October Fest: A Murder-by-Month Mystery Read online

  “One.”

  “That’s all I need.” I dragged the lone empty chair in the room to the front of his desk and laid into the story. I told him how I’d sneezed when I’d first come upon Webber’s body. I hadn’t thought much of it until I realized that I had the same reaction whenever I was near Kenya, who always kept her trained gerbil close at hand. And then, I pulled it all together with the coup de grace: gerbil turds found around Webber’s body in a room that Kenya had no reason to be in if she wasn’t killing Webber. I explained that although Kenya had provided an alibi for her mother the night of Webber’s murder, she’d also said her mother had been knocked out on sleeping pills and so Kenya herself had no alibi. And I shared my fear that Kenya had given her mom sleeping pills and then killed her, too.

  He held up his hand. And then held it there for a moment longer, apparently searching for the right words. “You’re asking me to accuse a woman of two murders because you’re allergic to her pet?”

  “It’s not a lot, I know, but she’s unstable. Glokkmann told me Kenya has attachment disorder, and a symptom of that is defiance and inappropriate attachments. She had motive to kill Webber to frame her mom.”

  “A lot of people had motive,” he said. His sleeves were rolled back enough to reveal muscled forearms flexing with impatience. “What makes you think she also killed her mother?”

  “I didn’t at first. I thought Glokkmann really had killed herself to protect her daughter—she’d told me in jail that she’d do anything for her kids—but then her assistant Grace told me at the funeral that the Representative would never have done that. And she’s right. Glokkmann was selfish, superficial, and too convinced of her own worth to ever end her own life.”

  He glared at me wordlessly.

  “Look,” I said. “If you can prove her gerbil was in the room Webber was murdered in, wouldn’t that be enough?”

  “Not by a long shot.” He steepled his fingers. “And the room has been thoroughly cleaned.”

  My heart sank. “I know I haven’t always been up front with you, or reliable, but I know she did it, Gary. I know it.”

  I’d never called him by his first name before, and it hung in the air between us awkwardly. The muscles on his forearms flexed again. Finally, he spoke, his voice low and controlled. “What did you have in mind?”

  “A sting.”

  His eyes flashed with impatience or suppressed laughter. I was not good at reading this man. “A sting?”

  “Yes, a sting.”

  He arranged the papers on his desk, standing to file a loose one. I couldn’t help but stare at his butt, which looked roughly firm enough to crack a walnut. Damn that man and his psy ops. He turned and caught me staring. A muscle in his cheek jumped, and he sat back down. “I’ll pass on the sting. And if I hear that you’re within a hundred yards of Kenya Glokkmann, I’ll arrest you.”

  I coughed on my own spit. “On what charges?”

  “Don’t need any. At least not right away.”

  I was so angry I could only see out of one eye. “Is that all?”

  “You tell me.”

  The one time in my life I needed a comeback more than a fish needed water, and I had nothing. I stormed out, slamming the door on my way and then returning to slam it again.

  I was so angry when I stomped out of the police department that my footprints gave off sparks. Sure, the phrase “the gerbil turd” wasn’t going to replace “the smoking gun” in the lexicon anytime soon, but Gary didn’t seem to have anything better to go on. What a hardass he was. Literally, not figuratively, dammit.

  But I didn’t need him. I’d stumbled through by myself just fine until now. Well, sort of. The bummer was that if I was going to nail Kenya, I did need Bad Brad. I tromped over to his two-bedroom apartment above the Klassy Kwilt Shoppe in downtown Battle Lake and rang the bell.

  He buzzed me in, informing me over the intercom that his apartment was the third door on my right at the top of the stairs. He was thrilled to see me, meeting me in the hallway and offering me a tour of his digs. I’d never been to his local abode before and followed him in reluctantly. I thought it a gimme that the place would be a dump with beer cases standing in for furniture and trash to the ceiling, but I found it to be neatly-kept. One of the bedrooms housed his musical instruments, all of them in their cases on a custom-built shelf or displayed on the wall. Peeking in the second bedroom revealed that the bedspread didn’t match his pillow cases or his curtains, but he had all three, and they were where they should be. In his kitchen, his dishes had been washed and were drying, and he even had a (intentionally) dried flower bouquet on this kitchen table. The furniture in the living room was old and mismatched but there were no dirty clothes lying around or dust collecting. I refused to go into his bathroom for fear of finding that he did not have booby magazines stacked next to the toilet. That would be too much topsy-turviness for one day.

  While Brad showed me around, I filled him in on the details of my plan. Part of me didn’t want to tell him the whole story, that I thought Kenya had tricked Webber into meeting her in a room she knew would be empty so she could knock him out, suffocate him, string some of her mom’s hair around his fingers, and stomp around in her mom’s shoes, made muddy courtesy of the ditch and some lake water. I didn’t know how to convince him to secure to his person the handheld tape recorder I’d picked up at the hardware store on the way over without telling him, though, and I certainly didn’t know how I’d get him to trap her into confessing if he didn’t have some insider info. Plus, it hurts to lie to a guy without eyebrows.

  He was alarmingly happy to help. “I’m Crockett and you’re Tubbs, dude!”

  Before I even finished outlining the whole plan, he’d tossed some Phil Collins into his stereo and thrown a mint green blazer on over his worn Hüsker Dü T-shirt before racing to call Kenya. I had to push him down and remind him we needed Vanderbrick’s assistance before we phoned her. Fortunately, Vanderbrick was home and happy to help after I explained what was going down.

  That piece in place, I gave Brad the thumbs up to call the woman who’d been phoning him several times a day since their Octoberfest rendezvous. He pitched his voice low and invited her over to do the no-pants dance. He sure knew how to sweet talk the ladies. I heard him wheedle her, convince her that time away from her family would be the best thing for her tonight, and finally, she relented. He hung up the phone and said Kenya was almost done with her funeral obligations and would be here within the hour.

  The final phase of the puzzle was for me to duct tape the portable tape recorder to Brad’s body. When he pulled up his shirt, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that he was shaved as clean as a volleyball.

  “The doctor do that?”

  “Nope,” he said, grinning happily. “In the Air Tonight” was weaving its way out of the speakers.

  I refused to comment further. Once Brad was wired, I checked his computer for the millionth time to see if Vanderbrick had followed through. He’d been surprised to hear from me again, even more surprised when I explained that I thought Glokkmann’s daughter had murdered Webber and then her mother. I promised to share all the details if he’d helped me. He said it wouldn’t be easy, but he’d try his best. He still hadn’t fulfilled his end of the bargain, though.

  Brad offered to sing a love song for me to pass the time. When I declined, he asked if I’d like to play his skin flute. I also took a pass on that. And Vanderbrick still hadn’t come through. If he didn’t or couldn’t stick to his word, this plan was sunk and Kenya would walk away from two murders. The clock told me she’d be here in less than fifteen minutes, and still nothing.

  “Maybe you should restart the computer. It’s pretty old.”

  I took Brad’s advice for the first and last time and was almost disappointed that it worked. Vanderbrick had written and posted the article just like he’d said he would, with only five minutes until Kenya’s ETA. Leaving the screen up and sequestering myself into the closet off
the living room, I realized I felt sorry for both of today’s main actors. There was Brad, who kept his house clean but had so thoroughly bought into his own myth that he couldn’t be a decent person for more than thirty seconds in a row, and Kenya, who had apparently suffered so much when she was just a toddler or at the hands of her verbally vicious mother that she’d matured into a killer.

  I pushed those thoughts away and settled back just in time, leaving a slight crack in the door. The doorbell rang, a pleasant inhale-exhale of a chime. Brad flipped up his collar and tossed thumbs up back at me.

  “Stop it,” I hissed. “Remember, I’m not here.”

  He sang a couple bars of “Easy Lover” before opening the door. I couldn’t believe he was still thinking he’d see some action. If I was right, Kenya was as balanced as a corporate checkbook, and Brad was putting himself in deep danger by inviting her here.

  “Baby!” That’s all Brad had time to say before Kenya jumped in the air and wrapped her legs around him, kissing his face like a honey bear and stroking the arms of his pastel blazer.

  I leaned back from the crack in the door, my eye burning. Was I willing to listen to Brad and Kenya going at it in the off chance that she’d confess at some point? That’s when an icy reminder pushed my face back to the crack. If she kept stroking his body like she was trying to shine her silver, she’d find the sleek voice recorder taped between his shoulder blades. He must have remembered the same thing, because he pulled her away from him and tossed her on the couch, out of my line of sight.

  “What’s wrong?” She asked. I could tell from the high tone of her voice that she was worked up.

  “Nothing, sweetcakes! I just like a little anticipation.” I caught a glimpse of him striding toward the computer.

  “That’s not what you said when you invited me here. You said you were going to make love to me. That’s why I came. I missed you, Brad.” She lunged off the couch and also passed across my line of sight.

  “I’ve missed you too, baby, I really have, and I want to make this special. Can I get you some wine?”

  She giggled and then bounced back past the couch and into the kitchen. Brad followed. I heard the clinking of glasses and the throaty, insider laughter of two people dancing the pre-sex polka. It was driving me crazy, not hearing what they were saying, and I wanted to crack the door wider to improve my amplification. But I didn’t, fortunately, as they returned to the sofa moments later.

  I heard the squeak of couch springs and the rustle of clothing. “I’ve been worried about you, baby.”

  “You’ve got a big heart.” I sensed she was reaching for a part of him that definitely wasn’t his heart, though it probably had a comparable blood supply.

  “That can wait. I wanna talk first.”

  My heart was thumping so loudly it echoed off the walls of the closet. This was the moment. This segue is exactly what we’d talked about. He’d been certain she’d show up raring for action. The plan was that he’d lead her on and prime her with wine. When her guard was down he’d spill about the blog entry he’d “found.” What happened next relied completely on his ability to convince her that he regularly followed The Body Politic. It was the weakest link in our otherwise anemic plan.

  “I’ve got something much more fun that I want to do with my mouth.” I heard the jangle of wine glasses being set down and the wet friction of kissing followed by the crisp whip of a zipper being opened.

  “I wanna talk now,” Brad said, his voice husky. He stood and positioned himself in my line of sight, his side to me. Kenya followed, leaning against his shoulder, her face toward me. Her gaze was so intense that I was certain she could see me. He pulled up his zipper.

  And that’s when I saw it. It was a switch, an audible click, an eerie shift as clear as white against black. Her face, next to his ear, had gone psychoceramic. “You didn’t want to talk when I was calling you every day,” she rasped dangerously.

  Brad was oblivious to Kenya’s unhinging. “That was then, this is now, baby. I’ve got something I have to tell you. You know that guy who was murdered here last week? I was reading his blog. You know, curious who he was since he was killed just up the road. Anyway, he posted something the night he was murdered, and I think you wanna see it.”

  Brad disappeared from my sight and must have strolled toward his computer. He didn’t see the black-ice stare Kenya gave his back, but I did, and it made my stomach gurgle. She wasn’t all there anymore. Some bedrock part of her had fled. I wanted to stand, to stop what I knew was unfolding, but it was like I was watching a distant play.

  “It’s about you.” Brad kept his voice surprised and sincere. “He wrote that you asked him to meet in his friend’s empty room that Saturday night but weren’t there when he showed up. You were going to give him some information about your mom that would ruin her. But you didn’t show when you said you would, so he went back to his room to type up his blog post. The last thing he wrote was that you had called and he was going to meet you in room 19 for sure this time.”

  We were winging this last part. When I’d crossed paths with Webber on the motel stairs last Saturday, he’d been agitated. I had an inkling that was because Kenya had originally stood him up. If true, it was a detail that only she and Webber would have known, and it would have to be enough to convince her that the blog post Vanderbrick had just posted on Webber’s site was genuine.

  “I know you met him there later, and you killed him, and I’m glad you did, baby. He was a prick. An absolute prick.”

  All the air in the room grew heavy and dropped to the ground, making it difficult to breathe. I was sure Brad had overplayed his hand. Kenya was as still as rock, her eyes black and wide, her mouth a stiff red slash across her face. She was either going to laugh in his face or slice it off and eat his nose with a dessert fork. “He wasn’t. He wasn’t a bad man at all.”

  “What?” Her voice was soft, and Brad, who I could hear still fooling with his computer, didn’t hear her the first time.

  “I was just going to tell him how he was right, and my mom was an alcoholic, and she did take bribes. I had the evidence, and I could have just handed it to him. But she would have squirmed her way out of that. She walked away clean from everything. And so he died. Hammy helped me.” She laughed, and it sounded like wind through a skull.

  “Hammy?”

  She reached onto the table behind her for her purse, and then a puzzled look crossed her face, quickly replaced by a serene smile. “He’s my gerbil. He’s not here.”

  “He helped you to suffocate Webber? That’s what I don’t get. I don’t get how a little thing like you could kill a guy.” Brad was talking fast, and I could tell he was beginning to feel anxious.

  “I gave him one of my mom’s sleeping pills, all crushed up in wine. It made him slow. When his back was to me, I hit him with a hotel chair. That didn’t kill him, so I took the bag out of the bathroom garbage and tied it around his neck. Shooting the Queen was even easier.”

  Brad’s voice shook. “Well, it’s done, and that’s what’s important.” Not as important as me spending the extra $1.23 on the 90-minute tape, apparently, because that’s when it ran out. The record button popped out as loudly as a firecracker.

  Kenya jumped, startled. “What was that?”

  Brad attempted a clicking sound in his throat. “Beatboxing. A new thing for the band. You like?” He continued to wheeze and chirrup like a tractor straining up a hill.

  She shook her head slowly and held her arms out, her purse still clutched in one hand. “Come hold me.”

  God save him, Brad did. Now they were both in my line of sight. She wrapped her arms around him and dipped her head into his chest. “I’m guilty,” she whispered. “I did it. I killed Webber and I shot my mom.”

  Brad laughed uncomfortably but didn’t push her away. Her purse fell to the ground, and in her hand and behind his back was a gun. I choked.

  “We could go out like Thelma and Louise,” she sighed, slowly r
aising the barrel of the pistol to the back of his neck.

  I powered through my fear and yelled. Kenya staggered back and pointed the gun toward the closet door. Without time to think, I stood and pushed it open and found myself staring into the bottomless black barrel of her pistol. The whole scene felt slow-moving and ridiculous, way more watery and surreal than in the movies. It didn’t have to end this way. But Kenya’s eyes were lit by crazy, and the three of us were not walking out of here. Her finger clenched against the trigger. Brad whimpered but didn’t move. This must have felt as inevitable to him as it did to me.

  And then the front door exploded.

  “Everybody down!”

  Deputy Wohnt led the charge but two plainclothes officers were directly on his heels. I was still partially in the closet and obliged immediately with the command. Brad also dropped to the ground and then scurried past me so he was fully in the closet.

  Kenya did not respond. She studied the three men, guns drawn, their breath coming in adrenaline bursts, exactly like she’d studied me the first time we’d met at the side of the stage on debate day. She was a hawk, recording every detail before deciding whether they were worth her attention. Her gun had been hanging at her side but she drew it slowly up, swiveling the end toward her face. I lunged forward to grab it, but Wohnt was quicker. He fired a single shot at her right shoulder and she dropped her weapon and crumpled.

  One of the officers moved swiftly to retrieve the pistol and the other called for an ambulance on his shoulder unit.

  “Are you okay?”

  Wohnt had crossed the room in three strides. He made a move to reach toward me but stopped abruptly, turning back to focus on Kenya. He flipped her over. Her eyes were open and she was shivering. There wasn’t much blood, even when he ripped her shirt open to get a clear look at the wound. “I need a blanket and a clean towel.”