Janice Bennett - Cold Turkey

“When you have a few minutes,” I said.

Judy seemed to take that as her cue, and picked up where she had left off on her stream of local gossip. I was surprised at how many names I didn’t recognize, but then considering the litany of troubles attached to them, it was probably just as well. I let it roll over me, and came to the conclusion that chairing a SCOURGE project might not be the worst fate, after all. Just goes to show how gullible I was feeling. By the time Sue rinsed off the last of the mud and had added clarifying lotions and moisturizers, I felt myself well acquainted with all the newcomers to our tiny community.

Sue whipped off the towel that had protected Judy’s hair, revealing a highlighted brown blunt cut. She set to work restyling, producing her usual wizardry, completely transforming her customer. Delighted, Judy Wharton left, leaving a generous tip-and a promise to bake a dozen pies, if I’d drop the stuff by her house later that evening. I assured her that nothing would stop me, and meant it.

Sue turned to me with a grin. “So what’s up? Besides pies.”

“What was going on between my Aunt Gerda and Clifford Brody?” I demanded, not wasting words.

“What makes you think-”

“Cindy Brody told Sheriff Sarkisian that you could tell him all about it. Hasn’t he been here, yet?”

Sue’s face sobered, and she perched on the stool behind her small desk. “No. Hasn’t your aunt said anything to you?”

“I want to hear it from someone else.” Actually, I just wanted to hear any of it.

Sue sighed. “It’s a long story, but you know how she didn’t really trust him?”

I nodded. I’d never found out why. Gerda clammed up the minute anyone mentioned his name.

“Well, you know how creative your aunt can be.”

“Devious, you mean,” I interjected.

Sue fought back a grin. “Honestly, she should be the one to tell you. It really doesn’t feel right…”

The musical bells announced the opening of the door. I looked up to see Owen Sarkisian standing there, regarding me with all the delight of a gardener who has just found a warren of gophers in his prize vegetable patch. “What the hell are you doing here, Ms. McKinley?” he demanded in that resigned voice I was beginning to know, if not love.

Sue and I exchanged guilty glances.

“I thought I told you to stay out of official business. But when I saw your car out front, I knew you were meddling again.”

I held up my hands in a defensive gesture. “It’s no such thing. I’m here for…” I looked around, seeking inspiration, and spotted it in the jars and other debris lying around from the last victim. “A mud pack,” I finished. “It always helps me relax.” Actually, that was true. I just never seemed to have time for one anymore.

“A mud pack,” Sarkisian repeated. An evil gleam lit his eyes. “Go ahead. Don’t let me interrupt.” He folded his arms and looked expectant.

There was nothing else for it. Sue draped one of the pink and gray protectors over me and fastened it behind my neck, then wrapped my hair in a towel. After warming the mud, she smeared it over my face. The scent soothed my nerves, but Sarkisian’s chuckle of appreciation at what he thought to be my suffering set them back on edge.

“I don’t usually allow observers,” Sue informed him.

“You wouldn’t make me miss this, would you?” A touch of malice sounded in his voice. “But I guess it would be a shame if you had to go through this for nothing, Ms. McKinley. Okay, Ms. Hinkel, I guess I’m here for the same reason she is,” he indicated me.

Sue raised her eyebrows. “You want a mud pack?”

“I want to know about Ms. Lundquist and Clifford Brody.”

Sue met my gaze in the mirror, apology blatant in her eyes.

“I’m not making you repeat yourself, am I?”

“No, we’d only-” Sue broke off. She’d never make a good conspirator.

Sarkisian grinned. “Start at the beginning.”

Sue sighed. “Okay. You have to sit for awhile, anyway, Annike.” She considered for a moment. “Gerda thought that Brody had padded his bill to the Service Club when he did our nonprofit status filings last year.”

Sarkisian stared at her. “That’s it?”

Sue hesitated.

“And what about her purported intention to lay a trap for him?”

“No! I mean, she… Why would she do anything like that?” Sue stammered.

Not a very convincing denial, I reflected. To my relief, I saw a figure running through the rain toward the shop door. This seemed a perfect time for an interruption. I’d rather find out about my aunt’s plot when the sheriff wasn’t around.

The temple bells jingled merrily as the little woman darted inside. She lowered her umbrella, and the dripping, bright orange hair of Peggy O’Shaughnessy peeped out from beneath her scarf. Her bespectacled gaze took us all in. “What are you doing here, Sheriff?” she demanded. “Come for a more fashionable cut? You’d look great if you could just get those curls of yours to spike.”

I choked back a laugh at the revolted expression on his face. The day was developing a bright spot or two, after all.

“I’m here on official business,” he informed her with amazing calm.

“So am I. I’m selling raffle tickets,” she announced. “You need another book, don’t you, Sheriff?”

“If you’ve got a stack, I’ll try to peddle them to my customers,” Sue put in.

To my amazement, Sarkisian brought out his wallet and bought another book.

Sue waited until the money had been safely passed over to Peggy. “He’s here trying to get us to incriminate Gerda,” she said.

The look of pained suffering on Sarkisian’s face made the mud pack on mine more than worthwhile.

Peggy turned on the man, outrage shivering from every pore. “How dare you!” she cried. “Gerda, of all people…”

“Look,” Sue interrupted her fellow SCOURGEie, “everyone was always annoyed with Brody. Cindy’s story is absolute nonsense.”

“She was probably just trying to divert suspicion from herself,” Peggy stuck in.

I tried to agree, but found my mud pack had dried tight. I couldn’t move my mouth. Apparently I rated a different formula than Judy Wharton. I made irritated noises, and all three of them looked at me.

Sarkisian brightened, and a distinct chuckle sounded in his voice as he said, “Okay, you might as well wash it off, now. It’s obvious I’m not going to get anything out of you three-especially you,” he grinned at me. “For the moment, at least. But don’t bother concocting some farfetched story to explain it all. My bullshit detector works remarkably well.”

“What was he trying to get you to say?” Peggy demanded as soon as the door closed behind him. Sue explained, and Peggy’s brow wrinkled as she turned to me, earnestness radiating from her. “Honestly, Annike, I don’t know of any plot. Oh, Gerda fumed about coming up with something, she really was mad at him. But then other things came up and she forgot about it.”

Sue nodded. “That’s Gerda, you know. If she’d been going to do something, it would have been at once, as soon as she got mad at him. She always acts so quickly and decisively.”

“Like the time she caught her shop assistant passing out free rentals to her friends,” Peggy stuck in. “She fired her on the spot. When she’s angry, she doesn’t take time to think, she just explodes.”

“But the more time passes,” Sue went on, “the more she gets involved in something else, and whatever infuriated her before doesn’t seem as important.”

She turned her back on the sheriff and placed a warm, damp, herb-steeped cloth over my face. The pack began to soften, and I scrubbed at it until I could move my mouth. When I looked up, I saw Sarkisian at the door, grinning.

“Cleaning that off ought to keep you too busy to follow me for awhile,” he said.

I glared back. “But I have to. Remember the key to the Grange Hall? I’ve got to have that today.”

His eyes lit. “Certainly. I’ll deliver it to your aunt’s house-so there’s no need for you to go rushing around any more this afternoon.”

“It’s almost night,” I muttered, but at that moment Sue draped another herb-scented towel over my face, and I went to work de-mudding myself. When I emerged, the sheriff had left. Peggy and Sue stood in front of me, watching the process with apparent fascination. “Okay, he’s gone. Tell me what my aunt’s been up to.”

Peggy shook her head. “We told him the truth. Well, some of it, at least. Gerda did go on for a little while about coming up with a trap for him, but she couldn’t think of anything, and then she got sidetracked over the video rental problems, and she stopped fuming about Brody. Honest!” she added at my piercing stare.

Sue nodded in earnest agreement. I sighed, not knowing whether to believe them or not. If they told the truth, then all we had to do was convince a very suspicious Sarkisian of that fact. If not-well, I’d have to figure out what kind of a fiendish trap my resourceful aunt might have contrived-and what consequences it might have brought.

I was beginning to think that getting over three hundred pies baked by Friday morning just might be the easier task facing me.

My clock radio went off with a violent fit of static, which sent poor Vilhelm into a screaming fit. Thanksgiving morning. Too soon, my mind whimpered. Too soon. I tried to bury my head under the pillow. That’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It was stifling, and my neck bent at the wrong angle. With a sigh, I threw the pillow aside and sat up with a cavernous yawn.

My mind jumbled with lists and tasks-completed, coming up today, and those still in the not-distant-enough future. I’d set the alarm for five-thirty, which didn’t leave me much time to spare-or much sleep, for that matter. We hadn’t gotten to bed until at least one a.m. I couldn’t be sure of the exact time, by then, my eyes were too bleary to see a clock. Suppressing a groan, I climbed out from under my warm comforter into the chill of the room, pulled the cover off the parakeet’s cage, and found him glaring at me with his beady eyes.