Paper-Thin Alibi (17 page)

Authors: Mary Ellen Hughes

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Paper-Thin Alibi

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“Like pulling a sore tooth, huh? Just reach in and yank. You’ll most likely get the right one. If not, there’s plenty more to try.”

At Jo’s dismayed look Harry burst into laughter again. “A little dentist humor, Jo,” he said, punching her shoulder lightly.

Jo shook her head. “You guys must be a riot at your conventions.”

“Almost as much fun as morticians.”

“That I can believe.”

They had left the highway, and Jo watched as Harry made several turns, each time distancing them farther from strip malls and stoplights and taking them closer to forest and farmland.

“Delroy lived down that road.” Harry pointed as they whizzed by. Jo caught a glimpse of a narrow road lined with canopied trees. “He’s a chef, now, in D.C. My aunt Eulie was a great cook. He got the gene.”

“So we must be close to the tobacco barn?”

“Uh-huh. Right around the bend here. Let’s see.” Harry slowed down, scanning the roadside carefully. “Should be right about . . . ah! There it is.” He swung onto a barely visible farm road whose ruts caused Jo to brace herself on the SUV’s sides. They bounced along for a couple of hundred yards through trees that, when fully leafed in a few weeks, would eventually block out most sunlight and turn this pathway dark. Jo saw open field up ahead, and, as they moved into it, a tobacco barn.

“There she is,” Harry said. He continued on the farm road, which curved to the left toward the barn. The SUV handled the rough terrain easily—easier than Jo, who continued to hold on tightly—until they pulled up close to the old barn. Harry cut his motor, and the silence of the empty field and barn descended.

The quiet and emptiness made Jo worry. There was no sign of the photographer. “That turnoff wasn’t easy to see unless you knew where to look. Ewing might have trouble finding it.”

“He might have to drive up and down a few times,” Harry acknowledged, “but he’ll spot it eventually.” He opened his door. “Want to look around?”

“Sure.” Jo unbuckled and stepped out. She gazed up at the gray-sided barn as Harry pulled out his camera case. She had seen several such barns from the road as she drove through this part of Maryland, but had never examined one up close. Two stories high and rectangular shaped, it had what appeared to be a rusted tin roof still fairly intact. Clumps of vines covered much of the partially rotted, slatted sides.

“Looks like it hasn’t been in use for quite a while,” she said.

“Nope. Tobacco isn’t the money-making crop it used to be. Thank goodness. You should see the stained teeth of some of my smoker patients. Not to mention the problems that arise from the chewers.”

“I can only imagine,” said Jo, who really didn’t want to. “Can we go inside?”

“Might be able to peek in. I don’t know if I’d recommend actually going into it. Might be a few creatures setting up housekeeping in there now.”

Harry dragged a rusty-hinged door open and pointed out features to Jo, who took care not to step very far inside. “They used to hang the bundled tobacco up there,” he said, pointing to the ceiling above several open cross beams, “for curing.”

Jo sniffed and thought she could detect a lingering tobacco aroma mingled with damp earth and vegetation smells. She heard something and pulled her head back outside. The sound of a car motor grew louder until Jo glimpsed a red vehicle through the far-off trees.

“Looks like Bill Ewing found the road,” Harry said.

Chapter 17

Jo and Harry watched as the red Chevy Blazer came toward them. It stopped several feet behind Harry’s Jeep. Ewing cut his motor and climbed out.

“Mornin’,” he said, hiking up his jeans. He wore a multipocketed, safari-style khaki shirt over the jeans, and sturdy-looking boots “You the owners?”

“No,” Harry said. “Just here to take a few pictures.”

Ewing scowled. “Who for?”

Harry grinned. “Myself. Got a new camera here—a new digital SLR. I want to see what it’ll do.”

Ewing grunted. “Thought you might be competition. I’m doing a photo series on tobacco barns for
Mid-Atlantic History
magazine. I don’t need it getting canceled because some other rag beat us to the punch.”

“No worry there,” Harry said genially.

Ewing simply nodded. “Mind pulling your car out of the way?” He gestured farther down the rutted road and climbed back into his Blazer, assuming Harry and Jo would comply. They did, of course, both climbing into the Jeep, which Harry then backed up slowly, following Ewing until he stopped at least three hundred feet from the barn.

Ewing climbed out and began unloading equipment from the back, ignoring them. Harry shrugged at Jo, then pulled his camera from its case and fiddled with it until Jo saw him glance over at Ewing. His jaw dropped.

“Whoa!” Harry cried. “Is that a Deardorff V4?”

Bill Ewing looked up from the case from which he had carefully removed a large camera, which, to Jo, looked like something out of a 1940s or 1950s newsreel. A tripod lay on the ground beside it. “You know Deardorff?”

“Only from what I’ve read.” Harry’s face, Jo thought, couldn’t look more impressed. She wanted to ask, “What’s a Deardorff?” but held her tongue. As Harry had predicted, suddenly the tight-lipped Ewing was talking cameras, specifically
his
camera, which Jo assumed was the Rolls-Royce of the photography world.

Suddenly she was hearing model numbers and letters tossed around that meant nothing to her, as well as terms like “lens focal length,” “shutter speed,” and “aperture setting.” She waited patiently, glad to have Harry warm up Ewing for her, though whether he would rapidly freeze when she took her turn remained to be seen.

Ewing glanced skyward, then picked up his gear and began heading toward the field. Harry quickly asked, “Mind if I watch?”

“Just stay to the rear.”

“Great!” Harry said, looking as joyful, Jo thought, as if Tiger Woods had just invited him to share a round of golf. As the two of them tramped off, she wondered if a comparable superstar celebrity dentist existed who would have made Harry as excited, but suspected not. She scurried to keep from being left behind, and when she managed to pull alongside Ewing, broke into Harry’s streaming camera talk to ask, “Are you finding enough tobacco barns to photograph for this magazine?”

Ewing turned toward her, answering with a brief, “Yup.”

“Mostly around here, or have you had to travel around a lot?”

“Traveled a bit.” Ewing stepped over a dip in the ground. “The barns in any one area,” he said, keeping his pace brisk, “tend to all look pretty much the same except for condition. The farther out you go, the more variety you get.” He stopped, then slid his tripod off his shoulder and began setting it up.

“Down to North Carolina?”

“Haven’t been there yet. Virginia and West Virginia. Found a few Mail Pouch barns.” Ewing worked at attaching his camera to the tripod, and Jo saw that Harry watched each little movement intently. He obviously had totally forgotten the reason they’d come here in the first place, so getting to the topic she was really interested in had fallen solely onto Jo.

“Oh, Mail Pouch!” she said. “I remember seeing those signs on barns. They were like the first billboards, weren’t they?”

“Yup.” Ewing looked through his lens, then made adjustments on his camera. “They used only the barns that could be seen from the road. Farmers got a few dollars and a free paint job out of it.”

“I don’t remember seeing any around here. Where’d you find them? Mostly in West Virginia?”

Ewing nodded and bent down to his camera case to get something. “Found a couple south of Morgantown.”

Jo remembered Gabe Stubbins’s story of Ewing being ejected from the craft show’s Morgantown venue because of his blowup with Linda. She ventured a turn toward that subject.

“Morgantown? Was that after Michicomi?”

Ewing shot her a sharp look. “What do you know about Michicomi?”

“I had a booth in it when it stopped here, at Hammond County.”

“You a photographer too?”

“No, jewelry.”

“Yeah?” Ewing turned back to his work, acting less than interested. But Jo saw a tightening of his jaw.

“I thought I recognized you,” she said. “I stopped at your booth when I had some break time. I was very impressed with your work.”

“Yeah?” Ewing glanced back at her, not exactly smiling but a bit less grim. “Buy any?”

“No. I wish I could have, but such things just don’t fit in my budget right now.”

Ewing snorted softly. “That seemed to be the feeling of most of the Hammond County shoppers. Some of the Michicomi towns are better than others. Unfortunately, they don’t let us pick and choose which ones we want to be in, do they?”

“No, they don’t. I heard,” Jo said, picking her way carefully, “that the woman who died—Linda something-or-other? —had managed to get invited to plenty of good festival towns.”

Ewing’s jaw clenched once more, and red patches appeared on his cheeks as well as the scalp beneath his light crew cut. This was obviously still a sore subject with him. She pushed harder. “I guess her product was pretty outstanding.”

“Her booth was no better than any others! Worse, in my opinion.”

“Then how—”

“Sleeping with one of the top guys can get you plenty of favors.”

“Oh, gosh! You think she was getting special treatment?”

“I know she was. And let me tell you, lady, it’s a pretty sorry state of affairs when an organization handles things that way. Believe me, I would have been done with them altogether if I hadn’t spent years building up a reputation with the people who regularly show up at their shows. I can’t just start over with another group! But there they were, giving this two-bit newcomer preferential bookings and putting me off with idiotic excuses!”

Ewing had begun gesticulating broadly as his temper rose, one of his flailing arms nearly knocking over his tripod-mounted camera, which Harry leaped forward to steady. Ewing putting his precious camera at such risk told Jo the extent of his anger toward Linda and how much she had affected him.

“Well, I guess your problem with Michicomi is ended,” she said.

Ewing stared, suddenly seeming to realize that the object of his anger was dead. Or had he realized what he might have been giving away about himself?

He turned back to his camera. “Tough thing to happen.”

“It was. Especially since now they’re saying it was murder.”

Harry, clearly still enthralled with Ewing’s Deardorff, began to interrupt with a question about the film Ewing was using until Jo aimed a not-too-gentle kick at his ankle. Ewing, concentrating on his view of the tobacco barn, didn’t seem to notice. Jo plowed on.

“That Sheriff Franklin was talking to a lot of people who knew her, trying to track down the person who sent her those candies. Did he give you a hard time?”

“Why? Because I had a beef with her getting favoritism? If I wanted to take someone out, I’d have punched out the lights of the guy that kept bumping me off the schedule and putting her on it instead.”

“But that wouldn’t have solved your problem, would it? Picking a fight with one of the organizers would only get you crossed off their list altogether. Removing Linda from the competition would have made more sense.”

Ewing’s head snapped around. He straightened up from his camera and glared at her. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“Not at all! I’m just saying that might be how the sheriff might look at it.”

“The sheriff nothing! He never blinked an eye when I told him I never knew Linda had allergies like that. Sounds to me like you’re trying to stir up trouble, lady.”

“Hold on,” Harry said, stepping in. “Nobody’s trying to stir up anything. Jo, here, was just speculating about the investigation.”

Ewing wasn’t buying it. “How about you two get the hell out of here!”

“Now, just—” Harry began, but Ewing suddenly reached into his equipment case and pulled out a menacing-looking metal rod. He stepped forward threateningly.

“I mean it. Get out of here. You think I don’t know how to use this? Think again. I’ve run into too many people think they can grab a good camera from me not be ready to chase them off.”

“You think we’d . . .” Harry began to sputter, but Jo pulled him back.

“Let’s just go, Harry.”

They backed away several steps, Ewing glaring at them, broad stanced, until they turned and walked briskly to Harry’s SUV.

“I can’t believe that guy,” Harry muttered as they climbed into the Jeep.

“Just drive off, Harry. Who knows what else he might have in that case of his.”

Once they put a good distance between them and Ewing and were back on the farm road, Jo breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry I got you into that.”

Harry shook his head. “It’s a good thing I was along. The guy’s got a temper, doesn’t he?”