The next Miller Sisters Mystery, Totally Evil has the town of White Bass Lake up in arms when the local senior citizen population seems to be targeted by a serial killer.
Buzz races against time trying to find the murderer at a time when the County Fair is ready to open, the carnival comes to town, and Buzz croaks her only entry for the third year running in the “Third Annual Miller Sisters Best Tomato Contest.”
Oh-oh, don’t look now, but Mary Cromwell is in charge of the talent contest at the fair, and it looks like it’s going to be a sell-out crowd. Meanwhile, the rest of the Geriatric SWAT girls are setting a trap in the Ag building, laying in wait to catch the notorious garlic thief; and ready to pounce on the dirty rat when he makes his move!
Talk about making moves, will our heroine finally let the sheriff catch her until death do they part? Or will one too many concussions beat J.J. to the punch?
Find out soon when Totally Evil comes to a loony bin near you!
Chapter 1
I hate dead bodies. Have I mentioned that before? Dead bodies in the pouring rain are exceptionally objectionable. Crap. I knew this would happen. It’s me. My fault. I’m a jinx!
Murphy’s Law runs rampant in police work, as it does in my Irish family. If anything can make a crime scene more miserable, it will happen when I’m around—guar-an-teed! If someone gets himself knocked off outside, it is either fifty degrees below zero, raining, snowing, or 110 degrees in the shade.
Today I stood in an ice-cold deluge behind Sal’s Diner. I was soggy, crabby, talking to myself, and in desperate need of a cup of coffee and a roaring fire. Well happy horse hockey Buzz Miller, at least the rain will wash some of those maggots off the corpse before you have to handle it.
I always like to keep a positive attitude.
I pulled up the collar of my raincoat and dumped about a half gallon of icy rain water down my back. Cussing a blue streak and dancing around the parking lot doing the Funky Chicken made for a short outtake of levity on an otherwise dismal day. I was sure glad I could provide the half-time entertainment for all the laughing idiots standing behind the police tape. I hoped they were as cold and miserable as I was. Wouldn’t you think one of them would offer to share an umbrella? Their collective teeth clacking together sounded like a marching band cadence at post rest. Along with the smell of soggy hot dogs and hot coffee, it all added to the half-time atmosphere of a rain-out dead-guy show. Thank God the football team had enough sense to stay home.
“Don’t you people know it’s raining out? Go home and read about it tomorrow in the paper!” I yelled to the crowd.
They laughed and waved from behind the tape. Someone gave me the thumbs up sign and another gave me the finger. I squinted through the rain. Hey! That almost looks like Mom back there. . .naw, must be my imagination—but I snuck one more peek to make sure.
I was so busy trying to make out who the finger flipper was under all that rain gear that I didn’t see that I was closing in fast on the dumpster. The crowd frantically waved and pointed again and I raised a hand to wave back. I slammed right into the side of the dumpster, jarring the lid and dislodging the garbage which had been piled up there after the body had been discovered.
With leftover pizza and congealed, unmentionable glop raining down on my head, I stumbled back a few steps, throwing more colorful language across the parking lot, and shaking rotten food out of my hair. The crowd roared and Sheriff J.J. Green poked his head out of the dumpster. “What the heck, Buzz? Why are you banging on the dumpster? That is so not funny, old girl.”
The crowd echoed “Oooooo, Old Girl,” and I flicked potato surprise in their direction, while glaring at J.J.
Now I admit I might have been a little owly at that moment, but I let fly in a loud voice every complaint from dying of hypothermia to miserable maggots, and moving to Jamaica to escape Wisconsin weather in the early spring. Meanwhile I continued to pick rotten eggs and slimy muck out of my hair. Humph-good thing I’m a multi-tasker…maybe the rain will wash the rest of it out. Ha! There you go again with the optimism, Buzz Miller. You’re a regular Pollyanna.
J.J. had the nerve to grin. “Look on the bright side, Miller; at least you’re not on insider detail with me this fine morning! Toss me that pitchfork over there, would you?”
I had a vision of tossing the pitchfork tine-end first, but his and my mother were both in the crowd watching. “Find something exceptionally yummy in there Green? Nothin’ like a slimy restaurant dumpster with corpse alfresco to get the appetite goin’, eh?” I handed him the pitchfork…handle first.
He grinned and I heard, “Pretty smart mouth for someone with maggot soup in her hair, Miller.” Right before his head disappeared over the side.
I immediately grabbed my head and realized he chumped me out. Again. I moved away from the dumpster to the sound of laughter from the White Bass Lake citizenry, along with the dumpster divers echoing guffaws from inside. “Mag-got SOUP! Mag-got Soup!” I gave up and let them yell.
J.J. and FBI Field Agent Luke Hall were taking care of the body recovery end of the crime scene while I handled the perimeter portion. The crowd behind the yellow police crime-scene tape was made up of die-hard Cheeseheads, ages eight to eighty. Among them was a group of two-fisted hot dog eaters who were probably those same guys you see in their skivvies at the January Bears-Packer game with big letters painted on their huge, bare, beer bellies.
They were flanked by members of the local chapter of the Polar Bear Club-those wonderful idiots who participate in the annual Polar Plunge; where hundreds of brave (or dumb-depends on your point of view) souls dive into freezing Lake Michigan or other frigid local lakes from January to March across Wisconsin from Eau Claire to Green Bay, and down through Milwaukee into Pleasant Prairie. They raise money for Special Olympics-a great cause and one of the best reasons to pay your friends to go jump in the lake. The Polar Plunge participants earn a special “license to chill,” and help a wonderful and worthy cause at the same time. I personally belong to the “Too Chicken to Plunge” crowd, and I am proud of it.
Movement across the parking lot caught my eye. Behind the only shrub in a three-block area I eyeballed Rosie the News Whore with her nose pressed against the window of the WSEZ media van. Rosie knew better than to get any closer than within fifty feet of me because she knew I didn’t need much of an excuse to kick her butt. Immature as it seems, I’ve fed my childhood hatred for Rosie from the time she and her rotten cohorts ratted my sisters and me out about who stuffed Mac O’Dell’s laying hens into the phone booth outside Sal’s Diner when we were kids. Tattle Tale Rosie grew up mean and graduated to Rosie the Floozy when she bragged about sleeping with her journalism professor to get a “B.” At the time I asked her if the grade was for journalism or was she just a lousy lay. Gee, for some reason she has reciprocated our mutual loathing into adulthood, and about thirty years later we still banter back and forth in a totally immature way.
Rosie tried her journalistic “luck” in Milwaukee, but no matter how many news executives she got “lucky” with, she kept ending up hung over and alone in the morning, and no job with big network television.
Five years later she came crawling home with her tail between her legs and a reputation for doing just about anything (or anyone) to get a story, and Rosie has since been dubbed “Rosie the News Whore,” and will forever go down in history as the Monica Lewinski of White Bass Lake.
Sitting in her warm van with her pug nose against the glass, she reminded me of my Bulldog, Hilary making those wet-nose trails across the window when she saw a stray hound dog lifting his leg on a hydrant.
No one was lifting his leg anywhere that I could see, so Rosie must have been entertaining herself by watching J.J. fork garbage from the dumpster into Sal’s parking lot. Though J.J. never treated Rosie with anything worse than polite disdain (if that was possible), it still made my blood pressure skyrocket when she twitched her rear in his direction. I already chased her off with the pitchfork once today, and had a wonderful, warm moment of imagining Rosie accidentally tumbling head first into the rancid dumpster, her stilettos flipping helplessly in the air.
Tearing my green-eyed fantasies back to the cold wet parking lot, I watched as J.J.’s deputies, Moe (Darryl) and Larry (Phil) sifted through the trash J.J. and Luke tossed out of the dumpster, onto the plastic sheeting spread across three parking spaces.
Sal poked his head out the back door of his diner for what must have been the fiftieth time that morning. He bounced on the balls of his heels and stood on his toes, waving a spatula in my direction. I waved and called “No updates yet, Sal!”
He waved his spatula again and bits of egg flew into the air. “Okee Dokey Buzz, you gonna tell me first ‘cuz it’s my dumpster and my dead guy, right?”
I smiled and nodded and lifted an arm to wave back. Water trickled down my arm and all humor vanished.
Geez. I thought as I shook my sleeve. His dead guy? Since when does ending up in a rented dumpster define ownership of a corpse? What the heck is this sick town coming to?
I summoned up what I thought was a smile “Sure Sal,” I half heartedly yelled back, “I’ll give you a holler when we get something.”
Sal looked confused and a little scared and ducked back in the diner.
Shaking my soggy sleeve I thought, why the heck do I do this? Buzz Miller, YOU are an idiot!
Sal rewarded me with a beautiful smile. “Good, Good; uh, thanks Buzz, I’ll send out more coffee!” Satisfied, he hustled back inside.
That’s why you do it, Buzz. You get free coffee. “Thanks, Sal!” My mood lightened as I wondered if Sal would throw in a doughnut along with the coffee.
Just then I heard the roar of eight cylinders eating up the road and my newly found positive attitude took a dump right there in the pouring rain.
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Uh, except there was a little mishap with a particularly rude gentleman. At one point, I turned to Mom to ask how she liked a particular plant, only to find her burried in the armpit of a guy who leaned so far over the arm of her chair, he fell right into the Sweet 100′s. I started down the aisle only to watch him go behind the wheelchair and knee the back, which sent Mom rolling toward me.
The turtle must have known I was the enemy, because he spun around, hissed open-mouthed, and attacked my plant box with a vengeance. He did not want to go home, but I was determined he was not going to be turtle soup this afternoon.
