Chasing a Blond Moon(119)

“I think seven-thirty, eight p.m., your time.”

“Where’s the body now, Les?”

“Bay Area Med in Menominee. There’ll have to be an autopsy. The roads were dry, she was thirty-nine and in good health. No reason for this.”

Service looked at the map in his head. The next city north of Cedar River was Escanaba, then Gladstone, and she had been headed south. From where? Cal Shall’s words came back to him: “The obvious is usually the right choice.” Cedar River was thirty to forty minutes south of Escanaba and Gladstone. Mary Ellen Fahrenheit had taken up with Ficorelli as much for a payback to her husband as anything else, and when Service told her that her husband was in jail, she wanted to leave him there.

Could she have found Outi Ranta? He had done so, based on what Charlie Fahrenheit had told him. Mary Ellen seemed a determined woman—but to kill someone with a gun? His gut said no. This was not the sort of crime you attached to the average person, and even less often a woman.

He called Vince Vilardo at home and Rose said he was on the back deck, working on a report. She went to fetch him.

“Grady, I was gonna call you in a little while. Ranta was definitely a homicide.”

“Have you got a time of death?”

“Temperature would indicate TOD sometime between six and seven p.m.”

The time frame was more than intriguing. If Ranta died between six and seven, that could easily put Mary Ellen Fahrenheit around Cedar River at the time of the accident. “Do you know the M.E. in Menominee County, Vince?”

“Blaize Jenner. She’s the only board-certified forensic pathologist in the U.P. right now.”

“She the cooperative type?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think you ought to be lookin’ for a date.”

“This is professional. There was a fatal accident near Cedar River last night, a woman named Mary Ellen Fahrenheit. The body is at Bay Area Med and there will be an autopsy.” Service explained what he wanted.

“Blood tox is standard,” Vince said incredulously, “why the heck do you want paraffin tests for a car wreck?”

“Please humor me, Vince. I’m in the middle of a convoluted case and I’m desperate to nail down anything.”

“Desperate, eh? Okay, I’ll do what I can. You at your office?”

He wanted to correct his friend and call the office his cell because every day he felt more and more like a prisoner.

Vince called back thirty minutes later. “Jenner will do it tomorrow, but she’ll do the paraffin today and then let us know about the tox results when they come back. You coming over for supper soon?”

“Soon. Thanks, Vince.”

Fern LeBlanc poked her head in his office. “The Secret Squirrels are outside.”

The Secret Squirrels were Egon Spurse, the outdoor reporter for Marquette’s Channel 22 (“For the latest Yooper Sports and News, Tune in The Double Deuce!”), and Mia “Midge” Private, who had an outdoor radio program at a small station in Munising. Private’s station might be tiny, but her weekly thirty minutes of anti-DNR vitriol was syndicated by tape across the U.P. She called her show “Sporting Voices,” but the only voice heard on the program was her own: angry, shrill, and filled with righteous indignation over “the gray-shirted Nazis who usurp our rights as Yoopers and Americans.”

Spurse was a bit more restrained and attempted to cover various sports and goings on in the U.P., but every program carried a two- to three-minute “DNR Report Card,” at the end of which he flashed a letter grade for the department for that week. The grade rarely got as high as C-minus.

The two often worked together and were known throughout U.P. law enforcement circles as the Secret Squirrels. Both were married—to other people—but had engaged in a not-so-secret years-long affair. The source of their well-known animus for the DNR stemmed from a time when Lisette McKower, prior to her promotion to sergeant, caught them in flagrante dilecto in a van parked by the Rock River in Alger County. Shortly thereafter, the rants against the DNR began, and every U.P. officer except one had at least once been the subject of their on-air scorn. The only exception was McKower.

Spurse was short and wide with a bushy red beard and always dressed in camo, which he strong-armed from various sporting goods stores in return for “editorial consideration.” Mia Private was not quite five feet tall, and had abnormally large breasts she displayed to maximum effect in tight blouses. She was a tiny woman, which had given her the nickname of Midge (a very tiny insect), and she had long straight black hair and looked like an aging hippie. She also had a concealed weapons permit that had been granted because of numerous alleged death threats.