The Heat is On
Mere words cannot convey the wonderful feeling of being inside the Crowne Plaza Hotel and immersing myself in an enduring envelope of heat. Wonderful, that is, after a brief period of needles lancing through my fingers and several minutes of knife points stabbing into my toes as my tortured digits returned from their state of cryogenic suspension.
“Thank god we’re only doing this for one day,” Al said as he banged his toes against the carpeted floor in an effort to restore circulation. “I can’t imagine these guys freezing their asses off every day for … how long?”
“The carnival runs twelve days,” I said. “I don’t know if they’re out in that damn truck every day, but I’m guessing at least ten.”
“Give me a sweaty day at the Aquatennial any time,” Al said.
This would be the Minneapolis Aquatennial, which occurs in August when the daytime temperatures range from eighty-five to ninety-five degrees.
“That does seem like a more appropriate time to water ski,” I said.
“It’s a more appropriate time to do anything outdoors. I swear my toes are frost-bitten from standing around on that cake of ice by the river.”
“Think about that water skier’s bare feet.”
“I’m remembering how she looked in that skin-tight rubber dry suit and thinking about more than her feet being bare.”
“A shocking statement by a married man,” I said. Al’s wife is an extremely attractive blue-eyed blonde whose figure is still svelte after giving birth to a daughter and a son.
“I’m speaking strictly as a photographer,” Al said. “I constantly try to get to the bottom of things.”
Vulcanus Rex and his Krewe ate lunch at a long table in the room where we’d met them that morning. As we ate, I was able to get a better look at their faces because they’d removed their hats and goggles, but I didn’t recognize any of them as men who’d been featured in the news.
I was seated between Grand Duke Fertilious, blond, blue-eyed, round-faced and younger than I expected, and Baron Hot Sparkus, who was older (early forties), thinner and less willing to chat up a reporter. Fertilious wanted to question me about journalistic procedures and ethics. Hot Sparkus, who I wanted to question about Lee-Ann Nordquist’s last visit to a bar, was engaged in a long conversation with Klinker, who was seated on his other side.
Our desserts were before us when I finally managed to detach myself from Fertilious and get in a word with Hot Sparkus. He was a square-faced, broad-shouldered man in his mid-thirties with bushy black eyebrows and a heavy five o’clock shadow. According to the Vulcans’ Website, Hot Sparkus was “the spark plug of the Krewe,” whatever that meant.
I had decided to take a less direct approach to questions about who was in the bar with the murdered Klondike Kate, so we talked about the Carnival in general, the role of Vulcans and, finally, about the role of Klondike Kate. Our conversation was pleasant and relaxed until I asked if he had been acquainted with the unfortunate Lee-Ann Nordquist.
Even this roundabout tactic failed. The man’s back and shoulders went rigid. “What’s Lee-Ann Nordquist got to do with your story about riding with us?” he asked.
“Nothing really, but I’m working on the murder story as well, so I’m looking for comments from people who knew her.”
“You’re sure she was murdered?”
“I don’t think she took off her coat and laid down in that frozen driveway and died all by herself. Do you?”
“Well, it seems to me that’s for the cops to determine,” said Hot Sparkus. “Why don’t you ask them who they think did what? Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a leak.”
He rose and walked off to the men’s room. When he returned to the table, he sat on the opposite side, as far from me as he could get.
I had now struck out with four members of the Krewe. The only item of interest so far was the discrepancy between the responses of the Duke of Klinker, who said he’d never met Lee-Ann, and the Grand Duke Fertilious, who told me that everybody in the Krewe knew her.
Still to be approached were Count Embrious, General Flameous, the Prince of Soot and Vulcanus Rex. I rose and was heading toward one of the men I hadn’t questioned when the Herder of the Flock announced that it was time to don cloaks, goggles and hats and hustle our buns out to the Royal Chariot. Foiled again.
“Where to this time?” I asked the Vulcan on my right as the truck roared out of the hotel garage with siren screaming.
“A big daycare center,” he replied. “Lots of little kids. It should be fun.”
“Which Krewe member are you?”
“General Flameous at your service, sir. I’m the Keeper of the Flame, which is a huge responsibility because legend has it that if the flame dies, the Fire King dies, and that would be the end of us all.”
“That is a huge responsibility. I can’t imagine the Winter Carnival without the Vulcans.”
The general smiled and nodded in agreement. “Without Vulcanus Rex to bring him down, King Boreas would rule forever and winter would never end. St. Paul truly would become another Siberia, and it would be freezing here all year round.”
“Well, take good care of that flame,” I said. “Stay out of dangerous places, like parties in rowdy bars.”
His smile disappeared. “If you’re leading into asking me if I was in O’Halloran’s the night Lee-Ann Nordquist was killed, don’t bother,” he said. “I’ve already told the cops that I wasn’t there and I don’t know who was.”
“What makes you think I was going to ask that?”
“The word was passed at lunch that you’ve been nosing around about who was in the bar that night. What’s the big deal about that, anyway?”
“I’ve been told that several Vulcans were in the bar that night. I’m working on that story and I’m wondering if any of them talked to Lee-Ann or saw anything that might be helpful in identifying the killer.”
“Like I said, I don’t know who was there and what’s more I don’t care who was there. I’m sure none of our guys had anything to do with what happened to Lee-Ann.”
“I’m not implying that they did,” I said. “As I said, I’m just wondering what, if anything, they saw.”
“Then ask the cops who questioned them,” General Flameous said. “If the cops want the press to know who was there and what they saw, the cops will tell you. You’re not going to get anything from our guys so you might as well stick to the subject at hand, which right now is a visit to the daycare center we’re parking at.” He turned his back to me and jumped off the back of the truck the second it quit rolling.
We were in front of a sprawling, two-story, red-brick house surrounded by a four-foot-high wrought-iron fence. Arranged on the snow-covered side yard was an assortment of swings, slides, and various climbing structures in every color of the rainbow. A recently fallen layer of snow clinging to these playthings had not been disturbed, which, considering that the temperature had soared to the day’s high of six degrees below zero, showed good judgment on the part of the daycare center employees.
Inside, we were greeted by about twenty screaming and giggling pre-schoolers who charged fearlessly at us, hugged us, high-fived us and generally treated us like a football team coming home after winning the Super Bowl.
I joined the Vulcans in returning the hugs and high-fives while Al shot about fifty photos. I even applied grease to a few kiddy faces and helped pass out big red-and-black metal pins with Vulcanus Rex’s face on them.
“Pin one on me,” shouted one of the young women overseeing the juvenile mayhem. She thrust out a substantial bosom, with the top two buttons of her blouse unbuttoned, as my target. I gingerly grasped the open edge of her blouse near a buttonhole and slid the pin into the cloth, hoping I wouldn’t stab too deep. Before I could move my hands away, she pressed that substantial bosom tight against my chest, wrapped her arms around me and kissed me on both cheeks. “Hail, Vulcan!” she said when she pulled her lips away.
“Hail, Vulcan!” I said with my palms still trapped against her breast. At last I was beginning to understand why men volunteered for this job.
The woman kissed me enthusiastically again, this time on the lips, and momentarily tightened her bear hug before releasing me. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “The kids just love you guys.”
“And we love them,” I said, resisting the urge to tell her what else I’d loved about this visit.
The Vulcans were moving toward the door, so I gave the woman a little goodbye wave and followed the river of red. Outside on the sidewalk, Al fell into step beside me. “Looks like you were keeping abreast of the action in there,” he said.
“Are you going to bust me for that?” I asked.
“I do have a photo of your brave frontal advance, which would be of great interest to both your city editor and your live-in lover.” He extended his camera, and in the display window I saw myself wrapped in the daycare worker’s arms with my hands obviously buried against her breasts.
“But neither Don nor Martha will ever see that photo, will they?”
“Why won’t they?”
“Because I’ll throw your camera off the back end of the fire truck if you don’t hit the delete button right now.”
“You’d have to throw me with it,” Al said.
“That’s no problem,” I said. I was three inches taller than Al, even if our poundage was roughly the same.
Al pressed the delete button. “Happy now?”
“Hit it again,” I said. I knew the first press merely brought up a message asking for confirmation of the order to delete.
He frowned and pressed delete again. “It’s a shame to lose the photographic record of such a historic act. I even had the perfect cutline in mind.”
“And what was that?” I asked.
“Staff writer Warren Mitchell becomes a titular leader of the Vulcan Krewe.”
Back in the box of the Luverne, I worked my way next to one of the two Vulcans I hadn’t quizzed. There was barely enough skin showing between his goggles and his beard for me to ascertain that he was the African-American. He told me his title was Count Embrious and said he was the Fire King’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. Before I could ask a single question, he said, “I’m not discussing Lee-Ann, any of the other Klondike Kates or anything I saw in O’Halloran’s Bar with you.”
I wondered if he realized he’d just told me that he’d been in the bar with the murdered woman. Not wishing to press my luck, I said, “I’m not going to push you on that subject. It seems like you guys have decided as a team not to answer any questions about Lee-Ann.”
“You got that right,” Embrious said. “You want answers, ask the cops.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
I felt a nudge from the other side and turned to find myself facing the only man (with the exception of Vulcanus Rex himself) I hadn’t spoken with. “I’m the Prince of Soot,” he said. “Talk to me when we get back to the hotel.”