This drew understanding nods, even from the out-of-towner I had just verbally accosted. These people understood funerals. Anybody who chose to live in a place where the wind chill could reach sixty degrees below zero without causing a hitch in the daily giddy-up respected the great circle of life. Plus, funerals were another opportunity to talk about other people, or nothing.
As the crowd filed past me, I studied them for beady weasel eyes. I was sure anyone who made death threats must have clear and shifty animal features, but no such luck. For the most part, the looks I got were reassuring or sympathetic, all the eyes clear blue or brown.
When they were all gone, I locked the door and went back to the note. I imagined the police could have it fingerprinted, but I didn’t think they really did that stuff around here, and if they did, it would take a really long time. Besides, at this point I had suspicions about Chief Wohnt since discovering he had known Jeff pretty well back in high school.
I ripped the note off the screen and looked at it closely. Nothing telltale except the cutesy “UR” in place of “you are.” Stuff like that bugged me. If you’re going to threaten someone’s life, you should probably take the extra twenty seconds to spell out all the words. Jesus.
All this was really starting to get my goat. I had felt I was to blame for Jeff’s death. The article I wrote came out the day before I found his body, and I was worried that somehow the article had killed him. At first, it scared me. Now I was getting pissed. Wasn’t it enough that the murderer had taken away the one man I was starting to trust, not to mention the only decent recreation I’d had in longer than I cared to remember? Now they were threatening me directly.
I folded the note and tucked it in my pocket. It took me about fifteen minutes to close the library up, and then I headed to the liquor store. I found myself with a case of Rolling Rock in my hands, knocking on Gina’s door with my foot. It was midafternoon. If she had worked the early shift, she would be home.
“Christ, Mira, I was wondering when you were gonna stop by!” She pulled me in and locked the door behind me.
I flopped on her couch and reached for the open beer she handed me. “You heard?”
“I heard about Jeff’s death yesterday on my lunch break. I didn’t hear about you snaking him first until I was almost done with my shift.”
I grimaced. “What is up with this town?”
“It’s the seven degrees of sexual separation, Mir. You live in Otter Tail County long enough to get laid by a native, and I can guarantee you’re no more than seven degrees from having slept with everyone in the county. A new member in the club is a big deal. Word’s gonna spread.” She shrugged her shoulders and chuckled, taking a pull off her beer.
I shuddered. That meant I was likely only one degree from having slept with Kennie Rogers, and that slippery slope could lead anywhere. “What do I do, Gina?”
“About what?”
I filled her in, beginning with the first meeting with Jeff, our excellent sex, the article I wrote, him standing me up, Kennie’s weird treatment of me at the café, Karl telling me who Jeff really was, finding Jeff’s body, finding the invitation and checking it out in the yearbook, the interview with Curtis, finding out about Lartel’s connections, and finally the note on the computer today. It was a great relief to say it all out loud at once. The only detail I left out was about the petroglyphs I had found. I still felt protective of that information for a reason I didn’t know.
“Hoe-lee shit,” Gina said.
“I know.” And suddenly, I was crying so hard I was hiccupping. Since finding Jeff’s body, I had made a point of being busy to the point of crazy, but talking about it with another person, and one who cared about me, was too much.
Gina rushed over to the couch and put her arms around me. “It’s not your fault, Mir. None of it is.”
“But the article came out the day before I found his body, and . . . and . . .”
“And nothing. No one even reads that rag, and for sure they don’t kill over it. Jeff had something going on that you didn’t even know about.”
I tried to wipe the hot tears from my face but managed only to blend them with the snot gushing from my nose. “Yeah, he had lots I didn’t know about going on,” I said darkly.
Gina pulled back a little but kept her arm around me. “You tell him about your dad?”
“No.”
“Then you’ve got no right to be upset at him for not telling you about growing up in Battle Lake. He used to date Kennie Rogers, for chrissake. That’s worse than being Manslaughter Mark’s daughter any day of the week.”
I sniffled and laughed a little.
“Here, have another beer.” She handed me my third, along with a box of Kleenex from off the coffee table. “You know, I’ve heard about those class of ’82 parties. I don’t think it’s a reunion thing.”
I blew my nose hard. “What is it, then?”
“I don’t really know. People never answer you when you ask them straight on. I think it’s one of those direct sales things, like Tupperware or lingerie parties in your home. Better bring some extra cash.”
“I don’t think I’ll be buying anything. I just want to check it out. Why would there be an invitation to the party right by where I found Jeff’s body?”
“Who knows? Why do I have the body of Nell Carter when I have the personality of Cameron Diaz?” Gina laughed her throaty, contagious laugh, and I felt myself loosening up.
“You know,” I said, “beer can be so delicious. It makes me want to smoke cigarettes again.”
“But don’t,” Gina said, firing up a Marlboro Light 100. “If I could quit, I’d never start again. By the way, what’re you doing for lunch tomorrow?”
“Nothing. Wanna meet?”
Instead of answering me, she charged me with another question. “So what was Jeff like in bed?”
My hiccups were gone, and the beer was lubricating my joints and my tongue. “Mmm, you know how he’s an archaeologist?”
Gina nodded, leaning forward.
“Well, let’s just say he knew how to use his digging tools, and he was definitely into finding value in things discarded by past civilizations.” We both laughed at this until tears came out of our eyes. Gina knew the story of my first boyfriend, a clitoriphobic bass player in some lame garage band based in the Cities. I should have known better when he told me their name was Ancient Chinese Penis. I misread his quietness for intelligence and confidence, and we were together for four months. I pretended that it was OK that he thought foreplay was rubbing an erection against my leg, and he pretended that he had a personality. It was enough that we were both not lonely for a while, and then I moved on. It was that being-happier-with-my-own-thoughts thing.
By the time Gina’s husband, Leif, got home, we were both completely in the bag and playing the “Would You Sleep with . . .” game. He offered me a ride home, but I chose the couch instead. I didn’t want to be at the mercy of someone else’s wheels the next day, even though I knew her husband to be a reliable man. I woke up before sunrise, a bad habit I’d developed this past week, and drove home to shower and change. My head was only slightly throbby, and I shoved aside my guilt about getting drunk.
The Thursday morning library crowd was a lot more reasonable than the Wednesday afternoon one had been, and some of those who showed up even dropped off memorial cards in the basket at the front counter that held slips of scratch paper. I had forgotten about the “viewing.” I was reaching for the phone when it rang. It was Ron Sims, the
Battle Lake Recall
’s editor, desktop publisher, only full-time reporter, photographer, and salesman, and I hadn’t called him back after he had left a message telling me to come up with an article on Jeff’s murder.
“Mira.” Ron wasn’t one for small talk. “I got good news. We’ve had a staff illness, so I have some extra work for you.” The only other people besides Ron on staff were me and Betty Orrinson, who wrote the “Tittle-Tattler” and “Hometown Recipes” columns. If you wanted to know who had dined with whom and whose relatives were visiting from where and what to cook them, you read her stuff. She apparently had a good following and actually had to turn down tidbits and recipes from readers on a regular basis.
“Betty’s sick?”
“Sick of writing the recipes. She says there’s nothing new out there. The job’s yours. I need one recipe a week, starting tomorrow, and make it original with a Battle Lake feel. Questions?”
Only a hundred. “What do you mean by a ‘Battle Lake feel’? Where do I get the recipes? How long do they have to be?”
“You’ll figure it out. I’ll be in the office all day today. Get me a recipe before lunchtime.” Click.
Ron had come at me so quick that I’d forgotten to tell him I was working on the Jeff article. This recipe mandate was Battle Lake’s version of cutting-edge, push-the-deadline journalism; I would have complained if Ron hadn’t hung up on me.
Instead, I plopped myself in front of my computer, fired up Word, and made a sign advertising a contest for “Homegrown Minnesota Recipes. Winners will be published.” I printed the sign and stuck it on the other side of my counter, where it would stay, at least until Lartel returned. I folded another sheet of paper in half and stapled the edges, making a pocket for people to slip their recipes into. I visualized it full and plump.
Being a realist, I also went online and punched “Minnesota recipes” into a search engine. A lot of wild rice and game recipes, along with carb-heavy hotdishes, popped up, but none of them spoke to me like the recipe for “Phony Abalone.” Some clever woman had discovered that if you marinate chicken breasts in a bottle of clam juice overnight, wake them up and pound them between wax paper, roll them in flour, corn flakes, and egg, and cover them in tartar sauce, they taste just like fish. To me, this had a Battle Lake feel. I especially loved the phrase “Fool your friends and family!” at the top of the recipe. I retyped it and e-mailed it to Ron.
Then, I returned to what I had been doing when he called. It took me twelve minutes of wait time to track down the Fergus Falls coroner. When she got on the phone, I explained who I was and that I was writing an article on Jeff Wilson’s death for the
Battle Lake
Recall
. She placed Jeff’s time of death at sometime Sunday evening. She said his corpse had been in surprisingly good shape but that there wasn’t enough fluid to do a toxicology report. She told me that’s common in a shooting. Something about the heart pumping after the person is dead.
The strange thing is I didn’t feel anything when she told me all of this. I filed it away with the rest of the information, knowing that I was going to have to schedule a full-blown nervous breakdown in the near future. For now, there was too much work to do.
After I hung up the phone, I tried to chase down more information about building on sacred Indian land. I had no reason to doubt Karl, but it would be my name on the
Recall
article I was working on, and I wasn’t in the habit of using secondary information. After some Internet searching, I found out Minnesota had a state archaeologist, and I tracked down his e-mail address. I wanted to know what the rules were. I was pleased with the quick reply but disappointed to find what Karl had told me corroborated:
M—
Non-burial archaeological sites (incl. petroglyphs), and non-burial-related archaeological artifacts are private property
if they occur on private property. There are no restraints on sale/use/etc. of such property/sites/artifacts by property owner. E-mail with any more qs.
MD
So it was true. The petroglyphs wouldn’t slow Trillings down. On a hunch I decided to see if the company had a website. I clicked on the blank bar at the top of my computer screen and was about to type
in the address for my favorite search engine when my eyes caught on the word
Trillings
in the list of addresses that dropped down. I knew I hadn’t typed it in before. I opened up the whole list and didn’t see anything else familiar—just some doll sites, a couple links to state casino home pages, and the URL for WebPALS. I clicked on the Trillings address and looked over their bland home page, trying to figure out what Lartel had been looking for. It had to be him who had gone to the site before. He and I were the only ones who used this computer.
After finding nothing of note on the page, I opened up the field book and jotted down a contact number for the company, which was located in Pennsylvania. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that number, but it seemed like a good thing to have. I imagined they would begin building soon. Jeff had said he was going to give them a report on Saturday, and Karl said they had called him Monday to say that they wanted the land, so that seemed like a done deal.
I was so caught up in researching that when the tall, salt-and-pepper-haired man with deep brown eyes stood at my counter, it took me ten beats to notice him and another ten to figure out who he was.
“Mira?”
“Yes, I’m Mira.” My heart was beating fast and deep, like a techno beat in a smoky club. I wasn’t just playing dumb.
He held out his hand. “I’m Jake. We were supposed to meet for lunch?”
Gina. The big, hairy hagasaurus had e-mailed the Moorhead State professor with an online ad and set up a lunch date for us, and here he was, squiring me at the Battle Lake Public Library. That’s why Gina had asked me if I was free for lunch today. I thought quickly. “Sure. Right. I have some things to shut down. Can I meet you at the Turtle Stew, the diner right on the corner?”