Julie Seedorf - Fuschia Minnesota 01 - Granny Hooks A Crook Read online

  Granny Hooks a Crook

  A Fuchsia Minnesota Mystery

  by

  Julie Seedorf

  I dedicate this book to my grandchildren, Abby, Brady, Maggie and Jake who helped me find the forgotten child hidden inside of me and taught me how to play and dream again. Seeing the world anew through a child’s eyes is the best inspiration of all.

  Chapter One

  Granny didn’t always like to get up in the morning. It seemed a waste of a good bed to get out of it so early in the morning. First, Granny would wallow in the warmth. She would squirm a little and enjoy the softness of the mattress. Granny would then open one eye to see if it was light yet. If it appeared that the sun was up, she would open the other eye very slowly, not wanting to get too excited. Getting up too fast always made her head spin.

  Granny would then stick her big toe out of the blanket, trying to determine the weather. Her big toe was a good barometer. If it started turning blue, she knew it was cold and her toe was going to throb on and off for the day. If it stayed red, Granny knew that it would be a good day for her flip flops, even though she wasn’t supposed to be wearing them. Her kids harassed her about wearing her flip flops, something about not walking properly and being at risk of falling. She couldn’t make them understand that at her age she was always at risk for falling, so why not live dangerously in her flip flops.

  Granny always looked around first before attempting the final lift out of her bed. She had to make sure there weren’t any kids or grandkids visiting before she threw off the covers. At her age it was easy to forget if her kids and grandkids had stayed over. Occasionally, she forgot they were there even before she climbed into bed. It didn’t bother her that her memory was a little foggy. It was a good excuse to use when she needed to get out of something she didn’t want to do, or if she got caught somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.

  Usually, if Granny remembered before she went to bed that her kids and grandkids stayed over, she would dress in her granny gown pajamas. It was what they expected of someone her age and she didn’t want to ruin their expectations. But when Granny was by herself, she occasionally slept in the nude and occasionally she wore her hot pink, silk shortie nightgown with red hearts on it. Or she might wear her purple leather PJ’s that stated Sexy Granny and I Know It.

  Granny’s secret PJ’s always made her smile before she went to bed. It made the creaky body and the saggy skin feel better. She still felt like that sexy granny inside. Her mind never did keep up with her body.

  There were times her kids would visit unexpectedly in the morning and have breakfast waiting for Granny when she stumbled into the kitchen from her warm bed. She could see the horror on their faces if they caught her in anything other than her granny pajamas. She would be sent to the wrinkle farm faster than she could lose her flip flops.

  Granny peered down the hall and listened carefully to see if there were live people in her house. She took the time to wonder what would happen if her kids and grandkids knew about her secret life. What would they do if they knew about her undercover work? Granny shuddered at the thought, decided she had the house to herself so she was safe in her purple leather and flip-flops and shuffled down the hallway to the kitchen.

  Granny loved her cheery kitchen. She had painted it bright yellow when she had moved in all those years ago after her husband had died. With three children to raise, Granny felt yellow was the only color that could lift her spirits and remind her that in spite of the responsibility that was now hers, the sun would shine again in their lives.

  The kitchen, located at the front of the house, had large windows that looked out onto the neighborhood. It was an old house located on the side of the block that was original to Fuchsia. When Granny first saw the house, she knew it had to be hers, with its large lawn and not too many neighbors close by. When the new housing started to go up across the street a few years later, she was worried that her privacy was going to be corrupted. What she found out was that having neighbors close by added some spice to her life because of their quirkiness.

  Granny would have liked to change the outside of the house a little more. It was very respectfully painted a light gray with white trim. The ginger board at its peaks was a darker shade of gray outlined in white. The white porch on the front of the house was adorned with white wicker furniture along with a comfy white wooden swing hanging from its ceiling.

  Granny had thought about painting the outside of the house when she first moved in to town in Fuchsia. Granny had toyed with the idea of painting it the color fuchsia to honor the town and topping the house off with purple trim. Older Victorian homes used to be more dramatic in color than boring gray, but Granny decided to leave it alone as her kids still needed to be raised and she had promised her dear, departed, dead husband to raise them up in the way they should go and so she did. Her only concession was to make sure that the porch was lined with potted Fuchsias in the summertime and colored lights in the wintertime. She also, on a whim, put a life-sized statue of the cartoon character Maxine outside her door. Maxine was her idol and she hoped to live up to Maxine’s wit and uniqueness.

  The first thing Granny did when she reached the kitchen was to pull out her binoculars and head to the window. Her neighbor Mavis was old and someone needed to check to see if she had kicked the bucket during the night. Mavis had a thing about shades on her windows. She didn’t like them. Mavis claimed she didn’t have anything to hide but Granny wondered if she just liked people watching her. Granny asked Mavis about that once and Mavis told her she had always wanted to be in a reality show on TV and this was the closest she was ever going to get to it.

  The problem with Mavis not having shades on her window was that it was not easy to check on her. Sally, down the street, would pull her shade up in the morning so Granny knew she was ok. George, on the other end of the street, hung a pair of boxer shorts on the pole outside his door so Granny knew he was still alive and kicking. But Mavis, living straight across the street from Granny refused to do that, so Granny had to get out her binoculars and peer into Mavis’s window to see if she could see Mavis moving around.

  Granny secretly thought Mavis enjoyed this and it was a pretend part of Mavis’s reality fantasy, because every time Granny would find Mavis, it would seem Mavis was posing or acting out for the binoculars.

  Yep, there she was. It was Mavis all right, all in her glory, in her mind-induced reality show. Mavis was hanging from the chandelier with one hand and waving to Granny with the other. If Mavis’s children could see her now they would certainly think Mavis was losing her marbles. What they didn’t know was that Mavis was always a little daring, a quirk she had kept hidden from her family. George’s boxer shorts were hung on the pole. Today’s shorts were covered with hearts. Granny decided she didn’t want to know what that might mean. Sally had her shade pulled up. All was fine with her neighbors.

  Granny proceeded on to her next task.

  Chapter Two

  Fish needed to be fed. Fish was the cat Granny rescued from a fish tank at the pet store. She happened to be walking by the fish tank at the pet store when she felt water hit her face. Looking closer at the tank, she found a huge alley cat floundering in the fish tank. When Granny reached in to save him, he thanked her by tattooing her arm red with his claws. Granny then and there knew that this cat was the cat for her.

  Granny took the cat to the employees to purchase him and the employees informed her that this cat was free. He didn’t belong to the pet store. He snuck in every day and tried to fish out the fish from the fish tank. Occasionally, he would crawl in an
d have to be rescued. They would be glad to be rid of him. Granny promptly named him Fish and took him home.

  Fish had a personality of his own. He was feisty, lovable and was always bringing a new and unique present home for Granny to see. One night he thought Granny needed a new bra. Fish was aware of her nighttime attire. Who would have thought a cat could notice what someone wore. Fish, in his wandering, brought Granny home a hot pink, polka dot, padded bra. The only problem was that it was a 40DD. Granny could have only wished for those kinds of assets.

  Fish was not your average looking hulk of an alley cat. Somewhere along the way, Fish had lost part of his tail, part of one of his ears and part of a paw. He was an unusual looking guy and when he pose, he looked as if he’d been out on an all night alley catter binge. He always looked a little tipsy.

  Fish used the cat door most nights to wander around the town. Granny didn’t worry about him. Before she left for her day, she would leave his food in his bowl and when she got home Fish would be waiting for her along with the latest present he had acquired for Granny.

  As Granny put the food in the dish, she spied some leftover chocolate truffles that she had quickly hid underneath Fish’s water bowl one evening when her eldest daughter had dropped in unexpectedly just as Granny was going to savor a delicious bite of the truffles for her dinner.

  Granny lifted the bowl sneakily so Fish wouldn’t see that there were chocolates within his reach. For some reason, Fish could sniff out anything but chocolate so Granny’s hiding place was safe, not only from Fish, but from anyone else who might be snooping around. She grabbed the chocolate, warmed her coffee from the day before, dropped two sugar cubes in the coffee for energy and plopped into a chair by the window so she could run surveillance of the neighborhood before she left for her other creative endeavors.

  Yes, life was good. Who would have thought that she, Hermiony Vidalia Criony Fiddlestadt, would finally have her life to herself. Granny looked down at her flip flops and fingered the words Sexy Granny and I Know It on the front of her PJ’s as she became lost in thought.

  “Hermiony, Hermiony” her mother used to call. Just when Hermiony was making progress in her quest to hunt down the thief who kept stealing her apples out of the hiding place in her tree in her parent’s orchard. Her mother would call and Hermiony would have to go back to her boring homework and her boring chores around the house. “Hermiony,” her mother would chastise her, “look at how you are dressed. A proper lady doesn’t dress like a hooligan and run around out in the woods making up stories about someone stealing the apples out of our orchard.” Hermiony didn’t think her patched jeans and old t-shirt that she borrowed from her brothers would qualify as church dress but how could she climb trees and wade in the crick if she wore shoes and girl clothes all the time.

  Hermiony would always answer, “Yes, mother.” Then Hermiony would proceed to do as her mother said. As she got older, Hermiony would forget about her orchard adventures and settle into doing what her parents expected her to do. But before she became the good daughter Hermiony, she fixed the apple orchard thief. She didn’t say, “I told you so” to her parents when they found Herman Picnic at the bottom of an apple tree one morning, right next to the wagon filled with the apples he had stolen the night before. Her mother and father couldn’t figure out how the ground underneath one of the wagon wheels had sunk so fast that it threw Herman onto the ground beneath the tree with a broken leg so he couldn’t get away when he was trying to abscond with the apples.

  Granny smiled now as she was remembering the confusion on all the faces of the adults. They never did find the shovels she and her brothers had used to make the trap. She had had to blackmail her brothers into helping her but it was a small price for her brothers to pay so their parents wouldn’t find out that they had been the ones who had rigged the water bucket to fall on Johnny Hedges’ head at the Halloween dance that year.

  No one had called Granny, Hermiony, in a long time. Her real name was another one of Granny’s secrets. She could still hear the kids teasing her with the name “Hermiony Crybaby” over and over again. Those same teasers found snakes living in their lockers at school. No one would suspect Hermiony, since she had to act like the perfect lady that her parents wanted her to be and she pulled off the charade well. In fact, far from hooligan clothes, Hermiony was always the most put together dresser in the class. Why she was even voted best dressed girl her senior year in high school. Hermiony was also voted most likely to succeed as a designer in the fashion world, when she told everyone that being a fashion designer was a lifelong dream. Secretly, she thought she should design for Risque Secrets of the Bedroom fashion magazine but that wouldn’t have been “proper.”

  Hermiony remembered asking her mother, “Why did you name me Hermiony, especially with a last name like Criony?” Her mother always replied, “I was in a rhyming phrase. I love to make up rhymes.” Granny knew her mother stayed in that stage for a while because her brother was named Briony Criony. Then along came her younger brother Abraham. Neither she nor Briany could figure that one out so they had to ask their mom. “What happened to the rhymes?

  “I fell in love with history. All of a sudden I loved Abraham Lincoln. I went from rhyme to time, history time and I didn’t care if it was a rhyme.” Her mother answered them with a far off look in her eyes. All Hermiony and Briany could do was roll their eyes and hope adulthood came soon so they could change their names.

  Granny savored the last bit of chocolate as she came out of her reverie. She slurped down the left over coffee and went back to her bedroom to throw on some clothes for the day. She grabbed her Granny sweater, made a quick jump into her double knit polyester skirt, put on her hose stockings, tossed off her flip flops and put on her shoes and sprinted to the living room as exercise to loosen up before she became her undercover persona.

  Granny glanced around her home to make sure she hadn’t left any of her night clothes out in case her kids stopped by and let themselves in with their keys. Maybe it was time to take their keys away.

  Granny grabbed her umbrella, put on her hat, pulled down the hose on her legs so she looked the way old ladies were expected to look, pulled out strands on her hair under her hat and locked the door on her way out.

  Granny walked across the lawn and opened her garage door. She paused as she opened the door to let her eyes roam around the neighborhood, making sure no one was tinkering with any of the garbage that was sitting on the street waiting to be collected by Gorgonzo Garbage. She put one foot into her garage and stopped. Her garage was empty. There was no red 1957 Chevy Corvette convertible standing in front of her. Where had she left her car this time? It wasn’t unusual for Granny to misplace her convertible. Downtown Fuchsia wasn’t too far away, just a mile or two as the crows flies, and if she was deep in thought she would forget that she drove to town. There were times she would forget that she owned a red 1957 Chevy Corvette. It was part of Granny’s foggy memory. She didn’t worry about it. If she did start to worry she would forget what she was worrying about.

  Granny hurried out of the garage. She would be late for work if she didn’t step it up. It was lucky Granny wore her red, sparkly, high top tennis shoes. They seemed to help her walk faster and if she got tired, she would use her umbrella as a cane to lean on.

  Granny always enjoyed a good walk into town. Usually she would take the time to sing a song to Mrs. Shrill’s hound, Baskerville, down the way, along Granny’s trek into town. Baskerville always joined in on the chorus.

  Mrs. Shrill would come out of her house and give Granny one of those “tut, tut, tuts” and wag her finger at Granny before she dragged Baskerville into the house. Granny would skip on down the street laughing.

  Baskerville was one big dog. He was a mix between a bloodhound and a mastiff. He had the most soulful, bloodshot eyes that could melt anyone’s heart with one look, except Mrs. Shrills. His large Mastiff nose and head seemed a little off with his long dangly ears. His howls could be heard
all across town when he was unhappy. Granny had often thought of sneaking him away one night and having him howl in the cemetery behind her house as she was telling ghost stories to the kids that came to her house on Halloween. She would really hear the “tut, tut, tuts“ from Mrs. Shrill then. Granny smiled her mischievous grin as she thought of all the ruckus that would cause.

  While Granny would skip, some of the neighbor kids would join her. They couldn’t understand how someone as old as Granny could still skip.

  As Granny strolled down the street, she took notice of the cracks in the sidewalk, reciting to herself the old childhood ditty, “Step on a crack you break your mothers back.” Some of the sidewalks in Fuchsia were old and crumbly. No one seemed to care. Everyone was more careful when they walked. Fuchsia natives didn’t worry about little things like crumbly sidewalks. The little pebbles from the sidewalks made great skipping stones at the town pond.

  Granny rounded the corner onto Main Street. Granny loved the quaint sight of the buildings on the Main Street of Fuchsia. Like the brightness of the town’s name, the buildings on Main Street had a uniqueness all their own. Where other cities were bowing to conformity, Fuchsia valued creativity when it came to their businesses and the buildings that housed those businesses. No siree, you wouldn’t find those boring metal awnings and windows put in older buildings that didn’t belong in older buildings. People in Fuchsia didn’t care if Main Street had round, curved or large windows. They did care if a large window was made smaller by boards and other contraption things that ruined the uniqueness and quality of the building.

  Fuchsia didn’t have any ordinances against purple buildings, pink buildings or other bright colored structures. Fuchsia was a little too large to call itself a village, but it bordered on being too unique to make it a normal, encyclopedia-defined town. The stores on main street mirrored the uniqueness of the owners of the buildings and the names of the businesses mirrored the uniqueness of the shops themselves. It had always been that way in Fuchsia.