Totally Buzzed (A Miller Sisters Mystery)

TOTALLY BUZZED

An Echelon Press Book

First Echelon Press paperback printing / 2010

All rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2010 by Gale Borger

Cover Art © Nathalie Moore

Echelon Press

9055 G Thamesmeade Road

Laurel, MD 20723

www.echelonpress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Echelon Press LLC.

eBook 978-1-59080-957-0

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the loves of my life, Bob and Shannon.

I couldn't have done it without you.

Without the love and support from the real Bill-n-Gerry Show, I would not have had the background material to mold my characters. I love you both.I
 
only wish you could have shared this with us, Dad.

Big thanks go to Sadie Sullivan Greiner–the finest witch in the west. Thank you for your expertise and your friendship–you too, Froggie!

Finally, huge thanks to Karen, Kat, and all the folks at Echelon Press for your hard work, and for holding my hand through the process.

1

"Okay Buzz, let's do it; rock, scissors, paper," my younger sister Fred said.

I stood, hands on hips, staring at the open door to the crawlspace under our parents' farm house. "Rock, scissors, paper my butt, who do you think you are talking to? It stinks to high Heaven down there! You are not getting me under that house."

"C'mon, rock, scissors, paper!" Fred shook her fist in the air–like that was going to convince me to do something as stupid as to play her little game.

"C'mon now Buzz, we've always made major decisions this way. We can decide fairly and impartially who has to go under the house, get the lamp, and drag out whatever died down there. I promised Mom." She wore that condescending look that never failed to piss me off, as if she were conversing with a foreign, slow child.

I felt my blood pressure rising. "Impartiality my ass, you cheat. I never did know how, but I know you cheat. If you think Mom's ugly old floor lamp is under there, you go. No
way
are you getting me under that house!"

I sniffed, confirming that it reeked under there. "I can smell something rotten in Denmark."

I bent to look in the black hole. "
Oooo
, looks like some big hairy spiders are waiting for you Fred."

Her face crumpled and her voice took on the nasty grating whine that told me she was getting desperate. "Aw geez Buzz, you know I have arachnophobia! I won't be able to breathe, I'll die down there! If I wasn't sure the lamp was there I would never suggest you going.

"I remember we stuffed the lamp under there about five years ago, hoping she'd forget she owned it. Just go under there, get Mom's cowboy lamp." She sniffed. "And uh, while you're there you can drag that dead coon, or what ever the heck is rotting down there, out. I'll even pay you, I swear!"

I sighed. "Damn right you'll pay me!" Fred opened her mouth and I held up a hand. "Okay, okay, rock, scissors, paper. I don't know how you Bogart me into this stuff, I never win anyway." I went for rock, and lost like I knew I would.

"Crap, I really hate it when that happens," I mumbled as I crouched down and prepared to enter the crawlspace from Hell. "A few spiders and you'd think Godzilla was down there! I can't believe I have such a wienie for a sister."

"Oh Buzz, you're the best."

"Spare me, Spider Girl, and shine that flashlight under here."

The reality of it was the crawlspace under our folks' house really
was
a damp, spider-infested, creepy place all four of us avoided at all costs–even when we were kids. Not that we were girlie-girls, well, except for Al, but we don't usually claim her as a sib anyway.

Staring through the door, I saw a string tied to one of the rafters and smiled. I remembered one time when I was really pissed at my youngest sister, Al. I'd put a noose around her Beach Girl Barbie's neck and hung it about four feet inside the crawlspace. No one would rescue her and Al cried and tattled to Dad. He cut down the little Prima Dona's stupid Barbie doll and I got my butt kicked. That would have been about 40 years ago. The tell-tale string still hung, mostly rotted, to the rafter. I sighed
. Ahhh, those were the days.

Coming back to the present, and resigned to my dismal fate, I took a deep breath, cracked my knuckles, and squeezed my not-so-petite butt through the opening under the farmhouse.

Inching through that damp, smelly crawlspace, I continued to cast aspersions on Fred's integrity, our ancestors, and any future-born children she might have. I huffed, I puffed, and I clawed my way through five thousand spider webs and 54 years of old junk.

I heaved myself along what must have been the length of two football fields. Straining to look behind me for the opening, I realized I had gone about eight feet.
Damn,
feet
s
chmeet; I was getting the hell out of Dracula's Den as soon as I laid a hand on Mom's stupid floor lamp.

I crept further along, the smell of dead animal making me nauseated. The feeling of being trapped in this moldy, dark place brought every horror flick I ever saw to life. The tickling of panic settled in the back of my throat. In the ever-narrowing, coffin-like confines of the foul-smelling crawlspace, all I could think about was the many ways I could murder Fred.

The rub was how to convince my parents she had run away to Alaska to count whales. It crossed my mind that it had been much easier to wind my way around broken pram wheels, rotten dog bones, and old window screens when we were younger...
much
younger.

"Are you there yet? Are you there yet?" floated the sing-song mantra of my lovely–and soon to be dead–whale-counting sister. She sounded so smug and triumphant. I gritted my teeth and thought about bringing back a couple giant tarantulas and slipping them into her underwear drawer.

"To Hell with this mess; I'm out of here."

Scrambling around on my belly so I once again faced the door, my elbow smacked into what I thought was another empty box. When pain shot up my arm, I thought whoever thought up the words 'funny bone' should be shot. I nudged the box and figured this had to be where Mom must have stashed that butt-ugly cowboy lamp. Eureka! Now to get the Hell out of Hell.

In the dim light, through an open corner, I could make out the cowboy boot which made up the base of the floor lamp. That was all the incentive I needed.

I would have made Jesse Owens proud as I high-tailed it down Black Widow Boulevard and exploded out of the door, dragged in great gulps of fresh air.

Looking much like Medusa must have on a bad hair day, I heaved the heavy box with the cowboy lamp to the door. I swept the spider webs out of my hair and choked on the foul smell emanating from the crawlspace. A brief moment of great joy rushed through me as I flicked six of those eight-legged little buggers off my sleeve in Fred's direction. Watching her screech and dance out of the way was the highlight of my entire morning.

"Man, for a woman who owns a pet store, you sure are freaky about spiders, Fred."

She gave me a 'You're number one' with the wrong finger, and I chuckled as we lugged the box around the corner of the house. We agreed we would clean up and de-bug the lamp before hauling it into Mom's kitchen, so we headed toward where Mom's garden hose lay in the back yard.

Struggling with her end of the box, Fred waddled around the corner of the house. "I wonder if this thing s as ugly as I remember it."

"I remember it as being butt-ugly, but not this heavy. Boot, rattle snake–distinctly Mom's taste. I wonder what made her decide to go for the southwestern décor again."

"Don't know, maybe she was watching a John Wayne marathon and the mood struck. So how about if we accidentally drop this ugly sucker on the way in?"

While I agreed the idea held merit, I figured nothing short of a sledge hammer would destroy it. We also thought about accidentally leaving it behind the pickup truck and letting Dad run over it, but we figured Mom might make him fix it. I didn't think Pat carried that much duct tape at the hardware store, so we just dropped it in the back yard.

The box was slit up the side, so we decided to just flip it open. As the flap came loose, the putrid odor of rotting flesh lambasted our unsuspecting nostrils and sent us both stumbling backward.

"Oh, my God! Something must have crawled in there and died," Fred yelled, falling over my feet, and gagging to beat the band.

"No shit, Sherlock, and it don't smell like any dead raccoon, either." I poked the box with a long stick, but nothing moved. As Fred continued to choke in the background, I lifted the flap on the box, again exposing the cowboy boot.