A Fair to Die For (11 page)

Burke slanted his head toward Henry.

“Any thoughts, Major?”

“It is possible Sales was involved in something peculiar, if not criminal. Perhaps his fair neighbors can tell you more. After all, as my wife has said, the three of them have, at their own request, been neighbors at every fair for a number of years. Those two must have observed something of interest beyond the fact Sales’s attention to his booth was somewhat erratic.”

“Not a bad idea, and I had intended to speak with them again tomorrow anyway,” Burke said. “Okay, I guess that’s all for now, Ms. McCrite. I’m sure you’ll be here Sunday if I need to talk with you further. He turned toward Henry. “Will you be here too, Major King?”

“Definitely,” Henry said.

And with that, they were done.

As soon as they were in the truck, Henry asked, “You intended for Edie to be alone in our home?”

“Well, I didn’t like it, but what could I do? It isn’t up to Shirley to baby sit her.”

“Maybe not, but she is with Shirley. I am firmly against leaving her alone to use our house, our phone, and maybe even our computers as she wishes, so I took your house key off the ring. We’ll pick her up now, when we get your car from Shirley.”

“Okay.”

She was quiet for so long that Henry wondered if she was angry about his decision. Then she said, “You’re right, of course. But I knew I didn’t want the law enforcement people to connect us with Edie, at least not yet. I couldn’t think how else to get her out of there without Burke seeing her with you and me.

“Now, have you heard anything from Ray or the Stacks?”

“Eleanor called to say Randy’s awake and able to talk, though somewhat hampered by his bandages. I told her how well things were going at both the shop and the craft fair, and that I’d been able to keep the shop open the whole time.”

“How about Ray?”

“He did call, but had learned nothing. No name like Agent Arnold Frost in the FBI records Ray’s contact was able to access. That’s not really definitive, however. I have no idea how complete the records he was talking about are.”

“Henry, do you feel like we’re wading through mush? How on earth am I to think about Cousin Edith Embler? How far can we trust her? Well, obviously you don’t trust her, and everything’s still up in the air for me. I can’t remember a time when I’ve been more upset about, well, what I might call one of our cases. And we aren’t even in danger this time.”

“Or don’t think we are,” he said. “We still know almost nothing about Milton Sales. He could be dangerous.”

“Too true.”

He decided not to mention his concerns about what the sheriff’s department might be thinking of Carrie McCrite right now. Their background check on her would reveal she had no criminal record, but probably would tell them about some of McCrite and King’s experiences helping local police departments with investigations in areas where they were, of all things, vacationing. The deputies might think that was odd.

He could explain it easily. Where other people ignored peculiarities and events going on around them, especially if they had the scent of unpleasantness, or might interrupt planned activities, Carrie not only noticed things, she headed right into the middle of them.

His wife could probably join Sergeant Friday from the long-ago television program,
Dragnet,
in saying “Just doing my job.” Which was, as she repeatedly told him, helping people.

Caution wasn’t a word in Carrie’s vocabulary. Well, it was in his nature to be cautious, and to watch over her when she wasn’t.

“Are you at all worried about tomorrow?” he asked.

“Hmm, not really. But I’m sure glad you’re going to be with us all day.”

“Last day at the fair. Maybe Edie’s last day to connect with Milton Sales?”

“Yes, I know.” She nodded. “I know.”

Chapter Eleven
FOUR WOODEN TOYS

Roger opened the front door as soon as he heard Henry’s truck pull up. “Y’all come on in. Got supper ready. Beans and cornbread. Shirley and Edie are already eating. It ain’t fancy, but it’s fillin’.”

Carrie almost wept with gratitude. At this moment she couldn’t think of a bigger blessing than an already prepared supper of beans and cornbread. She couldn’t even manage a protest that she didn’t expect the Booths to serve them supper. She was too tired and hungry to think of anything other than a bowl of Roger’s famous bean soup.

When she turned to hang her sweater on a hook behind the truck seats, she noticed a box on the floor. It looked like one Shirley used to move things to the fair, so she picked it up, thinking Henry was returning it. They sure weren’t going to need many boxes for quilts or Cuddlys coming back here tomorrow night.

Something heavy slid across the bottom of the box. “What’s this?” she asked Henry.

“Oh, yeah. Forgot. Edie found them at the back of the booth. They’re the wood toys you bought for Jeremy and Jemima. I figured at some point you managed to connect with Sales about gifts for the twins. You left them behind when you went with Investigator Burke.”

“Oh, no! I didn’t buy them. Milton Sales left them under the counter in his booth, and the guy next to him asked me to take them to the fair office. In all the commotion, I just plain forgot. I’ll take them to the office tomorrow.”

“I seem to recall you told the investigator you went back to Sales’s booth to see if you could find toys for the twins.”

“Well, I lied. I couldn’t exactly say why I was really interested in him, could I?”

“Understood. And why don’t we carry them inside now? I’d like to see his work, and I think Shirley and Roger would, too.”

Roger said he’d clear the table after supper, but everyone insisted on carrying their own dishes to the sink for him. When he came back to take his seat, Henry was just adding the last toy, a cow, to the line-up standing on the red gingham cloth.

Shirley reached out to pull the heavy cord attached to the cow, and it rolled slowly across the table toward her. She picked it up, and said, “Whoee, these are right fancy, lots of work here. This cow must be eight inches high with the wheels. I wonder how much he’s asking for these. I’d like to buy this cow, but how can I do that, since the fella has gone missing? Guess we gotta find him, that’s all there is to it.”

She turned the cow upside down. “Lookie there, she even has a bag and teats ready for milking. I wonder how long it took him to make . . . who-eee, this is loose . . . what the dickens?”

She grabbed at the udder as it fell off and bounced to the table, leaving a large hole under the cow that was now spilling white powder.

She’d reached out to brush at the powder when Henry said, “Wait, Shirley, don’t touch that stuff.”

She jerked back, and said a barely audible, “Is it anthrax? Oh, glory. In my kitchen?”

“I’m sure it isn’t anthrax, but it could be an illegal drug.”

“Mebee it’s powdered milk and the guy is making a joke.”

“Well, let’s see.” He picked up another toy, the horse, and, after some looking and poking his fingernail into cracks, discovered the animal’s head came off, spilling more white powder. In turn he explored the chicken, which also had a removable head, and a goat, who’s solid-looking feed bucket came away from the painted grass base the animal stood on.

While Roger and Shirley, Edie and Carrie sat in stunned silence, Henry took out his cell phone, scrolled through the directory, and punched the number for the sheriff’s department.

At the end of a short conversation, he told them, “Someone will bring a drug test kit right out. He asks that we all wait here. Sorry, Shirley.”

She got to her feet. “I’d best make more coffee.”

An hour later they stood in a circle around the kitchen table, looking at the set of clear plastic drug test pouches the deputy was working with. The contents of every pouch had turned blue.

“This blue color indicates the powder in these animals doesn’t test positive for any of the drugs we normally find,” he said. “I’m guessing it’s baking soda, but the state crime lab will tell us for sure.”

Shirley went to a kitchen cabinet and came back with a plate and a familiar yellow box. She spilled some of the box’s contents on the plate.

“By golly,” Roger said, “the stuff does look exactly like our baking soda.”

The deputy, who was beginning to nest the labeled test pouches in the chain of evidence box he’d brought with him, said, “It’s not time to trust that conclusion yet. An officer will take all these samples to Little Rock tomorrow. Then we’ll know for sure what it is.”

He picked up the toy horse. “Whose animals are these? I need to take them with me.”

“They actually belong to a missing person named Milton Sales,” Carrie said, “Ask Investigator Burke about that. He knows. But for the time being, you can put me down as caretaker of the animals. What I want to know, though, is why somebody would take the trouble to hide a substance that’s possibly baking soda in a way that causes us—or anyone—to think it could be a drug like cocaine or heroin?”

“Deception. Baking soda is sure a lot cheaper than cocaine, for example. My best guess is the substitution was meant to deceive. I’ve even known poison to be substituted for a drug when malice was intended. That’s one reason we’ll send this to the crime lab. We need to know exactly what we have here.”

“Somebody is playing with fire,” Henry said.

The deputy nodded. “For sure. I don’t know how all of you got involved in this, but I’d advise caution if you have any more contact with the person owning these animals. We’ll stay in touch with Ms. McCrite and Major King, and they can keep the rest of you informed.

“I understand all of you but Mr. Booth will be at the War Eagle Craft Fair tomorrow. Ms. McCrite, I know an investigator will want to hear again how you got these animals, and how you’re involved with the man who made them. If someone from our department doesn’t contact you at the fair, they definitely will on Monday. Actually, it would probably be best if tomorrow seemed to be a normal fair day, with no one in uniform coming near you. However, I’m thinking we might have a deputy in plain clothes on guard, just in case.”

“We’re Critter Quilts and Baby Cuddlys, fourth space from the front on the right. Tent number three,” Shirley said. “Hours eight ‘til four.”

The deputy made a note as Carrie spoke up. “At least one of the exhibitors knows I had the animals. Milton Sales left them behind when he vacated his space. A man named John Harley, in the space next to Sales, said they were expensive, and he didn’t want responsibility for them. He asked me to take the toys to the fair office since he was too busy. But we were covered over with customers when I got back to our place, so I put them in the box and then forgot all about them.”

“Well, so far as he knows, you did take the toys to the office,” the deputy said.

“Thanks for doing all the dish washing,” Roger told Edie as he followed them to the door.

“I enjoy that sort of thing,” she said.

Carrie wondered how anyone could truly enjoy cleaning up an after dinner mess. She had noticed Edie asked about the location of a bathroom as soon as the deputy rang the Booth’s doorbell and, after her return, by-passed the table and busied herself at the kitchen sink, washing dishes and scrubbing the bean pot. In fact, as Carrie thought about it, there had never been an occasion for anyone to introduce Edie. The deputy may have even thought she was household help.

Coincidence? She doubted it. But she decided not to mention her observations while the two of them made the short drive home in her car.

“It seems unproductive to have this rental car just sitting here,” Edie said when Carrie pulled into the garage. “I think I’ll drive myself to the fair tomorrow. Are you going to pick up Shirley like you did today?”

”Yes, and there’ll be plenty of room for you going and coming. I’m to bring back left-over stock, but we won’t have much of that. Henry is driving separately in his truck. That way he can help haul things back to Shirley’s, since we won’t have Eleanor’s van like we did when we set up. Roger is coming right before closing. He’ll help take the display racks and backdrop apart and load those in the trucks.”

“I’d really rather drive myself, Carrie. I’m used to being independent. I’ll meet you at the fair before opening, and I can help haul things back at the end of the day.”

“You aren’t concerned about those two guys who’ve been looking for you?”

“Well yes, assuming they haven’t given up and left the area. But in any case they haven’t seen this car as far as I know. I can change again if I get worried.”

“Okay, but you don’t have a pass for the exhibitor parking.”

“It won’t matter, will it? I’ll be there early enough that I can easily find a good place in the regular lot.”

Though Henry moved his truck to let Edie out before 6:30 on Sunday morning and she left immediately, saying she’d get breakfast out, she hadn’t arrived at Critter Quilts and Cuddlys by 9:30. Fair attendance was lighter than it had been the day before, so Shirley and Carrie could easily handle sales with a little help from Henry, who wrote tickets and took payments when they had busy spurts. Nevertheless, Carrie kept looking at her watch. Edie had said nothing about being late. She’d even mentioned she’d be there early enough to find a good parking place in the visitors’ lot.

“I’m worried about Edie,” she said to Shirley and Henry during a quiet moment. “I wonder if she decided to run an errand, or something, and it’s taking longer than she thought it would.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Shirley said. “Otherwise, why drive herself? Seems dumb, since she could’ve just as easy come with us.”

“Yes, I know,” Carrie said as she watched a woman maneuver a stroller holding two children down the grass-covered aisle. Both of the kids were crying, and she wished their mother would look toward Shirley’s Cuddly display. No luck, the woman was too involved in repeating “Shhh, hush” over and over to look at anything but her children and continue shoving the stroller. Carrie resisted the temptation to hand the poor woman a Cuddly for show and tell.