A Double-Pointed Murder Page 2

  Lars Teljo was sitting on the mattress, his elbows on his knees. His lean body slumped, as if he’d stayed up all night. He’d clearly been running his fingers through his thick dark hair. I noticed he was beginning to go gray around the temples. He wore an ancient McKenzie plaid flannel shirt my mom had given him for Christmas about ten years earlier, close-fitting jeans and the buff-colored work boots with the sure-grip rubber soles that are standard issue for a Keweenaw winter.

  “Go on in,” Waino said. “There’s no lock. We use the honor system.”

  Lars looked up at the sound of the deputy’s voice. The green eyes looked remote and I got the feeling he’d been a million miles away. I entered the cell, sat down in the chair and cast a glance at a wastebasket full of dead soldiers. Bud Light.

  “Not mine,” he said. His voice was rusty as if he hadn’t used it in awhile. “Waino’s. I stuck to pop.”

  I said nothing but I felt a wave of relief. Alcohol had contributed to the whole Cricket debacle three years earlier and I knew Lars had vowed to stop drinking.

  “What about your breakfast,” I asked, glancing at the plastic tray propped next to him on the mattress. It was loaded with food, including scrambled eggs, crisp bacon and Trenary toast, a cinnamon-sugar, twice-baked rusk that is one of our UP specialties. There was a carafe of coffee, too, and an empty cup. I knew the food had been prepared by Sheriff Clump’s mother-in-law, Vesta Raatikainen, owner of the Lunch Box. Vesta had been fond of Lars when he’d served as sheriff’s deputy several years earlier and I guessed, from the lavish breakfast, she was still fond of him. Lars had always raved about her food.

  “Help yourself,” he said. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You should eat,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee. “You’ve got to keep up your strength.”

  He flashed a lame facsimile of his old familiar grin.

  “You’re starting to sound like your mother.”

  After their shotgun wedding during senior year in high school, Lars and Sofi lived with us on Calumet Street for nearly ten years. He had always treated me like an older brother, except nicer. I, like the rest of the family, wanted to see him back with his wife and their daughter.

  Coffee in hand, I settled back on my chair.

  “Have you been charged?”

  “Not yet but it’s just a matter of time. I’m the obvious choice. Means, motive and opportunity. It’s a slam dunk for the sheriff.”

  I wondered if it had occurred to Lars that Sofi might be implicated. Normally, my brother-in-law is a smart dude but this morning he was acting like a former NFL lineman who’d been hit in the head too many times. I figured I’d better keep things simple. “Tell me what happened.”

  He leaned against the wall, his eyes closed, long, black lashes resting on high cheekbones. He spoke slowly, as if by reconstructing the experience, he could hope to understand it. I knew he’d already spent hours going over the same information.

  “I spent the day in Houghton with Charlie. We went to a Star Wars marathon at the Frostbite Mall. Afterwards, I put her on a commuter plane to Detroit Metro.” Charlotte, or ‘Charlie’, is Lars’ and Sofi’s fifteen-year-old daughter. My folks had invited her to come down for a few days to enjoy the pool at the condo. Lars continued. “I got back to town around ten-thirty.” He paused and I nodded to assure him I was listening. “I stopped by the duplex.”

  The duplex, located across Calumet Street from my parents’s home, belongs to Aunt Ianthe and her lifelong bosom buddy, Miss Irene Suutula. They live in one half of it while Sofi and Charlie live in the other half.

  “Sofi and I had planned to meet and talk,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, “but she wasn’t there.”

  “You must have forgotten about the New Year’s Eve celebration at the Leaping Deer. Sofi, Sonya, Elli and I.”

  Lars dropped his head back against the cinderblock wall and rolled it from side to side.

  “I didn’t forget. She was supposed to leave the party early.”

  And then I remembered.

  “Sofi did leave the party early, before we made caramel popcorn balls and just after we’d cast tin.” Casting tin, a form of fortune telling, is a new year’s tradition. “She told us she was getting sick and left a little after eleven.”

  “I must have just missed her,” he said, his brow furrowed. “I kept falling asleep in the truck and I figured I wouldn’t be much good to her until I got some shut-eye, so I went on home.”

  Home, these days, was a small, rented cabin on Dollar Lake, about a fifteen-minute drive from Red Jacket.

  “So you got home around eleven fifteen or a little later,” I said, speaking more to myself than to him. And then my curiosity, one of my besetting sins, got the better of me. “What were you planning to talk about?”

  The flash of pain on his lean face made me wish I’d kept my mouth shut. He confirmed what I’d been thinking back in the morgue.

  “Reconciliation. That’s out the window now.” He sighed, heavily. “Sofi will never believe I wasn’t having a tryst with Cricket at the cabin.”

  “Were you?”

  “No.” There was no heat behind his denial. “I hadn’t seen her in three years. I told you that on the phone last night. I’d had no desire to see her. That business was a blip on the radar screen during my drinking days. It meant no more to her than it did to me, Hatti. But, at least, she was single. I was the one at fault.”

  “Was she dead when you got back to the cabin?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, I was exhausted. I thought I was alone in the cabin and I didn’t bother to turn on the lights. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, shucked off my clothes and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I woke up when I heard a knock on the door. I dragged myself out of bed to answer and there was Waino telling me he’d gotten an anonymous phone call about murder at my cabin. I told him he was nuts. He flicked on the light and pointed to my bed or, more precisely to the late Cricket Koski.”

  “Lars, why was she there?”

  “Search me. Like I said, I hadn’t seen her in years.”

  I stared at his defeated expression. I’d never known him to lie. It must be true. And, if it was true, then there was only one explanation.

  “It must have been a set up.”

  He flashed me a weary grin.

  “Thanks, Squirt, for believing in me.” His smile disappeared. “But that doesn’t even make sense. Why would anyone want her dead? She was just a barmaid. Not a threat to anyone.”

  I tried to look at it from another angle.

  “Maybe it wasn’t about her. Maybe it was about you. Have you got an enemy? Someone who wants you out of the way?”

  “Just Sofi.”

  It was a bad joke and he knew it.

  “Did Waino tell you what the caller said? I mean, exactly?”

  Lars shrugged. “Said someone’s been killed out at Teljo’s cabin on Dollar Lake. Pretty straightforward.”

  “Pretty eerie,” I said. “Your cabin’s on a deserted dirt road a quarter of a mile from the interstate. No one happens by. The only way the caller could have known about Cricket is if he killed her.”

  Lars shrugged.

  “There’s no way to trace the call. Must’ve used a burner phone. Anyway, Waino got there, found Cricket and, what with one thing and another, I agreed to come down to the station with him.”

  “Under arrest?”

  “Nah. Waino had Clump’s damn Corvette. There was no way to get the body into it. We laid her out in the back of my SUV and caravanned back to Frog Creek.” A year earlier, when it had been time to replace the sheriff’s department old, woody station wagon, Sheriff Clump had decided to go with a fire-engine red Corvette. There were those who thought it was a questionable choice for a law man whose main job is to rescue motorists stranded in the snow but Clump claimed the sports car would improve the county’s image with potential tourists.

  “Only on the Ke
weenaw,” I said. He smiled, briefly.

  “Lars, shouldn’t somebody have come in to look at the crime scene?”

  “Waino’s new at the job. I took pictures on my phone and jotted down some observations which I’ll share with the sheriff if he’s interested.”

  “He’s got to be interested,” I said, fiercely. “You certainly didn’t kill her.”

  “Nobody’ll believe that. I’m the only possible suspect.”

  “What about Sofi?”

  “What?” He jerked into an erect position, his face flushed and contorted. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped.

  I didn’t take offense.

  “Everybody knows she hated Cricket Koski. And that wound on her chest? The perfect circle? I’m almost positive it was made with a double-pointed knitting needle. People will say it was a woman’s weapon. And then there’s the alibi. She left the party earlier last night.”

  “To go home and sleep,” he growled. “She told you she was sick, right?”

  “Nobody saw her. She could have met Cricket somewhere, killed her and dropped her off at your cabin. She’s got a key, right?”

  “She wouldn’t kill Cricket. She wouldn’t kill anybody. Hatti, you know that. For cripe’s sake, don’t mention this cockamamie idea to anybody else, okay?”

  We heard the sound of the front door opening and, an instant later, Waino appeared outside the cell.

  “Sheriff’s here,” he hissed. “You’ve got to vamoose!”

  I looked at Lars. He’d come alive. All his circuits were humming now. “What can I do for you?”

  “Besides keeping mum about Sofi? Find out what you can about Cricket. Where did she live? Who were her friends and enemies? Any family? She worked down at the Black Fly in Chassell.”

  I knew all about the Black Fly. Sofi and I had driven down there a month or two after the incident three years earlier. She’d wanted to get a look at the homewrecker. We only stayed for a few minutes and, afterwards, Sofi threw up in the parking lot.

  We could hear Clump’s slow, heavy footsteps in the outer office. He is short and built exactly like an egg with his greatest circumference around the middle so that when he walks, he waddles. Still, it was time for me to get out of there.

  I opened the cell door, slipped into the morgue and exited out the back without glancing again at the dead girl.

  Chapter 3

  Chassell is thirty-miles south of Red Jacket, pretty much a straight shot down U.S. Route 41, the highway that starts in Miami, Florida and ends at Copper Harbor, (or starts in Copper Harbor and ends in Miami, depending upon your perspective). If I left now, I’d get there by seven-thirty a.m. on Sunday morning, New Year’s Day, not an auspicious time to visit a bar. The Fly would open this afternoon so folks could come together to watch the Winter Classic, a hockey game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs played on the flooded turf of the University of Michigan football stadium.

  The whole thing sounded kind of gimmicky to me but there were scores of Yoopers who wouldn’t dream of missing it.

  I figured I’d spend the next few hours comforting my sister.

  The heavy sky broke open as I made my way along the two-lane road from Frog Creek to Red Jacket. Large, heavy flakes hit the windshield first but were quickly followed by snow showers. The wipers on my new-to-me Jeep Explorer worked double time, grinding away, like a metronome measuring my anxiety. It was a weird sensation. I used to be fairly happy go-lucky, a sunny person who saw life as full of possibilities. Jace’s defection changed all that. My mind leapt back to that fateful day thirteen months earlier. I’d been in the kitchen of our tiny Capitol Hill apartment mixing a batch of Joulutorttu, which is a prune tart traditionally made at Christmas time.

  Jace, arrived home from a week-long trip that included a stop to his grandfather’s home at the Copper Eagle Reservation a few miles from Red Jacket, came through the door, put down his briefcase in time to catch me as I flew at him. He ignored my squeals of excitement and set me firmly on my feet. He just looked at me until I paused and then he said, “It’s over, Hatti.”

  Oddly enough, I knew just what he meant but, of course, I didn’t take it with a stiff upper lip or the stoicism that would have left me with a shred of dignity. I wept and yelled and demanded explanations that I never got. That was Friday. By Sunday, I was making the long, tedious drive back to the Upper Peninsula on autopilot. Somewhere around Cleveland I remembered I’d left the dough for the tarts in the mixing bowl on the counter. It reminded me of an upside down version of the Hebrews fleeing Egypt with unleavened bread and it seemed like a perfect metaphor for my failed attempt at matrimony.

  Anyway, since then, I’ve turned into an all-purpose worrier. Waking or sleeping, I feel an undercurrent of anxiety about everything from war and death to red wigglers and mealworms. Mostly, though, I haven’t worried about Sofi. She, like Elli, is true descendant of our strong, practical female forebears who braved the hardships of the isolated new land. If she has an Achilles Heel, (and who doesn’t) it is her ex. I know in my soul that Sofi, my sister, would never kill another human being. I also know that Sofi, the bitter ex-wife, would like nothing better than to skewer Cricket Koski with a double-pointed needle.

  So I was a little worried. Make that, more than a little. In fact, my stomach was tied up in knots.

  The road from Frog Creek turns into Main Street. I followed it up to Third, then turned into the alley that ran behind the houses on Calumet including the Leaping Deer, my family’s Queen Anne and the Maki Funeral Home.

  I parked next to a three-foot snowbank then waded through a foot of fresh powder to reach the back door of the B and B.

  Elli’s family has owned the inn as long as I can remember. It has gone through several incarnations from boarding house to cheap motor hotel called the Dew Drop Inn. When my aunt and uncle retired to Florida, they left the ramshackle structure to Elli who rolled up her shirtsleeves and turned the white elephant into a state-of-the-art Victorian hostelry. Elli had not just restored the hotel, she’d made it better than ever, as my Great Aunt Ianthe was fond of saying.

  Larry, who had the run of the place, was curled up on a rug on the kitchen floor watching with interest as Elli added flour to the industrial-strength mixer that’s nearly as big as she is. He glanced at me, and the white tip of his tail jerked a couple of times in greeting. I knelt to rub his soft ears.

  “Thanks for picking up Larry,” I said, when the whirring had stopped. “What’re you making?”

  “Cranberry-orange-walnut muffins.”

  “Yum.”

  “They’re for tomorrow. Have some pannukakku.”

  I helped myself to the pancake and coffee. I could hear the buzz of conversation and the clink of dishes and glasses on the other side of the swinging door that separates the kitchen from the dining room. I knew that half the town would have shown up for Elli’s New Year’s morning breakfast feast.

  When I’d taken a few bites she started in with the questions.

  “How did it go with Lars?”

  “He says he didn’t do it.”

  “Uh-huh. Why was she in his bed?”

  “He says he doesn’t know.”

  “Weak. He’s going to have to come up with something better than that.”

  “I know.”

  “Sofi’s not here, by the way. The aunts say she’s got the flu.”

  “That means she knows about the Insect.”

  “Everybody knows, Hatti. You know the grapevine. But she really is sick. Remember, she mentioned it last night.”

  “That was a dodge. She was supposed to meet Lars but they got their signals crossed.”

  “Huh. They were going to reconcile, weren’t they?”

  “How the heck did you know?”

  “Everybody knew, Hatti. That time you spent away from home must have dulled your instincts.”

  I felt foolish but persisted. “So what’s everybody saying?”

  “The usual. Aunt
Ianthe said Lars is a good boy and wouldn’t have hurt a fly much less a cricket. ”Mrs. Paikkonen claims there’s no smoke without fire and Miss Irene backed that up with a quote from Acts: And there appeared cloven tongues unto them, like as fire.”

  “Pentecost,” I interpreted. Miss Irene could be counted on the come up with a Bible reference, relevant or not, for every occasion.

  “And then early this morning Mrs. Moilanen stopped in at the IGA to get the ingredients for her vinegar cabbage. She ran into Vesta Raatikainen from whom she got the story. Edna went home and called Aunt Ianthe and Betty Ann Pritula, in that order.”

  Betty Ann is the host of the radio program, The Finnish Line, or as Pops likes to call it, the Finnish-Me-Off Line. It comes on promptly at six a.m. every day of the week so that Betty Ann can inform us of events, teach us crafts and bully us into spending the day doing whatever she considers important.

  “You weren’t kidding when you said everybody knows about the body in Lars’s bed.”

  I sectioned part of my pancake and dumped it into Larry’s bowl. He favored me with another wag while he ate it.

  “Hatti,” Elli said, sounding hesitant, “you don’t think Cricket Koski was trying to blackmail Lars, do you? I mean, if he and Sofi were talking about reconciling, Cricket could have seriously interfered by telling Sofi a pack of lies.”

  I shook my head. “Even if Cricket had tried to blackmail him, Lars wouldn’t have killed her.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, he hasn’t seen Cricket in three years. How would she even know he was trying to make it up with Sofi?”

  Elli raised one eyebrow. “I think we’ve just established how impossible it is to keep a secret around here.”

  I put down my fork. Suddenly, I’d lost my appetite.

  “There’s some other news, too. Sonya’s gone back to New Mexico for the first time since she moved here. She got a call after midnight. Some sort of family crisis.”

  Sonya Stillwater, a Navajo midwife who showed up on the Keweenaw a couple of years ago, is a close friend and the fourth member, along with Sofi, Elli and me, of our knitting circle.