Moose Willow Mystery

Chapter 3

- 2 -

- 2 -I went straight home after practice to my little cabin in the woods. I liked where I lived, all snug in the forest with the nearest neighbor a half mile down my road—Silver Road—and they went South for the winter.

“Hello? Hey George, I’m home!” I hollered as I tromped into my miniscule entryway, stomping snow off my boots. There was no answer, so I slipped off my boots and went up the steps to the loft where I found George throwing a pot. The throwing did not involve a random act of violence, but rather the creation of something sloppy on a spinning potter’s wheel. Wet clay hung from George’s beard and his bib overalls were a mess.

“Damn. Too wet,” he muttered.

I could have been standing there buck n***d with my hair on fire and George wouldn’t have noticed. When he was working on one of his pots, you might as well forget finding out if he wanted peas or corn for dinner or if he had paid the electric bill. All of those trivial things didn’t matter one iota when George was in a creative mood.

That didn’t stop me from trying. “Did you have any dinner?” I asked.

“Hmmm.” He was furiously working a long funnel of clay that looked a teeny bit lopsided to me.

“Want a cheese sandwich?”

“Hmmm,” he repeated as he moved his hands to the top of the piece where he tried to close it in a bit, presumably to form a neck. I figured he was making a vase. He actually made some nice ones, considering he had only been doing pottery for about a year. It was something his doctor recommended—as therapy. George’s craft had moved very quickly from therapeutic to a job teaching at the Copper Country Community College where I worked. The Community Center—located on campus—couldn’t get enough of G. LeFleur pottery, which never sat on display long before someone snapped it up. Some said each piece had a story hidden within it. I admit the blobby, drippy stuff that he glazed on did seem a bit peculiar. Sometimes a face would emerge. Sometimes a tree. It was a little creepy if you ask me. I’m not much of an art critic.

. I turned and went back down the loft steps into the compact kitchen of my cabin and poured my first glass of white zinfandel.

“Well, I’m hungry and I’m making a grilled cheese. You can just be a starving artist,” I yelled. I knew darn well that I’d make a sandwich for George, too. I thought about opening a can of tomato soup.

I heard a soft, tragic splut followed by a string of curses; the whir of the potter’s wheel stopped.

splutUh oh, I thought, taking a generous swig from my wineglass.

Uh oh, George thudded down the steps from the loft. It had originally been a guest loft for the occasional visitor that wanted to see how “Mrs. Henry David Thoreau” lived, as Mother called me. When George moved in, he converted it into his pottery studio. I broke out into a cold sweat every time I looked at it: clay hardened on the floor, walls, and windows—even the skylight. If Mother ever saw it…

“f**k it,” George said, and headed toward the bathroom, presumably to remove the clay from his person and deposit it on the walls and floor of the shower.

I buttered some bread, slapped it on the griddle, and added a few slices of shiny, yellow cheese. I decided not to bother with the tomato soup. I topped off my wineglass.

Eventually, George emerged from the shower. He slumped down into his seat at the table and absently picked up half of his sandwich. His dark blond hair, still wet from the shower and in desperate need of cutting, gave him a slightly wild look. The beard could have used a trim, too. However, his body—well, no complaints there—had kept good muscle tone from a few years of working for a logging company. While he made his way into the second half of his grilled cheese, he seemed to come out of his defective-pot funk.

“Hey, Trout, thanks for making this,” he said. Calling me by my fishy last name was George’s way of being affectionate. Of course, if we got married, my last name could be LeFleur. I would gladly abandon “Trout,” which was the last name of Mother’s original husband who had also been my father. I was their little surprise. My father, whom Mother described as a free spirit, died hang-gliding while stoned on c******s. A double high, so to speak. His death, which occurred when I was still toddling, left Mother with nothing but me. I guess it was tough, bringing me up alone with no family to speak of. Mom managed a motel and restaurant in town and worked long and hard to make ends meet. I think that was when the church became so important to Mother and me. Just about the time I graduated from college, Mother met husband number two: Sherman C. Caldwell the third who took a vacation every year in the Copper Country where he could shoot animals and gamble at the casino. Shermie, as Mother called him while they were courting, conveniently died during the honeymoon (probably because he was 86) leaving Mother a sizeable fortune. Tragic yet fortunate that Shermie had no offspring. This enriching turn of events helped build my cabin in the woods. Mother sometimes shared her good fortune, but there were always strings.

the third Currently, Mother—known to most as Madeline and to her closest friends as Maddie—was on a cruise in the Gulf of Mexico, taking a break before the holiday rush at The Straights Inn. She owned the place, which was clear at the other end of the Upper Peninsula (praise God) in St. Ignace. Thanks to Shermie, Mother no longer worked at a motel: she owned one.

George let out a huge sigh. “I guess I tried to make the damn vase too tall,” he said. “I still got the other two to go to work with you tomorrow for firing.”

Since the average home doesn’t include a kiln room, George used the one in the art center at the Copper Country Community College—we called it the 4Cs for short—to fire his masterpieces. That was where we met—not in the kiln—but at the art center in an enrichment class. My job at the 4Cs, among other things, included coordinating community enrichment classes, such as art, dancing, basket weaving, kantele lessons, and other life-altering opportunities. One night I had decided to stop in and try pottery. What the heck, it was free to 4Cs’ employees. However, since I never will see a blob of clay for more than a potential mess (George says I’m anal), I gave up my wheel to a senior lady who wore a bright floral smock and, God love her, called me young lady. Though I failed miserably at pottery, George and I hit it off.

kantele I thought about Mother and her occasional surprise visits. I had not yet told her about George, who was f*******n to answer the phone. Quite frankly, I was sure she would either try to run George off or trick him into marrying me. Even though my biological clock was ticking along at an alarming rate and the potential for grandparenthood remote, Mother was intent on meddling in my life, giving me ridiculous advice about men. According to her, a woman should be married at least once, even if she were to get divorced. Like having lots of shoes, it was something women did. I looked at my wineglass, which was empty again. Had I already had my daily allotment?

“Earth to Janese,” George said.

“Huh? Oh, sorry, I was thinking about Mother.”

We sat in silence for a while, George probably thinking about clay and me thinking about her.

her“Um, so how much for the pieces I’m taking?” I asked.

“Oh, seventy-five—the usual. Ah, how was choir practice?”

“Same ol’—except there is this woman, Derry, who just showed up. She sings beautifully and wanted to join. She’s never been in on Sunday and I have no idea why she’s in town.” My glass was still empty and I got up to refill it. I didn’t offer George any because he didn’t touch the stuff.

“Yeah? Well, maybe they came here because of the hiring at the prison,” George said.

“See, that’s the thing,” I said, sitting back down at the table. “There is no they. She says she’s a widow. Don’t you think it’s strange that a single woman—a widow at that—would come here? I mean she might have family, but she was kind of vague about it. And she’s drop-dead gorgeous, but a little—haunting,” I added. Those pale blue eyes were still with me.

they“Ah, then I bet Rushinski was sniffing around her.”

Rushinski was James’s real last name. He had shortened it to “Rush” for show-biz purposes. On those rare occasions when George attended church, he made a point of calling James Jimmy or Jimbo, just to annoy him. In retaliation, James responded by calling George Georgie or Georgie Boy. Somewhere over the Wisconsin border, George and James shared a history. I could never find out much about it, except it went back to their days of working for Plante Forestry Products. As one might guess, forestry products are trees. To Plante, trees are potential logs, but they don’t call them logs, they call them forestry products, which is more politically correct.

Jimmy Jimbo, Georgie or Georgie Boy. “So this Derry woman just showed up, eh?”

“Yeah, and she can sing. I think she’s going to do the solo for the cantata. I don’t think Eleanor is happy, either.”

“Oh yes, Heimlich. She’s the old battle ax that screwed me outta getting that custodian job at the school,” George said.

“Well, you have your teaching job at 4Cs now,” I said.

“True. But I’ll never get anywhere there,” he said. “Don’t have the degree.”

It was true, George didn’t have a higher ed degree, which interestingly wasn’t mandatory to teach but essential for job security. Mother had insisted that I go to college in spite of the economic hardship. I did okay and got my bachelor’s degree from Upper Michigan University. I majored in business and minored in partying.

George looked a bit forlorn, so I offered: “There’s always the prison. They’re always hiring.” I really didn’t want George to apply at the prison. It was a sucky job, but they hired regularly and had benefits.

George smiled. “Don’t think I’d check out with them.”

“How come?”

“Oh, that’s between me and my shrink,” he said.

“Same as the logging accident.”

“What do you want to know about the accident?”

“You never said what really happened, only that someone died, and that you could have prevented it.”

really “Yeah, well I don’t exactly remember it; that’s why I go to the head doctor, who says I’m suppressing things.”

“And he—or she—is trying to un-suppress you?”

un“I guess. Let’s not talk about it, okay?”

George had been living with me for several months and refused to open up. He went to regular court-ordered appointments with a psychiatrist or psychologist—someone in the mental health field. I hadn’t seen much progress.

I cleaned the congealed cheese off the griddle while George put the dishes in the dishwasher. I retired my wineglass for the evening and headed for the bedroom. Since the guest loft had become a potter’s studio, George had the choice of sleeping up there on the futon or with me in my nice pillow-top bed. The man liked his comfort, and since I wasn’t collecting rent in the conventional sense, I felt due some sort of compensation. Normally, George was quite accommodating. However, that night he instantly fell asleep. I thought about his vase that apparently self-destructed when it was stretched too thin. Sometimes I felt that way, stretched too thin and ready to ooze into an amoebic puddle. I envied George’s quiet strength—his resolve to invert his soul and emerge with a new identity; to reshape like a lump of clay. It made him maddeningly unreachable, and alluring. George was different than the other men I had known who basically wanted s*x, beer, food, fishing, and football, in varying order.

I dozed off, thinking about ropes of clay and the stacks of projects on my desk at work. I dreamed that I was ensconced in an igloo with no windows and no doors. I lay there, cocooned in the oppressive, hot confines of a mummy sleeping bag with no zipper. The heat was overwhelming. The igloo started to drip, melting away. I was in my office and angry people pounded on my door, calling me names.

And then George shouted something weird that sounded like “gaaa,” which jolted me awake, thank God not in a mummy sleeping bag or an igloo, but instead in George’s house of horrors.

thank GodGeorge moaned like a distant foghorn, low and painful.

“George, wake up,” I whispered, nudging him gently. “You’re doing it again.”

More deranged moaning.

“George! Wake up!” This time I jabbed him. That did it.

He sat up in the darkness. “Hey Trout, was I snoring? Take it easy. I’m gonna have a bruise,” he said massaging his ribs.

He turned to me. “Was I having the dream?”

“Apparently.”

“I guess we’re both wide awake,” he said.

“Yeah. I was having a doozie of a dream myself.”

“What about?”

“Igloos.”

We were quiet a moment.

“Igloos,” George said.

“Uh huh. Probably because of the New Year’s Eve thing,” I said.

“Mmm?”

“You know, the igloo building competition that 4Cs sponsors. It started out as a spur-of- the-moment-fun-alternative-to-getting-drunk on New Year’s Eve and now it’s, well, it’s just ugly. Do you know that people cheat?”

George gave a snort. “Really?”

“I mean they’re supposed to wait until December 26th,” I said. “They can’t start until the day after Christmas, and I’ve heard that Bucky Tanner—you know Bucky’s Game Processing and Taxidermy—supposedly stores items for his igloo contest entry that he makes ahead of time in the freezer of his meat locker. And all this trouble so he can beat Weasel Watkins.”

“What people won’t fight over,” George said absently. “So, you have to run the thing?”

I gave George my most withering look. I had told him all about how coordinating the igloo contest had fallen on my desk. This was the second year, not counting the spontaneous teen/quinzhee competition that had started the whole thing. It had been my colleague, Brenda Koski’s idea, supposedly to turn it into something “way cool,” as she described her alleged epiphany. Most likely the college president, Patrick Neil, had planted the idea with Brenda, hoping it would grow there. However, Brenda lacked the brainpower to “grow” anything, and the project had somehow gotten shoved off on me. Brenda was the resident floozy at the 4Cs. Her title varied, depending on who she was chummy with. I had been racking my brain to come up with a way to pay her back for shoving the igloo contest off on me, but so far had only been able to think of things that would get me fired or possibly arrested.

George and I lay in the semi-darkness, listening to the silence. George shivered.

“Want some hot cocoa?” I said.

“Nah,” he said looking at me.

I had seen that look; I liked that look. It was my turn to shiver. I preferred to think it was desire causing my chill rather than the drying perspiration from my bad dream. Whatever the cause—and I was pretty sure it was George’s finger tracing down my… Anyway, I didn’t want any cocoa, either.