May Day Read online

  “Karl?”

  “Mira?” he mocked, chuckling softly.

  I could feel my fight-or-flight mechanism kick in, and adrenaline bum-rushed my brain. Why didn’t it go to my arms, like it did for Popeye? “Who else knows that the land is supposed to be donated to the state instead of sold?” I asked in a thin voice.

  His left hand slid onto my left shoulder, making me jump. Karl massaged me softly, delicately. “No one. At least not anymore. There was a time that Rob Winston, Mrs. Jorgensen’s lawyer, knew, but he died almost five years ago, well before the CDs could be withdrawn without penalty. Mrs. Jorgensen didn’t want it to be a big deal.” His voice deepened. His right hand connected with my right shoulder, and the massage intensified.

  “She said she wanted the curse of the land to rest. Batty old lady. And she wanted to pay back the town’s debt to the Indians. But she didn’t want to stir up trouble, so she asked Winston and me to keep it quiet. No problem, I said.

  “Winston said the same thing, but he was a lawyer, so he was a weasel. By the time the information chain he started got back to me, it was pure rumor. People said that the land was haunted and that that was why Mrs. Jorgensen never wanted it sold. I thought that all the truth to the rumor had died, but somehow Jeff got wind that the land was supposed to go to the state.”

  I thought of Ruby calling Curtis Poling “the town’s memory.”

  “I just took a little off the top at first,” he continued. “I paid the mortgage, and whatever was left over I considered my pay as executor. But then, you know.” He pulled my shoulders up, forcing me to shrug for him. “The gambling got the better of me.”

  “So you killed Jeff? Because he knew the land was supposed to go to the DNR and he wasn’t going to let you sell it for your own profit?”

  He abruptly took his hands off my shoulders and strode to the other side of the table. The curtain-covered sunlight shadowed his face like a mask, but his body was plain to see. He was wearing his loafers, and I could see pant legs sticking out, but above that he was clad in an ankle-length gingham dress, his nails painted pink, his receding hair covered by a platinum-blonde wig. His eyes glowed in the shadows like a wolf’s. When he stepped forward, his pink-tinted lips were pulled back in a fierce, pained smile.

  “What are you staring at, Mira?” His voice switched to a falsetto southern accent. “Don’t ah look pretty? Gotta be ready for Lartel to get home. Y’all do know how he likes his house clean and his food cookin’.”

  Hiccups of panic were pushing up from my diaphragm. “Who are you?” I whispered.

  Karl giggled, but his voice returned to normal. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about your boyfriend. He had a hunch about the land. A pretty good hunch. That guy always had good instincts.” Karl’s eyes were on fire, threatening to burn this horror house down around us. “Even back in high school, he always knew what to do—when to throw the ball, when to run. Back then, I looked up to two people: Jeff Wilson and Lartel McManus.

  “But that was a long time ago. I’m successful now. It was actually me who contacted Trillings about the Jorgensen land months ago. Jeff was going to see what kind of person I had become. Then he called me at home on Sunday afternoon and asked how much was left on the mortgage, and I told him. He said he was thinking of some big PR stunt, some ludicrous idea for Trillings to donate money to pay off the mortgage so it could be handed over to a land conservation group. He knew Mrs. Jorgensen never wanted it sold, but he didn’t know about the investments or why the mortgage hadn’t been paid. Yet. Said he needed to see the will to make all this work.

  “I told him I was interested in learning more but that I was housesitting for Lartel so he would have to meet me out here.”

  Housesitting. Karl was the one who had been watering Lartel’s plants while he was on vacation, and apparently he was also a surrogate Kennie in Lartel’s twisted world. The real Kennie had warned me about the connection between those two, and damned if that woman hadn’t been dead on. I felt myself going numb, probably from my heart overexerting itself. My own fear was poisoning me. Soon, I would collapse to the floor and be unable to run. Would Karl clean my body up before he planted it somewhere? Would he dress me in my own clothes or borrow some of his play clothes?

  Karl rubbed his nose absently, then pulled out waterless disinfectant and squirted a dime-sized drop into his palm. The alcohol smell hit me like a slap. “Jeff wouldn’t have given up, Mira. He didn’t when he was in high school, and he hadn’t changed.”

  My hands were sweating viciously, and I tried to buy myself some time while I fought for control of my body. “I won’t tell anyone, Karl.”

  Karl laughed again, but not the kind of laugh you’d want to join in on. “No, you won’t, Mira James. You’re absolutely correct right there.” He rubbed the disinfectant into his hands vigorously and popped the plastic bottle into a pocket of his dress.

  Then, he tensed up like an electric bolt had zapped him. “You know, it was Kennie who messed it all up again, just like the old days.” Karl spit her name out as if it burned his tongue. “She told Jeff about the Skinvold land. He met with her on Saturday night to talk about the acreage. Sunday he met with Herbert, and then he came to me to tell me about that PR coup bullhockey for Trillings.”

  I was not pleased by the distracting surge in my emotions. Jeff had met Kennie on Saturday night, not some mysterious lover, and he had only gotten together with her to look at some land. He hadn’t slept with anyone else. I struggled to get back on track. “But since Jeff didn’t know about all the debt, couldn’t you just make something up?”

  Karl’s eyes became distant and unfocused. “Lartel warned me about women like you, Mira. He always talked about how manipulative you can be, women like you. Nosy, unclean, disorganized. Best avoided. I knew when I saw you snooping through his house on Thursday night that you were a sneaky one. I was a couple steps behind you that whole night, you know. You thought you were so clever, tromping through here like a bull. When you landed on your back in the living room, I almost took advantage.

  “But I didn’t. I thought that doll and the fish I left later at the library would have discouraged you, but females like you don’t discourage easily. Lartel would have caught on to that right away.” Karl tilted his head back like he was trying to catch a voice in the next room, and he switched his own tone up a notch, back to his falsetto. “Yes, Mr. McManus, you’re always right. Always.”

  Salty bile ate away at the back of my tongue. Clearly, Karl had spent a lot of time with Lartel, and it wasn’t happy healthy time. I didn’t want to know what sticky string connected those two. I needed out. Karl’s calm insanity had kept me frozen like a rabbit in a wolf’s stare, but my most feral instinct, the urge not to let others control me, was cracking the spell.

  Karl picked up where he had left off, too caught up in his own confession to notice my change in posture. “Jeff would have figured it all out soon. All it ever would have taken to blow my whole plan was someone asking to see Mrs. Jorgensen’s will. And nobody ever would have if Jeff had just done what I brought him to town to do and not gotten so curious. All he had to do was survey the land for Trillings, sign the papers, and maybe entertain our mayor a little, bring her back East with him so Lartel had more energy to focus here at home. But that was too much to ask of Jeff, to do things right. He was always one to ruin everything.” Back to the falsetto. “Y’all were right about that, too, Mr. McManus. Yes, you were.”

  His eyes refocused on me. “I could have sold the land free and clear. I could have been free.” He blinked. “So, you will keep my secret, Mira?”

  His hand reached under the table, and I smelled acrid smoke in the back of my brain. My escape appeared for the briefest moment. Before thought could act, I jumped at him, my fingers gouging at soft skin and wet surfaces. I might have growled as I dug at his face, deeper and deeper, down to the black dirt below. There would be no more weak men hiding behind addictions and anger in my life
. Something popped under my fingers and yanked me out of my bloodlust. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing, so I spilled through the front door and tried to slip into the shadows between dimness and solid things. My echoing heartbeat chased me and kept me fast.

  I had prepared for this run ever since my dad had died. Sometimes, it had been monsters in the night, and I had to save my mom before I could flee. As I got older, it was burglars or crazy boyfriends or escaped prisoners, and I had to save my cat as well as myself. When the nightmares were at their worst, before I went to sleep I mentally mapped out the route from my bed to the nearest safe spot, always disregarding the car that likely had been disabled by my pursuer, the yard lights of neighbors who might be his accomplices, roads that would leave me too exposed, and loud noises that would point at me.

  It felt exhilarating to really run, like touching something so hot that at first you think it’s cold. I was a purely physical animal doing the one thing I knew how to do. I didn’t know this area well, but I knew how to run in the woods, and I was certain that if I kept running, I would end up in one of the many resort communities that lined the forests and lakes here.

  Paths appeared in front of me whichever way I turned, small openings in the brush that would be missed by preoccupied, human eyes. I could smell the pine needles crush under my feet and hear the soft whump of my soles on the forest soil. There were occasional explosions of noise and rushes of air around my head, but to this day I don’t know if Karl shot at me, or even if he chased me.

  It didn’t take me long to reach Madsen’s Resort, where I was welcomed like the crazy lady I appeared to be. When I explained what was happening, the police were called immediately. That’s how I had always expected it would be, of course, except that in my head I always imagined making all the people I encountered run with me, because once you’ve felt absolute terror, no place is safe to stand still.

  The state, not local, police arrested Karl in a cabin down the road from Lartel’s house. I had gashed his face pretty well but not done any lasting damage. Apparently, after I had broken out the door like a crazed animal, Karl had taken his bloody face to the cleaning supplies and arranged and sanitized everything in Lartel’s space. When that was done, he moved on to the cabin down the road, broke in, and was busy alphabetizing the contents of their cupboards, first by type of food and then brand name. Fortunately, they were summer people and not yet around in the middle of May.

  Karl didn’t confess to the crime directly, but he never moved the file of evidence that told the story. The police found Jeff’s bloody clothes buried out back of Lartel’s house, covered in synthetic hairs from a platinum-blonde wig. They released the homeless man, who was never officially charged with any crime. As for Lartel, he really had been in Mexico the whole time and was coming back early because Karl had called and told him there was an emergency, specifically that his cousin had been found dead in his library.

  I prefer to think Karl had wanted to get caught, even though the police never did find the gun he had shot Jeff with, either around the house or in the woods. Regardless, he clearly was deeply disturbed. The police surmised he had kept Jeff’s body in Lartel’s root cellar for over twenty-four hours before deciding what to do with it. He sanitized it and transported it to the library Monday evening, using a key Lartel had given him long ago. It chilled me to realize Karl had probably come from dumping the body at the library when I bumped into him outside the Turtle Stew, freshly stood up by a corpse.

  The word around town was that Karl was pleading insanity as well as spilling some of the town’s dirtier secrets, including the facts that his wife had left him more than a year ago and that Lartel McManus had been stalking Kennie for over five years. As a direct result, I think, Lartel packed up shop and disappeared before anyone even noticed he was back from Mexico. His clean, creepy little house is for sale, and I’m the interim head librarian. A promotion is a promotion.

  I also got my article published as widely as the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. They edited a lot out that appeared in the Recall, but I suppose we were catering to a different audience in Battle Lake. Writing and publishing the article was good experience, and I was happy to make Jeff look like the hero it turned out he was. I celebrated my first statewide publication by dumping out the half-empty bottle of vodka I had bought at Bonnie & Clyde’s.

  The doublewide was now officially liquor free again, and when Sunny called to tell me Alaska and Rodney were still wonderful and to ask me how I was doing, I could truthfully answer, “Just fine.” And it was time to go out and see how the world was treating me.

  The Turtle Stew has tater-tot hotdish on the lunch menu, and that’s about as good as it gets. A side of green beans and whole chocolate milk, a quality pen and a virgin crossword puzzle, and I’d be that much closer to mental health.

  The bell jingled as I entered, and conversation stopped momentarily. I passed around the bland, “how ya doin’?” smile I had been practicing, meant to reassure and soothe while keeping others at a distance. I sat down in the only open booth by the window, the electric red naugahyde cover feeling alive next to my naked calves. I had decided to wear a skirt this morning, another part of my master plan to blend for a while. I had ruffled enough feathers and was feeling moderately spanked.

  “Hello,” the waitress said, sliding a menu over to me.

  “Hi,” I said, sliding it back. “I know what I want.”

  “Tater-tot hotdish, green beans, and chocolate milk?” She smiled openly at me.

  I smiled back, this time a genuine grin showing my teeth. “Sounds perfect.” As she walked away, I debated the merits of being considered a regular in Battle Lake. Before I could get my list past one (“save time ordering food”), Kennie slid into my booth across from me, a full-sized cardboard-backed poster in her hand.

  “I know what y’all did, and I have to say I am so proud of you, honey chile. You saved the town.”

  I blinked loudly at her, willing her to be uncomfortable in the silence. Like most beauty contest types, she was immune to negative body language. It really is hard to shame the ignorant. She lowered her voice and leaned across the table, air escaping the negative space between her thighs and the naugahyde in pained squeaks.

  “And I know you called Trillings and told them what Jeff planned to do with the land. That’s right good of you.” She nodded her chin firmly. “The DNR has started looking into making it a wildlife refuge.” A playful smile highlighted by bubblegum pink lipstick and makeup-caked wrinkles tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “But y’all ain’t the only humanitarian.” She slowly turned the poster around. Mrs. Berns’s full-body, swimsuit-clad picture beamed at me, her skin going one direction, her varicose veins another. “Elderly beauty contests! Countywide!” Kennie grinned.

  In a distant way, I noticed how the whites of Kennie’s eyes were as milky as her teeth, a startling contrast to her heavy blue eyeliner and dark red rouge circles. “That’s gross, Kennie.”

  She laughed heartily, but it was a reflex instead of an acknowledgement. “Beauty doesn’t stop at any age, and we need to prove that. We’re gonna fight the good fight in Otter Tail County, you mark my words, honey chile. These old people just plain ol’ need more extracurricular activities.” Her fingers clacked the beginnings of “The William Tell Overture” on the plastic tabletop. Her wide smile wilted, and she pouted like a child. “Well, I can see y’all ain’t gonna get excited. And here we were gonna ask you to be a honorary judge, bein’ a town celebrity and all. Y’all change your mind, you let me know.”

  “Don’t quit your day job, Kennie.”

  She laughed her belly laugh again and darted out to place the poster in the entryway. Gary Wohnt was leaning against his new police Jeep across the street, perfecting his Frank “Ponch” Poncherello look. He had on the requisite mirrored sunglasses, glossy hair, and jaunty toothpick. It appeared as though he was even cultivating some facial hair, and for a grotesque second, I pictured
him offering free mustache rides at the next class of ’82 party.

  I watched Kennie strut out the door and toward the Chief. His gleaming lips cracked a smile, and he opened the passenger door for her. Apparently she had a chauffeur for her poster-hanging run. I mentally made it a mission to not find out anything more about those two.

  I sighed, thinking that geriatric beauty contests were probably a healthy improvement over geriatric orgies. One small step for Kennie Rogers, one huge step for humankind. The waitress plunked my food in front of me. One of the many beauties of tater-tot hotdish is that it’s quick; at the time you order it, it’s already cooked and just needs to be heated. I peppered the pile and dug in.

  I reached into my back pocket to pull out the note from Jeff I had found yesterday in my bottom dresser drawer. He must have written it after our last night together, intending for me to find it while he went to the Cities.

  Mira,

  You’re one of a kind. I am looking forward to spending a lot of time getting to know you better. Beware closed minds and open mouths while I’m gone, blood brother. This town can trap you!

  Jeff

  My eyes got a little hot reading it, even though this was the fourteenth or fifteenth time. He had been a note writer, and I hadn’t even known it until he was dead. I loved note writers. I wondered what he meant about this town trapping me. I would have to spend some time with that one.

  But first, I needed to do two things. I had to haul Sunny’s draconic garden tiller over to the Senior Sunset and get their garden ready for planting. It probably wouldn’t hurt to pick up some seedlings for them on the way. Next, and most importantly, I needed to go out to the Jorgensen land and say a farewell prayer for two men, Jeff and my dad, who were going to miss out on a lot of good things in life. I knew just what flower I was going to leave as a memorial—a bloodroot. I only hoped Jeff and I hadn’t plucked the last one.