Shake Down Dead (5 page)

Henrietta suddenly sat up and set down
her glass. “Let me tell you about those little witches,” she began.
“Whitney’s been around that group all her life. They were best
friends all through junior high. In high school, they all made the
cheerleader squad. They used to love to come to the house and play
music and hang out. Now she and her friends leave me alone all the
time while they go out and have fun like nothing’s
changed.”

“What about your friends, Henrietta?” I
asked.

“They’re all too busy for me now. I
think they are embarrassed for me and just don’t know what to say
so they just stay away.”

“Do you have family around here that
you can turn to?”

“My family? I don’t want to be around
them. They’re white trash, mostly. I couldn’t wait to get away from
them. I turned my back on my drunken brother when I married Graham,
God rest his soul. And things were fine until Whitney was in high
school. Edwin decided that Whitney should be kind to my niece,
Pamela, and start taking her to some of the social
events.”

She stopped to take a long drink and
catch her breath. I felt like I’d unleashed a magpie. I decided to
say nothing and just keep nodding. Maybe something she said would
be useful.

“Graham wouldn’t leave it alone. He
even made Whitney give Pamela one of her beautiful prom gowns. The
one she wore the year before. Then he made Whitney take Pamela
along with her cheerleader friends to the prom! Can you imagine how
embarrassed Whitney and her friends were to bring Pamela along like
a lost kitten?”

I just shook my head.

“It’s a good thing my sister-in-law was
good with a needle. She was able to alter the prom dress so it fit
Pamela. She’s such a skinny girl. Everything just hangs on her.
She’s not curvaceous like Whitney.”

Curvaceous? Whitney? I’d say about
thirty pounds past curvaceous. I smiled and nodded.

“Whitney wore this lovely bisque gown
with tiny saffron flowers in the print of the over skirt. You
should see it. Oh, you can. Here,” she said digging through a pile
of books and papers on the coffee table. She pulled out a yearbook
and waved it at me. “This should tell you all about her
friends.”

Not wanting to hurt her feelings, I
took the yearbook she pushed into my hands. I thanked her and got
up to leave.

I opened the front door hoping to
finally get away, when Henrietta said, “Have you been out to that
bar she goes to?”

“What bar is that, Henrietta?” Why had
she waited so long to part with that information?

“It’s a little early for her. However
she might be there.”

“Where?” I almost shouted.

“Oh, it’s that little place out by the
house. Or whatever they call my beautiful home now. All filled up
with those strange people. How could Graham have done this to me?”
She began to cry. I came back and patted her shoulder, then said
goodbye. I felt sorry for her but there was nothing I could do to
help.

If Whitney went to a bar in her old
neighborhood, she wouldn’t need her car. She could have walked
there from Sunrise.

I was backing out of the driveway when,
my cell phone played a little tune. I hit the touch screen knowing
who it was before I even read the name. When Jerry Decker called,
my phone played an old Chuck Berry song, “Brown-eyed Handsome
Man.”

“Hi, what’s up, handsome?” I asked,
trying to sound upbeat.

“If you’re not busy tonight, do you
want to meet for dinner?”

“Of course I’m not busy. It’s Saturday
night. Don’t we always go out on Saturday nights?”

“I wasn’t sure if we were still on
after I saw you cuddling with that blond guy today.”

“I wasn’t cuddling with anyone. Pete’s
an old friend.” I said.

“Looked like more than a friend to
me.”

“Believe it or not, your choice,” I
said, wanting this conversation to end. “Hey, let’s try someplace
new tonight.”

“Is there someplace new around here?
Did I miss something?” Decker asked.

“How about that little place in Itzig?
The Cozy Corner Bar & Grill?”

“Good idea! They have great burgers.
I’ve only been out there once. They had a good band, played
country.”

Oh, great, I thought. Country is not my
favorite music. I’m more of an eighties gal. Still, on the chance
that we might see Whitney so Trudy and I could stop worrying about
her, I figured I could put up with country music for one evening.
Especially if the food was as good as Decker said it
was.

“Pick you up in an hour?” He
asked.

“I think I need a little more time than
that. I’m not home yet.”

“Oh, you must have been on a crochet
binge.”
I didn’t bother to tell him what I was really doing. He would only
tell me to keep my nose out of other people’s business. We’d been
through this before. “How about eight-thirty?”

“Eight-thirty is fine, see you then.” I
hoped I’d have a little time to peruse the yearbook Henrietta had
given me before Decker picked me up.

6

Pulling into the driveway that I shared
with the big house next door, I smiled and sighed. My enchanting
little cottage was a miniature of the neighboring Victorian. I
bought it soon after Edwin and I signed the divorce
papers.

Edwin the Louse had decided to stay in
the house we had shared in Hermann. At first, he wanted to sell it
and split the profit but after his girlfriend had been murdered in
the kitchen, it was impossible to sell at a decent price. Although
we had lots of people looking at it, most were lurkers—just wanting
to see where someone had been killed. Finally, Edwin decided that
he’d stay in the house for a while until it was saleable. Then the
housing bubble burst and no one was even looking at
homes.

I think Edwin thought he’d just be able
to stay in the house while we shared the house payment. My lawyer
wasn’t about to let him get away with that. Now we share the house
payment and Edwin sends me a rent payment every month. It seemed
silly to me, until my lawyer explained to me that this protects my
interest in the house.

I unlocked my front door and stepped
into the living room. I had bought some lovely furniture for my
home and was in the process of decorating it in a mini-Victorian
style. It wasn’t big enough to use large bulky furniture, so Megan
and I had spent a lot of time in furniture stores and antique shops
searching for just the right pieces. The living room now had a
comfortable sofa and chair that fit into the room without
overwhelming it. I had insisted on keeping my platform rocker and
footstool. Even though it didn’t exactly match, I loved sitting in
it when I crocheted. It reclined a little and often I would take a
little snooze in the late afternoon.

I brought in the food that needed to be
refrigerated and jammed it in my fridge. If I was going to keep
doing this catering thing, I’d have to get a bigger fridge. I could
put an industrial-sized refrigerator and a freezer at my
warehouse.

I began roasting coffee beans on my
stove as gifts for friends. Edwin the Louse hated the smell of
coffee roasting and complained so much that I moved out to the
patio. That first summer I used a Coleman hotplate and a stovetop
popcorn popper to fill the trickle of orders that I
received.

As the seasons changed and leaves
started to fall, my business blossomed. I rented warehouse space in
the Hermann Industrial Park and moved the whole set up there. Early
last spring Megan created a web page for me and now I not only sell
my coffee to most of the restaurants in southwest Minnesota, I send
out my Primo Gusto Coffee to people all over the
country.

I sat down in my rocker and sighed,
tired from my busy day. Putting my feet up, I pulled Whitney’s
yearbook out of my ever-present tote bag. I paged through it,
reading the autographs written by classmates. Most were run of the
mill high school stuff.

“Whitney, I can’t believe it’s almost
over. We had such a great time! The best cheerleaders ever at HHS!
Onward to U of M! Kimberly”

“To a nice chick. Keep the peace.
Glenn”

“Whit, Think of me every
time you think of prom night. Wasn’t he (oops!

) that the best? BFF, ‘O’”

I flipped to the section with the
senior pictures and found two Kimberlys. Which one was a
cheerleader? Paging through again, I found a picture of the
cheerleaders. Third from the right, Kimberly Adler was a cute
cheeky girl with blond hair—one hand on her hip, one foot pointed
out in front of her, a pom-pom in her other hand.

One down. Booting up my computer, I
Goggled Kimberly Adler. There were a lot of hits. Dr. Kimberly
Adler, Dallas, TX; a photographer in Maine; a teacher in Tennessee.
Maybe I could locate information on her somewhere else. I found her
on Facebook and saw that her name was now Kimberly Adler Reese. She
still lived in Hermann, so maybe that was who Whitney was meeting.
She had her Facebook page set for limited viewing; all I could see
was her name and age. I’d have to be her friend to see more. I made
a note in the little notebook I had begun to carry with me last
summer when Sister Bernadine was a suspect in a murder.

I picked up the yearbook again and went
to the senior pictures, looking for someone with a name beginning
with “O.”

On the second page, I found Oscar and
Olaf. That didn’t seem right. The note seemed to be written by a
girl. On the last page, I found Olivia Zimmerman.

I didn’t bother with Google. Instead, I
went right to Facebook. There she was—Olivia Zimmerman Brooks,
living in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. Right down the road from Hermann.
Olivia’s page was wide open. I could view her wall and see what
others had written and shared with her. I could also look at her
photos.

It appeared that Olivia hadn’t gone to
the University of Minnesota or any college for that matter. The
autumn after she graduated from Hermann High School, she married
Ronnie Brooks. The following summer there were pictures of her and
Ronnie and a baby. Two more babies followed, one each
year.

One photo album on her Facebook page
was labeled “High School Reunion.” It was dated last year. Olivia
was a little more full-figured than her high school graduation
photo. There was also a picture of four women, arms around each
other with their right foot pointed out. The next picture was
identically posed only there were five girls in prom dresses. These
looked like some of the girls in the cheerleader pictures from the
yearbook. I noted the names: Olivia Zimmerman, Whitney Wentworth,
and Kimberly Adler. A curvaceous, stunning young woman with long
blond hair that swooped across her face, covering one eye was
identified as Gina Lang. On the far right was a slim girl with long
straight hair the color of café au lait looking at her feet. She
was pegged as Pamela Frey. Her bangs almost covered her eyes. She
wasn’t smiling.

Looking through the Facebook list of
Olivia’s friends, I found Whitney and Kimberly. I noticed that
Whitney and Kimberly used their high school graduation pictures for
their main pictures on Facebook. Pamela Frey wasn’t on
Facebook.

Back with the yearbook, I searched for
Gina Lang. When I found her name, I saw there was no picture to go
with the name, just the outline of a female head. I guessed she
hadn’t had senior pictures taken. I checked Olivia’s Facebook
friends list again and found Gina. Her picture looked to be recent.
She was still drop dead gorgeous but her hair was short and the
picture was a noncommercial snapshot. I clicked on her picture and
up popped her Info page—Gina Lang Cooper. Under “relationship
status”, she had written: divorced.

I glanced at the clock and realized I
only had a half hour until Decker would be picking me up. I pulled
off my shirt on the way to the shower, thinking about what I wanted
to wear to a country western bar.

7

Decker rang the doorbell just as I was
running the brush through my hair for a final time. He was always
prompt, unless he was called out on an emergency. I opened the door
and greeted him with a hug and kiss.

“Wow, Babe, you look terrific!” he
said, looking me up and down, approving of my skintight blue jeans
and magenta low-cut V-neck sweater. I knew that would get his
attention. He captured me in his arms and said, “Hey, maybe we
could postpone dinner for a while. Are you in a hurry?” He was
moving me backwards across the living room toward the
bedroom.

“Not so fast, big guy. I’m starved.” I
laughed, pushing on his chest to shove him away.

“Okay, okay. Let’s go get a burger and
check out the Cozy Corner.”

Arms around each other, we walked out
to Decker’s big black Dodge Ram.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said. “I’m
on call tonight. Maybe we should take separate cars so you won’t
get stranded if I get a call.”

“Good idea. I sure don’t want to go
with you to any crime scene. Is there really that much going on in
this county?”

“It’s Homecoming weekend. Hard to say
what could happen. Most kids today get together and rent a limo,
but there are those who think drinking and driving accidents will
never happen to them. Then there are the kids who just hang around
looking for trouble.”