Things were going well with the expansion, the business was booming, and they thought they could use a handyman to clean up the bakery, the slaughterhouse, lift the heavy items like flower sacks and pork products, deliver baked goods, and help out as needed. That’s where I came in. I had lost my job at the factory and wasn’t having any success finding a new position. The economy was bad and industries had shipped most of the factory jobs to China. I had to work and this was all I could find.
The new job was going well at first, I was getting along well with the ladies and they seemed happy with me. It was more labor than I was used to but I had to become accustomed to hard labor again.
Monday morning I showed up and Jean said I needed to go over to the slaughterhouse and see Jan. I walked over across the road and went in the door. Jan jumped up and shrieked as I walked in the door.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“A... we need you to dispose of these two boxes of meat,” Jan said. “The butchers will be here in about fifteen minutes,” I said. “This meat isn’t the regular pork and we don’t want the butchers to get it mixed in with the other pork.”
“What are you saying Jan?” I asked.
“This isn’t pork.”
“What is it Jan?”
“It’s Frank,” she answered.
“Frank the loan officer from the bank?”
“Yes he showed up last night and was wanting to collect more than the loan payment. He was drunk and was pawing at Jean when I walked in to help in the kitchen. He said it would be a nice going away present to have both ladies before leaving on vacation. He lunged at me and I hit him with the rolling pin I had in my hand. He never got up. We didn’t know what to do, so we hauled him over here and ground him up.”
“What did you do with his car?” I inquired.
“Drove it to the airport and parked it in long term parking,” Jan answered.
“He’s beginning to smell really bad; why didn’t you put him in the freezer?”
“This is our first murder; we’re not very accomplished at it yet.”
“Well we can’t put him into the freezer now and it’s too late to get him out without being seen. I’ll haul him up into the attic ventilator.”
“Is that the best place to store him?”
“I don’t know; this is my first murder too. We only have a minute to get it done.” I hauled both boxes up into the attic and stumbled back down the ladder, exhausted, sweating and out of breath. Just then the two butchers walked in the door, looking at me all sweating, breathing heavily and Jan with a strange look on her face. Those two have dirty minds.
I walked out and across the road to the bakery. There was an old man getting out of his car with his nose up in the air sniffing, “what is that smell?” he asked.
Oh my goodness! The smell wasn’t noticeable over in the slaughterhouse, but the strong exhaust fans blew it out of the roof into the air and the wind was sending it right across the street. Worst of all, the health inspector was due here in an hour or so. He would want to know where such a foul smell was emanating from. I told the old man that there was a pig over there that didn’t get into the cooler fast enough.
The old man picked out some sweet rolls and left with his handkerchief covering his nose. I walked to the back of the bakery and Jean handed me a small bakery box and told me, “put this with the rest of the pig across the street.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s the pig’s ears,” she said.
Reeling backward I gasped: “how am I going to put this with the rest of the carcass?”
“Don’t ask me,” Jean replied; “where did you put the rest of the pig?”
“Up in the attic ventilator, but the butchers might wonder why I’m going up there now, besides, the smell is wafting across the road and the health inspector will be here shortly.”
“Why did you put it up there?”
“I’m not experienced at this sort of thing either,” I answered.
“Well what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know;” I replied. “This is still my first time. What do you suggest?”
“Should we be ready to add the health inspector to the cargo up in the attic?” Jean mused.
“And just how many are you ready to do in?” I asked.
“However many it takes,” she answered.
I wondered what had I gotten myself into? I should have walked out of the slaughterhouse and called 911 the first thing that morning.
The health inspector arrived half an hour later and he started out of his car with his nose to the air. He didn't know what it was, but he knew immediately something was rotten in Denmark. He didn’t even walk into the bakery but went straight across the road to the slaughterhouse and began his search. He ordered the butchers outside so he could do his inspection. I told them Jean said they could just go on to an early lunch. They were happy. Mister health inspector went all through the shop looking and sniffing but came up blank. “Something’s rotten here; I know it,” he said. “And I’ll find it!”
He proceeded to circle the shop again looking and sniffing a second time and then stopped, looking at the ladder up to the attic ventilator. He began his climb. I panicked and looked around the shop, grabbed a pipe wrench from the tool cabinet and followed him up the ladder. He was just past the first ventilator duct, looking back at me asking, “what the hell are these boxes of ground meat doing up here instead of down in the cooler or the freezer?”
“What boxes of ground meat?” I asked.
“These,” he replied as he turned to point them out to me.
I pasted him with a 16-inch monkey wrench. His unconscious body hit the attic floor. Whack, whack, an extra two blows to the noggin ensured he didn’t wake up with just a really bad headache. Now I was not only an accessory to murder, I was a perpetrator too. What the hell did I get myself into now?
I went back across the road and I could see Jan and Jean both staring out the bakery windows. They both had an ashen complexion with jaws slacken and pupils dilated. “Where’s the health inspector?” Jan asked.
“He’s with the loan officer,” I answered.
“Why is he there and you here?” Jean questioned.
“He found the pig in the boxes and wanted to know what was going on with the meat up in the attic and not the cooler. I answered him with the monkey wrench. It was all I could think to do.”
“Well,” Jean said: “what are we going to do now?”
“Tell the butchers we got a citation from the inspector and send them home. We’ll grind the inspector up like you did the loan officer, box him up and wait until dark to haul the two of them out to the farm; and then we’ll dig a hole behind the barn, stuff them in it and cover them with lime, then move the manure pile on top of that.” I said.
“Will that work?” Jan wondered.
“Have you got a better idea?” I asked.
“No, I guess not,” she answered.
Everything went as planned that afternoon and evening. It was amazingly simple and frightening in its own right. Was it that simple to kill two people and get away with it? The answer was soon to come.
A week later sheriff’s detective Mills came walking through the door of the bakery. “Are you two ladies Jan Mixer and Jean Pelter?
” “I’m Jean and this is Jan,” Jean answered.
“I’m looking for any leads I can find concerning a missing health inspector Chris Handle. He was last seen the morning of the 23rd when he was supposed to be here making an inspection. Did he show up here?”
“Yes,” Jean replied; “he was here and left an hour later.”
“Did he mention where he was going next?”
“No, we didn’t speak much at all,” Jean answered.
“Ok I’m going across the street to talk to your butchers for a moment and I’ll be on my way.” Mills walked across the road and went into the slaughterhouse. “Either of you two remember seeing mister Handle, the health inspector here on the 23rd?”
The butchers looked at each other and Juan answered: “he was here I think that day, but we were sent to lunch early and then when we got back we were sent home because of the health violation he gave the ladies.”
“What was the violation for?” Mills asked.
“I don’t know,” Juan replied.
“Thanks,” Mills said as he walked out the door. He walked back across the road and into the bakery shop. “Ladies, what was the citation that Mister Handle gave you?”
Both Jan and Jean looked at each other, both getting more pallid by the second.
“It was for a rotten smell he thought he detected, but he never found anything,” I answered.
“And who might you be?” Mills asked.
“Bill ” I answered. “Do you work here?”
“Yes I do; I’m a handyman here.”
“Did you speak with Mister Handle on the 23rd?”
“Yes, I escorted him around the slaughterhouse.”
“Did he say anything to you about his plans after he left here?”
“No, he did not,” I answered.
“We found his car over on highway 116 about six miles from here. He was scheduled to go back to town, but that was out of his way. Any idea where he was going?” Mills asked.
“No idea at all,” I replied.
“Do you have that citation ladies?”
Jean swallowed and answered: “yes somewhere but I’ll have to look for it.”
“You do that,” Mills suggested. “Thanks for the information and I’ll be back.” He got into his car and sat there writing some notes.
“What are we going to do,” Jean asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “This is still my first murder.” That night I went home and started poking around the Internet, looking for something, anything I could find about anarchists and their doings or soldier of fortune sites. I found a site called http://www.i.do.anything.for.money.com. It had a cookbook list of services performed and at the bottom it gave a phone number to call for things not on the list. I called the number and arranged for a meeting. I didn’t know if this was a legitimate person I was dealing with or an undercover cop. I went for the meeting the next day and saw this stranger with a Boston baseball hat at a coffee shop in Saint Louis. Something didn’t seem right about him, probably because I wasn’t used to picking out scumbags from undercover cops, so we talked in generalizations about how one would exit a bad situation and never be seen again. He had he said a complete menu of how and where to go for a fee, depending on where a person wanted to disappear to. He then asked me where I wanted to go. I hesitated, and then decided I didn’t like the situation and just told him I would get back with him in a few days. He pressed for a phone number or a place he could get a hold of me, but I refused any more information and left. I felt sure he was a cop or at least a possible blackmailer. It was a long trip back home, but it gave me time to think about where we were and what we needed to do to fix our situation.
I got a call from an old friend that night. He asked me what I had done. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Well some cop named Mills was asking me about you today,” he answered.
“What was he asking?”
“Well just what did I know about you and if you had ever been in trouble, things like that.”
“It’s probably nothing,” I said. “Don’t really have any idea why some cop would be asking about me.” We finished our conversation and I called Jean. “Jean, we need to talk, but not on the phone,” I urged.
“Why do we need to talk?” she asked.
“Just meet me down by the Dairy Queen in 10 minutes.”
I hung up the phone and left the house. A car started up and seemed to follow me at a distance until I turned into the Dairy Queen lot. Jean drove in about five minutes later. “Why did you say that we needed to talk and not over the phone, are you getting all spooked on me?”
“Things are happening, I know, but I can’t really be sure of what they are. I talked to a guy in Saint Louis about ways to disappear, but he seemed not right. I got a call from a friend about Mills asking questions about me and just now a car followed me all the way down here.
’They could have a tap on all of our phones; I don’t know.”
“Could they know what we did?” She asked.
“I think they do, but they don’t have enough evidence to arrest us or they would have done it by now.”
“What do we do?” Jean asked.
“I think we gather what money we can and get out of town.”
“They’ll know for sure if we all skip town,” Jean said.
“If we wait, Mills will figure it out sooner or later,” I conceded.
“I just don’t know,” Jean argued.
“Let’s go to the bank in the morning, all at different times, and take out most of our money. If anyone asks, we’re going on a vacation.”
“Ok, but I think you’re imagining things Bill.”
“I hope so, Jean.”
The next morning I went by the bank and took out most of the money I had before I went to work. Jean left when I got there and she withdrew the majority of her funds. The teller asked what was going on? Jean answered: “Just going on a vacation,” and left the building. She glanced back and saw the teller pick up her phone. Jan waited for another hour before she went to the bank. When she asked for her savings the teller told her she would have to talk to the manager. Jan walked over to the manager’s office and went inside. “Hi Mike, what’s going on with my account?” Jan asked.
“A… We received a court order this morning to freeze your account. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“Well what’s the reason,” Jan asked.
“Don’t know,” Mike replied. “Sorry Jan.”
Jan left the bank and raced back to the shop. There was a sheriff’s car sitting a couple of hundred yards down the road when she walked in the door. “They wouldn’t give me my money!” she shrieked. “And there’s a sheriff car just down the road. They know we did it. They’re going to arrest us for sure! What do we do now?”
“We walk out the back door, climb into my truck and calmly drive down the alley and then out of town,” I answered. We started to do that and by the time we were half way down the alley, the sheriff’s car was screeching tires and headed our direction.
Jan looked in the side mirror and said: “he’s gaining on us fast!”
We made a turn onto another road and I gunned the truck for top speed. The sheriff car had much more horsepower than my old truck and was rapidly closing on us. I told the ladies to count three and brace themselves for impact. They did and I stood on my brakes. The still accelerating sheriff car was on us in a fraction of a second and slammed into the back bumper of the truck, pushing the front end of the car back into the tires and blowing them out. I struggled for control of the now maimed old truck, got her straightened out and headed on down the road. The sheriff car was turned sideways in the road with steam spewing out from under the hood. We turned off down an old county road about two miles further and saw another old pickup truck sitting there some distance from a fishing hole. “Jump out Jan and see if the keys are in it.” They were so she fired it up and took off, we followed her for a half-mile and I drove my truck off the road into the woods far enough from the road so it wouldn’t be found for hours or hopefully days.
We’re living in New York these days. We’ve gained a lot of experience in the last three years and have a nice little operation. We’re in the disposal business now. A broker calls us when clients need or want a problem solved and we make the problem go away, forever. These days it’s a very lucrative occupation. I owe it all to the factory shutdown. They gave me lemons and I made lemonade.
The End.
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