“Neither did I,” enthused Gary.
“So who got electrocuted? Who’s dead here this time?”
“We think it’s one of Tony’s brothers. Come on,” Beth ordered. The four of them trooped to the back of the house. Beth and Gary showed Tom and Dani a crumpled body face down at the bottom of the exterior stairwell: a stocky, swarthy man in a summer suit, lightweight, and Italianate.
“Ohmigod,” wailed Dani. She stepped gingerly down the steps.
Beth warned, “I think I’ve got the power turned off at the breakers, but don’t touch the door.”
Dani seemed not to hear her. “Ah, crap,” she muttered.
Gary moved a little closer. “It’s Harvey or Marvin Sartorelli, right?”
Dani nodded dumbly.
“Which one?” Beth asked.
Dani undid the fly of the dead man’s pants, pulled the back of the pants and boxer shorts away from the body, and peered at the buttocks. “No tattoo, so this is Harvey. He was the nice one, you know.”
Nice one
? Tom imagined it was all relative.
Gary had a revelation. “Hey, wait a minute. If Wyatt is alive, if someone really did free him from my locker, then whose body did the fire department take out of my store? It had to be this guy’s brother, didn’t it? Sure. Marv went in the store and unlocked Wyatt. When the fire started, Wyatt made it out but Marv didn’t, see? Guys, we may have a two-fer.” He clapped his hands.
“I
knew
these men. Show a little respect.” Dani frowned.
“I forgot that. Sorry.”
Tom sighed. “We’d better get Robert to disable his alarm before it fries one of us. Where is he?”
“We don’t know. He and Renada have disappeared. We can’t tell him he killed someone. He’s already close to losing it,” Gary said.
It was Tom’s turn to frown. “You told the cops I got burned up at the store. The skeleton of a twin to this guy wouldn’t look much like mine.”
Gary reassured him. “Marv is just a pile of blackened male bones now. It’s not like he was some elderly female dwarf or something. It’ll be close enough.”
Tom was not convinced. Beth was on still another wavelength. “I suppose we have to report this.”
Dani was appalled. “No way, Beth, honey, if we report a stiff in your back yard, so soon after Angelo turned up dead near here and your cousin had a celebrated fire, your B&B starts to smell rank. Robert could be up for manslaughter. Tom’s cover could be blown. If Horst can read a newspaper, it will bring him back on us.
“But we’re all in pretty good shape, because Tony is out of people to send here. Marv was the most dangerous of them, and now all three are dead. We’re in the clear.”
Tom considered telling them about the green Suburban and rejected the idea. It wasn’t like Wyatt’s Firebird. It didn’t have to be the Sartorelli vehicle. He thought Dani had made an overly optimistic summary of their situation but it was calming them down.
Beth was unsold. “There’s still Wyatt.”
Dani dismissed this. “He has to be a local twerp the twins recruited. He’s certainly not one of Tony’s guys. Wyatt will bug out when he can’t find Harv. And if not, there’re four of us, six with Robert and Renada, to handle him, right?”
“Yes,” said Beth. “I guess it’s not so bad. But what do we do with Harv?”
“I suppose we could put him in the river like Angelo,” Dani mused.
Tom held up a hand. “No, we can’t have anybody finding this one.”
“Well I’m not burying him in my garden,” warned Beth.
Gary spoke. “He can’t be anywhere on this property, little cousin. We’ll take him to my mine property out by Mildred’s place once it’s dark. There’s plenty of room for eternal rest out there.”
Tom remembered stumbling upon the site. “Can we get a car in there other than going up Mildred’s driveway and down the path?”
“You’ve been to the mine?” asked Gary, surprised.
“Yeah, while looking for Robert after the Chief spooked him.”
“Oh, that. Well, you’re right, Tomahawk. The mine driveway is too overgrown for a car and it will be a bear to carry a guy this size in. Plus, there’s actually quite a bit of traffic on that road and our car will be seen if we park it on the shoulder. We’ll have to go up Mildred’s driveway, have someone distract her, and carry him in on the path. But even then, we can only do it after dark.”
“What do we do with him until then? Don’t these things sort of stiffen up?” questioned Beth, indicating Harvey’s corpse.
Gary nodded agreement. “Good point, we’ll get him in the station wagon right now. Beth, you get a tarp or some drop cloths in case he leaks or something. The three of us can get him to the garage.”
They got Harvey as far as the rose garden when the mail lady came up the drive in her truck. They dropped him rudely and crouched behind a hedge. The postal carrier had Beth sign for a package, briefed her on the county gossip, and departed. Soon thereafter, Harv was resting peacefully in the station wagon. His rattled funeral party retired to the dining room for a supper of frozen pot pies and beer.
“We can’t tell Robert about this electrocution, it will flip him out,” advised Gary.
“We can’t tell anybody,” Tom warned the others.
Dani said, “This aunt that we have to distract and slip the body past, what’s she like?”
“You met her in the alley by Gary’s store,” Tom told her.
“The feisty one with the ball bat? She won’t be easy to fool.”
“She does have a singleness of purpose, the evil-minded old hen,” agreed Gary.
Beth scowled at her cousin. “Gary, that’s enough. She’s your grandmother’s sister.”
Dani’s expression scrunched into a puzzled frown. “How are we to get Harv past her? What’s the distraction?”
“Bears,” said Beth.
“Where do we get a bear?”
“We don’t need one. For a long time she’s had trouble with one rummaging in her garbage. All we have to do is have someone make bear noise and bang the garbage cans around in their chain-link cage. She’ll go to the back of the house when she hears the noise.”
Gary sat back in his seat. “We need to move Harvey past the house quickly. Beth is the smallest of us four. So she turns over garbage cans while the other three of us handle the body.”
Tom didn’t like it. His own recent experience with a bear had not been a happy one. “Mildred has a shotgun. She could shoot Beth.”
His concern for her safety just seemed to make her angry again. “Give me some credit. By the time she’s out the back door I’ll be out if sight. It’s a good plan.”
Gary nodded agreement. Tom felt he might well have offered to be the target bear instead of his cousin, but this was Gary, after all. Gary taught Beth what he claimed was a bear growl. It didn’t sound like the bear that chased Tom, and he saw that her eyebrows were up during this tutorial.
Chapter Fifteen
Beth had started the day thinking things couldn’t get worse. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. At dusk they joined Harvey’s corpse in the old station wagon. She was scrunched in the middle of the front seat with Gary at the wheel and Dani in the right-hand spot. To keep Tom out of sight, he was recumbent in the back with an odoriferous Harvey. They were partway down the drive when Gary swore.
“What?” she asked, a touch of panic in her chest.
“It’s Robert. His Plymouth just turned into the driveway. Tom, get under that tarp with the body and I’ll get rid of him.”
“I’ve got Renada’s little gun here. I can put the barrel in my mouth and end this, you know.”
But he complied. They stopped and gritted their teeth against the squeak of the Plymouth brakes as Robert pulled onto the lawn alongside them. A grim-faced Renada sat close to him. Gary had the presence of mind to be preemptive. “Robert, damn it man, we were all worried about you. Where have you been all day? What’s wrong with Renada?”
“She saw someone who looked like Horst in town and it totally freaked her out. She needs me to take her away to a safe place tomorrow until things are all right again here.”
Beth looked at Renada for confirmation but she was turned away, ignoring them. She directed her attention back to Robert. “Where will you take her?”
“It’s best that none of you know. Where are you three going?”
“Beth had some old carpet to throw away. We’re taking it to the dump.”
“At night?”
“Yeah, so we won’t be seen. Otherwise she has to buy a carpet disposal permit.”
“I never heard of anything like that.”
“It’s new; some EPA thing.”
“But who’s defending the house, just Tom?”
“No, we need you to do that. Tom’s asleep in the storeroom with some flu bug, some real contagious Afro-Mongolian bug. We think he got it from the carpet.”
“He caught the flu in August?”
“Leave him alone and he’ll be all right tomorrow. Just watch for intruders and we’ll be back in an hour. I know you’ll keep Renada safe. We are very proud of you,” said Gary.
Beth and Dani chimed in telling Robert how brave he was. Beth told him to disable his alarm system as she had seen sparks near the cellar door. She urged him to be careful doing it.
As soon as the station wagon started moving, Tom threw the tarp off of his face. “Air,” he gasped. “How often did Harv shower, Dani?”
“No so much, I would imagine. It hardly matters once you’re dead for a while, though. Where can Robert take Renada, Gary?”
“His mother has a big old place in Calumet. I met her once. Mother Matthews used to work the docks at Duluth. That somehow made her rich. She collects firearms, does her hunting with a bow and arrow, and drinks alone in redneck bars. Robert said she’s beaten two aggravated assault charges.”
“I wondered where the balls in his family went. She and Renada ought to get along famously.”
Gary spoke over his shoulder to Tom. “That was too close. For a moment I thought Robert had seen you. Stay under the tarp, except your face, all right?”
“Whatever,” Tom muttered, sounding like a man whose last shred of human dignity was gone.
When they approached Mildred’s house, Beth could see through the trees that lights were on in her front room. She was home, and Beth was going to have to do a bear impersonation. She wondered how good a shot her aunt was with that old shotgun.
Gary killed the headlights and turned into Mildred’s long driveway, going slowly. Good thing, too. Thirty feet in, a heavy chain blocked their path, anchored to two opposing oak trees, each over two feet in diameter.
“Nuts,” said Gary, bringing the station wagon to a full stop.
One by one they got out. The relief on Tom’s face was obvious and he grumbled that as the softly sprung and heavy-laden wagon had made its rolling navigation of the curving side road, Harv had tried to get intimate under the tarp several times.
“Why would Mildred do this?” Gary fretted as he fingered one of the padlocks that secured the chain.
“Because she came home and found me in her drive today in the Nash and didn’t like it,” said Tom. The others gave him a “well, you idiot” look.
The four of them carried the body as close to the house as they dared before Beth split off toward the garbage can cage. Twigs cracked under foot and she winced at each small noise. At the garbage there was almost no smell. Mildred’s exemplary housekeeping extended to her refuse containers.
The cage had a hinged top and a place for a padlock but no lock. You didn’t have to be Einstein to figure out that Mildred had borrowed it to secure the driveway chain. It allowed Beth to lift the lid and bang the two cans together. She elected to defer the questionable bear grunt that Gary had taught her. As soon as the kitchen light at the back of the house lit, she ducked behind the garage for cover. Mildred had a back yard light like Beth’s, but it was less powerful. How good were the old woman’s eyes at night, anyway?
She heard a retort and saw a burst of dirt arise four or five feet from the cage. Not bad for shooting from the back porch in the near dark. Mildred called, “You bastard, you get your greasy ass back in the woods.” There was the slamming of the back door followed by the extinguishing of the yard light. It all had an aura of oft-repeated ritual. But very little time had elapsed. Was it enough time for a half-crippled ex-Marine, an out-of-shape con man and a strong woman to smuggle a fat body past the living room window?
Beth crept out from behind the garage and again lifted the cage lid, banged the cans again and retreated posthaste behind the garage. She watched and waited for the yard light to come back on. Then she felt pressure on the small of her back.
Mildred growled, “Don’t move, buster, or I’ll blow a hole clean through your gut.”
The old girl sure got around. “I’m not moving.”
A flashlight, she assumed a very large one, washed light over her shoulders.
“Lizzie Kessler, as the Lord is my witness, you are a strange young woman.”
“Can I turn around now, Aunt Mildred?”
“Well, of course. What the dickens are you doing?”
It was going to be a bit hard to explain. She tried to stall for time. “Aunt Mildred, you come out here in the dark when there could be a bear at your garbage cans? Isn’t that a little dangerous?”
“There’s no more bear. My neighbor plugged that bad boy last year. Oh, I get it; you’ve been talking to Gary again. If that walking bull-fart ever visited me he’d know the bear is gone.”
“But you shot at me when I made noise.”
“I still have trouble with an arthritic old raccoon going after the garbage, and I’m ready to go man to man with him. And why am I telling you all this? What I want to know is this, why the devil are you here? Has it got something to do with your nitwit cousin or the two twits you convinced me to let him send out here Sunday?”
“Well, yeah, it does. You may not believe this when I tell you.”
“Try me.”
“I will. But first let me go to my car. I left my purse in the back.”
“I’ll be waiting in my house, girl.”
****
Tom’s back ached from carrying at least a third of Harvey’s weight over a poorly graded path full of treacherous tree roots and skittish loose gravel. They had dropped him twice, once from each end. The second time Gary had fallen into what Tom feared was poison ivy but he kept mum about that. At last they reached the headquarters of Gary’s so-called mining company, a collection of rusting sheet metal shacks that had been too worthless for the original company to dismantle when they’d pulled out and capped the mineshaft. They were exhausted.