Murder in a Small College Town (eBook)

2

Sky painters dueled far off to the north with broad sweeping strokes of foreboding, charging over land and waterway with endless changing hues, growing ever darker, and engulfing. Few really slowed their pace enough to notice, but this canvas of tomorrows, with its calm and keen, burgeoning chill, signaled a thing that was too soon coming, and breathing hard, as if it were a living entity, it cared not if mountains, forests, towns or irreverent clowns of defiance got in its way—it was coming.

Trumpeting weather stations about the country announced that the developing storm front would most likely channel through the Dakotas then swing easterly through Iowa to lower Illinois, humping the Ohio valley on its way toward the New England coast and out to sea. For outlying areas it was just a yawn and a go-about-business-as-usual stroll, but the Alberta Clipper had changed its course and crept into the night before last on velvet paws. Silently at first, as if stalking some hapless truant, it menacingly picked up its pace with every heaving breath and overtook an unsuspecting sun climbing to the horizon. Suddenly leaping, claws extended, it had sprung into a full gale, and by noon you could tell it was just warming up as the mercury headed south and the wind churned into overdrive. By noon the small Upper Midwestern college town was engulfed in two feet of icy, blinding snow. The sun had fallen in full retreat behind swirls of ghostly white that obscured the deserted shops and byways. By nightfall only the hoods of surrendered cars could be seen; all else was barren grey and dark—and cold. The sun would not be seen for three days hence. Only a very few of the more resolute watering holes, never loathsome for the greenback, would be found daring the elements and providing fixes for the needy, the lonely, and mirthful. By 3 a.m. the following morning, only the polar winds and the forsaken were left howling in the dark.

From the far side of a now barren market square, an orphaned illumination flickered intermittently behind an endless vertical of snow and ice. Now you’d see it, then you wouldn’t—a predawn moment as this day melted into night shades, just as it began. Inside, the to and fro rhythm of a listless mop, swaying lazily in small arcs over the soil laden, terrazzo floor, dulled and cocooned his senses into a monotonous nothingness; a kaleidoscopic dance from nonsense to sensibility and back again. A bucket of hot, soapy water steamed reverently with an air of indifference, like a sentinel standing watch over some long forgotten historical testament.

Chance Bigalow Harbor, numb and blurry eyed, was in effect, suspended in a wasteland, alone with only the faint sensation of the mop’s regimental waltz. He leaned wearily against its handle and closed his eyes to a wave of uneasiness. But for fleeting consciousness, and the irrepressible cold shiver that ran down his back, he was oblivious to his yesterdays and the premonitions of tomorrows—a state that encapsulated him from the faint tapping at the back door, almost inaudible under the incessant drone of the neon lights behind the bar. It went unheeded—the wind perhaps? The air hung heavy with the acrid smell of stale cigarettes and fermenting beer, remnants of an evening filled with gaiety and frivolity. The soft but anxious, almost apologetic, rapping broke the silence, as if the hands of time had suddenly broken free of constraint.

“Dammit! Just what I need!” he groaned. He cursed Mike ‘The Handicapper’ for his “one more for the road” persistence last night at the Slippery Eel, as he reluctantly laid the mop against the pool table. He checked his watch. It was 6:05 a.m. He had little doubt as to who it was. They must have found some change, he reasoned, perhaps from some feel sorry for ya schmuck, or perhaps, it was a gift from some frozen doorstep, carelessly dropped by one of last night’s merry makers.

He struggled to keep the cumbersome backdoor from bowling him over, as a savage wind slapped him mercilessly in the face, chilling him instantly to the bone. “Come in! Come in! Quick! Come in!” he barked, with an aroused passion that seemed almost equal to nature’s raw indignation. Having elbowed their way through the doorway, the two snow encrusted ragamuffins stood stiff as corpses, looking awkwardly at the doorman’s exasperated expression, now embroidered in white.

“What the hell are you two doing out in this weather? You should get yourselves down to the city shelter,” he growled, wiping the snow from his face with his sleeve.

Looking at them huddled together, shivering, looking anxiously about to see if there were any surprises lurking about, his temperament mellowed. “It’s a tad cool out there, isn’t it, fellas?”

They smiled wide, tooth gaped, smiles; their heads nodding in agreement like dashboard plastic dolls. Stevie Good Boy’s hand was outstretched with several coins glistening beneath the faint silvery-blue sheen cast from the neon glow emanating from the cooler on his right. Stevie Good Boy is what those that frequented the local taverns called him; a name Stevie had obligingly perked up to. To the rest of the city he was an unknown; a shadow; a specter they preferred to ignore.

“Come in, guys. Grab a stool and warm up for a bit, while I finish cleaning things up.”

Hindered by a slight hitch in his right hip, Stevie Good Boy limped slowly toward the bar, peering cautiously about from under a soiled, caved-in, brown felt fedora. His clothes, tattered remnants from a bygone era, were draped loosely over his frame as though his body had shrunk under their weight, and when he moved, he emitted a distinctive whistling swish-swish sound, as though he was wading through a field of tall, brittle grass.

They stopped at the neon lit cooler that caged several aged lemons and limes,—faded condiments that were consigned to retirement the very moment they were purchased, for this wasn’t a bar that lent itself to such sophistications—and having taken inventory of the assorted carryouts, and comparing his coinage with the prices marked on the bottles, Stevie turned away sorrowfully, wiped his runny nose with the back of his gnarled hand, and moved on.

Lucky huddled timidly at his friend’s side, tugging persistently at his sleeve; clinging to him as though he were afraid he would slip down between the cracks in the terrazzo floor, only to be rebuffed by his more stalwart friend, who would yank his arm rudely away, the way an annoyed dandy might shun attention from a boorish, persistent pan handler. He peered nervously at Chance with quick, birdlike, darting glances; peek-a-booing, first down to the floor and then up to his friend and back again. Both sported several days stubble that shimmered silver and gray, depending how they held their head in the light, and with little imagination, one could easily picture them leaping headlong from some late night, coal fired, freight train, laboriously grinding to a halt in a steam hissing, metal grinding, car bumping moment, fleeing anxiously from an angry yardman’s waving billy. They epitomized, or what one could imagine, if there were such a thing—a King of the Road poster tribute to the nomadic rapture and glamour of the open road. That would be, of course, if they were tempered of such inner strength. But they were not. That was not in their nature. These were timid vagrants; broken men—society’s refuse; men that never felt the warmth of a woman’s embrace, the inclination to swagger, or know the camaraderie other men shared among men. They needed the familiar, the steadiness of it all. They were, however, men of endurance who survived where most others would most likely perish. They knew where the summer gardens lay, where the fruited orchards of fall swelled and where the rabbit ran. The town they hugged was generally compliant, even to their sort, thus affording them places to loiter, and on a good day, be the butt of a joke for the price of a drink. No, they would not be hooking their tendrils to any fire stoked dream down the rail, at least, not in this life time.

Both men hesitated for a moment where the floor had been freshly swabbed, carefully traversed the wetted area and made their way to the far end of the bar, near the large window that overlooked the square. Stevie climbed onto a stool and grinned smugly at Lucky who was trying to wrestle his stool closer to his friend and simultaneously climb onto its seat, and accomplishing neither, churned the affair into a comical, one man, whirling dervish. Stevie closed his eyes and released a deep ponderous sigh, as though his body had suddenly surrendered to the warmth of his surroundings. Lucky, finally seated upon his stool and apparently unfazed by his own antics, mimicked a mild, listless yawn and turned to look out the window. His body fidgeted nervously; shoulders, fingers, head, all moving at once in a twitching, discombobulated fandango. He stopped and abruptly turned toward his friend as if he had just remembered something. He nudged Stevie sharply with his elbow, to which Stevie, as if he too had suddenly remembered why they had come, catapulted his arm in Chance’s direction, revealing his soiled palm, dressed with a number of small coins. Chance leaned over from behind the bar and plucked the coins from his hand and laid them out on the bar.

“Piwa?” “You boys want a piwa?”

They turned to one another, blank faced.

“Didn’t know I could speak Polish, did you? Well actually that’s all I really know but—” He stopped suddenly upon...