Paper-Thin Alibi (2 page)
“Really? That was just before I moved to Abbotsville. A mess, huh?” Jo saw a sign directing her to vendor parking, and drove on.
Carrie groaned, remembering that county fair outing. “There had been thunderstorms for several nights before. Let’s just say they could have used some shuttle buses to get people around—pulled by water buffalo. Anyone selling hip boots that weekend would have made a killing.
Ah-choo!
”
Ah-choo!
”
“Gesundheit. Well, here we are!” Jo said, coming up to groupings of windowless, rectangular buildings, with several plastic tented stands set up near them. She pulled her Toyota into an empty space between two cars that were hitched to small trailers, the license plates indicating one had driven from Vermont and the other from Georgia. Rows of similar trailers, along with campers and vans, stretched out on either side, each with different colored plates. Transporting one’s creations to a festival like this often involved much effort. Jo was grateful the festival had come within commuting distance of her adopted town, and that her wares—necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and pins—were compact.
“Thanks so much for helping me set up, Carrie, especially since you’re not feeling that great.”
Carrie flapped a hand dismissively. “We’re all so excited you got into Michicomi. Most of your Craft Corner customers have never seen your jewelry designs.”
“That’s true.” Jo had needed to temporarily suspend her beloved jewelry making with the busy-ness of setting up Jo’s Craft Corner, a venture that sprang from Carrie’s suggestion. Jo had needed to pull her life together after her husband Mike’s fatal accident at their New York artist’s loft. Carrie, a long-time friend who had settled in Abbotsville with her husband, Dan, saw an opportunity there for Jo to use her artist’s background to make a living on her own, something her jewelry work, much as Jo loved it, wouldn’t do.
So Jo had invested Mike’s meager life insurance into the shop and shifted her life from big city to small town. The adjustment hadn’t always been smooth but had proven satisfying, especially because of the new friends she had made, who had been extremely supportive at critical times.
Many of these friends had participated in her craft workshops, where Jo demonstrated the ins and outs of crafts like scrapbooking, wreath making, and beading. But few were familiar with the fine jewelry Jo could put together. This would be her first chance to display it all, and it would be like introducing her new friends to a beloved relative, an important part of her life they had heard about but never met. She was happily looking forward to it.
“Okay,” Jo said, pulling out the letter of acceptance she’d received from the Michicomi organizers, along with her identification badge. “My booth is number 188 in building 10. I hope Dan found it all right this morning when he came to set up the display cases. Building 10 is that one over there.”
Carrie studied it thoughtfully. “I think that might be where the hog pens were during the county fair.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Let’s hope it’s been thoroughly deodorized since then, particularly the area around booth 188. Grab a box from the back, and let’s find out.”
Jo and Carrie reached into the disarranged boxes in her back seat and loaded up with as much as they could carry. As Jo led the way along the row of parked cars, she noticed a black SUV. Surely it couldn’t be the one that had raised her blood pressure out on Route 30? Then the car’s vanity license plate caught her eye: LW-GEMS.
LW? With New York plates? Could that be . . . ?
No, no way, she thought again, shaking the whole idea off and continuing on to the building. She stopped to have her credentials checked by the security guard stationed near the entrance, then pushed along with Carrie through the clear plastic curtain that served as a door in the open-air, unheated structure. The place was a beehive of activity as other vendors worked at setting up their wares in the few remaining hours before the festival opened. They walked past one man carefully hanging panes of stained glass from hooks, and a middle-aged couple arranging their shelves with hand-tooled leather bags and wallets. Jo breathed deeply of their rich scent, and if she’d had a spare hand would have loved to touch as well. A collection of beautiful handmade sweaters and vests caused Carrie to slow, while passing a booth of unique metal sculptures brought sad-sweet flashes of Mike to Jo’s mind.
No, no way, she thought again, shaking the whole idea off and continuing on to the building. She stopped to have her credentials checked by the security guard stationed near the entrance, then pushed along with Carrie through the clear plastic curtain that served as a door in the open-air, unheated structure. The place was a beehive of activity as other vendors worked at setting up their wares in the few remaining hours before the festival opened. They walked past one man carefully hanging panes of stained glass from hooks, and a middle-aged couple arranging their shelves with hand-tooled leather bags and wallets. Jo breathed deeply of their rich scent, and if she’d had a spare hand would have loved to touch as well. A collection of beautiful handmade sweaters and vests caused Carrie to slow, while passing a booth of unique metal sculptures brought sad-sweet flashes of Mike to Jo’s mind.
Jo checked overhead numbers as they progressed and saw they were getting close. She came to a booth filled with colorfully painted wooden toys with a “187” above it, and just beyond was hers: number 188.
“Here we are!”
Jo had contracted, because of cost considerations, for the smallest-size booth available—ten feet wide and eight feet deep. She’d then asked Carrie’s husband, Dan, a professional home remodeler, to build display cases for that space. There they were, deftly fitted into place.
“Wow, Dan did a great job!” she said, setting her load down carefully on a Plexiglas surface. Made in sections that fit together in an L shape, the cases, she saw, provided the greatest amount of display area while allowing her customers to step out of the crowded aisle and partially into the booth to examine and try on their selections. “I’m so glad Dan suggested this arrangement. I owe him big time.”
“Dan feels we still owe you, you know,” Carrie said, sliding her own box next to Jo’s, “as do I. If it weren’t for you, who knows how his business would have survived that Parker Holt situation in January.”
Carrie and Dan had been in real danger of losing their income when a client of Dan’s was murdered and Dan’s reputation—and worse—was jeopardized. They, on the other hand, had helped Jo so much after Mike’s death, first in just getting her through it, then by helping her set up her new situation in Abbotsville, that she felt the scale tilted sharply in their favor.
“We won’t get into that argument again about who owes whom,” Jo said. “We’re friends, and friends try to help each other. Let’s just bring in the rest of the stuff so I can get into the fun of arranging it all. And so you can go check out that knitting booth.”
“I did happen to notice some beautiful sweaters,” Carrie said, grinning. Knitting was her specialty, and she generously applied her time and skills handling that section of Jo’s Craft Corner. “I’d love to ask how one particular piece was done. But first things first.”
Since Jo’s booth turned out to be at the far end of the building, next to that end’s curtained doorway, they exited there and walked back to Jo’s car via the alleyway between buildings; the virtually unobstructed route proved much faster than the building’s busy aisle. Two more trips transferred the rest of the cargo, and when she’d set down her final load, Carrie stood back to take it all in.
“When ever did you manage to make all this?”
“Some are things I made in New York and withdrew from consignments before coming here. But I’ve been working hard since I first applied for Michicomi.”
“Please tell me you managed to sleep occasionally.”
“Don’t worry. I haven’t run myself ragged—yet. But you know how I love working at my jewelry. What better way to relax than by doing what you love?”
“Hmm.” Carrie gave her a skeptical look. As the mother of a teen and preteen, Carrie recognized sidestepping explanations when she heard them. “Well, you certainly haven’t been over to our place much lately. The kids have missed you.”
Jo was godmother to Carrie’s fifteen-year-old, Charlie, and therefore had a soft spot for him. But she was inordinately fond of eleven-year-old Amanda as well.
“I’ve missed them too, and I promise to make up for all the lost time. If Charlie comes tomorrow to help me out, I’ll at least see him then. Is that still going to work out?”
“Absolutely. And I’ll handle the craft shop, of course, while you’re tied up here. Amanda will come there after school, and Ina Mae promised to pitch in now and then during the busier times.”
“You guys are so great,” Jo said, struggling with the lump that threatened to form in her throat. Jo remembered how retired schoolteacher and perennial dynamo Ina Mae Kepner had shown up unannounced at the shop to help out when Carrie had been briefly unable to work several weeks ago. Jo always felt she and Mike had some good friends up in New York, but nothing topped the people she’d encountered in Abbotsville. Most of them, anyway.
“Speaking of the shop,” Carrie said, glancing at her watch, “Dan should be coming by soon to pick me up and take me there. He went to meet with a prospective client not too far from here after he set up your display cases, so this worked out great. I said I’d meet him at the ticket stand. And I think I have just enough time to stop at that knitting booth. Unless, that is, you need me to help set things up?” Carrie pulled out a Kleenex and rubbed at her nose, looking questioningly at Jo over the scrunched up tissue.
“Go,” Jo urged. “I have a plan in my head for where I want everything to be, so it’s best I do it alone. Really. And when you get to the shop, call the doctor’s office for an appointment. Okay?”
Carrie smiled. “Maybe.” She took off, and Jo saw her stopping to chat with the proprietor of the knitting booth, both reaching up to the sweater Carrie had spotted earlier.
Jo turned to her own concerns. Where to start? she wondered as she gazed at the pile. She decided to first arrange her meticulously labeled boxes in the order that she would empty them, then got to work, putting silver with silver, gold with gold. Her most expensive pieces went inside Plexiglas-covered viewing cases, and her less costly ones on top where customers could touch and try on.
It was time-consuming and tedious, but Jo still took special pleasure in it. Handling each carefully wrought item meant briefly revisiting the creativity that had gone into it and the joy she had felt as it progressed. The time flew by, and so absorbed was she that Jo barely noticed the controlled pandemonium going on about her. Until, as she crouched over a final box, searching for the twin of an opal earring that had gotten separated from its mate, a piercing voice floated over her front display case.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Jo McAllister. I thought you were dead.”
Jo froze, not wanting to believe that voice belonged to who she thought it did. Then the vanity plates she had seen on the black SUV came to mind. Had the erratic driver on Route 30 been blonde? Jo suppressed a heart-sinking wince and slowly rose.
“Linda Weeks,” she said as she turned and faced her visitor. “What a surprise. It’s been a while.”
“Yes indeed. I hadn’t heard a thing about you so I naturally assumed you had perished as well in that explosion.”
“At our loft? No, I had been away at a gallery when it happened.” Jo maintained a stony smile. “There was a hugely comforting turnout for Mike’s funeral, though. I guess you didn’t hear about it in time to come.”
“No. And what a shame. It would have been wonderful to see some of the old gang.”
Jo managed not to choke. She didn’t believe for a minute that Linda had thought Jo had perished or hadn’t got the word about Mike’s funeral arrangements. More likely she simply didn’t have the strength of character to show up and face Jo, as well as the many good people erroneously referred to by Linda as her old gang.
“Well, what brings you to these parts?” Jo asked, hoping against hope that Linda was just passing through, maybe taking in the cherry blossoms in D.C. But her worst fears were confirmed when Linda’s smile turned sharklike.
“Why, I’ve been a regular at Michicomi for ages now. They’re fairly consistent, you know, about only allowing the best. And you can imagine how my jaw dropped when I looked over from my own booth and saw
you
here. It’s amazing, isn’t it? After all those years in the Big Apple, sharing suppliers and buyers, not to mention design ideas—then going our separate ways only to end up right across the aisle from each other for the next three days.”
you
here. It’s amazing, isn’t it? After all those years in the Big Apple, sharing suppliers and buyers, not to mention design ideas—then going our separate ways only to end up right across the aisle from each other for the next three days.”
Jo could agree on that point at least, as her wooden smile turned to granite.
“Amazing.”
Chapter 2
Fortunately for Jo, the arrival of a deliveryman drew Linda back to her own stall, where she remained to unpack the large box that had just arrived. Jo watched for a few moments, still unable to believe her incredibly bad luck. Of all the booths she could have been assigned, here she was within spitting distance—a phrase that made Jo salivate—of possibly the last person in the world she’d ever hoped to encounter again.
Linda was looking good, though, Jo had to give her that. She wore a youthfully styled jacket and pants that made her look in her midtwenties rather than what Jo knew to be close to her own age of thirty-six. Her hair was still blonde, having been lightened from her natural brunette shortly after Jo first met her, and was tossed in a casual style that was quite flattering. Her makeup was understated, but like every other aspect of Linda’s appearance had probably been studiously chosen and meticulously applied.
Jo intensely disliked the woman, but couldn’t deny her skill in personal presentation. As far as jewelry design, however, she honestly was amazed at Linda’s claim to regular participation at Michicomi, aware as she was of Linda’s shortcomings in that department. Was Michicomi less selective than she’d been led to believe? Or was something else involved there?
Jo turned away, not willing to go down that road. There was no point wasting any more time on the woman. Linda’s appearance at Michicomi was a definite downer, but Jo couldn’t let it affect her own Michicomi experience. She had invested too much in it. Besides, she had a lot still to do on her booth before Russ showed up to take her to dinner.
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