I strode into Mrs. Berns’ hospital room and was happy to find that her family wasn’t around. “Here.” I held out the pumpkin-and-spice colored mums I’d bought for her, trying not to wince at the sight of her harsh bruises. “How’re you doing?”
She shushed me and pointed at the TV. The evenings news was on, and if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, this national news station’s cameras were panning downtown Battle Lake. “And it’s here that the campaigns of Representative Sarah Glokkmann and her challenger, Arnold Swydecker, took a precarious turn.” The camera found the face of the commentator and widened slightly to include an appropriately somber-looking Glokkmann.
“Representative Glokkmann, can you comment on the death of Bob Webber, the man behind The Body Politic?”
“It’s terribly sad, Craig. This whole town is shook up about it. My staff tells me it appears to be suicide. He must have been a desperate man.”
The commentator nodded sagely. “There’s been some talk that this was a murder.”
Glokkmann looked shocked. “Well, I’ll leave the investigative work to the police force.”
The reporter tightened his lips. “Will this unfortunate tragedy affect your campaign?”
“I’m always saddened by an early death, but I didn’t know Mr. Webber personally. My condolences go out to his friends and family. In the meanwhile, I have a job as a representative of Minnesota, and I have a duty to fulfill. I will fulfill it.”
“Thank you. I’m Craig Clutch, live from Battle Lake, Minnesota.”
I stared at the image of Glokkmann appearing properly sad but not weak. She was a polished act, and I became aware that I needed to speak with her, and soon. Swydecker, too. They wouldn’t be in town for much longer, and I had a strong hunch that one of them knew exactly who’d killed Bob Webber.
“That woman is as slick as pirate snot, isn’t she?” Mrs. Berns flipped off the TV.
“I didn’t know you watched that channel.”
“Gotta get my laughs somewhere.”
I smiled. “You never answered me from before. How’re you feeling?”
“That’s a stupid question. My face is purple, my leg is broken, and my ribs are cracked. I’m feeling like a half-eaten lobster. They tell me I get out Wednesday, though, so you better come pick me up.”
“Really? That soon?”
“Insurance doesn’t want to pay to keep an old lady around. They say the rehab facilities at the Sunset will be enough. You bring me any wine with those flowers?”
“Sorry. Doctor’s orders. You must have much better stuff here anyhow.”
She shook her head sadly. “Used to, but I don’t any longer. Got my morphine privileges revoked yesterday. Seems the hospital staff has a different definition of ‘as needed’ than I do. So tell me what you know about who killed the bobber.”
“Blogger. And first you gotta tell me why Elizabeth was in town, remember?”
“Blogger to you too.” She sighed dramatically and flattened her bedspread. “Fine. You know that it’s Conrad’s fault I was checked into a nursing home a few years back, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, that same bug has bit him again. Somebody told somebody about our wild antics at the State Fair, and it got back to him. He’s putting his foot down.”
“ Our wild antics?”
“I’m an old lady. You’re going to put all this on my shoulders?”
I rolled my eyes and got back on topic. “But that doesn’t make any sense. You’re already in a nursing home. What more can he do?”
She handed me a brochure from her nightstand. “Shady Acres Retirement Home” was emblazoned across the top. I flipped it open. It looked like a bucolic place. “I haven’t heard of this one. Where’s it at?”
“South of the Cities. And it’s a maximum security place for elderly patients with dementia. He wants me declared mentally incompetent and shipped off for my own safety. His words.”
“Noooo!”
She furrowed her brow. “He needs at least two family signatures on the commitment form, which is why Elizabeth flew up. She wanted to see firsthand if I was as loony as Conrad was saying.”
I thought back. “That’s why you were wearing granny clothes last time I saw you at the Sunset?”
“Among other things, like going to church regularly and getting a marriage license I didn’t intend to use to prove I’m stable. Told my kids I’d been dating Bernard for a year. We were going to get the license and be engaged long enough for Conrad to lose interest in me and find some other life to ruin. The plan had been working right up until the car accident. Now Elizabeth is back on the fence. She says she believes in personal freedom but doesn’t know if I’m capable of making the best decisions for myself anymore.”
“Wow.” I dropped heavily into the bedside chair. “You did a crap job raising those kids.”
“You’re telling me.”
“So what’re we going to do?”
“ I’m going to get married.”
“What?” The printouts of Bernard’s criminal past were burning through my purse. “Bernard is a dunce.”
“Exactly.” She fiddled with a gaudy glass ring on her finger. “Dumb enough to marry me and do everything I say. He’d be my legal guardian, even if my traitor children managed to declare me incompetent. Of course, if Bernard murdered the bobber, it’s all over for me. He’ll go to jail and my kids’ll ship me off to old lady prison. You’ll never see me again.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said, unwilling to admit how hard my heart had constricted at her words. “I’m sure there’s another way. I’ll talk to Elizabeth.”
“Do what you want as long as you do what you promised: find out who killed the man in the motel. What have you uncovered so far?”
I wrinkled my forehead. “I don’t know any more about that than I did last time I saw you.”
“Have you asked that Glokkmann if she did it? She looks like a bad sort.”
“I’ll talk to her this week.” I was stalling. I knew I should tell Mrs. Berns about Bernard, but I didn’t want to increase her stress right now. I’d have to find a different way to keep her out of the maximum security home so she wouldn’t have to marry him. How’s Freda?”
Mrs. Berns grew serious. “She’s out of ICU, but she’ll be in the hospital a little longer. You should visit her before you go. She doesn’t get many visitors. Her sister and most of her friends are too old to drive.”
“Will do,” I said. I was about to tell her I’d had flowers delivered to Freda’s room on my way up when my attention was arrested by one of the top five most annoying sounds in the world: someone saying “knock knock” rather than actually knocking.
“Anybody home?” And in peeked Tanya Ingebretson, whom I hadn’t seen since the debate, where she’d been the only local besides me. She disliked Mrs. Berns for the same reasons she hated me, so seeing her in the hospital room was puzzling.
Mrs. Berns tilted her bed so she was sitting upright. “Tanya! Thank you so much for coming. I wasn’t sure you would.”
I switched my surprise from Tanya to Mrs. Berns. I’d never heard her so polite in her life. I surreptitiously checked to make sure she wasn’t hiding a morphine drip after all.
She glared at me, but out of sight of Tanya. “Mira, you must know Tanya Ingebretson. She does so much good for Battle Lake.”
“Surely I must,” I said sarcastically, reaching my hand out to Tanya. She slipped a business card into it: “Tanya Ingebretson, Life Coach,” written in swirly girl letters.
“I’m board certified.”
“What board?” I asked. A heady dose of expensive perfume wafted up from the card.
“The Global Life Accreditation Bureau. If you ever want to take charge of your life, give me a call.” She turned her attention to Mrs. Berns. “I have to say I was surprised to receive your message. You of all people! But I suppose it makes sense because who needs more help than those who have fallen the farthest from The Light?”
I could hear the capital letters. And see them on the card I was still holding: Let Her Walk with You to The Light. “Where does one go to school to learn to be a life coach?”
She gave me a brittle smile. She was used to naysayers. “I went to the school of life, honey.”
“Hmm. Maybe I should be a life coach.”
“You can.” She didn’t sound convinced. “You have to practice for two years to be certified, not have any ethical violations, and pass a ten-point life coach multiple-choice test with a score of 70 percent or higher to be board certified.”
She said it like it wasn’t the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. “Mrs. Berns, what’d you call Tanya about?”
Mrs. Berns hid the grin that had been fed by my light bickering with Tanya. “To get my life in order, of course. I’ve made many mistakes”-here Tanya nodded in profound agreement-“and it’s time for changes. I want to live in The Light.”
I rolled my eyes. I was sure that Tanya was in the picture for the same reason as Bernard Mink and the granny pants, but that didn’t make fake Mrs. Berns any easier to swallow. On an up note, however, I was glad she hadn’t put all her buns in the Bernard Mink basket. “I think I’ll visit Freda and leave you two to your business. Call me if you need anything.”
“Of course, Mira,” Mrs. Berns said, in a voice so cultured it made my ears hurt. “And I’d love to treat you to dinner at Stella’s after you drive me home from the hospital on Wednesday. Is that proposition acceptable?”
“Yes, most certainly.” I ducked out as quickly as I could and tracked down Freda. Her bruises colored her as brightly as an Easter egg, and one eye was still swollen shut, but she was thrilled by the company. We shared dinner, me eating a turkey and cheese sandwich that was surprisingly good for hospital food until I remembered it was my first solid food in nearly two days. I must have inhaled it because Freda offered me her applesauce. She tried to be good company but was still in a lot of pain. The doctors had told her they wouldn’t know until the end of the week if she’d be able to walk without help, but her attitude was as sunny as spring. I promised to stop by to visit on Wednesday when I picked up Mrs. Berns.
My next and final stop before reuniting with my beloved bed was the Old Brick Inn to find out if Brad had, in fact, slept with Sarah Glokkmann’s daughter on Saturday night. If he had, their stories didn’t jibe. He’d told me they’d only bumped uglies between sets, but Kennie’d said that Glokkmann’s daughter couldn’t offer her mom an alibi because she was out with a band all night. I wanted to know which version was true.
By the time I arrived at the busy bar, it was past ten o’clock at night and I was so tired that I was hallucinating. I exited the car into a night that was cool enough for a medium jacket and smelled as clean as frost and woodsmoke. A lonely wind rustled through the dried leaves still clinging to trees. It was the perfect weather for curling up in a quilt. I hadn’t slept in my own bed since Friday night, and had logged six total hours of sleep since then. The sandwich seemed to be staying down fine, but my stomach wasn’t yet at 100 percent. I’d make this quick.
It was unusual to find a live band in town playing on a Monday night, so either Brad was correct that Not With My Horse’s Octoberfest gig had increased their following or all the news crews in town didn’t have anything better to do. I certainly didn’t recognize most of the people seated in the darkly-lit main room, but bars tend to create their own small communities, and I’d never frequented this one much. The band had launched into a techno cover of “Delta Dawn” just as I entered. Disappointed that I hadn’t caught them on a break, I squeezed up to the bar and ordered a club soda.
Somebody tapped my arm “You here to see the band?”
I turned, immediately defensive, and then did a double take. The woman who’d addressed me was Grace Swinton, Glokkmann’s handler. “What?” I’d heard her, but I used the noise of the band as a cover to decide what I wanted to ask. I hadn’t planned on running into Glokkmann or a member of her entourage.
She indicated my club soda and raised her voice. “Not many reasons to come to a bar if you’re not going to drink.”
I took a swig. “Just needed to get out of the house. You?”
She appeared thoughtful for a moment, and then held up her drink. It was dark, and I recognized the smell of whiskey, at least a double shot. “Me too. Just needed to get out of the house.”
I considered lying, but up close, she seemed defenseless. The dim lighting colored her hair like mud, and she had worry lines feathering her eyes and mouth. I chose the straight route. “You’re in town with the representative, aren’t you?”
Her eyes flashed and she turned away.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I saw you at the news conference Saturday morning. This must be a stressful time for you.”
She took a deep pull off her sweating glass. “Yeah.”
“Can I buy you another?”
She shrugged. “What the hell.”
Brad screamed into his back-up singer microphone like a neutered cat and we both temporarily glanced his way. I ordered her another and worked at small talk. “He’s good looking, isn’t he?” I indicated Brad, who had the poor timing to be humping the drum set, balancing his bass over his head.
“He looks like a dick.”
Dang she was growing on me. “He is. I used to date him. He cheated on me.”
She squinted her eyes in his direction, looking for what I must have seen in him. Good luck with that. “He is pretty hot, actually. But why doesn’t he have any eyebrows?”
I swiveled in my seat to follow her gaze. I squinted my eyes, too, and had to agree with her analysis of his appearance. “He had face bugs.”
She nodded as if that was the most normal thing in the world.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You look kinda sad.”
“Long weekend.”
“I heard.” I put all my chips on the table. “I work for the newspaper in town. Somebody was murdered, somebody your boss didn’t like, and she doesn’t have an alibi for the night he was offed. It doesn’t look good.”
She surprised me with a guffaw. “This isn’t Murder She Wrote, you know.” The smile lit her face like a thousand fireflies. “The death is sad, but Sarah isn’t tied to it at all. We’re staying in town a few extra days so she can listen to the voices of her constituents and bring them back to Congress.”
I had to give her points for staying on message. “What about Swy-decker? Does he have an alibi?”
She grew tightlipped. “I can’t speak for him.”
“Fair enough.” It made sense that she wouldn’t defend her boss’ opponent. Did it make equal sense that she wouldn’t take an opportunity to badmouth him? Depended on her ethics.
“So the representative will be in town through Thursday? Friday?”
She stood and swayed slightly. “I think I’ve said more than enough. And it looks like your ex wants you. Good night.”
She wove her way through the crowd and left with her drink still in hand. Not so legal. I hoped she was walking the four blocks back to the motel.
“Mira! You came.”
Brad was upon me. His lack of eyebrows and eyelashes made him appear scared, or inquisitive. Or like a naked mole rat. “You visit the doctor?”
“Yeah, and you were right. No shot.” He held his hands wide to indicate his pleasure with this outcome. “Whaddyou think of the band? We’re on fire tonight.”
“You’ve never sounded better,” I said honestly. “Say, while I’m here, quick question. That Glokkmann chick you slept with during your show Saturday night, what was her name again?”
“Oh, Kenya?”
I snapped my fingers. “Yes! That’s right. Kenya Glokkmann. You guys still seeing each other?”
He sidled a little closer. Through closed lips, I tried to emit a high whining noise to deter bug migration onto my person.
“You want your place back in my life?”
“You’re a hard guy to forget, Brad. So, are you and Kenya an item?”
He turned away momentarily to accept a drink from a star-struck brunette, and I wondered if that’s how I’d looked when I’d first approached him after a show at First Ave. I made a note to track her down on my way out and tell her that just this morning he’d told me he had crabs.
“Naw,” he said, watching the brunette strut away. “Not dating. Just a little poke in the hay now and again while she’s in town.”
He nudged me like we shared a secret and was immediately distracted by another attractive woman strolling past. With his attention elsewhere, I grabbed a nearly empty drink and poured it where he’d touched me, figuring the alcohol would kill any critters the doctor had missed. “Did she stay for the after party on Saturday night?”
“Nope. I noticed her backstage when we de-staged to let Leif do his extended accordion solo. I was on her as soon as I spotted her. I romanced her like there was no tomorrow, and then I sent her on her way before the encore but after I’d pulled out all the stops. You remember all the stops?”
I did. Pulling out all of them took five minutes, less if there was music with a steady drum beat. “So you two didn’t even hang out after the show? Just a quickie during it?”
“Who said it was quick?”
I gave him the stink eye and he had the decency to look abashed. “Fine. Yeah. Just a one-off between sets.”
“Any idea where she went after that?”
“No idea. I can tell you she wasn’t at the after party but she is still in town. I bet I get fifteen calls a day from her. She’s got it bad.”
I looked around. “She here now?”
“No, but she said she’s crashing later.”
“So why not start something more permanent with her? You like her?”
He patted his chest. “In the Cities, I was a little fish. Here, I’m King Walleye. The ladies can’t get enough of this rock star, and I don’t intend to be bogged down by a single filly when I could run with the herd. Speaking of, you sticking around for the second set?”
I wondered if he could hear my teeth grinding. “Is the Pope Lutheran?”
He smiled happily and gave me the thumbs up, even though we were standing within inches of each other. I was scouring for the quickest way to excuse myself when I caught a familiar face on the other side of the bar. It was Johnny, scanning the crowd. My heart puckered. I dropped to my knees before his eyes landed on me and whispered up toward Brad. “Cover me. I gotta get outta here.”
“Dude, what’s up? Or should I say, what’s down?” He smiled crookedly at his own joke.
“Not your worry. Just walk that way.” I pointed at the exit opposite the door Johnny had entered and commanded Brad to walk at the same pace I was crawling so he could shield me from view.
For once in his life, Brad listened to me. He made his own sweet way to the door, though, stopping to high five fans and make small talk. When I was within dashing distance, I stood and made for the exit. I thought I heard someone call my name but stopped only long enough to whisper, “The bass player of the band gave me crabs!” to a group of women near the door. They nodded vigorously. I’d have to trust that the news would find its back to the innocent-looking brunette who’d bought Brad a drink.
On the ride home, I fought gravity to keep my gritty eyes open. I was running on fumes, aware that my lack of sleep was making me a poor driver. I wanted to speed, but I kept it slow. Thankfully, no deer jumped out at me, and I made it home unaccosted. I dragged my feet into the house, fighting the pull of my bed long enough to apologize to, feed, and water Luna and Tiger Pop. Once I knew they were taken care of, I crawled into my bedroom, hot tears wetting my eyes as I took in the beautiful sight of my soft, big, safe bed. I ditched my clothes and crawled under the fluffy quilt, nestling in like a baby bird. I was asleep before my eyes closed.