Mezcalero, fiction by Anthony Neil Smith

Sip this.

Savor it, hold it in your mouth. Let your tongue embrace it fully.

What do you taste?

Smoke, you say, sir? People always say smoke. They think it makes them, if not an expert, then at least smarter than the tourist who still thinks there’s a worm in every bottle.

None of you think that, do you?

This is my first attempt as the maestro of this palenque, a position held, until recently, by my adoptive father, Leonel. You were wondering, I see it in your eyes, how a white blonde boy, the only son of an American mother, ends up becoming a maestro mezcalero.

Sip again.

Close your eyes and really think about it.

Lean your head back and swallow slowly, almost as if you are letting the mezcal flow down your throat in a stream.

So, we’ve got smoke.

But how would you describe the agave itself? The Espadin?

Grassy? Fresh mown? Yes, now we’re getting somewhere. Mezcal holds onto the wildness tequila tries so hard to tame. With mezcal, you are enjoying the land itself, my friends. It’s as if you are barefoot on the soil. Your fingers and toes covered in soil we mezcaleros consider almost sacred.

I say almost.

If it was really sacred, you would not be here now at this tasting, yes? You would not have been able to pay for the privilege.

Ha ha!

No, no, I think not. If there’s one thing I’ve found Mexicans hold sacred, it’s calling things sacred and meaning it.

Instead, I will say this: being drunk on mezcal is a nearly identical experience to religious ecstasy. The closest most people ever come.

I’m sorry, what did you say?

Heroin, she says. Ladies and gentlemen, did you hear her say heroin?

Did you think that was a cute joke?

Some powder manufactured in a lab by scientists who know how to easily pacify and manipulate their users? You think it’s funny to compare that to the tradition, care, sweat, and blood that goes into making blessed mezcal? Something as good as my dad made? Something as good as my older brothers – they were supposed to be my brothers, anyway, although they made it their goal in life to be my merciless tormentors as we grew up. Then they both fucked off to the States and partied until Dad ran out of patience and cut off their funds, forcing them both back home to take the business seriously.

But me, I was there all along. I was learning the secrets, too. I was mastering the craft right before Leonel’s eyes. To me, it was much more than a job. An obligation.

It was my life’s ambition.

But when the time came to name his successor…

The espadin absorbs whatever it is that makes the soil so special. Maybe it really is sweat, the way our jimadors muscle the pinas from the ground, slicing away the leaves with a nasty blade on a long wooden handle. A coa de jima.

You’ve all had a chance to see the pinas, haven’t you?

Yes sir, like pineapples. We have a poet in the house, everyone.

Percy Wordsworth Obvious.

Roberto Blandano.

Don’t pout. It’s just a bit of fun. A bit of fun is all.

If we can’t laugh about ourselves…as my brothers used to say.

Those pineapples, as you call them, are gathered together and thrown into a pit of burning oak and hot rocks, where they are slow roasted, although “roasted” is misleading. Yes, we set fire to the wood and heat the rocks, but it is the steam from the pinas doing the real work. We cover the pinas with banana leaves and dirt. It smolders for days and days. This is where the smoky taste comes from.

You might notice a touch of bitterness to the smoke.

That would be from the charred remains of my brother Fernando.

Yes, it’s funny. I agree. Very funny.

Fernando was the reason I never slept through the night. I’d wake to his face hovering inches from mine, his hand over my mouth. I would count my bruises taking a bath the next morning. Shivering. I began to lose my grip. When would he strike? What was real and what was nightmare?

He was silent. Never insulted me, like our oldest brother Benedicto did. In fact, I barely remember him saying two words to me our whole lives.

But I never felt safe when he was here. He would strike at anytime, anywhere. School, home, the toilet, the market, in the middle of the night, halfway through dinner.

The one time I approached my adoptive father, asking, begging, him to do something about it, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. Just continued sipping and spitting his latest concoction, tinkering. “A man must find his own way. I hope you will find yours. But if you want to make a way in this family, over your brothers, I cannot cheer for you. I do not bear you ill will, either. You will have a harder time than my blood sons, but that will make your victories only sweeter.”

How I loathed him. Loved him, in a way, but truly loathed him, too.

Even as I fumbled with my first serious girlfriend in the backseat of Dad’s Lincoln Town Car, parked up on a ridge overlooking the agave field, only an inch away from my first time, there came Fernando, flinging open the door and yanking me out onto the ground in front of all his friends, my jeans around my ankles, and literally whipped my ass with the wooden handle of a coa de jima.

Everyone laughed. Except Fernando, I mean. Everyone laughed except Fernando.

My girlfriend laughed.

There she was in the backseat, covering herself with the dress I’d taken off only a few minutes before, laughing to the point of tears.

As I rolled around on the ground, mi culo throbbing and splintered, she invited Fernando into the back of the car.

I limped home.

He dated her for a couple of years after that. Meaning she was always around the house, always around the palenque, always anywhere I tried to regain a shred of dignity. She was never awful to me about it, never mentioned it again.

She called me her conejo bebé – her baby bunny.

When Fernando left for the States, I admit, foolishly, that I approached her again. I brought her flowers. I asked if we could try again.

She laughed, though not as loudly or as cruelly as she once had. “My baby bunny, it would be like sleeping with my own brother. I can’t see you that way, never again.”

Yes, I am drifting from the purpose of the tasting. The mezcal, its secrets, its mystery. Please, stay, and I will get us back on track. I promise.

One last thing about Fernando. When he returned, our father gave him my job. I had been his right-hand man all this time, but Leonel demoted me, placed Benedicto at the top, with Fernando right behind.

Fernando didn’t even like mezcal. He preferred vodka full of sweet mixers.

He did pick up with his old girlfriend again, even though she’d gotten engaged to another. She thought it was a torrid affair, like a romance novel. Fernando thought it was an easy lay.

She got pregnant.

He threw a thousand dollars at her and told her to take care of it.

Her fiancé found out and called off the wedding.

She used the thousand dollars to move to Cancun, where she had the child alone and found work at a resort.

I’m sorry. I had promised.

Bitterness is not always unpleasant, if you think about it. There are many bitter notes in our favorite foods. The blackened crust on a flank steak on the grill. The char on a roasted habanero. These flavors work in concert – the smoke, the bitterness, Fernando’s bones.

Which brings us to the next step in the process.

Once the pinas have cooked in the ground due to all the steam, it is time to crush them.

I’m sure you know, those of you who haven’t fled, that we use traditional methods here. Others are switching to autoclaves and shredding machines to speed the job along. But my father always believed in the ancient ways. He wanted his mezcal to taste as natural as possible. I’ve seen him be offered tastes of others product, as his opinion was highly valued in the industry. And I’ve seen him spit onto the ground at their feet, saying, “It’s just pina piss.”

When it’s time to crush the pinas, we use the tried-and-true method, as you saw earlier, of the tahona. The stone, yes, the stone. A giant stone, pulled around our crushing pit by donkeys. A stone seasoned by nearly one hundred years of crushing pinas this way, as Leonel took over from his uncle, who had no children, who had taken over from his own father, who had stolen the palenque from his neighbor in the bad old frontier days.

Some may tell you there’s no difference between mezcal made with an autoclave and a shredder and the nectar we produce here using the old ways. Some may tell you the updated methods help reduce the bitterness and funk of wild agave, which is more palatable to the growing American market.

I find it all very strange. Very strange. Why drink mezcal that’s been distilled until it becomes, God rest Leonel’s soul, pina piss? Nothing more than smoky water?

For instance, sir, you mentioned that you also tasted something like iron, or a coppery flint. What’s that? Pennies, yes, old copper pennies.

That’s not something you’d find if you distilled it the way your fellow citizens prefer. All impurity washed away.

Instead, what you’re tasting is the blood of my eldest brother, Benedicto, who I treated on his birthday at the local watering hole, before dumping him into the crushing pit with the pinas and letting the tahona finish him off.

Did he deserve it?

Well.

Whereas Fernando had been an unholy terror, it was Bene who was evil incarnate. Whereas Fernando did his damage out of sight of Leonel, Bene’s poison was in his words. He could destroy me in front of our father, send me running from the table wracked with guilt and shame, without Leonel so much as spilling his spoonful of soup.

It was Bene who filled in the holes of my history.

Leonel had told me, when I was nine, that a young American girl unable to support her new baby had tearfully left me at a church in Oaxaca, and my adoptive father’s sister, a nun there, asked if he would take me in. And so he did.

But Bene said, “Your mother was a Spring Breaker, your father any one of countless frat boys, and if she’d known she was pregnant sooner, you’d have been forced out by a clothes hanger. Instead, she was too drunk to realize and her parents sent back here to give birth at an orphanage, so their friends would never know. She couldn’t get away from you fast enough.”

Bene said, “The only reason my father took you in was the monthly check promised from your mother’s parents to help support you if he would keep their secret. As you can tell, he didn’t spend much of it on you.”

Bene said, “If I were to let Fernando kill you in your sleep, my father would be angry, only because the check would stop coming.”

It was Bene who first got me drunk on mezcal when I was seven. Very nearly killed me. It also happened to be our father’s favorite reserve, which in my stupor I had smashed a case of to the ground.

Leonel did not respond…well.

It was Bene who taught me about sex. He showed me in the old encyclopedias. He showed me in old magazines with dried together pages, bondage, blood, whips, and other kinks a boy should not have a crash course in.

Bene told me I would be cast out of the family as soon as I graduated, if his father even let me get that far in school.

He and Fernando moved away well before I graduated. Leonel did not cast me out. I proudly stood beside him learning his craft, all his secrets, making them my own. It had begun as a passion. An art form. But now, it could make a man rich.

Bene said, upon the brothers’ return home, “You won’t get a dime out of this place. And if you try to start your own palenque, I will send Fernando to burn it. Any success you have in life, we will be there to take it from you.”

The next day Leonel announced his retirement and named his sons – his blood sons – to take over the business.

A month later, our dad was dead.

Regardless, I was there to celebrate Bene’s first birthday without our father. I kept buying him shot after shot of tequila. Not our beloved mezcal, no. But blue agave tequila, aged in scotch barrels, a deep amber color, the aging process blessing it with notes of caramel, vanilla, and tobacco.

Anejo.

Then I brought him back here – had to nearly carry him, and he’s so much bigger than me. I was determined, though. He might not have noticed how little I drank during the evening, as I had faked it.

Shades of Edgar Allan Poe, yes?

On the road home, Bene told me he was sorry for the way he had treated me. That he and Fernando were afraid of me, of my potential. They didn’t want their dad favoring me over them.

“I don’t know if you can forgive us, forgive me, but I can hope.”

It was far too late, and it was only the tequila talking anyway.

Once we were inside, alone, I helped him to the crushing pit, let him drop dead weight. His skull cracked like an egg on impact. While he convulsed his last breaths, I hooked up our strongest donkey, threw in some pinas I’d been saving for this occasion, and –

I see we’re really separating the wheat from the chaff here now. The strong from the weak. Please, those of you leaving, don’t forget to stop by the gift shop for sample sets to take home.

But to you remaining, my faithful few, my adventurous conspirators, you want to know what’s next. You can’t help yourselves. You’ve come too far to back out now.

Once the pinas are crushed to a pulp, they are moved to tinas – wooden vats – to ferment. Yes! It is no longer just a plant. The magic has begun. I still use my adoptive father’s special blend of yeast, cultivated from years of trial and error.

Then we wait. We can stir, we can pray, we can bargain with the devil, but we cannot rush the magic.

From there, we move into the distillation phase, using copper stills. Again, only the most traditional methods here, my friends.

What’s that you say? That you think it tastes a little of barbecued pork?

Indeed, ma’am you’re right. You’re absolutely right. You are drinking a very special type of mezcal called a – can you tell me?

Almost! Give her a hand. It is a pechuga.

Yes, a mezcal de pechuga is made for momentous occasions. Weddings, funerals, coming of age. Traditionally, you would make these by hanging a mix of fruit and nuts inside the still, above the mezcal, to enhance the flavor. That includes hanging a raw chicken breast as well. Sometimes turkey.

But you say it’s more like pork, and there’s a good reason for that.

You see, each family has a special perchuga recipe, and which fruits and nuts and herbs they choose make a difference. Sometimes, instead of chicken or turkey, a mezcalero might try venison or rabbit. Or, yes, a pig.

Or, in this case, long pig.

Which you might not know is what cannibals call people, because we taste so similar to pork.

That roast pork flavor infused in this batch is due to my father’s head hanging in the still.

Along with pears, plums, pecans, and cashews. My special mix.

No, he died of natural causes in his sleep. I know, because I was there. I made sure of it.

This is his finest creation, in a way. They always said “he put all of himself into his work,” but it took me for that to become even remotely true. I literally put Leonel and Sons into Leonel and Sons Mezcal.

But I am renaming the brand going forward: Les Entrañas de li Familia

I hope to introduce it to the States soon, though. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but there has been a lot of interest from an American actor to invest. It’s far too early to say who, but I’ll give you a hint: “Hi-ho Silver, away!”

That concludes our tour.

I believe this is the best mezcal you will ever drink.

Don’t worry. I won’t tell if you won’t.

Anthony Neil Smith is a novelist (Yellow Medicine, Slow Bear, The Butcher's prayer, many more), short story writer (Cowboy Jamboree, HAD, Blue Murder, Punk Noir, Bristol Noir, many others), and professor (Southwest Minnesota State University). He likes Mexican food, cheap red wine, and Italian crime flicks from the seventies. His dog is named Edmund, who is the devil. 

If You Make It Past The Dogs..., fiction by April Kelly

Unequivocal, those ominous words on the metal sign, but, for the benefit of the illiterate—who make up I’d guess a quarter of the population around here—Calvin Hobart had also painted a forced-perspective image of a double-barrel shotgun, its two soulless eyes focused squarely on anyone dumb enough to approach his gate. I admired Calvin’s work. Not so much the stenciled warning about his notorious dogs, but the meticulously rendered Fox Savage twelve-gauge. Who would have guessed an ignorant redneck like him knew anything about perspective in art?

While stealthily circling the property on foot, I noted the rest of the warning signs on the six-foot, chain-link fence were store-bought generics. Only the one on the front gate made clear in customized terms how unwelcome you were, be you lost hiker, Jehovah’s Witness or one of the many folks Calvin had screwed over. I counted myself among that last group.

Now, playing poker drunk is a sure sign of poor judgment, but playing poker drunk with Calvin Hobart at the table is a suicide mission. In my defense, I never would’ve been sitting there at 2 AM with the likes of Dimebag Tillman, Ratcher Bean and that mulleted perv the locals call Skunk, had it not been for Brody’s bachelor party getting out of hand.

Normally the staid and sober type, I would reliably put in my hours at the sawmill so I could pay off that parcel of land fifteen miles north of here where sweet MaryAnn and me wanted to build our house, but I’d known Brody since kindergarten and couldn’t say no to planning his last night as a single guy. That’s what the best man does, right?

The beers came way too fast for a lightweight like me and, long story short, I ended up in a Texas Hold’em game early that Saturday morning, losing all but my shirt to Calvin Hobart. I’ll admit I was Coor’s-hammered, but not so much as to miss seeing him pull a six of clubs out of nowhere to upgrade his two crappy pairs to a kings-over-sixes full house. Problem was, the six he conjured was the exact same hole card I’d tossed before the flop. He cheated, and I intended to get back my money.

Complicating any retrieval effort were two enormous guard dogs. Calvin had never been required to fire his shotgun at an intruder, because nobody yet had made it past Booger and Dammit. While I skulked around the perimeter to scope for weaknesses, the threatening pair sent up such an unholy racket that Calvin finally flipped on the porch light of his dilapidated trailer and stepped out onto the dimpled metal stairs with the Fox Savage in his hands.

I faded into the shadows, while his tick-riddled mongrels charged the fence, snarling, snapping, and swinging heads the size of cement blocks in my direction. Walking the half mile to where I’d hidden my pickup, I wondered how I could ambush Calvin and recover what I’d been cheated out of. First step of any plan would have to be dealing with those dogs.

They’d barely been weaned when their mother made her escape a couple years earlier. Taking advantage of the brief time the gate gaped open for the propane delivery truck to come through, Sheba lunged hard enough to snap her chain, then took off like her tail was on fire. The propane driver pissed his pants when he saw one hundred ten pounds of mange, fangs and muscle bounding his way, but Sheba tore past him and kept on going, dragging a four-foot length of chain behind her. Or, at least, that’s how Calvin told the story at the Eat ‘n’ Go, where he had lunch every weekday.

Life for the two pups she’d abandoned went downhill after that, and their natural reaction was to break mean.

I’d seen Calvin at the co-op, hoisting forty-pound bags of dog food onto his flatbed, the cheapest, no-name stuff they sell. Sawdust on the floor of the mill where I worked probably had more nutrition and better flavor. And Calvin was widely known to beat a dog, which is why Sheba bolted at her first opportunity.

At one time or another, every man in town had muttered over a whiskey about shooting those dogs and breaking into Calvin’s trailer to get back what that S.O.B. had stolen from them or cheated them out of. Well, maybe not Pastor Wilson, although, God knows he had reason to. When he opened the poor box year before last to make his usual Christmas distribution to our less fortunate families, he found the bottom smashed out and all the donated cash gone.

His mind, like the minds of everyone else around here, went directly to Calvin Hobart being the culprit, but Pastor Wilson didn’t dare make an overt accusation or file a complaint with the sheriff, for fear Calvin would bring Booger and Dammit to town and turn them loose in the church.

While others mused about killing the dogs and getting back their part of the money rumored to be stashed in Calvin’s trailer, I took a more analytical approach. After all, Booger and Dammit were not the problem; they were merely the hurdle one had to clear to get to the problem, namely Calvin Hobart. What those dogs needed, I figured, was a friend.

First thing I did was buy a dusty, old boom box from Miss Alice’s Pawn & Guns, then carry it with me when I visited Calvin’s property the second time. Thing probably hadn’t seen action since Falco released “Rock Me Amadeus,” but with four new C batteries, the playback and record functions worked just fine. Leaving my blue F-250 in the same hiding place as before, I hiked the last half mile in the dark, hitting the record button about a hundred feet from Calvin’s gate.

Sure enough, Booger and Dammit rushed the fence as soon as they sensed my approach, crashing their chests against the sturdy, steel mesh and barking like the hounds of Hades Pastor Wilson often claims in his sermons are waiting for sinners in the hereafter.

The trailer’s porch light came on and only seconds later, Calvin Hobart emerged in baggy long johns, cradling that shotgun with more affection than he’d ever shown to man or beast. I already had what I’d come for, so I backed away, slipping into the night as Calvin marched toward the spot where Booger and Dammit loudly dogsplained the issue of a trespasser.

After work on Friday, I drove the fifteen miles up to Icannoa to test the boom box’s remote control and playback volume on my property right outside of town. Using the opportunity to buy twenty pounds of hamburger meat and a large bottle of Old Spice aftershave, I ensured no local cashier or busybody would recall my making such a peculiar purchase.

MaryAnn had a retirement party to go to that Saturday night, and rightly expected her fiancé to accompany her. When I begged off on account of Mr. Chasen gave me D’s all through that miserable year of eighth-grade math, she sympathized with my lack of desire to shake his chalk-dusty hand and wish him well.

While sweet MaryAnn attended the party with her friend, Josie—history teacher and girls’ soccer coach—I made eighty balls of raw hamburger and laid them out on the otherwise bare shelves of my bachelor’s freezer.

My campaign to win over Calvin Hobart’s dogs began a few minutes before midnight on Monday. After taking out four meatballs to thaw, I slapped on a near-lethal dose of Old Spice, wanting to make sure Booger and Dammit could smell me coming.

While I didn’t have the best pitching arm in high school, it was good enough to take us to the regional play-offs my senior year, so I spent a couple minutes warming up my right shoulder before I hopped in my truck and drove to the parking spot a half mile from Hobart’s place.

As I approached on foot with one of MaryAnn’s Tupperware bowls in my hand, Booger and Dammit set up their snarling alarm and hurled themselves against the fence. Figuring I had a good sixty seconds before Calvin got out of bed, grabbed his shotgun and flung open the door, I darted forward, stopping ten feet short of that threatening sign on the gate.

One after another, I lobbed four beef grenades over the fence, shutting up both dogs for the nanoseconds it took them to gobble down their quarter-pounders. By the time the porch light popped on, they were barking again, but I was already a shadow in the darkness fifty yards away.

By the fourth night, the dogs associated the smell of Old Spice with an aerial delivery of something much tastier than the discount kibble Calvin dumped into an old paint can for them every day, so their warning to me came in the form of half-hearted growls too low for him to hear from inside.

After eight nights of making it rain steak tartare, I risked losing a couple fingers by holding a meatball and sticking it through the fence. As fast as it was snatched and gulped down, I handed another one through. The growling had reduced by then to a quiet burring sound.

On my twelfth trip, one of them—hard to tell which in the dark—let me scratch behind his ear after he’d devoured the amuse bouche.

By the fifteenth night, those two were cavorting with anticipation as soon as they got a whiff of my aftershave, and they greeted me with wagging tails and snuffling noises.

I climbed over the fence on my sixteenth visit, handing out meatballs, then sitting on the ground for ten minutes, scratching behind ears and patting giant, blocky heads.

Night eighteen, Booger, Dammit and I strolled all around the property without waking Calvin. When I climbed the fence to leave, both dogs stood up with their front paws on the chain-link, whimpering like they were sad to see me go, so I spent an extra few minutes doling out pets and baby-talk good boys.

I parked my truck much closer to the property on the twentieth night, as I figured Calvin would call the sheriff to report a theft as soon as I walked away with the three hundred dollars he took off me after Brody’s bachelor party. In case Sheriff Parnell came around to ask me questions, I wanted to be home in bed sleeping, ready to deny everything. Of course, there was always the chance Calvin would be too embarrassed to report such a clear betrayal by his dogs. Might give other aggrieved parties ideas about recouping their own losses, although I couldn’t picture Pastor Wilson scaling the fence to take back the poorbox cash at gunpoint.

With the boom box on my right shoulder and the last four meatballs in a plastic bag in my left hand, I approached the gate. Having already picked up the scent that signaled their Grub Hub delivery, Booger and Dammit waited for me, scampering around like puppies and whining for their treats.

I positioned the boom box on the ground, facing the trailer, then tossed the snacks over the gate, where the dogs inhaled them. Prior to scaling the fence, I patted the pockets of my work jeans, making sure I had the remote control in one and my father’s old .38 in another. The pistol wasn’t loaded, as I had no intention of harming any living thing. I only wanted to reclaim what was rightfully mine and make a clean getaway.

The two dogs danced circles around me as I approached the dark trailer, settling on their haunches while I took out the gun and remote, then positioned myself to get the drop on Calvin when he rushed through the door.

With the press of a button, the night filled with recorded barking, snarling, and howling coming from the direction of the gate. Pricking their ears, Booger and Dammit trotted off to investigate their own voices, although they seemed more puzzled than alarmed.

Returning the remote to my pocket and pressing back against the side of the trailer, I waited for the light to click on, tightly gripping the unloaded pistol. The door flew open and Calvin Hobart stepped out in his dirty long johns, a death grip on the twelve-gauge, while he scanned for unwelcome visitors.

About that time the recording ended and the dogs came bounding back. They stopped short of the trailer, panting excitedly and wagging their tails, as Calvin descended the steps. He didn’t realize they were looking behind him, rather than at him, so he lowered his weapon to read them the riot act.

“I don’t feed you worthless curs so you can wake me up for every raccoon or possum that waltzes by,” he snarled, loosening his hold on the shotgun so he could land a kick under Dammit’s jaw.

Luckily, that Neanderthal was barefoot, so the blow didn’t do too much damage, but when the force of it sent the dog sprawling with a yelp, I took advantage of the distraction to step from the shadows and roughly shove the barrel of Daddy’s .38 into Calvin’s lower back.

“Drop your weapon or say good-bye to your kidneys,” I ordered, trying my best to sound like a badass.

Mean, but not stupid, Calvin put his left hand high in the air while he slowly squatted and placed the shotgun on the ground. His right hand mirrored his left’s surrender, and he stood up again, still facing away from me. Dammit reappeared, although he kept well out of kicking range.

With a weary sigh, Calvin said, “Well, then, I guess you’re fixin’ to rob me.”

“I’m just here to take back what you cheated me out of.”

He had sounded so resigned to his fate that I wasn’t prepared for his right elbow to knife backwards and smash into my solar plexus. In a heartbeat, I was on my butt, empty pistol sailing out of my hand. Copperhead fast, Calvin snatched up his own firearm and aimed it at me.

Instead of seeing my life flash before my eyes, I envisioned the sign on the front gate, except the hand-drawn shotgun in my mind didn’t have two bloodshot eyeballs glaring at me over the side-by-side barrels. Dimly aware of a menacing growl nearby, I prepared to meet my maker as Calvin bid me a fond farewell.

“Adios, shithead.”

The blast sent a gout of gravel high into the air not ten inches from my ear, so I rolled under the trailer, knowing the bastard wouldn’t miss twice. When the second shot went wild and ripped through the side of the trailer, I ventured a peek and saw Calvin hit the dirt, frantically punching out at Dammit, whose massive front paws pinned his tormentor to the ground. After a lightning jab caught the dog on its sensitive nose, eliciting a squeal of pain, Booger joined the fray, powerful jaws clamping down around a stringy thigh. Dammit recovered from the snout punch and leapt for Calvin’s throat.

Living up to their vicious reputation, one dog tore open the man’s femoral artery, and the other ripped through his carotid. Calvin went out in twin geysers of his own blood and screaming profanities. Even after the threat had been eliminated, the dogs played a violent round of tug-of-war for another minute, and a detached finger plopped onto the ground right in front of my face.

Deeply rattled, I scrambled out from under the trailer and picked up my father’s .38. Things had gone way beyond what I had intended, and I couldn’t afford to leave any evidence that could incriminate me.

I looked over at the dogs, heart drumming in my chest. Their muzzles dripped gore, and an ear-shaped gobbet clung to Booger’s collar, but they hung out their tongues and watched me like they were waiting for a reward, as two swishing tails painted the gravel red. There was nothing to be done for Calvin, so I made a practical decision to complete my mission before climbing the fence and fleeing the nightmarish scene of canine carnage.

I entered the trailer in search of my three hundred dollars, mindful when I climbed the steps to avoid leaving footprints in the places where liquid Calvin pooled. Once inside, I easily found my money, along with what looked like all the cash that sumbitch had stolen from other folks over a lifetime of cheating, thieving and double-dealing. It was everywhere: stacked on the counters, under the mattress, in the freezer, spilling out of dresser drawers, and crammed into cereal boxes in the pantry. About the time I realized it was way more than Calvin could have squeezed from his long list of victims, I discovered why.

The stained toilet bowl had no water in it, so I checked the tank. Also dry, but filled to the rim with wrapped bricks of what I guessed was heroin. Whoever Calvin had been doing business with, they were far above my weight class and I needed to clear out of there ASAP.

Intending to take only what was due me, I had not brought any kind of satchel or duffel bag, but it seemed a pure shame to abandon all that cash. I pulled two pillowcases out of the reeking hamper by the rusted washing machine, stripped another filthy pair off Calvin’s bed, then commenced to stuff them full. Rubber-banded hundreds, rolled fifties, and a shit-ton of Lucky Charms-flecked twenties strained the seams of my makeshift money bags when I tied them closed with twine I found on the kitchen counter. Staggering under their weight, I made my way to the fence and tossed each bulging sack up and over, anxious to follow them and get the hell out of there.

The dogs had bounded alongside as I covered the distance from trailer to gate, but they lay down to watch me send the bundles airborne. That’s when it hit me: the first thing Sheriff Parnell would do when the mutilated body was found is shoot Booger and Dammit. They’d had motive, means, and opportunity, and would be given the death penalty without benefit of a trial.

Running back to the trailer, dogs cavorting around me, I sidestepped the poorly assembled Calvin puzzle and located a set of keys on a hook just inside the door. As soon as I got the padlock open and swung out that gate, the killers escaped into the night, searching for a better life like their mother Sheba had done when they were still pups.

An open gate would alert the sheriff—or, God forbid, Calvin’s “business” associates—that another person had been on the property, what with dogs not yet having mastered keys and padlocks. For my own safety, I needed Booger and Dammit to take full blame, so I restaged the scene, closing and locking the gate and replacing the keys on their hook.

All I had to do then was establish a plausible way for the dogs to have escaped on their own. A tool-box by the stove provided me with a claw hammer, which I used to pry up the bottom of a two-foot section of the chain-link, high enough for a massive dog to crawl under. Using the claw side of the hammer head, I chunked out a shallow trench from the dirt under the bent fencing, so anyone could conjure a picture of Booger and Dammit digging the hole and forcing out the steel mesh with the strength of their bodies.

Shortly after the news broke that Calvin Hobart had been torn to pieces by his psycho mutts before they took off for parts unknown, mysterious happenings around town fueled rumors of his ghost making reparations. It all started when Pastor Wilson found the new poor box full of hundred dollar bills. Then, Velma Simms, the gray-haired day waitress at the Eat ‘n’ Go, trudged out to her battered old Civic after a long shift and found a stack of fifties on her front seat, more than enough to make up for all the tips that cheapskate had stiffed her for in twenty years of eating lunch there five days a week. As the months passed, everyone Calvin Hobart had cheated or stolen from got their due, so folks speculated St. Peter had taken one look at the old reprobate and told him to get lost and not come back till he’d atoned for his many sins.

A rumor I did not hear, which I’d been expecting, was about the drugs, so I’m guessing one of Sheriff Parnell’s deputies made a fortuitous discovery and is working a little something-something on the side until his supply runs out.

And me? Well, I took a job at the Tractor Supply up Icannoa way, close to the site where sweet MaryAnn’s and my house has been under construction for five months. It’s a cozy little two-bedroom, with only the final interior work left to be done. I’ve already moved in, and once the school year ends, MaryAnn will join me. We have a June wedding planned, then a whole summer together before she starts teaching art to the local seventh-graders.

Last weekend, Brody came up here to discuss his duties as my best man and take a tour of the house and property. He expressed surprise that I could afford the six-foot high, redwood fencing that encloses my full two acres, so I fibbed about those years of work at the sawmill down yonder earning me a deep discount on the lumber. The labor I did myself.

As we headed toward the front door, he noticed the two large doghouses I’d also built, just as Stanley and Feebs woke from their afternoon naps and emerged from comfy bedding to yawn and stretch in the warm sunlight.

Yep, the night of Calvin’s demise, I’d arrived back at my F-250 to find the perps in the bed of the truck, wagging their tails and letting me know I was the new alpha. I did not have the heart to chase them away to be hunted down and shot for doing what the rest of us were too chicken to do.

As the well-groomed, sociable pair ambled over to check out my guest, Brody turned to me in confusion.

“Hey, ain’t those Calvin Hobart’s dogs?”

“Shhh,” I replied, raising a finger to my lips. “Witness protection.”

April Kelly is a former TV comedy writer (Mork & Mindy, Webster, Boy Meets World, ad nauseum) who now writes short fiction. Her work has appeared in Down & Out Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Mystery Weekly (now Mystery Magazine), Tough Crime, Mysterical-E, Floyd County Moonshine, DASH Literary Journal and many other publications. Her story Oh, Here! won enough money to buy a car (toy, plastic, model: Dollar General) in the Mark Twain royal Nonesuch Humor Contest.

Saviors, fiction by Sam Wiebe

Security must have fucked up.

He didn’t know how the girl snuck on set. But here she was, pushing her way into his trailer, rolling up her sleeve to show him her tattoo. 

“I’m so sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Chambers,” the girl said.

But you did, he thought. And now you’re going to eat up however many minutes of my time, my precious fucking prep time, telling me how much my stupid show means to you.

“I just had to meet you, Mr. Chambers—I mean Scott. I know you like your fans to call you Scott. I just had to meet you and tell you what you mean to me. And I had to help you.”

He smiled politely, thinking, Great. Here I am still hungover from last night because Carol, my on-screen mom, insisted on celebrating her last day on set. With my luck, this stupid show will get picked up for season—what? five? six?—and I’ll be seeing Carol again in eight months. Have to act more of those stupid kitchen scenes where I confide in her what a burden it is, being a teenager born with the collective powers of the Greek Pantheon. How many more years stuck in this stupid city where it rains all the goddamn time? Hollywood North my ass—

—and what was that shit the girl said about helping me?

”Girl” was a stretch. She could have been thirty, a decade older than him for all he knew. But a girl in her mannerisms, the jelly-legged way she gazed at him like he was a superior creature. A fangirl. Rail-thin and hawk-featured, her pale arms hanging out of the frayed cuffs of the grubby man’s shirt she wore.

Scott noticed the girl was holding a gun.

The tattoo on her arm was of him. A terrible likeness. Scott in the Captain Destiny uniform, cape billowing out behind him as he soared through the clouds. Christ.

She transferred the pistol to her left hand and began awkwardly rolling up the other sleeve.

“It was you that taught me to believe in myself,” she said, pausing for him to acknowledge the compliment.

“That’s very nice,” Scott said.

“Before I started watching, I was at loose ends. I admit it, I know it’s a sin, but I used to think about suicide. That’s how low I was. Then I heard about this show filmed right here in my hometown, and I started watching, and I saw you dealing with the same things I was. And everything started to hurt less, you know? It was a miracle, really. A miracle is the only way to describe it.”

Jesus, she was a fucking local.

Captain Destiny was filmed in a far-flung suburb of Vancouver. The town had one main street, one second-run theatre, eight churches, a race track, and a flea market. Part of Western Canada’s miniature Bible Belt. The town was a perfect stand-in for Smallville, Starling City, and Smith’s Landing, where Captain Destiny’s alter ego hailed from.

The locals seemed split between meth heads and Jesus freaks. This girl seemed to have claims to both camps.

On her other sleeve, the girl showed him a matching tattoo, a Kurt Cobain Jesus hanging off a wobbly-looking cross. The picture was little better than a stick figure, but each wound had been etched on Kurt’s body in glorious bright red detail. Above it, the word RE P e N T.

“It was through you that I reconnected with Him,” she said. “You saved me. And I’m here, Mr. Chambers, Scott, to do the same for you.”

Up till now, she hadn’t pointed the gun at him. The barrel had been pointed down a few feet to his side. Now she brought it up, using it to gesticulate as she spoke.

“You see,” she said, “I read up on you on the world wide web. I learned all about you. I rented the show you were on as a child. It was really good, you were really great even then.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, eyes on the gun.

“You’re welcome. I even watched the commercials you were in. The cereal one, you were very funny. You can do anything, Scott, if you put your mind to it. I hope you know that.”

“Thanks.”

“Yes. And it made me sad when I read that rumor about you. That you were—you know.”

She was blushing.

“That you were not into women. That you were--well.”

“Gay,” he said.

“Well, yes.”

Rumor. He hated to think of any part of himself as a rumor. He was proud of himself, would’ve been happy telling the world, and fuck ‘em if they didn’t want to watch his show.

But his manager had explained to him the demographics involved, the realities of show biz. “In a few years, Scottie, by all means, do what you feel is best. But your hit show is a hit because of women thirteen to thirty, and that’s a tough demo for a comic book show to hold. They want to keep certain fantasies about you, Scott...it’s just how it is...”

“How it is” meant broadcasting to the world he was something he wasn’t. Just another reason he hoped the network pulled the plug soon.

She was waiting for his answer, holding the gun loosely, aimed at his knees.

Scott said, “Yeah, it’s a rumor. I’m actually seeing someone. A girl. We’re thinking of getting married, in fact.” Anything to get her out of there.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” she said. She raised the gun towards his chest, an accusatory finger of blued steel.

“You see, Scott, I want to believe you, but I was actually at the Chateau Vancouver last month. You were doing a signing in the city, remember, and I thought I’d come down. I was hoping we’d get a chance to talk then.”

Christ. Up till then he’d thought there was no real chance she’d hurt him. He’d dealt with crazies before. Now he felt his odds plummet and knew he’d have to get himself out of this.

“I was in the lobby,” the fangirl said. “I stayed there all night. I saw you come in late with that young man, and I saw you kiss him, and I waited and then in the morning, I saw you leave, and kiss him again goodbye and listen, Scott, don’t you know how that makes Him feel?” “Him who?” he said. “Makes who feel?”

“Jesus, silly. How it makes Jesus feel.”

He looked blankly at her, this fangirl, this woman who was here to kill him. She had tears in her eyes, and she was raising the gun.

Scott Chambers fell to his knees.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I have these thoughts.”

“They’re the devil’s thoughts, Scott.”

“I know it. But I feel so weak. Please, please help me. You were sent here to help me, right? Sent here by Him?”

He was crying—turning on the waterworks had never been difficult. Yes, he was just a kid himself, and yes, he was on a crap superhero show shot in this pissant backwater town. But he’d known since childhood, since day one, that he could deliver when it counted.

But it didn’t hurt that he was scared shitless.

“Will you help me?” he said in his best broken voice. “Will you—will you pray with me?”

It was working‑the barrel drifted downward. The girl sank to one knee, her eyes as round and luminous as the rose windows in a Gothic cathedral.

“Ask him,” she said. “We’ll both ask. He’s mighty, but he’s forgiving.”

Scott lowered his head, leaving his eyes open just enough to watch the gun. He prayed for real. Dear Lord, if you’re there, and you’re not the asshole these bigots and homophobes make you out to be...a little assistance here...

“Lord,” the girl intoned in a full, sonorous voice. “Lord, we ask that you guide Scott here—that you cleanse him—that you—”

She broke off, disturbed by the knocking on the door. The loud caffeinated tapping of Stacey, the director’s assistant.

“Hey Scott,” Stacey called out. “Sorry to disturb you. This a good time?”

He froze, not knowing if the girl would shoot him for speaking.

“Joyce wants to go over the blocking for the fight with Kid Achilles. She says fifteen minutes, if that’s okay with you.”

He looked to the girl, who  had the gun pointed at his throat. She gave no sign how she wanted him to answer.

“Scott, everything okay?” Silence for a moment. Then Stacey opened the door.

Percussion and light, then a howling pain from his scalp. The fangirl had shot him.

Blood was in his eyes and he couldn’t see much. Through the pain he could hear the woman snarling, furniture being toppled. Stacey struggled with her, wrested the gun from her hand. He heard it hit the carpet.

Scott swept his hands out, feeling for the weapon. Caught the warm barrel with his fingertips, dragged it back to where he could get his hand around the grip.

The fangirl barreled into him with a linebacker’s force. The gun went who knows where. He felt her fists on his cheeks, his eyes. He reached and grabbed for her throat and held on till she bit him.

Flailing elbows broke his feeble chokehold. He knew she was now picking up the gun. He heard her cock it. His hands flew up instinctively to his face, impotent protection from the gunshot he knew was coming.

There was a loud shhh-chunk and the sound of particleboard being smashed. Stacey hit her with a drawer from the dressing table.

A moment later the security guards  dragged the woman out, telling Scott the police are on their way, and sir, we are so, so sorry about all of this.

The set medic, Danny, treated and bandaged him. Scott asked him to describe the damage.

“It’s a deep crimson furrow,” Danny said, “still spurting rivulets of blood.” Of course, Danny would describe it poetically; he’d been haranguing Scott at Craft Services every morning to read his fucking screenplay.

“Will it leave a scar?” Scott demanded.

“There’s significant tissue damage,” Danny said. “I’m not a doctor, in fact my taking first aid was mostly for research purposes. But I think yeah, it’s a scar. Scott, I’m very sorry.”

Don’t be, Scott felt like saying. A scar! It was his ticket out of the show. No way the network would want a scarred leading man. And even if they did, he could say the trauma was too much to continue.

No more teen heart-throb. He’d be a scarred, brooding character actor—he’d be taken seriously. And off-camera he could be himself.

Scott Chambers smiled and wondered if maybe there was someone watching out for him after all.

Sam Wiebe is the award-winning author of the Wakeland novels, one of the most authentic and acclaimed detective series in Canada, including Invisible Dead, Cut You Down, and Hell and Gone. Wiebe’s other books include Never Going Back, Last of the Independents, and the Vancouver Noir anthology, which he edited. 

Owl Be Damned, fiction by Nikki Knight

A Jaye Jordan Vermont Radio Mystery

 Everybody loves a snowy owl.

 At least everybody I want to know. Nobody I want to know loves murder, though, and that sure took the joy out of Blanche’s visit to Simpson. 

 But in January in Vermont, you take what you get.

 January’s pretty ugly here. Figuratively, anyhow. Literally, it’s spectacularly beautiful, with thick, deep snow, shimmering blue skies, and flaming sunsets. As long as you don’t mind being reminded of why some cultures believe in a Hell of Cold.

 Ugly is exactly the right word for two big storms in a week, followed by a cold snap. Uglier for me, since I had to sweep that snow out of the satellite dish on the roof to keep my little radio station on the air. 

 Just another fun day of running WSV, the tiny operation I bought and took live and local again when my husband survived cancer but our marriage didn’t. My daughter is happy here, and the station is getting by…and that’s about all I want to say about it.

 I’m Jaye Jordan, by the way. Yes, my real name – people always wonder with DJs. Western PA country girl made good as a New York City jock before my life unraveled. I’m the one who just keeps going, no matter what.

 But January is wearing.

 Which is why pretty much everyone went nuts when the snowy owl showed up near the WSV transmitter shack out on Quarry Road. Anything at all to break up the monotony of shoveling, sweeping and scraping. Especially if it’s something as magnificent as a snowy owl.

 Blanche, as we inevitably christened her when birdwatcher Willard Collier pointed out that her gray-barred markings meant she was female, was the toast of the town within about fifteen minutes.   

 And my usually deserted stick (radio slang for transmitter) was the most popular hangout around, with folks driving and hiking up, coming close enough to see her – but not to scare her away.

 That Saturday afternoon, my pals and I had finished our weekly yoga class at the Community Center, when Sadie Blacklaw waved the keys to her Hummer. “C’mon. No one else will be there right now because the Patriots are the early game.”

 None of us really wanted to ride in the Hummer, a genuine military surplus one that Sadie had gotten through her many connections as Town Clerk and legendary local leader. She drives like Speed Racer on meth.

 But, Maeve, Alicia, and I definitely did want to see Blanche, and that was worth the risk.

 Too bad she wasn’t the first thing we saw when we wobbled out of the Hummer, crunching into the slushy tire and boot prints, an indistinguishable mess now two days after the latest storm. 

 No, while Blanche was perched on the corrugated-metal roof of the shack, her feathers fluffed up by the breeze, her vivid orange eyes glowing with something that sure seemed like annoyance, but the attention-getter was the guy on the ground.

 He was crumpled onto a drift at the edge of the lot, half on his side, one hand reaching toward the shack. It was Willard Collier, the birdwatcher, who’d been hiking up every day from his house a half-mile away. And I was pretty sure he was dead.

 “Call George!” Sadie said to Alicia, referring to her husband, Police Chief George Orr. “You’re still current on CPR, right, Jaye?”

 “Yeah.” I kept up my certification because of my tween daughter. Mom thing. If you have it, you won’t need it.

 I’ve never been so glad that it was her weekend with her dad. 

 “Good. Me too.” Sadie gave me a shove. “Let’s go. Two-man is better than one.”

 “What about me?” Maeve asked.

 “Reverend, you do your thing.” 

 Maeve, the Reverend Collins, is indeed a duly ordained Episcopal priest, despite enviable skills with profanity, makeup, and drinking. I’m Jewish, but I’m pretty sure she has a direct line to Whoever’s up there.

 As Sadie and I turned the guy over, his camera fell out of his hand, skidding over a patch of frozen coffee to smack into the thermos.

 First time in history coffee didn’t make things better.   

 Something about the camera didn’t look right to me, but it wasn’t the time. 

 “I’ll start with breaths,” I offered.

 “No, you’re stronger. You do compressions.” 

 Without even a blink, Sadie reached in and cleared the airway, and got down to it.

 I started compressions. I’m not just stronger. I’m bigger – a lot taller than most of my friends, at six feet. 

 We reached the first pause, where you’re supposed to check the person and see if they’re breathing on their own.

 “Nothing.” Sadie shook her head.

 Maeve, who’d been quietly watching from a few feet away, moved a little closer as we started again.

 I heard her soft, clear voice beginning the prayers for the dying just before the siren’s wail tore through the cold, still air.

##

  

 That evening, I was back in the studio, finally warm again thanks to double layers of fleece and most of a pot of coffee. I’d just finished a break and started the standard nightly spin of “You’re the Inspiration,” this time for a milestone anniversary couple, when Alicia Orr appeared.

 Many weekdays, she drops by for a coffee after working late at the local bank, where she’s a vice president. Sometimes weekends, too, especially when her husband, Police Chief George, is busy, as he sure was tonight. But her troubled expression was different.

 I didn’t remark on her new coral down coat and harmonizing striped fleece, which made her ebony skin glow. She’d wear it again – and it’s better to give a compliment when people will hear it. 

 With the coffee poured, another pot brewing, and the next song (overwrought Celine Dion for a depressed dump-ee) started, we settled in for a talk.  

 “Nasty thing today at the shack,” she said neutrally, though her expression wasn’t neutral at all.

 “Sad.”

 “Probably just sad, yeah.”

 I waited. 

 “Did you sense anything off?” she asked.

 “Um…” The camera hadn’t looked right to me, and we’d all been a little bothered by the way Willard Collier’s daughter had so coolly said she was glad her dad died doing what he loved.

 Everyone grieves differently, and it’s not necessarily a sign of anything.

 That’s what I had very firmly told myself.

 After all, some people can’t understand how I can joke about getting my husband through cancer only to get dumped, but humor keeps me from harming anyone. Probably myself. So I wasn’t going to judge. 

 Still, I’d never seen anyone’s eyes light up at the sight of their relative on a gurney,nd I’d spent enough time in the chemo suite to see a whole range of reactions. 

 Alicia watched me, and nodded.

 “Here’s the deal, Jaye,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully. “I know something that makes me suspicious. But I know it because I work at the bank, and I can’t break confidentiality.” 

 “And the Chief…” I started.

 “Will very rightly do nothing on the basis of his wife’s gut.” She shrugged. “I’m not thrilled with him, but he can’t open a criminal case because I’ve got a bad feeling and the daughter acted like she’d won the lottery.”

 “True.” I took a sip of my coffee, thought about what I’d seen when Sadie and I started CPR. “What if there was something inconsistent in the scene?”

 “Like what?”

 “Like the camera was not set up for what he was supposed to be doing.”

 Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

 “My uncle’s hobby is wildlife photography, and I know just enough to be dangerous. He explained his new camera to Ryan and me when he was up here at Thanksgiving.”

 “And poor Mr. Collier’s camera?”

 “Didn’t look right to me. But I’m not the expert. Why don’t I call Uncle Edgar and run it past him…and then get back to you?”

 “I like it.” She drank a little more of her coffee. “Thanks, Jaye.”

 “Glad to. It’s always good to have an excuse to talk to Uncle Edgar.”

 She smiled, knowing I was telling the absolute truth.

 Alicia stayed for a bit more coffee, and a little relaxing talk of moisturizers and long underwear, the two main topics of discussion for women in Vermont this time of year. Once she left, I picked up the phone.

 “Jacks!” Uncle Edgar roared. He’s the only person on earth allowed to call me that, as the closest thing I have to a father. I’m the closest he has to a daughter, since he had two sons with Aunt Mellie before she ran off with the urologist. (Don’t go there.)

 “Hey. How are you and Mom liking January in Palm Fountains?” He and my mother retired at roughly the same time, and they’re now enjoying a very late adolescent rebellion as a brother-and-sister act in their Florida senior development.

 “A little chilly. Only seventy yesterday.”

 “I think I hate you.” 

 “Well, I envy you. You have a gorgeous snowy owl up there. And you’ve only sent me one picture?”

 “I’ll get some more.” I am not the family photog, but I absolutely did owe him pics. 

 “You’d better. Maybe Judy and I fly up for a quick visit.”

 “We would love that.” Mostly. I didn’t even have to cross my fingers. “But I wanted to ask you something. A man collapsed and died near the shack earlier today, and-”

 “Oh, that’s too bad, Jacks. You all okay?

 “It was sad, but we’re fine. It’s just…”

 “You think there’s something hinky?” Uncle Edgar did thirty years with the Mineral County Sherriff’s Department. I could practically hear the click as his cop radar came on.

 “Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but his camera looked wrong to me, and I think I know why.”

 “Tell me exactly what it looked like…”

 I did. He agreed with me.

 Alicia was glad to hear it…and so was Chief George. 

##

 Sunday afternoon found us once again at the shack. This time, it was Maeve, freshly changed from vestments to fleece, picking us up in her old green SUV for a much safer trip, even if Sadie groused a little about it having less power on the hill than the Hummer did. 

 Blanche was back to the front of the shack, enjoying a patch of sun. 

 Enjoying more than that. 

 “Get the pic, Jaye!” Sadie called from the backseat. “She’s eating!”

 I’d had my cellphone ready because you never know when you might get a good shot of Blanche. I didn’t really want one with a rodent tail sticking out of her beak, though – that was more Uncle Edgar’s speed.

 As we got out of the SUV, Blanche finished her meal and shot me a glare. 

 I’d have to apologize to her later. 

 Everyone who wasn’t a vole had more serious things to worry about just then. The Simpson cruiser was on the other side of the little gravel parking area, and Chief George was leaning against it, just watching Blanche and observing the scene with his usual former NYPD cool and intensity. It’s always fun to watch him, and reactions to him, since most Vermont towns do not have a six-foot-three Black guy in a leather trenchcoat as their top cop. 

 This appeared to be pretty much the usual owl fan club: a small knot of local folks at the back of the parking area, standing and observing, or occasionally taking a picture, all trying to be as unobtrusive (to Blanche) as possible.

 Except for the woman at the front of the lot.

 She couldn’t be unobtrusive if her life depended on it.

 Standing by her white SUV, wrapped once again in her urban-fashionable silver puffer, her expensively highlighted brown hair wafting lightly in the wind, Jennee Collier (two N’s and three E’s please, she’d said yesterday as Chief George asked her whether her late father had been in poor health) was placing a bouquet, down on one knee in the chunky slush.

 I was honestly surprised that she was willing to get parking lot slop on her expensive yoga pants. Jennee was off in a lot of ways: that stupid white SUV that showed every bit of slush and muck, clothes always expensive and impractical, and hair and makeup far too much for Simpson. I’d always idly wondered how she afforded it on a teacher’s aide’s salary, and just figured there was family money around somewhere.

 Now I suspected something else.

 “What’s going on?” Maeve whispered.

 “Wait and see,” Alicia replied, sending her husband a glance and getting a nod. “Must have gotten his warrant.”

 Sadie’s eyes widened a little, and she smiled. “Looks like Blanche’s lunch isn’t the only show.”  

 Jennee stood, and glanced back at what had probably been an appreciative, or at least neutral, audience when she knelt. Not so much now. Her carefully sad face changed at the sight of Chief George and Alicia, hardening into something else for an instant before she snapped back into reality-TV mournfulness, complete with quivering lip. Maeve probably recognized the brand and color of the shimmery nude lip gloss; I just knew it was better than the usual drugstore stuff.

 “Ms. Collier.” Chief George didn’t raise his voice; it just carried across the parking lot in the chilly air. 

 “What?” She tried for innocent. “Is there something else? I’m just paying tribute to Dad where he had the heart attack.”

 She carefully wiped an eye. There was no actual moisture that I could see.

 A little too obvious, I thought. 

 “About that, Ms. Collier.” Chief George took a step toward her. 

 She stepped back. “I didn’t do anything.”

 Her brittle voice gave her away.

 “I’ve seen the bank records, ma’am. Your father found out what you’d been doing, didn’t he?”

 “No! He said I could use the money for whatever I needed.” She looked at Alicia, with a snort. “Shows what you know.”

 Alicia shrugged, not taking the bait. 

 “He collapsed from a heart attack while he was out taking pictures,” Jenee said, nodding firmly like a determined toddler.

 “Not with that camera, he wasn’t,” I snapped. I’d had enough attitude.

 Jennee’s eyes widened.

 “It probably looked good to you when you put it together. But it was the wrong lens. That was a big zoom lens. It’s for distance shots.”

 She made a flapping wave at the shack. “That’s a distance.”

 “Not that kind of distance,” I said quietly. “Any decent photog wouldn’t even bring that lens out for this.”

 “Well, he wasn’t that good-”

 “He was amazing,” Sadie said. “I have one of his pictures of a great blue heron in my living room. Jaye’s right. He would never have used the wrong lens.”

 Chief George unclipped the cuffs from his belt.

 Jennee let out a howl.

 That was enough for Blanche.

 The giant owl took off with a bloodcurdling cry, and strafed toward us.

 Everyone ducked. 

 Jennee shrieked again, and didn’t duck far enough, because we all heard Blanche’s talons ripping the back of that silver puffer as she flew past.

 For the next minute or so, most of us were busy: the Chief helping Jennee up – and then hooking her up, Alicia watching them, Maeve making sure Sadie didn’t fall on the slick parking lot, and Sadie trying to shake free. I was the only one who got a good look at Blanche as she landed.

 The owl was maybe twenty feet away from me, and she shot me a sharp glance with those big orange peepers. I managed to whip out the phone in time…and clicked off a couple of pics. Who knew if they’d be good, but she was so close I had to try.

 As we all straightened up and dusted ourselves off, Alicia elbowed me.

 “Thank you for being a friend.” 

 “Blanche too.” I grinned. “Love the Golden Girls reference.”

 “Just don’t sing it.”

##

 Back at the station, a couple of hours later, I sent my hard-won shots to Uncle Edgar. 

 “Nice pics.”

 “Nice info on the lens.”

 “So what was it?”

 “Money. Seems she’d been quietly stealing from dad for a while, and when they went to move money from savings into a joint account, dad found out. He covered for her, but it was obvious to Alicia.”

 “And, of course, Alicia couldn’t tell you.”

 “Nope. Confidentiality.”

 “But the lens was enough to get a warrant for the records, right?” he asked.

 “Yep. And run a quick tox screen.”

 “Fentanyl?” he asked.

  “That’s the one. Apparently fed it to him in his breakfast and dumped him at the shack.” I sighed. “Too many opioids are too easy to get around here.”

 “Everywhere, Jacks.”

 We were both silent for a moment, as I thanked the Lord that he’d gotten out before the worst of it, and I suspect he did too.

 “Good thing you’ve got an eye,” he said finally.

  I laughed. “I just remember stuff.”

 “Got a pretty good shot of your owl, too, Jacks.”

 “Guess so.”

 A few minutes later, after we hung up, I looked at the picture again. I’d caught her with one eye closed. Winking. 

 As usual, Blanche was smarter than the rest of us. 

 

 

Nikki Knight describes herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning weekend anchor at 1010 WINS Radio in New York, she writes short stories and novels, including LIVE, LOCAL, AND DEAD, a Vermont Radio Mystery from Crooked Lane, and as Kathleen Marple Kalb, the Ella Shane Historical Mysteries for Kensington. Her stories are in several anthologies, and she was a 2022 Derringer Award finalist. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.