June Bug Page 7

  Sid spelled out QUINCE and took a drag off her coffee. “There’s small minds everywhere, Mira. You can’t make choices based on fear.”

  “I don’t know. I make some of my best choices based on fear.”

  Sid smiled. “Nancy and I both grew up in towns the size of Battle Lake. We like the pace and the familiarity. Plus, this is the only coffee shop we found that we could afford.”

  “Ha! So it was money that brought you here.”

  “That, and the gorgeous lake and smiling faces of the locals and the great sermons Pastor Winter gives. Just give it some time, Mira, and you’ll be stuck here too. In a good way. This town has a lot to offer.”

  I laid the D, I, and S tiles in front of the word BELIEF that she had put down four turns ago. Fifteen points, doubled because the D fell on a pink double-word-score square. I loved it when things worked out like that.

  “Sid, did you know that Alfred M. Butts invented Scrabble?”

  “Yeah, and I. M. Alezbo is going to win it,” she said. “Pay attention!”

  I smiled at this memory of Sid’s humor as I walked up to her at the counter. The smell of fresh-roasted coffee beans pushed the thought of ordering green tea out my ear.

  “Mira! Is it too late in the night for a decaf mocha?” she asked.

  “Only if you didn’t just find a fake dead body in Whiskey Lake?”

  “That was you!” Sid turned and hollered for Nancy. “Nance! That dead body in Whiskey Lake, that wasn’t really dead or a body? Guess who found it!”

  Nancy showed up at the front counter wiping her flour-covered hands on a rainbow-colored apron that read “One Recruit Short of a Toaster Oven.” She grinned broadly when she saw me, her bright smile gentling her rough features. “My money is on our resident body-finder, Ms. James herself.”

  “Bingo.” I fished in the pockets of my cutoffs for money. “Since you guys already know about the pseudo-body, I suppose you know about the diamond necklace and the Star Tribune contest?”

  “Old news, sweets. Tell Ron at the Recall to get his hands out of his wife’s pants and onto a keyboard, preferably with a washing in between. Most of the town knows about the contest.”

  “Why am I always the last one to know?” I asked.

  “You’re an outsider, hon.” Nancy put her arm around Sid and gave her a peck on the cheek. “It takes a while for this town to accept you.”

  “Pshaw. Give me some coffee. I’m off to order a Taser and maybe have a couple drinks at Clyde’s to see what else everyone knows that I don’t.”

  Sid operated the gurgling machine and added extra chocolate and whipped cream to my drink. She winked at me as she slid it across the counter. “Two-fifty. Anything else?”

  “Call me if you hear something that sounds like news, ’kay? I’m supposed to be a reporter.”

  “I’ll give you a call if I hear anything, honey.” She patted my wrist.

  “Thanks.” I sipped gingerly at the creamy hot coffee, which felt like manna on my throat, still sore from heaving lake water, and headed out the door in search of weaponry and answers. The short evening walk to the library was pleasant. On Sunday nights, the weekend tourists packed up and returned to the Cities, leaving Battle Lake warm and relatively quiet. The chairs outside of Granny’s Pantry were packed, full of sticky kids nursing triple-decker waffle cones and playing tag around their parents’ legs. Otherwise, it was just my coffee and me. I took a sip and fished in my pockets for the library keys.

  Lartel, the former head librarian and a guy with a freaky doll fetish, had always kept a key under the fake rock out front. He had disappeared in May shortly after Jeff was killed. He hadn’t even taken the time to put his house up for sale, so there was always a possibility that he would return. When I got his job, I’d removed the key and convinced the town to change the locks.

  I was now the only one who held the keys, and I kept the place pretty clean. That’s why Kennie’s Minnesota Nice brochure with a paper pocket full of business cards stuck to the outside of the tall and narrow library window immediately caught my attention. I shoved one of her cards in my back pocket and promised myself I’d find some way to get Kennie to infect Jason’s life.

  Inside the library, the smell of old paper and slick magazines was still the first thing to greet me, but since I had started running the ship, there was a whiff of sandalwood incense underneath it as well. There were also far more plants in the place, mostly ferns and succulents, my favorites. I had them crawling in the windows, and if the sun was just right, the kid’s area under the south window was lit up like a jungle.

  There were twelve rotating carrels near the front desk, and they housed mysteries, true crime, and romance. To the right was the children’s area, and straight back were the stacks. The far wall held a pretty decent magazine selection, though I may have been the only one who read the monthly copy of Spin.

  I marched straight to the front desk computer, booted it up, and found the article I had started on the diamond necklace. I added some angles from my interview with Shirly without giving away his reluctance to go on the record about whether or not the diamond was real or his suspicion there was something else going on at Shangri-La that summer—that was something I wanted to look into for myself before announcing it to the world. I proofread the article until I was satisfied it was error-free and not too obviously plagiarized from the Star Tribune original, and sent it off to Ron.

  After I clicked on “Send,” I ran a search on “Taser.” I didn’t really know what they were beyond a legal way for me to defend myself without having to go through five years of tae kwon do. Turns out they shot little electric bullets, nonlethal and nonpenetrating, which resulted in “Electro-Muscular Disruption.” I gathered this was cop-speak for “You’ll be so buggered by electricity that it’ll be half an hour before you can slap a mosquito off your own ass.”

  Unfortunately, the gun-like Tasers were out of my price range, so I opted for a fifty-five-dollar Z-Force stun gun, which promised to deliver 300,000 volts to any creep who got within arm’s reach. It looked like a mean black vibrator with two metal prongs at the end. I knew I’d have a hard time not testing it out, but I had a feeling fate would provide me with that opportunity soon, and I was old enough to know you should always listen to your hunches. I paid twenty-five extra bucks for same-day shipping on my order, shut down the computer, and took off for Bonnie & Clyde’s.

  Once on the road, I cranked my window as far open as it would go to let the frog songs and sweet green breeze wash in. Minnesota is an incredible place to live, but we natives learn at a very young age that for this privilege we must pay a tithe, usually in blood. We’re first indoctrinated while we’re still in diapers. A summer day spent in the shallow, still part of the lake results in a chocolate-chip-shaped leech nesting between our peas-in-a-pod toes. This leads to the wood tick that attaches itself to the front of our ear lobe when we’re five. We think it’s the closest we’ll come to an earring for many years, so through luck and cunning we manage to hide it from our mom until it’s a corpulent gray blob, its legs ridiculously small on its blood-stressed body.

  Interspersed with all of this are the mosquitoes, which are there when the snow isn’t, and when winter arrives, it brings with it winds so fierce that school is sometimes canceled simply because it’s too cold to step outside. We learn the price of Minnesota’s beauty at an early age. It’s not a place for the faint of heart, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

  It’s a quiet understanding of these dynamics that makes every native Minnesotan welcome at Bonnie & Clyde’s, one of two bars and four total businesses in Clitherall, if you count the post office as a business.

  It was only a seven-minute ride from Battle Lake to Clitherall, and I went sixty the whole way. The only time I slowed was when I passed Delbert Larsen on the shoulder of Highway 210 driving his riding lawn mower to the bar. He had gotten his license revoked after his fifth DWI in May, but he wasn’t letting that put a dent in his
good times. I waved as I passed, and he made the classic “old man shaking his fist in the air” gesture back at me. Crabby bastard.

  When I entered Clyde’s, the cigarette smoke and pounding notes of Kid Rock raced for purchase in all my orifices big and small. The smoke won, but the music got my hips moving. I tried to look cool, staring back at all those who glanced at the jangling of the door opening, but I needn’t have bothered. The place was empty except for Ruby, who was the bartender and owner, Jedediah Heike, and Johnny Leeson.

  My heart pumped some extra blood to my cooter at the sight of Johnny, and I took a hard left to the bar instead of saying hi. I envied those women who could flirt—those easy-smiling, hair-flipping, ass-shaking sirens. I just wasn’t comfortable putting myself out there like that. The best I could rustle up, when confronted by an attractive male, was an attention-deflecting sarcastic remark and a stiff smile. If my dating track record was any indication, this was exactly the mating dance of the emotionally unavailable male for whom foreplay is a card game. I needed to find a guy who could see past my social ineptitude to the magnificent me, like Jeff Wilson had done. “Hi, Ruby. Got any specials tonight?”

  Ruby ignored me like she ignored all her customers. She shoved beer glasses upside down on the rotating scrubbers in the first of three sinks she used to wash barware. The second sink rinsed the soap off, and the third sink sanitized with some blue cleansing agent. Or at least it would have, if the toxicity of Clitherall’s water didn’t create a chemical reaction that made the blue tablet black and the water smell like old broccoli.

  Two years earlier, a sales rep had come to Clyde’s trying to sell a gross of cocktail napkins that patrons could splash a drop or two of their drink onto to see if it had been spiked with any date-rape drugs. That was the only time I had ever seen Ruby laugh out loud. She knew the nitrates in the town water neutralized everything but alcohol, for good or bad. It was part of the charm of the place, and besides, Clitherall was the home of the oldest married couple in the five-state area. The water couldn’t be all bad.

  Ruby swiped her wet hands on her jeans, tipped up one of the still-dripping beer glasses, and poured me a Lite draft. I thanked her, slid two singles onto the low spot of the bar, and watched her hands carefully. She had a way of taking my money and assuming her tip without me ever seeing it. The game was worth the 80 percent gratuity.

  Ruby was in her early seventies and had owned Bonnie & Clyde’s for decades. Her husband had built the place, and she’d kept it running herself after he died. The inside was a visual disharmony of wood and lights, with holes in the floor that allowed customers to watch Ruby change kegs below, and bathroom doors that didn’t lock. The chairs were plastic, elementary-school style, and the tables were mismatched, some of them handmade and some of them folding card tables. This comfortable rot was contrasted with a sparkly, modern jukebox, pristine pool tables, and a buttery, elegant main bar.

  I was considering how long I should let the beer sit in my glass before the alcohol killed the nitrates, or vice versa, when there was a tap on my shoulder.

  “Mira, hey, cool. Why don’t you come hang out with me and Johnny?”

  I smiled at Jed, thinking I’d like to hang off of Johnny for a while. For a minute, I was worried that Johnny must be a pothead if he hung around with Jed, but then I remembered I hung out with Jed sometimes, too. I think the three of us didn’t bump into one another more often because Johnny spent most nights playing in a local band and giving piano lessons to old ladies and young girls. He was a Battle Lake native, and he had left for college in Wisconsin to study plant biology about five years earlier. I don’t know if he finished his degree or not, but I did know he returned to his hometown the summer before under less-than-happy circumstances. My local friend Gina said he got kicked out of college for knifing a guy or stealing rare plants from the college greenhouse, she wasn’t sure which. I refused to believe either.

  I leaned over to check out the man for all seasons over by the pool table, admiring the thick ropes in his neck and arm as he tipped his head back to finish his beer. Johnny was bright and healthy and open. Clearly, he was not my type. With the exception of my short tryst with Jeff, I went for the dark brooders, the guys who disguised vapidity as introspection.

  I even went out with one attractive slacker because he liked dark chocolate and I wanted to believe that was proof of his intelligence. I could no longer buy that illusion after he let me read his poetry. It all rhymed, and every poem was about the band Van Halen. The only one that I can remember specifically was titled “David Lee Roth, Thou Art the Flame to My Moth.”

  No, Johnny would definitely stand out in the short lineup of my past loves, but I couldn’t deny his earthy appeal. I wanted to get down and dirty with him, literally. I decided to take this bull by the horns as I followed Jed back to the table. Seeing Johnny twice in one day without having to stalk him must be a sign. I could be cool. Right?

  “Hey, Jay, you see Mira was here?” Jed said.

  I held out my hand and smiled into Johnny’s eyes. “Twice in one day. It must be fate.”

  At least, that’s what I swear to God I meant to say. Unfortunately, it came out as, “Twice in one day. This lust can’t wait.”

  I honestly shouldn’t be let out of the house some days. Thank God I’m a mumbler when I’m nervous. It’s nature’s way of balancing out the fact that dorky stuff rushes out of my mouth like vomit when I’m feeling awkward.

  Johnny held on to my hand and leaned his ear close to my mouth. “What?”

  I breathed the clean spice of his thick, sun-lightened hair, and lightning bolts shot out of my crotch. If smoke started rising from my nether region, I would never be able to look him in the eye again.

  “I just said it’s nice to see you again. You know, here at Bonnie & Clyde’s, where before it was at the Last Resort.” Hmm. That put me one sentence past cool.

  He nodded. “Yah. Say, I enjoyed that article on Jeff Wilson.”

  Jesus. He gardened, smoldered, and read. I was way out of my league.

  “And I plant your stuff in my garden.” I followed this with a twinkly guffaw and filled my mouth with beer before I said something else stupid.

  For his part, Johnny smiled brilliantly and turned back to the pool game. When he was out of earshot, I turned to Jed. “Why am I such a dork?”

  “Dorks rule, man. Wanna get high?”

  “No thanks, Jed. How’re you doing tonight?”

  “Except for a little too much time with the Man, I’m good. Shit, I thought they were coming for me.”

  I pulled my attention from Johnny, who was leaning provocatively into the pool table as he lined up the purple four ball with the corner pocket. “The cops?”

  “The cop,” Jed corrected me, running his hand nervously through his curly hair. I noticed he was wearing a black Pink Floyd T-shirt with a rainbow prism etched on the front. “Chief Gary Wohnt came by the Last Resort, dude, and his cherries were on. I had my stash flushed before he got to the main office. Good thing I only had a dime bag.”

  “He came to bust you?”

  “Naw, and that’s the kicker!” Jed slapped his knee. “He wanted a list of who we rented dive gear to. That fake body they found in Whiskey? It was wearing a Last Resort wetsuit. We stamp the name on every one of ’em. Right on the butt.”

  I wanted to laugh with Jed, but every time someone talked about that body, I fumed. I felt like it was a big joke at my expense, and somebody needed to pay. “So who did you provide gear for?”

  “Aw, some tourists staying at Shangri-La, a couple staying at the Last Resort, and you.”

  “No one you recognized?”

  “No one except Jason Blunt. You know him, don’t you? I think he used to date Sunny back in the day. Boy, could that dude put away a bong. He had a mean streak like a mule if you crossed him, though.”

  My heart made its way out of my chest and lumped in my throat. “Jason rented a dive suit from you?”

&nb
sp; “Three dive suits, three BCs, three of everything, the day before you got yours. Why? You think he planted the body?”

  I suddenly felt very tired. My cocky spell had passed, and I had had enough Jason Blunt for one day. “That’s totally possible, Jed.” The question was, why? It must be connected to the jewels he was after. I had to find out more.

  I brought my unfinished beer up to the counter and saw that my two dollars had disappeared even though Ruby had been at the far end of the bar the entire time I’d been talking to Johnny and Jed. I said a quick goodbye to both, and thought for a moment that Johnny’s eyes lingered on my mouth as he smiled at me. No, must have been the lighting. Anyhow, I was too concerned about Jason’s current mischief to have more than a parting lustful thought about Johnny Leeson.

  I slept fitfully that night and woke at least four times, wishing I had my stun gun under my pillow. On the fifth wake-up, I seriously considered moving myself to a corner of the spare room under all of Sunny’s stored junk. An intruder would not look for me there, and I could catch some hidden z’s. I quickly discarded that idea, though, refusing to be scared in my own bed in my own home.

  At four a.m., I gave up on wrestling with the sandman and took my knotty head outside. The air was hot on cool, the leftovers of a ninety-degree day losing out to the quiet morning chill. I could feel the repercussions of the previous day’s heat in the tightness of my sunburned nose and shoulders as I stretched. Outside, the animals didn’t know whether to make night or morning sounds, and my presence threw another wrench into their song. I sat on the front deck, closing my eyes so I could better hear the rustlings in the woods and smell the mystery of Whiskey Lake and an early summer morning.

  I soon realized I wasn’t comfortable sitting, either. I had too much nervous energy. I got off my butt, the sweat shorts I had thrown on wet from the dew, and walked past the barn down to my vegetable garden near the lake. I had tilled this area in April, and though I still had to fight the pigweed and thistle for ownership, it was turning out to be a good location with a full day of sun.