by Joanne Fluke
“I don’t know. And then there’s the burglar, the one who broke into the office at the fairgrounds.”
“And we don’t know who he is either,” Michelle reminded them. “I talked to Lonnie about it tonight, and he told me there’s been no break in the case. How about the picture I showed around this morning to the 4-H kids? Did any of them tell you anything?”
“Yes. One of the kids came to see me today with his parents. I can’t tell you who they were, because I promised to keep it confidential. It seems the boy saw Willa with a cowboy from the rodeo on Monday night and again on Tuesday, shortly before she was murdered. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a good look at the cowboy’s face.”
“Do you think the cowboy is the boyfriend she got all dressed up for?” Andrea asked.
“Could be,” Hannah said, squelching her desire to correct her sister’s sentence structure. “Or it could be the boyfriend is someone else entirely. That’s still up for grabs.”
“How about Willa’s apartment?” Michelle reminded them. “Did you find anything interesting there?”
Andrea sighed. “Not much. The only thing was a florist’s card she saved. It said, Yesterday and Today, Tomorrow and Forever.”
“It was stuck in a hardcover copy of Gone With the Wind, along with an orchid that probably came from a corsage,” Hannah added. “It must have been important to her, or she wouldn’t have saved it.”
“I ran into Pam and she said she gave you the keys to the school so you could search Willa’s desk,” Michelle said. “Do you want us to help you do it?”
“It’s already done. Norman went with me.” Hannah made a unilateral decision not to tell them about the car they’d outrun. They’d only worry, and that would do no one any good.
“The only thing we found that was the least bit interesting was a little photo album,” she went on, retrieving it from her purse and handing it to Michelle.
“I’ve got one exactly like that, except it’s black,” Andrea commented, looking over Michelle’s shoulder.
Hannah bit her lips to keep silent. Now was not the time to point out that one thing could not be exactly like another with a difference. “Take a look at the last picture.”
“There’s Willa in a white satin gown,” Michelle identified it. “It looks almost like the one I wore for the evening gown competition. But it’s only half there. Somebody cut off Willa’s date. You can see his arm around her, but the rest of him is missing.”
“Willa probably did it,” Andrea said, sounding very certain.
“But why would she do that?” Michelle asked.
“It’s simple. Remember when I went to the junior prom with Benton Woodley?” Andrea waited until they nodded, and then she continued. “After we broke up, I cut him out of our prom picture. Willa could have done something like that.”
“I agree,” Hannah said, “but I think it’s her wedding picture and she cut off Jess Reiffer. I certainly couldn’t blame her for that!”
The total shock on both of her sisters’ faces made Hannah groan. “I didn’t tell you that Willa was married?”
Two heads shook in tandem, and Hannah went on. “And you don’t know that she sold Mother the silver champagne glasses from her wedding?”
Again the two heads, one blond and one light brunette, shook in tandem.
“Or that Willa spent four months in jail in Oregon?”
The heads started to shake again, but then Michelle spoke up. “When did you learn all this?”
“Today. If one of you will get me another mug of coffee, I’ll tell you all about it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Tell me why we’re doing this again,” Hannah said as Andrea pulled up in front of “Digger” Gibson’s mortuary.
“We’re doing it because the flower shop at the mall is closed,” Andrea explained. “And if we come in without flowers, they’ll think we’re just trying to pump them for information about the identity of the cowboy who was seen with Willa on the night she was murdered, and whether Tucker really attempted to kill Curly or not.”
“We are trying to pump them for information.”
“I know that and you know that, but we don’t want them to know that.”
“And what happens if they ask us who the flowers are for?” Hannah posed another question.
“We’ll have a name by that time.” Andrea sounded very confident as she opened her car door. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
“I just don’t believe she’s doing this,” Hannah groaned, watching as her sister walked up the sidewalk and rang the bell to Digger’s apartment over the mortuary.
“Neither do I. You know what to do when we get to the hospital, don’t you?”
Hannah nodded. “You and Andrea will keep the charge nurse busy, and I’ll get a look at the patient list. Lake Eden isn’t that big. We’re bound to know somebody in the hospital.”
“Right. And then?”
“We carry the flowers to the waiting room and pretend we’re waiting to see someone. And then we do what we came for in the first place, which is to pump whoever’s there for information about Curly and Tucker.”
“Right. Here comes Andrea with Digger.” Michelle stared out the window. “It looks like he’s laughing! I don’t think I’ve ever seen Digger laugh before.”
“That’s because the only time you see him is at funerals. I’m sure he laughs in private.”
“Really?”
Hannah thought about the dour-faced undertaker and shrugged. “Well…maybe not. But he could be like the concert pianist who moonlights on a keyboard in a rock band. For all we know, Digger’s a standup comic in his off-hours.”
They’d just gone over the plan again when Andrea came back to the car. “Hold these, will you?” she half asked, half ordered, thrusting a small vase filled with flowers into Hannah’s hands.
“Very pretty,” Hannah said, glancing down at the bouquet.
“We took one stem from each arrangement,” Andrea explained as she slid in behind the wheel. “Digger didn’t want anyone to suspect that we’d taken part of the funeral flowers.”
“No lilies, I see,” Hannah noted.
“No. Digger thought maybe that would raise some questions. He said lilies were traditional funeral flowers. Except on Easter, people don’t usually bring lilies to patients in the hospital.”
Andrea drove out of town and soon they were on the road to Lake Eden Memorial Hospital. In less than ten minutes they were pulling up in the section reserved for hospital visitors.
“Looks like Curly has some friends here,” Michelle said, pointing to the car next to them. “That car’s got a Great Northwestern Rodeo and Carnival sticker on the window.”
Hannah glanced at the pickup truck on the other side. It also had a Great Northwestern sticker. “This truck has one, too. Does everybody know who to zero in on?”
“I take the owner’s daughter Brianna, if she’s here,” Michelle said. “I’m closer to her age and she might talk to me. I’ll try to get her alone and away from Tucker.”
“And I’ll take Tucker,” Hannah said. Then she turned to Andrea. “You’d better take Brianna’s father, Sam Webber. He owns the show.”
“Okay. What shall I ask him?”
“Find out if he thinks there was bad blood between Tucker and Curly. That’s what the two cowboys said. That might be hard to do.”
“Yes, but I’ll figure out a way. Anything else?”
“Try to find out if any of his cowboys knew Willa. That’ll probably be tricky. And if you finish that, ask him questions about the show. That ought to distract him from what Michelle and I are doing.”
“Got it,” Andrea said.
“Me, too,” Michelle agreed, opening her door and getting out. “Are you still tired, Hannah?”
“Oh, yes. Actually, I now know for sure that I’m a couple of light years past tired.”
“How do you know that?” Andrea asked.
“I know because this whol
e crazy plan is starting to make perfect sense to me.”
“Three choices,” Hannah told them as they walked down the hall. “Calvin Janowski’s in for a tonsillectomy, Ed Barthel is having a hip replacement, and Dot Truman Larson’s in labor with her first baby.”
“Not Calvin,” Andrea said. “Nobody would believe we came here at almost eleven at night to visit a first grader.”
“Good point. Ed Barthel? His wife is in Mother’s quilting club.”
“That’s a possibility,” Michelle agreed.
“I vote for Dot Truman Larson. If it’s her first baby, it could take a while.”
“You’re right,” Andrea said.
“My vote’s for Dot, too,” Michelle agreed. “All three of us know her, and we went to her wedding last summer.”
“There’s only one problem,” Hannah reminded them, heading down the hall to the large waiting room.
“What’s that?” Michelle asked.
“There’s a separate maternity waiting room. If we came to see Dot’s first baby, why aren’t we there?”
“Because her husband’s there with all his relatives, and it’s crowded,” Andrea offered a possible explanation.
“Good enough for me,” Hannah said, rounding the corner and stopping so suddenly her two sisters nearly plowed into her.
“What is it?” Andrea asked.
“The cowboys I overheard this afternoon are in the waiting room.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Michelle asked.
“They might recognize me.”
“Hold it.” Andrea took Hannah by the arms and pulled her back a couple of paces. “I thought you were in the magic cabinet at the time.”
“Oh, I was.”
“And you didn’t say a word, or make any noise?” Michelle asked.
“That’s right.”
“Then how could they possibly recognize you?” Andrea questioned her.
Hannah shook her head like a dog coming out of Eden Lake. Logic seemed to have deserted her, and she wondered whether she’d be able to question Curly. “Coffee?” she asked.
“We passed the alcove with complimentary self-serve coffee. I’ll go back and get you some.” Michelle hurried off. Several moments later she was back with a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Drink this,” she said. “It’ll help.”
Hannah took a sip and grimaced. Although she seriously doubted that anything that tasted like paint thinner could deliver the necessary caffeine to her exhausted brain, she drank it down in three gulps.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Did it help?” Andrea wanted to know.
“I think so. My eyelids felt as if they were weighted down with quarters before, and now the quarters feel like dimes.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Michelle said.
“Me, too,” Andrea agreed. “I’ll take the flowers. You might drop them.”
“Do you want to interview Tucker?” Hannah asked, something she never would have done if she’d been less exhausted.
“No. You’re better than I am with guys who swagger and think every woman out there will fall in their laps if they snap their fingers. I’d slap him silly if he said anything sexist to me.”
That remark caused Hannah’s eyelids to experience an unscheduled lift. “Do you know him?”
“Not personally, but I saw him at the rodeo that first afternoon. Tracey wanted to go, so I took her. She didn’t like Tucker, either. She said, That cowboy’s really full of himself. He thinks he’s something and that means he’s not.”
Hannah was impressed. Her eldest niece was a good judge of character. For that matter, so was Andrea. “Okay. I’ll take Tucker.”
“Good.” Andrea gave her a little hug. “Give him your best shot, and Michelle and I will let you sleep all the way home.”
The coffee had done it. Or perhaps it was the sludge in the bottom of the cup. Hannah didn’t even want to think about how that had tasted, so she crooked her finger at Michelle to follow her and headed straight for the long row of chairs that held the youngest couple in the room.
“Do you mind if we sit here?” Hannah asked, not even considering what she’d do if they said they’d mind. But they shook their heads, and Hannah and Michelle took up their positions. Hannah sat next to the cowboy, and Michelle sat down next to the girl who was the very picture of youth and innocence.
“I hope you’re not here for something really serious,” Hannah said to the cowboy, knowing full well why he was here.
“Serious enough,” he said, sighing a bit. “I’m from the rodeo. One of the clowns was injured, and we’re all here waiting for news.”
“He’s in the operating room,” the young girl explained. “The doctor said somebody would come out and tell us how Curly was doing, but we’ve been here for an hour, and nobody’s told us anything.”
“Then let’s go try to find out something.” Michelle stood up and held out her hand. “I’m just here because my friend’s having a baby, but I know some of the nurses. Maybe they’ll tell us something.”
“That’d be great!” the girl said, practically jumping to her feet. She turned to the cowboy Hannah assumed was Tucker. “Do you want to come along?”
“Better not,” Hannah told him.
“Why not?”
“Because the nurses aren’t supposed to give out any information, and they’ll clam up if too many people ask. They don’t want to get in trouble, you know?”
“Oh. Well…go ahead then, Bri.”
As the girl she’d pegged for Brianna bent down to kiss the guy she’d nailed as Tucker, Hannah gave a little smile. She might be exhausted and not thinking straight, but so far she was batting a thousand. Even though the waiting room was crowded, she’d correctly identified their two interview subjects.
She waited until Michelle had left with Brianna, and then she turned to Tucker. Andrea and Tracey had described him perfectly. Although he was sitting, Hannah knew he’d swagger when he walked, and he looked about as full of himself as a man could get. He had a face that was movie cowboy handsome, tousled blond hair that looked as if he’d just ducked his head under the pump in front of the bunkhouse to wash off the dust of the trail, and a twang in his voice that would make Howdy, Li’l Lady sound authentic. She could see how someone like Willa, who’d had the same air of innocence about her as Brianna did, would be attracted to someone excessively self-assured like Tucker.
“Is something wrong?” Tucker asked, startling her out of her thoughts.
“No. Just thinking about how nice it would be if they’d put cots in here instead of chairs.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Hannah saw his face brighten and realized that he was looking at her appraisingly. She’d really put her foot in her mouth with that remark! She could try to explain herself, or she could let it go.
“I think I saw you at a roping demonstration the other day,” she said, going for the second option.
“Could’ve been me. I go along with the other guys sometimes.”
“I’m almost sure it was you. You did an incredible thing jumping in and out of a loop you were twirling, and the 4-H students were absolutely amazed.”
Tucker began to smile. “I figured they thought I was good. I got more applause than the other guys.”
He was just as conceited as Andrea had thought, and she decided to lay it on even thicker. “Oh, you were good all right! They all want to be cowboys, you know, especially famous rodeo cowboys like you. You’re Tucker Smith, the star of the show, aren’t you?”
“That’s me. But I wouldn’t say I was the star of the show. Maybe on a good day, but not all the time.”
You’re so egotistical, you think that’s being humble, Hannah thought, but all the while she managed to keep the admiring smile on her face. She was getting a lot better at duplicity. Perhaps it had something to do with practice. “Did you know the clown who was injured?”
“Yes.” Tucker put on an appropriately serious expressi
on. “He’s my best friend.”
That’s not what I heard, Hannah thought. But she said, “It must be awful sitting here waiting to see if he’s going to be all right.”
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Curly and I are close. Real close.”
And the lies are getting deep in here. Real deep. Hannah took a deep breath and plunged in. “Everything that’s happened makes you wonder if some places are just plain unlucky, doesn’t it?”
Tucker looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the Tri-County Fair has been plagued by misfortune this year. First it was that poor woman killed on the midway, and now it’s your best friend winding up here in the hospital. I bet you’ll be glad to move on.”
“Yeah. You could say that.”
“Did you know the woman who was killed?”
Tucker looked startled. “How would I know her? She wasn’t with the show.”
“I just thought maybe you ran into her. Her name was Willa Sunquist, and she was a judge on the baked goods panel.”
“Oh. Well…I might have seen her, but I don’t remember.”
“She was also the beauty contest chaperone.”
“Maybe I did see her, then. Some lady brought the girls over to the arena to pose for pictures with us.”
Hannah knew she was spinning her wheels. If Tucker had known Willa, he wasn’t about to admit it. She’d try another tack. “I really hope your friend is going to be all right.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m almost glad I didn’t get to the rodeo this afternoon. It must have been awful. Did you see what happened?”
Tucker nodded. “I saw it. I was the cowboy riding the Brahma bull.”
“You mean…you were right there when it happened?”
“That’s right, Li’l Lady. I got thrown, and Curly put himself in harm’s way to protect me from the bull.”
“Oh, my!” Hannah pretended to be shocked. “I’ll bet you feel terribly guilty about it.”
“Oh, I do. I really do. I wish it had never happened. You don’t know how many times I went over it in my mind, wondering if I could have done something to help him. It was horrible, just horrible!”
