Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 05 - Tight as a Tick

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “I thought I saw her outside just now.”

  “Really? You think this has anything to do with what I’ve asked you and Richard to look into?”

  Suddenly Vasti was right there next to us. “Laurie Anne, what are you up to now?” she asked loudly. “I swear, I don’t know how you and Richard can stand sticking your noses into other people’s business.”

  That was the pot calling the kettle black, especially under the circumstances.

  Aunt Maggie said, “Why don’t you say it a little louder, Vasti. Some of the people in Boston might not have heard you.”

  “Goodness, Aunt Maggie, everybody knows about Laurie Anne and Richard’s investigations. They might as well hire themselves out as private investigators.”

  “How on earth could we keep any investigation private with you around, Vasti?” I asked. It seemed to me that an awful lot of heads were turned in our direction. “Would you please keep your voice down?”

  “What are y’all investigating this time?” she asked at a slightly lower volume. “It’s something at the flea market, isn’t it? Somebody told me that you said that you and Richard were going to start working at a flea market, but I told them that there was no way you’d do anything like that.”

  “Vasti, did it ever occur to you that we might have told people that for a reason?”

  “Oh.”

  “Who were you talking to?” Maybe I could undo some of the damage.

  “I don’t know his name. One of the dealers. He’s got a ball cap on.”

  I counted at least seven men with ball caps on. “Wonderful. Vasti, please don’t discuss Richard’s and my business with people. It could really cause problems for us.”

  “I certainly didn’t mean to cause problems,” she said indignantly. “It’s just that my mind is on this auction. You have no idea how hard it is to make things run smoothly.”

  “I realize that it’s a lot of work,” I said.

  “It would help if you’d bothered to tell me what it is I’m not supposed to tell people.”

  “You’re right.’” Of course, we hadn’t had a chance to tell her, and even if we had, I don’t know that we would have, but I could see her point.

  “If you two will excuse me, I have business to take care of, if doing that won’t cause you any problems.”

  “Vasti,” Aunt Maggie said with a tone of warning, “that was uncalled for.”

  Vasti backed down. “I’m sorry, but I am in a delicate condition right now.”

  “Really?” I said. “Then you’re—”

  “I’m not one hundred percent positive, but I feel like something happened this afternoon.”

  “I sure hope so,” Aunt Maggie said with a chuckle.

  Vasti ignored her with as much dignity as she could muster. “I’m sorry if I messed things up for you, Laurie Anne.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Vasti. Enough people know about Richard and me that it would have come out sooner or later.” I remembered something Aunt Nora had said. “There might be something you can do to help, if you’ve got a minute.”

  “What’s that?” she said, torn between wanting to get involved and wanting to claim terminal lack of time.

  “I need some information about Annabelle Lamar. You know her, don’t you?”

  “Of course I know Annabelle. She and I are chairing a committee together. You don’t think she’s involved in—” She stopped herself, bless her heart. Of course, Aunt Maggie clearing her throat just then might have helped. “I can’t imagine that she’s involved in anything wrong.”

  “Has she ever mentioned Carney Alexander to you?”

  “Never. In fact, I was there when she read the article about him in the paper. At first she thought he was one of the Alexanders from Raleigh, so she read the rest of the article, but when she found out he wasn’t related to anybody, she didn’t care anymore. Except she said she wondered what kind of people would spend their time at a flea market. No offense, Aunt Maggie.”

  Aunt Maggie looked like she did take offense, but she controlled herself admirably.

  “Anyway, I’m sure she’d never heard of him before that,” Vasti said.

  Annabelle could have been lying, but Vasti is usually pretty good at spotting lies. “Thanks, Vasti.”

  “You’re welcome.” She looked at her watch. “Red said he was going to take a ten-minute break, not an eleven-minute break.” She walked purposefully toward the back room.

  “Do you think Annabelle is involved?” Aunt Maggie said.

  “Probably not,” I said. “I’m just doing like you do.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I thought I saw something interesting, so I bid for the box to find out for sure. Even if I don’t get what I want, I usually get something worthwhile.”

  A few minutes later, Red Clark stepped back up to the podium, and the scattered Burnettes sat down again. Keeping my voice down so as not to distract Aunt Maggie, I told Richard what I’d found out from Aunt Nora, how I’d seen Annabelle sneaking around, and that Vasti had been talking again. Then he told me about the box of books he’d bought, which included some classic science fiction novels I’d wanted to read for years and a couple of books about the playwright he wasn’t quoting.

  There didn’t seem to be anything else we could do right then, so I was content to relax and enjoy the auction.

  Aunt Maggie bought several more boxes of assorted stuff, each time producing nice pieces from what looked like junk. Aunt Daphine and Aunt Nora went in together for a box of China Upton’s sachets, saying that they’d be perfect Christmas gifts. Richard and I bid on a couple of boxes of books, and got one. And later on, we somehow found ourselves in a bidding war for an oil lamp that had been converted to electric. We didn’t even have a place to put it, but we still bid like our lives depended on it. If Aunt Daphine hadn’t taken our number away from me, we’d probably still be bidding.

  Afterward, I thanked her. “I’ve heard about people losing control at auctions, but I never thought it would happen to me.”

  “It happens to all of us. You know that ugly chair I’ve got in my front hall?”

  “It’s not ugly,” I protested, then tried to think of something nice to say about it. “It has character.” It was upholstered in a sickly yellow fabric, and its stuffing poked through the fabric and the clothes of anyone sitting in it. Even if she had it re-covered, there was nothing she could do about the slant of the back that made it impossible to sit back.

  “It’s plug ugly,” she said, “and I’d be embarrassed to tell you how much I paid for it. I was at a charity auction, and I got carried away. I keep it around to remind me.”

  “You should have let them buy the lamp so they could learn their lesson,” Aunt Maggie said.

  “Oh, we’ve learned our lesson. Haven’t we, Richard?”

  He didn’t answer. He was starting to lift his hand, and when I saw what was up for sale, I grabbed that hand and held on for dear life. “Richard, we don’t have room for a church pew!”

  After that, I decided that Richard and I needed to get out of there. Aunt Maggie didn’t want to leave yet, but Aunt Daphine was ready to go and offered to drop us off. After taking one last load out to Aunt Maggie’s car, we gratefully allowed Aunt Daphine to take us to the house, and just barely got ourselves into bed before falling asleep.

  Chapter 24

  Sunday morning came earlier than it should have, but Aunt Maggie was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, even though she’d been out later than we had. She rushed us even worse than she had the day before.

  “How does she do this week in and week out?” I grumbled to Richard. “I think there’s two of her: one to rest while the other one herds us around.”

  “Surely not,” he said. “There couldn’t be two Aunt Maggies.”

  Once again, stopping for sausage biscuits and coffee along the way provided some consolation, so I was nearly awake by the time we got to the flea market.

  “No police cars,” A
unt Maggie said cheerfully, parking in Carney’s old spot again. Obviously she doesn’t believe in ghosts.

  Everything inside looked all right. Either Bender and Rusty had been more attentive, or the killer hadn’t come back. Did that mean that he’d found what he was looking for, or did it mean he was looking elsewhere? Or did it mean that I was crazy to think that he was looking for anything in the first place? I was working from an awful lot of assumptions.

  Aunt Maggie put Richard and me to work getting the booth ready for business while she went outside to cherry-pick. She came back with a bunch of odds and ends that she promptly priced and put out on the table.

  “Don’t people ever come inside and see their stuff on sale?” I asked her.

  “Not usually, but even if they do, what are they going to do? The only ones who have ever made a fuss were Mary Maude and Mavis.”

  Her saying that must have started Mary Maude and Mavis’s ears burning, because they showed up a few minutes later, looking even less friendly than usual.

  Mary Maude planted herself in front of Aunt Maggie. “I hear there was an auction at Red Clark’s barn last night.”

  “I believe you’re right,” Aunt Maggie said, and picked up a figurine to dust it.

  “You were there, weren’t you?”

  “Right again.”

  Mary Maude waved her finger at Aunt Maggie. “You listen to me—”

  “Sister,” Mavis said, putting a placating hand on Mary Maude’s arm. “Miz Burnette, why is it that when Mary Maude asked you about an auction yesterday, you said you were going to be visiting family?”

  “First off, it’s no business of yours how I spend my evenings.” She gave them the look. “But it just so happens my great-niece Vasti arranged a charity auction last night, and asked me to come. My niece Nora was in charge of refreshments, and my niece Daphine was there, too. So we were visiting family. But like I said, it’s none of your business.” Aunt Maggie looked Mavis straight in the eye until she looked away, then did the same to Mary Maude. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  Mary Maude muttered something under her breath, but didn’t quite dare to say it out loud. Mavis said, “You could tell us if there are any sales this week.”

  Aunt Maggie pulled her date book out of her pocketbook and made a big show of looking through the pages. Then she pulled out a piece of blue paper. “There’s a mini warehouse auction scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

  Mavis snatched at the paper and read it.

  “You can keep that flier if you want,” Aunt Maggie said. “Of course, if the renters pay up before tomorrow, they’ll cancel the sale. You better call tonight and make sure it’s still on.”

  “Maybe we’ll go anyway,” Mavis said sweetly. “Somebody might tell us that it’s been cancelled when it hasn’t been.”

  “Suit yourself,” Aunt Maggie said with a shrug.

  They left without even thanking her.

  “That was ruder than usual,” I said. “If it were me, I wouldn’t have told them about that auction.”

  “No skin off my nose if they go,” Aunt Maggie said. “Red told me last night that the renters have paid up, so there’s not going to be any auction.”

  Richard and I laughed.

  “I warned them to check first.”

  That made us laugh even harder, and while Aunt Maggie didn’t join in, she did grin.

  People must have been waiting outside, because they poured in as soon as Bender opened the main door. Most of the early birds were regular customers, so Aunt Maggie waited on them and put Richard and me to work making change and wrapping purchases. That gave us a little time to talk in between customers.

  “I never had a chance to tell you what Aunt Daphine said last night,” Richard said.

  “I thought she didn’t know anything about the people out here.”

  “She didn’t, but she did have something to say about Augustus.”

  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it or not, but I said, “So what’s the story?”

  “A lot of it we’d heard before. He’s been acting distant ever since he got back from Germany, spending a lot of time alone. He doesn’t help around the house, he hasn’t tried to get a job, and he hasn’t tried to get together with his old friends. According to Aunt Daphine, a steady stream of former girlfriends called him his first week home, but he didn’t even call them back. She says that Aunt Nora is upset, Uncle Buddy is angry, and Thaddeous is confused.”

  “What about Willis?”

  “Willis hasn’t had much to say.”

  Aunt Nora’s youngest son never had much to say, but it stood to reason that he was as worried about his brother as the rest of the family. “Augustus must be smoking a lot to have affected his behavior this way,” I said sadly.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “His smoking could be a symptom of some other problem.”

  “Like what?” I had a horrible thought. “Augustus didn’t know Carney, did he?”

  “What? No, not that. I was thinking more along the lines of something that happened in Germany. Maybe he left a lovely fraulein behind.”

  “He would have said so if he had, unless she were somebody he didn’t dare bring home to Byerly.” I thought about it, then shook my head. “No, the old Augustus wouldn’t have let what anybody else thought stop him.”

  “Could he have discovered an organization of latter-day Nazis ready to form a Fourth Reich, but been unable to convince his superiors of the coming danger?”

  “Richard, have you been reading Aunt Maggie’s thrillers?”

  “Just the back covers.”

  I sighed. “Well, whatever his problem is, we’ve got Carney to worry about right now. Besides, I’m not sure we should be sticking our noses into Augustus’s business anyway.”

  Richard looked like he didn’t quite believe me, and I wasn’t sure I believed myself. After all, if Augustus was in trouble, was it prying to try to help him, or was I just being a good cousin? We Burnettes tend to err on the side of prying.

  Business slowed down around mid-morning, and Aunt Maggie, in her own subtle way, said, “Are you two going to do any detective work today or not?”

  Richard suggested that he go talk to people this time, and I was more than willing to give him a shot. I’d had my chance, and I didn’t have much to show for it.

  “How should I play it?” he asked us. “The nosy Yankee who doesn’t know any better or the polite good ole boy?”

  Aunt Maggie snickered. “You better stick with the nosy Yankee, because with that accent, you’re not going to fool anybody into thinking you’re a good ole boy.”

  He assumed an air of injury. “I can say y’all with the best of them.”

  “Is that right? Do you say ‘grits is’ or ‘grits are’?”

  “Grits are?”

  Aunt Maggie and I looked at each other, and in unison said, “Yankee.”

  Richard bowed his head in surrender, and headed on his way.

  Chapter 25

  Not long after Richard went sleuthing, Thatcher Broods wheeled a padded dolly over to Carney’s booth and started loading boxes.

  “You moving your stuff outside, Thatcher?” Aunt Maggie asked.

  “No, ma’am, I’m taking it home. I wanted to sell today, but I got a late start because I had to go over the inventory with Miz Alexander before I did anything else. I was here late last night getting it done.”

  “Is that Carney’s sister you’re talking about?”

  “Yes, ma’am, Sadie Alexander. Carney didn’t have any records, so she didn’t have any idea of what it was she was selling to me. I didn’t want her to think that I’d gypped her, so I took her the inventory in case she wanted to check it against the stock, but she said she trusts me. The way she figures it, if I make a little on the deal, it would only be fair. From the way Carney talked, she was pretty sure he’d been cheating me ever since I started working as a point man.”

  Aunt Maggie
said, “Being a man’s sister doesn’t make her blind to his faults. Sometimes it makes you see them that much more clearly.”

  “I don’t think those two liked each other much, anyway. He complained about her a lot, said she wouldn’t leave him alone and went through his things when he wasn’t home. She said he was a lazy slob. She even complained about him when I was over there this morning. I guess when she took the police over to his place, it was a real pigsty, even though she cleaned it before she went out of town Friday. It’s like she was mad at him for getting killed and leaving her with the mess.”

  “I’ve known a lot of people to lose husbands and wives, and parents, and brothers and sisters, but I’ve never seen two people show their feelings the same way. Maybe fussing is her way of grieving.”

  Thatcher said, “Maybe you’re right,” but I could tell he just couldn’t imagine why a grieving sister would complain about her late brother. Aunt Maggie looked at me and shook her head ruefully, and I could tell she was thinking that Thatcher was awfully young, and that someday he’d know better.

  As for me, I was wondering how Carney had made such a big mess so quickly. If his sister cleaned Friday and he died Sunday morning, when had he had the time? Even assuming that he’d gone straight home Saturday night, there wouldn’t have been but a few hours to make a mess.

  Of course, the killer had Carney’s keys, including his house key. Since Carney’s body had stayed hidden most of the day, that meant that the killer would have had plenty of time to search the apartment, and he wouldn’t have cared how much of a mess he made. Presumably he hadn’t found what he was looking for, because if he had, he wouldn’t have had to break into the flea market later in the week.

  I sighed. I was still working on assumptions. Reasonable assumptions, maybe, but still assumptions. My problem was that I’d only talked to Carney’s enemies, and I really needed to talk to one of his friends.

  “Aunt Maggie,” I said, “did Thatcher know Carney well?”

  “I couldn’t say, but he’d been a point man for a good while.”

  That was something, anyway. “If you don’t need me, I think I’ll go see if I can give him a hand.”