June Bug (3 page)

Can’t kick that special someone off the funeral committee, even though NO ONE likes her five-meat hotdish?

Don’t want to tell Jimmy that he can’t use your deer stand anymore because he’s never got the hang of peeing out of a tree?

I felt my inner head shake in disbelief as I read on:

Then Minnesota Nice Inc. is for you! We do your dirty work.
The truth shall set you free, and we’ll tell it for a fee!

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Kennie might finally be onto something. “So people hire you to tell the hard truth to someone for them?”

She nodded. “I knew you’d appreciate it, honey. Y’all and me are both intelligent women of the new millennium. We know we gotta do for ourselves.”

She nudged me, hard, in the ribs, and grabbed her brochure back. “I’ll give y’all one of these when I get some more printed. I’m sure you’ll let me put a whole pack out at the library. Right, sugar?” Ah. The real reason for Kennie stopping me in the street. She smiled and waved her talons in my face, then turned on her five-inch sandal heels and tottered away.

I suppose a woman born, raised, and cured in Battle Lake who could pull off a Southern accent should be expected to surprise, but she still had caught me off guard. Minnesota Nice, indeed. I just wish I had written down the number. I’m not a big fan of confrontation.

Speaking of which, I hoped I could avoid one with the front-desk people at the Senior Sunset. It was sometimes hard to slip past the security door, depending on who was working. To me, it was just weird that the elderly had so little freedom. This place was like a minimum-security jail, except the inmates couldn’t run to save their souls.

As I neared the main door of the Sunset, I thought about the turn of fate that had brought me here. Not just
here
, as in Battle Lake, but here at this point in my life. I had fled my tiny hometown of Paynesville as soon as I had my high school diploma in hand. Minneapolis, one half of the Twin Cities, sang my siren song, and I started out in the dorms at the university and then set up base in my tiny loft apartment on the West Bank of the Mississippi. After ten years in the big city, though, I hadn’t felt any more grounded or purposeful than I had in the horror known as high school. I had been bopping around grad school, waiting tables, and hoping someone would discover me and bring meaning to my life. To make matters worse, I had been cultivating a drinking habit rivaling my dad’s.

I remember one particularly lost day, about five months before Sunny called to ask me to housesit in Battle Lake for her, when I was walking home from a late shift at the Vietnamese restaurant where I spent most of my waking hours. It was an icy November night, and I wore black Aerosoles, taupe knee-highs under black cotton pants, and a fish-sauce-splattered white shirt. I had forgotten to remove my required black bow tie, and the smells of spring rolls and curry swarmed between my head and the cold air like sluggish bees.

It was ten-thirty, two and a half hours before bar close, and I felt relatively safe. Even when I noticed the man walking across the Washington Avenue bridge twenty paces behind me, I didn’t think much of it. The streets were well lit, but out of habit I crossed to get away from the stranger. He crossed shortly behind me. I crossed back. He followed. I was about two blocks from my apartment, and I could see a clot of people laughing and living outside of Bullwinkle’s, a local bar. If I could get past the empty corner I was nearing, I would be enclosed in the warm light of their company and safe from the man who was following me.

I wasn’t going to run. I was going to walk steadily. My gloved hand felt for my apartment keys deep in my pocket, and I laced one between each of my knuckles. I could hear the man coming closer, his breath matching mine, his feet crunching on the layers of ice frosting the sidewalk like a cake. Forty feet in front of me, I could see the Bullwinkle’s group. Traffic buzzed past, everyone encapsulated in their protected, cozy cars. Suddenly, the man grabbed my shoulder and twisted me around to face him. He wore a woolen cap pulled low over his face, and he brushed up against me, something hard pressing against my side. I felt a hand inside my coat, and then a sharp tug at my shoulder, and then he was gone, empty-handed. I didn’t know if I had been molested, almost robbed, or hugged.

It happened so quickly that I didn’t take my hand or my keys out of my pocket. I just watched him run away. Later that night, I lay in bed thinking about this life I had chosen for myself, in which I worked, slept, and drank, with only the occasional failed mugging to break up the monotony. It didn’t fit. Fast-forward six months, and here I was, in Hamm’s beer’s land of sky-blue waters, one dead lover under my belt and becoming a regular at the local nursing home. Was this life better than random pat-downs by strangers?

I stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the street toward the landscaped front lawn of the Senior Sunset. Battle Lake had one main drag—Lake Street—with various avenues leading off of it like fish ribs off a spine. The Sunset was on one of the back streets, around where the dorsal fin would be. The area was mostly residential, and the houses were small and boxy, built in the fifties. It was quiet back here, except for the random ringing of church bells, and when a breeze picked up, it carried the smell of fresh-baked bread. I started to pull open the Senior Sunset lobby doors when I heard a “Psst!” from the bushes.

I swiveled my head to the right and spotted a fuzz of light gray and apricot on the other side of the yellow-flowered potentilla bush. “I can get you a pack of cigarettes, mint-flavored Maalox, or a pretty new crossword book,” whispered the voice.

“Mrs. Berns?” Mrs. Berns was one of the younger residents, a spitfire who pretty much came and went as she pleased. My overriding hope in life was to have as much spirit as her in my golden years. And maybe to have her sex life, though I’d be okay with that kicking in anytime soon. This woman had more moves in one arthritic pinky than I possessed in my whole body. She claimed it took her nine marriages to figure out that she didn’t need to buy the cow to get the milk, and she’d been burning up the geriatric singles scene in Battle Lake ever since.

I walked over the stone path and peered behind the bush. Mrs. Berns was perched on a three-legged gardening stool, an inventory list in one hand and a short library pencil in the other. Her hair covered her head like a steel-wool hat, and most of her face was lost behind a pair of enormous square-framed sunglasses. “Did you just have eye surgery, Mrs. Berns?”

“Ssshh!” she hissed. “Whaddya need? Liquor? Betty Page poster?
Perry Como’s Greatest Hits
? You name it, I can get it.”

You know, as weird as it was, I had to admire the entrepreneurial spirit of this town’s women. “Mrs. Berns, I can buy all that stuff out here. I’m going
into
the nursing home. You should sell to the people who can’t get
out
of the nursing home.”

She looked down at her check-free inventory list and back at the front door, and back at her list again. “Damn!” She grabbed her stool and whipped past me, leaving a faint smell of lemon verbena and pressed face powder.

I followed her into the nursing home and was greeted by a wall of odor—antiseptic, fear, and something a little too sweet to pinpoint. The sweet smell actually was reminiscent of marijuana, but I wasn’t going there. I had already encountered the passion for pot held by a certain sector of Battle Lake’s geriatria, but I saw no gain in acknowledging it.

The Senior Sunset was set up like a cross between a dorm and a hospital. The floors were shiny, faux-marble linoleum, and the walls were institutional green. The pictures hung on the walls looked like the work of a four-year-old with watercolors, all of them set in brass frames exactly five feet off the ground. I suppose the blended pastel colors were meant to soothe the clientele into forgetting they were reasoning, functioning human beings. Thank God that Mrs. Berns was doing her part to keep the resistance alive.

The ceiling was covered with those squares of pocked ceiling tiles that can be found in any high school. They did wonders for the acoustics, which presently were being tested by a Muzak version of Blondie’s “Rapture” piped out just loud enough to be annoying. I walked to the front desk like a woman in charge.

“What room is Shirly Tolverson in, please?” I could hear a faint crying in the distance, and the bilious sound of Judge Judy on a bender piping out from the community room.

The man-child behind the counter wore two-toned beige sunglasses, an unruly mop of Prince Valiant–styled brown hair, and a tie-dyed, long-sleeved Metallica shirt peeking out from under his janitor scrubs. He held a mop in one hand and tucked the phone under his ear with the other. “Yeah, down the hall, fifth door on the right.” He waved me on and returned to his phone conversation.

I almost signed in before realizing that I might not be allowed to enter if I was still standing here when the receptionist, who must have been on break, returned. I really didn’t have a legitimate reason to be at the Sunset, though I could have lied if necessary. I scurried down the hall and slipped into the fifth door on the right. Mr. Tolverson was lying on the bed, a carpentry book in one hand,
Jeopardy
on TV, and a bowl of peanut M&M’s within reach. I liked this guy’s priorities.

“Mr. Tolverson?”

He glanced over at me, pulling his trifocals farther down his nose. Unlike most residents of the home, who wore white “convenience clothes,” he was dressed in street attire—ironed khakis and a plain white T-shirt. His hair was a crisp white and thick as a dictionary. The brown of his eyes was watery but still sharp, and his lips showcased a smile of even white teeth. They were probably dentures, but who was I to judge? He was a hottie of an old guy.

“May I help you?”

“Mr. Tolverson, my name is Mira James. I’m a reporter at the
Battle Lake Recall
.”

“Oh yes, of course. I read your article on Jeff Wilson. A true shame about him. What can I do for you?”

I considered embellishing my story so we didn’t look so stupid at the
Recall
, but Shirly Tolverson didn’t seem like a man to lie to. “Ron Sims sent me over. We got scooped by the
Star Tribune
. Apparently there was a diamond necklace lost a number of years ago at Shangri-La, and Ron thinks you might know something about it. I’m trying to write a human-interest angle on the same story.”

Shirly set his book down, took off his wire-rimmed glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He sighed profoundly. “What’s the sudden interest in the diamond?”

I studied him. The mention of the necklace hadn’t piqued his curiosity; it had tired him. “The
Star Tribune
is running a contest. The first person to find a decoy box in the lake gets five thousand dollars. They don’t have any hope of finding the original lost diamond, I don’t think. It’s mostly a marketing article for the tourism industry around here.”

Shirly got a distant look in his eye and leaned back on his pillow. “Shangri-La, located in the mountains of the Blue Moon.” The reference was lost on me, but I didn’t want to seem stupid so I kept that to myself.

He looked in my direction, a little past my head and to the left. “Well, Mira James, pull up a chair and I’ll tell you what I know. When I’m done, you can decide for yourself if this necklace is something worth finding.”

Turns out Shirly Tolverson had been a gofer for his dad back in the twenties when Shangri-La had been built. One spring afternoon, Randolph Addams had sauntered into Tolverson’s Lumber and told the senior Mr. Tolverson that he wanted to build “a little cabin” down on Whiskey Lake. First, he bought the peninsula and access to it from Sunny’s great-grandfather. Then, the road out to the six acres that was really a wide spot on the isthmus needed to be built. Next, the builders constructed several outbuildings and four servants’ cabins.

When it came time to build the main lodge, no expense had been spared. The architect ordered Otter Tail County fieldstone to craft the foundation, supporting pillars, and fireplaces. Mr. Addams sent for Brazilian mahogany beams all the way from South America. The porch window frames featured out-swinging sashes, grooved and cut for both screens and shutters with all the hardware concealed. The workers finished the outside with stained cedar shakes.

Once the main structure was completed, the architect ordered hand-cut French stained glass to fill in the doors leading from the large living room to the wraparound porch. He also had a system of buzzers installed all around the interior that connected to the servants’ cabins and had a dumbwaiter set up so food could travel from the first-story kitchen to the second-story rooms without being seen.

The Addamses hosted grand parties for their friends from the East once Shangri-La was completed. Randolph Addams’s associates would stay in the main lodge and be catered to by the servants, who resided in the cabins. Not all the workers were live-ins, though; Addams hired on Shirly to do lawn work and run odd errands for the household. He’d been on the beach the day the necklace was lost, working as a towel boy.

“So you saw the woman lose the necklace?” I asked.

“In a manner of speaking.” Shirly pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “I saw her go into the water with a diamond the size of a caramel around her neck. I saw her walk out of the water without it.”

I smiled. “Are you being intentionally vague?”

“Vague isn’t the word, Ms. James. Her necklace wasn’t the first piece of jewelry to disappear that summer, though that diamond necklace was the official end of the relaxed days at Shangri-La. She put up quite a stink when she lost it—made us workers search on hands and knees in two feet of water for three days. She swore she was going to make Mr. Addams replace the necklace if we didn’t find it.” Shirly studied the back of his veined hands. “Tell the truth, I don’t know if she didn’t
plan
to lose that necklace.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She came from an upper-class East Coast family. The Krupps, I believe, was the family name, from New York State. Back then, it took a lot longer to cross the country, so you remembered when someone came from New York or California.

“She never seemed to have as much money as the other guests, and she seemed angry about it. One day, I caught her upstairs in Mr. and Mrs. Addams’s bedroom, over in their closet. She was scared, and then angry when she saw it was just me. I think she was hiding something back there, and she didn’t want anyone else to know about it.

“Later that day, she loses her necklace, and it’s me who’s searching for it. When I couldn’t find it, she made Mr. Addams fire me and any leftover part-timers who had built the place. She said we were a bunch of lazy thieves.”

“If she lost it herself, why would she accuse you guys of being thieves?”

Shirly winked at me. “My guess is she had something to hide herself. Or maybe we reminded her too much of herself. Rumor had it that she was dirt poor until she married Mr. Krupps. It wasn’t but a couple months after she had us fired that Mr. and Mrs. Addams sold the property, only a handful of years after they built it. They were sick of dealing with all the thievery that was going on and all the police questioning that came with it. Shangri-La’s been a resort ever since.”

“Was it a real diamond necklace that she lost?”

“She claimed it was.”

He clearly did not want to go on the record about that, but I got the impression the only real thing about that necklace was the bad luck it brought Shirly. I vowed to find out the whole story, even if I had to track down one of the original Addams family members. Ha. The Addams family. I leaned back in my chair, just now noticing that my butt was asleep. “That’s quite a story, Mr. Tolverson. Mind if I use it all in the article?”

“Not one bit,” he said, smiling at me. “Peanut M&M?”

On my way out, I was contemplating how many years older than me Shirly Tolverson was. At twenty-nine, I was becoming more open to dating outside my generation. I feared I was close to, if not immersed in, the relationship-atrophy phase of my life. It was a stage I’d seen coming for a while, a place in my personal evolution where if a guy hadn’t gotten here with me, he’d be reluctant to leave the comfort of his train to jump on mine. Call it the “What do you mean you don’t like peas in your macaroni and cheese?” point that we all reach, where we are too set in our ways to realistically expect a healthy relationship with another human being.

The threat of this specter was forcing me to consider new dating realms, though so soon after Jeff’s death, I was officially gun-shy about men from now until the end of the time. The male of the species had a lot to offer in theory, but in my experience, they had a tendency to die too soon. Not to mention that my last official date was with a professor from a local college who turned out to be a post-operative transsexual. My “friend” Gina had found him for me online, and in her defense, his online thumbnail had been cute. After our first lunch date, I knew something was a little off, but I thought it was me. Turns out it was him.

My dad was another example of what could go wrong with men. He had been an interesting man, a career alcoholic too smart for his own good. My childhood was a tapestry of forced normalcy punctuated by raucous fights between my parents. By the time I was seven, I knew I couldn’t have friends over because if my dad wasn’t drunk, my mom would be yelling at him for being drunk the day before. I spent a lot of time in my room with my imaginary friends. It wasn’t all bad—my family traveled a lot in the summer in the car, and when dad was in public, he would usually stay sober. And even drunk, he wasn’t mean, just crazy. He believed he could control the wind and speak French. Apparently, both wind-talk and French share a lot of root words with pig Latin.

By my teen years, I’d learned how to shut down my emotions so I wasn’t a forced passenger on his roller coaster. I got even better at that after he died the summer before my senior year. He was driving drunk and slammed head-on into another car when he swerved over the center line. He killed himself and a passenger and her baby in the other car. I finished growing up that day. I still wasn’t sure if that meant I became an adult or a permanently stunted child. Actually, I wasn’t so sure there was a big difference.

I was so lost in thought on my way out of the Sunset that I was on the other side of the security doors and all the way to the lobby before I noticed the crowd. I stood on my tippytoes to see what was going on. In the center of an elderly mob was what appeared to be a Harlequin clown and a lion tamer accompanied by a small person dressed as a lion.

“How about you, young lady?” boomed the lion tamer, beckoning to me dramatically. “Wouldn’t you like to see a local production of the honorable William S. Shakespeare’s
The Taming of the Shrew
, starring esteemed members of your community and played out in a Gothic carnival setting?”

I stepped back as he stepped forward, shoving a piece of paper into my hand. I looked at him, confused. Had any of my English profs ever mentioned Shakespeare’s middle name? I decided they hadn’t and made a mental note to check out whether or not it was really an
S
. And what was going on?

I glanced at the second leaflet of the day to be shoved into my hand. It was card stock with gilded letters in a flowing serif font proclaiming, “The Famed Romanov Traveling Theater Troupe Is Coming to YOUR Town!” Underneath were pictures of the selfsame lion tamer, the Harlequin clown, comedy and tragedy, and various scantily clad Gypsy harlots. It was like the Renaissance Festival minus the big turkey legs and Dungeons and Dragons geeks. I wondered if Kennie was going to love this or hate it. I also wondered if the troupe knew the Senior Sunset folks were on lockdown. The rules, probably dictated by the Sunset’s insurance policy, said the residents could only leave the premises if checked out by family. There was going to be no Gothic carnival for them, but I was intrigued.

“Sure,” I said. I shoved the flyer back at him and studied his face. He wore the wide, empty grin of somebody who smiles for a living. His nose was broad, and his eyes, small and close set, darted around the room even as he talked at me. He seemed in habitual need of an audience. The Harlequin clown and lion wove in and out of the crowds, singing, dancing, and huzzahing, and I couldn’t get a good look at either of them.

“ ‘Sure,’ it is! We are in agreement!” The lion tamer made a departing grand gesture with his plastic mini-whip and strode purposefully out the front doors of the Sunset, the clown and lion dragging along behind him, their backs to me. I looked around at the stunned room of nursing assistants and old folks. A familiar face came forward, shaking his head.

“And they call
me
crazy?”

“Hey, Curtis. How’s the fishing?” Curtis Poling was another of my faves at the raisin ranch. People said he was crazy because he fished off the roof of the Sunset around lunchtime every day. The crazy part was that the closest body of water was a quarter mile away. I had found Curtis to be harmless myself, and he had a wicked smart streak that most people overlooked because he was old. He was also a hit with the ladies, due to his ice-blue eyes and rakish charm.

“Hmm, not so good. I might need to switch bait,” he said.

I shook my head knowingly. “That’ll happen.” Truth was, I didn’t eat fish and knew nothing about fishing. I had a rule about consuming anything that spent its whole life wet.

“Yup. Don’t be a stranger.” Curtis slapped me once on the butt and walked away.

It was time to go rent a diving suit and tank. I had already had too much human interaction for one day. As I stepped outside the home, the sun broke free from the clouds for the first time that day and warmed me to my toenails