen for not being careful enough while digging around for Ida Mae. Not like she felt anything.
“How do they make fun of you?” Kenny set a beer on the bar in front of Charlie.
Her mother sliced a thin slab of smoked cheese, put it on a cracker, and handed it to her. “You're looking kind of pale. Did you have lunch? You have to be careful now, you know.”
“I haven't had anything since breakfast, and I still haven't found my purse. They make fun of me by looking dumbfounded when I answer their questions and say things like ‘Wow, you're good at this,' when all I've said is the obvious. Know what I think? I think the whole town's in on this. Look, I'm crying in my beer.”
And all of a sudden, she was laughing. So were Kenny and Ben and Edwina. Kenny was doing the cooking again, his staff laid off until people could get into town. Supposedly, they were to be treated to “the catch of the day.” Smelled a lot like beef.
“What kind of line did you catch it on?” Edwina wanted to know. “A steel cable?”
“Where's Uncle Elmo?” Charlie looked around. “Don't tell me he drove our rental back to the home place.” Her messed-up metabolism felt better already with a little cheese and beer in her.
“Hitched a ride on the county plow. Don't worry, Charlie. He knows the ropes out here.” But Edwina looked worried as she cut her daughter another cheese slice. “Kenny and I were going through the album and a few other mementos from the museum—asking him all kinds of questions. We upset him. He's got his own ghosts to deal with. He doesn't need ours.”
Charlie took another grateful swallow of beer, and energy chased the ditzy bubbles away. “So what's for dinner, barkeep?”
It was a three-inch-thick grilled sirloin, medium rare. There would be enough left over for hash tomorrow for the whole restaurant, big cow. Fresh veggies were gone, so they had frozen string beans with basil and garlic, and grilled hash-browns from the freezer with rosemary and sage and grilled onion. The barkeep rhapsodized on each ingredient.
They all ate side by side on bar stools.
The marshal of Myrtle stopped by when they were halfway though the meal to claim his share.
“God, you can write books that actually sell and cook, too? Anything you can't do?” Charlie asked the barkeep.
“Not really.”
“So, when do you serve your shift on night watch up at the Oaks?” Charlie asked Del.
“I heard about that being your idea. I spent all day and all night plowing and moving food and dirty dishes to and from that place, moving people, digging up Ida Mae—and you want me to work tonight, too? You're one cruel woman.”
Kenny stretched comfortably. “I suggest we watch the evening news over a cup of my special coffee, kick back, and
then go up to the Oaks to find Charlie's purse. She may well be leaving town tomorrow.”
The marshal bent to look out a window at the darkening sky. “Anybody know how long a full moon stays full?”
“
T
HE DAKOTAS, NORTHERN Iowa, and Minnesota are just beginning to dig out of a snow-and-ice storm, the likes of which have not been seen for a century.”
“Lot worse in 'thirty-six and 'forty-seven. Had a lulu sometime in the sixties, too. And more since. He don't know nothing,” Ben scoffed.
“In an era of climate upset due to global warming leading to dry winters even in the nation's upper mid-section, this region was unprepared for what happened.”
“Hell, every street in Myrtle's plowed and sanded already,” said the gravedigger. “Whadaya mean, unprepared?”
“The National Guard in three states was called out to rescue travelers stranded in cars, many of them overnight.” Pictured—a guy in heavy camouflage brushing snow from a car window to peer inside. “There are no confirmed deaths as yet but many are missing and deaths are expected from this killer storm.” Pictured—cars skidding off a freeway and into a ditch. “Farmers and livestock were particularly hard hit.” Pictured—a farmhouse with the snow drifted up against one side to hide the first-floor windows, and aerial shots of snow with roofs and trees but not roads.
“There was, however, a bizarre story out of a tiny town in Iowa named Myrtle, which a reporter, Duane Webber, from our affiliate station PORK-TV, was able to reach by helicopter.” Pictured—moving shots of the shadow of helicopter blades on snow.
“Duane, can you tell us what's happened there?”
“Yes, Dan, apparently there have been six suspicious deaths—the coroner of Floyd County has termed possible homicides—in this nursing home named Gentle Oaks in this tiny village of Myrtle, Iowa.” Pictured—Duane on the porch of Gentle Oaks, his breath steaming, his demeanor serious but obviously distracted by events off-camera. Probably the Mexicans racing to avoid what they thought was the INS. “This home for the sick, elderly, and disabled has been virtually saved and provisioned during the power outage and blockage of the roads by valiant local men on snowmobiles.” Pictured—Buz Bartusek helping Elsina Miller out of a snowbank, rows of snowmobilers grinning and waving in the background.
“But, Dan, inside these doors yet another, this the seventh, alleged murder has taken place during the storm, when no one could enter or leave, not even a murderer.” Pictured—camera moving through doors into lobby. And then through the double doors into the “stench” zone.
“This isn't live,” Charlie said. “It all happened hours ago. The rest has got to be outtakes. I know, I was there.” And there she was all right.
“Which means, Dan, that the murderer must be someone from within. Allegedly.” Pictured—Charlemagne Catherine Greene shoving Fatty Staudt's wheelchair into Fatty Truex's knees and, as both men rear their upper torsos in combat, racing off down the hall with the expression of someone intent on committing yet another murder. At least the sound had been an outtake. When the skeletal Fatties let loose, the obscenity quotient far outdid the stench quotient.
“I'd just got my period,” Charlie whispered to her mother, who patted her hand.
Charlie hated it when Edwina did that. She knew it was supposed to be comforting but it seemed more like “that's okay, sweetie, I know you're weak. I'm your mom.”
“Ben, you been seeing old Abigail through this?” the barkeep asked suddenly. “We all kind of depend on you to keep
watch—when we get busy with storms of the century and such.”
“Oh, yeah, she's fine. Nasty, but fine. If she turned nice, I'd call in the doctors. Maybe the governor.”
Without the odor and even with the dishabille, because the real working staff had not yet come on duty, the residents of Gentle Oaks did not appear as gruesome as they had to Charlie during the day. Of course Marlys must have been an outtake. But no, she was there, too.
They'd been unable to interview Harvey Rochester, who owned the home, because he was currently with the aforementioned coroner. Pictured—Rose reading from her pamphlet, Sherman poking his cane into the back of a vacant-looking woman in a sweatsuit and walker, and a head shot of an ethereal Marlys Dittberner floating by with white hair streaming as she passed behind Elsina Miller.
“But, Dan, we were able to talk to the administrator and spokesperson for Gentle Oaks.” Pictured—the spokesperson looking benign, all-knowing, and unperturbed by the obvious jostling of those who were perturbed by being caught up in the cables and the crush and the added confusion outside their minds.
“What's she saying, Duane?”
“Well, Dan, there seems to be some problem with the mike.”
“Yeah, right, Duane. We can hear
you
just fine,” Charlie said and watched Elsina's lips moving between beatific smiles and repeating the word, “Jesus” joyously and often.
“She seems to think these deaths were God's will and not murder and that the deceased are happy with Jesus now.”
Dan Rather was cracking up. “She's delivering a sermon.”
“Right.” Now the man from PORK-TV was being jostled.
“Thanks for that report, Duane,” Dan said to PORK and then addressed the studio behind his own cameras. “Anybody talk to edit about this?” And then he looked out at the few people eating at the bar in Viagra's. “We'll get back to you
on this late-breaking story when the coroner of Floyd County has weighed in. And thank you, Duane.”
Brief cut to Duane, who, along with the camera, was shoved into the double doors behind them. “What the
bleep
?”
“We got plenty of that.”
Dan Rather lost it.
“Keegan Monroe is your client?” Kenny said when
Celebrities Tonight
came on and Charlie wouldn't let him turn it off.
“My purse will keep a while longer. I just want to see him.”
“Never heard of him,” the marshal said.
“You heard of
Phantom of the Alpine Tunnel, Shadowscapes, Glory Boy
? He wrote the screenplays.” The barkeep was impressed, anyway.
“Don't look like much. He gay, too?”
“No,” said Charlie. “Just very rich. Now be still a moment.”
Keegan was not an actor and didn't come off as well as Mitch Hilsten would have. He'd put on a lot of weight since he'd gotten out of prison last spring, but when he began talking about the new project,
Open and Shut
, he just came alive. He talked about his weight gain—a reaction to prison food once he was released—and how it fit into this project, which was really about making love with food.
“Oh, sick.” Marshal Sweetie.
“Shut up, Del.” Kenny.
“Like what? Bananas?” The watchman.
“I've got to get home,” Charlie said. “I have a life, damn it.”
“You all right, Edwina?” Kenny the host asked.
“Got any scotch, Squirt?”
The lights on inside had attracted a few die-hard customers now that the streets were plowed. So Kenny called Lorna to
come tend the bar and Delwood drove him and Charlie up to the Oaks in the official Cherokee.
“Your mother's about at the end of her rope,” Kenny told Charlie. “Too much history here.”
“So's her daughter,” Charlie replied, fighting cramps. “And I don't have any history here. I can't believe anyone would expect Edwina to give up her life to care for the Wicked Witch of the Midwest. Her family has lost all touch with reality.”
“Men sacrifice their lives in war,” the marshal said tentatively.
“For glory, right? And when they're too young to know better or defending their families from slaughter by other guys out for glory.”
They were met in the lobby by Mr. Rochester himself. He looked awful.
“Did the INS come for all the Mexicans?” Charlie knew she felt more awful than he looked.
“We do not hire illegal aliens, forsooth. And we are once again fully staffed and running smoothly. No, the problem is—”
“I just want my purse.”
“Miss Greene has gone testy on us,” Kenny explained. “What's your problem, Harvey?”
“God,” Marshal Del said. “Don't tell me you're looking for Marlys.”
“No, it's Darla Lempke. We can't find her.”
“Her grandpa probably picked her up in his titanic tractor with lugs.”
“He came for her, she wasn't here. He called from home—she's not there. You were here today, Charlie. Can you remember the last time you saw her?”
They looked under Marlys' bed. No purse. No Darla. Marlys wasn't in her bed, nor was Gladys in hers.
“They wander. They do not sleep much. They are warm and fed and showered and Marlys has clothes,” an aide who
could speak English assured them. “Even though the moon's not so full, all here are restless still. Like they are called somewhere they don't know how to get to.”
“So, Marlys is wandering around this place with clothes on?” Del's skepticism was lost on the Latino, who had no badge, whose smile was more weary than angelic, like that of the administrator who was actually in the stinky zone.
Elsina Miller came out of the ladies wiping her hands on a paper towel. Somewhere Dolores the cat moaned venom, but the rest of the place was surprisingly quiet. Only two room buzzers called for help and the only voiced request was the woman who considered it so hard to be alive now. No blaring televisions.
“God is in His heaven, Jesus is here with us, and all is well at Gentle Oaks. The residents all sleep comfortably in their beds.”
“We just saw you on TV,” Del said. “Your sermon sent Dan Rather into hysterics, but all sound was deleted. PORK panned you bad, babe.”
“I think it's cool Jesus is here, but have you seen Marlys or Gladys? And have you ever been here at night with the moon just short of full?” Charlie was getting real anxious about her purse now and worried that somehow being more involved in the insanity here would lengthen her stay.
“Elsina's never been here at night at all. Tonight I think should be her baptism,” Harvey said. “She, Darla, the families, and the doctors of course, are the only ones who have no clue about the realities of caring for ancient adults twenty-four hours. Seems to me it's time for management to taste reality. After all, Elsina, Jesus is here with you.”
Kenny looked around, posed with his hands on his hips, and shook his head. “Listen, hear it? It's too quiet in here.”
“They are all asleep in their rooms,” the administrator insisted.
They were not all asleep in their rooms, but they were very quiet. Dolores the big tom with big hair stalked the halls of
both wings, nervous, watching the shadows, hissing at the slightest sound.
“I haf never seen him act like that,” said the tired aide. She wore a back brace. Charlie had read that the percentage of nursing-home staff with serious back injuries incurred on the job is higher than that of any other occupation. Adult babies are heavy.
There were plenty of shadows and many slight sounds. These poor souls wandered, those who could get out of bed. Some who couldn't sat on the edges of their beds and watched the shadows of those who could.
Charlie, Kenny, and Del stepped out onto the smoker porch, where they could see the moon. It still looked whole to Charlie and had a mist around it that made it seem even bigger. It was white tonight, mirroring the ground below.
The deputy sheriff joined them and lit up. He looked at the moon, too. “I used to work the kill in the packing plant in Mason City—but I've never seen anything like this place. That was just blood and guts and the terror of animals so thick it seeped through your skin and made you sick. This is terror so strong of folks so weak and bewildered it makes you even sicker. It's in the air here like it was at Armor's, only worse. Man, I can't explain it.”
“I think you explained it very well,” Charlie told him with a shiver.
“Everybody's a writer these days,” Kenny griped. “That was beautiful.”
“I'm no writer. I get this duty again, I'm no deputy.” He took another deep and satisfied drag and started a continuous slow, thoughtful, determined nodding. “Tell you another thing—I've always been mildly religious. But I have another run-in with that Miller woman and I'm going to take up heavy drinking. Just to get even with Jesus.”
They followed him inside—Charlie humbled somehow—
to find Elsina Miller and Mr. Rochester embracing, she screaming, he roaring.
And Rose reading, “Darla Lempke. Activities Director.” Reading from the badge. Rose had found the badge.
Elsina had found Darla.

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