Shadows at the Fair

by Lea Wait

  “She told me.”

  “She really held that over Harry, that she was going without him. They’d never been apart for more than a weekend, even if they were both involved with people. And he didn’t want her to go because of her illness.”

  “He thought she might get worse?”

  “People with AIDS need to avoid germs, and that means avoiding swarms of people, because their immune systems make them so vulnerable to any infection. Not only was she going to expose herself to any number of horrible diseases—that’s what Harry said—traveling would exhaust her and weaken her further. Plus, of course, she’d be far from doctors who knew her.”

  “Then why did she go?”

  Joe shrugged. “Women! I think she was trying to prove she was independent. And, of course, Vince said he’d look out for her.”

  “He knew she had AIDS?”

  Joe looked surprised. “Of course. He’d visited her a couple of times when she was in the hospital and once called to recommend a new cure someone he’d met swore by.”

  Vince had known! Then what was all the talk and great trauma this morning? “You’re sure he knew?”

  “Absolutely.” Joe looked at Maggie as though she hadn’t heard him the first time. “I was with Harry and Susan and Vince just before the Asia trip when they were checking to make sure he knew about all of Susan’s medications, and her doctors’ numbers, should anything happen while they were gone.” Joe thought back a moment. “He seemed to take it all in stride. He didn’t seem worried that there would be any problem, because Susan kept saying she felt fine. Harry was the one who was worried.”

  Maggie suddenly thought of something else Vince had said.

  “I guess, despite everything, Harry was really devoted to Susan.” Maggie said the words casually, then sipped her diet cola.

  “Absolutely.”

  “That must have been difficult for you.”

  Joe flushed a little. “No, not really. We all got along well. And his love for Susan was different.”

  “Different from his love for you?”

  Joe nodded. “There was no one like Harry.” His eyes started to fill again.

  “Then Harry would never have left either of you.”

  As Joe looked at her, the flush on his cheeks paled. “That’s right. He wouldn’t have.”

  Gussie looked from one of them to the other. “So, Harry was the perfect husband and the perfect lover. But somebody must not have thought he was so perfect, or he wouldn’t be dead. I’m tired of listening to everyone talk about just how wonderful Harry and Susan were. People who were that wonderful don’t have other people murdering them.”

  “Gussie, we’re not saying they were perfect.” Maggie looked down at the angry face of her friend.

  “I’m tired of hearing all of it. I’m taking a break. And then I’m going to talk with someone who still has some perspective on this whole horrible situation.”

  She motored toward the rest rooms as Joe and Maggie looked after her.

  “They weren’t perfect,” Joe said softly.

  “Joe, was Harry going on a trip?”

  Joe looked at her in amazement. “How did you know?”

  “Vince told me. Where was he going?”

  “To California. He had a one-way ticket.” Joe’s pain was obvious. “A one-way ticket! And he didn’t tell me he was going. He didn’t even trust me.” He looked at Maggie. “How did Vince know?”

  Maggie watched him carefully. “On Friday night Harry asked Vince to look after Susan while he was away.”

  “Did he say how long he’d be gone?”

  “No. Vince said it sounded—pretty permanent.”

  Joe’s fist held his soaked handkerchief tightly.

  “When was he leaving?”

  “Tuesday morning. He had a ten A.M. flight to Los Angeles.”

  “The signing of the final divorce papers was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, wasn’t it?”

  Joe nodded.

  “When did he tell you about his trip?”

  Joe moved back a little toward his booth and sat down heavily in the folding chair he’d left there near his cash box. His voice was low; Maggie moved toward him and bent a little to make sure she heard him. “He didn’t tell me.” Joe looked up at her. “He didn’t even have the guts to tell me.”

  Or Susan, thought Maggie silently. What a wonderful and caring man he was. He was leaving his wife and, no doubt, taking with him the $500,000 his lover had loaned him that was to pay for Susan’s medical treatments. A terrific guy: he was going to clean his lover out of all his savings and leave his wife, who was dying of AIDS, without money.

  She looked at Joe. “If he didn’t tell you, then how did you know?”

  “On Friday morning, right before I left home to drive over here from Connecticut, I checked my answering machine and caller ID. There was a message for Harry from a woman named Julie, confirming his reservations.” Joe hesitated. “When Harry stayed with me, he often used my telephone. At some time I guess he’d given his travel agent my number. Anyway, I called her back to check the details of the message, so I could tell Harry when I saw him. She told me he had a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, and he could pick it up at her office Monday morning; she was working over the holiday weekend.”

  “Did you give him the message?”

  “No. I gave her Harry’s number in the city; I told her to call him there.” Joe looked at Maggie. “If he hadn’t wanted me to know, then I didn’t want him to think I did know. Maybe he was going to tell me this weekend.”

  Or maybe Harry was just taking Joe’s money and running. Leaving Joe holding an empty bankbook.

  Joe looked down. “And then he was dead. We never got to talk about it. Maybe he had a really good explanation.”

  Maggie nodded. “Maybe.” But no one had heard it; that was for sure.

  If anyone was adding up motives, Joe’s had just increased dramatically. His lover had just borrowed an unsecured half million from him and was taking off without saying goodbye. Sounded like grounds for a lot of actions. Murder would only be the simplest.

  “Joe, you must have been pretty angry Friday.”

  Joe just nodded and didn’t look at her. “I wanted to die. I thought everything was so perfect. I kept thinking, Harry’s going to tell me any minute what this is all about. Maybe there’s a really good reason for his trip. Maybe he’s going to postpone the signing for a day or so.” Joe looked over at the wall of his booth covered with books on travel and history. “But then he would have bought a round-trip ticket, wouldn’t he? Or at least a ticket with an open return. I may not have had a lot of relationships in my life. But I’m not stupid, Maggie.” There was a blaze in his eyes, and in the tilt of his neck as he stood up suddenly, knocking his cash box and three pencils on the floor. “I’m not stupid.”

  “No, Joe, you’re not stupid at all.”

  Just a little naive, and really paying for it.

  “It must have been pretty awful, knowing that about Harry. Maybe you confronted him—asked him about the ticket—asked him about your money? Maybe he laughed; maybe he lied. I don’t know. But you were very angry.”

  Joe looked at her. “I was furious at Harry. I was hurt. I was angry at myself for having fallen for him and his lines. But I didn’t kill him, Maggie. How could I kill him? I loved him!”

  Maggie nodded and patted his arm. “I know, Joe, I know.” But she had loved Michael, too, and although she had never killed him, there were moments when she knew she was not thinking straight.

  Scenes flashed in front her. The microwave oven he’d given her for her birthday when she’d asked for a romantic evening on the town in New York. The new silk underwear he’d bought—for himself. The local hotel bill for a weekend he’d told her he had to be out of town on business.

  She remembered anger. She remembered what she wanted to slice up and put in that microwave oven.

  There was no anger like the kind she had felt and Joe had just desc
ribed. Betrayal, combined with hurt and anger at yourself for not having seen what was happening until it was too late.

  Although when you were involved with a man who would do those things, it was always too late.

  Maggie realized with a start that she had walked back to her booth. A slight woman in a dress printed with red poppies was asking, “Do you have one?”

  “What? I’m sorry.”

  “Those charming botanicals in the corner. Do you have a tape measure so I can check whether they’d fit in the frames I just inherited?”

  “Of course.” Maggie pulled the tape measure out of her pocket.

  She focused on the poppies on the woman’s dress. She had prints of poppies…in her botanical files and, because of their drug connection, in her herb files. She even had a print of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, lying down and falling asleep in the field of poppies, the flowers overwhelming her with their color and scent. No one would really sleep forever because they took a nap in a field of poppies, but L. Frank Baum had known the power of the flowers, and in Oz, that’s just what might happen. A deep, deep sleep. A sleep you might never wake up from.

  “I think they’ll work. I’ll take these two.” The blonde in the poppy dress handed back the tape measure. “I’ve chosen two dark red roses. The frames I’m going to put them in are gold, and about an inch and a half wide. They’ll go beautifully in my downstairs powder room because the wall-paper is all roses, and I put in brass fixtures—they look so much more stylish than the ordinary silver kind, don’t you think? And I’m going to put a brass bowl full of rose potpourri over the toilet. Won’t that be spectacular?”

  Maggie nodded as she wrote up the order. “Spectacular, for sure.” She hoped none of this woman’s friends were allergic to roses or felt claustrophobic. The bathroom would certainly be memorable, though. And she was happy to do her part. “That’ll be one hundred twenty-seven dollars and eighteen cents, including tax.”

  As the rose lady was happily writing out a check to “Shadows,” Maggie looked across the aisle. Lydia nodded at her, and Abe was, as usual, nodding off in another direction. Maggie wondered how he managed to stay awake when they had to drive all day between shows or buying opportunities. “Thank you; enjoy your prints.”

  “Oh, I’m going to!” The poppies headed farther down the aisle.

  “Gussie! What time is it?”

  “Almost four-thirty—an hour and a half left to go.”

  “Then we only have a little time. You said you weren’t leaving until tomorrow. So you haven’t checked out of your motel room?”

  “No, I was able to extend the reservation.”

  “When we were having pizza Friday night, did I notice a laptop computer in your room?”

  Gussie looked at her. “I always think I’m going to have more energy than I do and think I’ll do some accounting after the show. And when I’m too tired to do anything else, I’m becoming a Web addict. It’s a way to have contact with the world even if Massachusetts is iced over and I’m too tired to socialize in person. Why?”

  Maggie quickly wrote something down on the pad of paper next to her cash box and handed it to Gussie. “If I promise, on my honor, to watch your booth, would you go back to your room and log on and see if you can find the answer to this question?”

  Gussie looked down. “Do you really think this is possible?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it until I’m sure. If it’s true, then we may be able to identify the real killer or killers. But we have to do it fast—the show closes soon, and people will be packing up and getting out of here.”

  Gussie nodded. “I have no idea whether you know what you’re doing, but I’m willing to try anything. I’ll see you as soon as I get some sort of an answer.” She looked down at the question. “It should be out there somewhere.” She tucked the piece of paper into the waist pouch she used as a cash box during the show. “What are you going to do?”

  “I still have a couple of other things to check out, but I can do that here. There’s almost no one left in the show anyway. Hurry, Gussie. I have to think about what to do if you bring me the answer I think you will.”

  Chapter 25

  The First of September—Partridge Shooting, hand-colored wood engraving from a drawing by Harrison Weir, noted English painter of sporting scenes. Published in The Illustrated London News on September 3, 1859. Three men with guns and two hunting dogs approaching a group of partridges. Price: $50.

  Vince tapped Maggie on her shoulder.

  “Still asking questions, Detective Summer?”

  “Still curious, Mr. Thompson.” She turned so that her back was to Joe. “You said earlier you didn’t know Susan had AIDS. Joe says you did. Why did you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie. I knew she was very sick. She told me she was afraid of AIDS. I didn’t know she had it! Why in hell would I pretend something like that? And even if I had, why would I kill one of my own dealers at one of my shows? What kind of publicity do you think that would be?”

  “Any publicity helps the gate. You always said that. Yesterday, after the news got out about Harry’s death, the gate was larger than ever, wasn’t it?”

  “Lookers, maybe. I haven’t heard of any new customers coming just because Harry got himself knocked on the head Friday night.”

  “But lookers add to the gate receipts. Receipts that go into your pocket, Vince.”

  He shook his head. “You’re headed in the wrong direction, Maggie. I know you’re trying to help, but you’ve got the wrong person. I’m a victim, too. This whole show has been a nightmare and disaster. Can you imagine what the Maine Antique Digest is going to print about all of this?”

  Maggie could. Tributes to Harry and Susan, and an indictment of security at the Rensselaer County Spring Antiques Fair. At least. And the MAD was the bible for East Coast antiques dealers. Vince’s revenues might well be affected.

  “I’ll buy that you think I had a motive to kill Susan. Okay. I did. I had a damned good motive. But what kind of a motive do you think I had to kill Harry? That he was taking off for the West Coast? That had no effect on me. I wished him well in his new business.”

  “Vince, what’s going to happen to his old business? Do you know?”

  The Art-Effects booth stood quiet.

  “Well, I’ve committed to Joe that we’ll help get the booth packed up and I’ll get one of my people to drive it down to Manhattan, probably tomorrow morning.”

  She looked back at Joe, who was talking to two men in his booth. “Joe mentioned he would help out. It’s kind of him to want to, under the circumstances.”

  “Circumstances?” Vince looked at her quizzically.

  “Well, he loved Harry, but Harry was leaving him. I think he cared about Susan, too. And he’d loaned Harry money that’s gone now. If I were Joe, I don’t think I’d ever want to see anything connected with Art-Effects ever again.”

  “Well, detective, you may have asked a lot of questions, but I think you’ve skipped a major one.”

  “What?”

  “Joe’s going to have to be pretty involved with the Art-Effects inventory, and fast.” Vince watched Maggie’s reaction as he continued. “At least, as soon as the estates are settled.”

  “Joe—”

  “Susan told me, after a few drinks in Hong Kong, that she was Harry’s beneficiary, and Harry was hers. But Joe was next in line for both of them. Joe just inherited all of Art-Effects—the inventory, the real estate—everything. I guess that van parked out in the lot will be his, too.”

  “Does Joe know that?”

  “Sure. He came to my van last night to tell me about Susan and said he’d be taking charge of her booth. He asked for my help.”

  “Last night? Right after she died?” Joe had seemed so upset before he’d left the motel. He’d said he was coming back to make some telephone calls. Will even went with him to make sure he was all right.

  “Was Will with him?”

  �
�Will Brewer? No; no one was with him. Joe was stressed-out, but he was definitely coherent. He was concerned about the logistics of getting both his van and Susan’s out of here. I told him, no problem. I’d get one of the guys who works the shows for me to drive the van down to New York tomorrow and meet him at the Findleys’ loft. Joe’s going to drive his own stuff back to his place in Connecticut tonight.”

  Joe. Inheriting everything. “I can see Harry leaving his estate to Joe…but Susan? Why?”

  Vince shrugged. “Who ever understood Susan? I asked her the same question. She just said she was leaving everything to Joe because of all his help during her illness, and because Harry loved him. But, of course, she didn’t expect Harry to die first.” Vince patted Maggie on the shoulder. “So, you never know, do you?” He turned a little toward Joe’s booth, then back to Maggie. “I came over to ask Joe when he’ll be at the loft tomorrow. He said he’d already talked with Harry’s lawyer and got his agreement to put the stuff in there. He just can’t take anything out until after the estate gets through probate.”

  Maggie took a deep breath. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to leave a bad impression, my dear. After all, I am going to have that”—he looked around carefully—“that test we discussed earlier? And I’m probably going to be fine. The more I think about it, the more I’m not worried. And, as a single lady yourself, and with me left pretty much on my own now…if you ever want to have a nice dinner—or—whatever—in the city, now, you just give me a call.” Vince winked at her. “I hear Jersey can be lonely for a single person sometimes.”

  “I’ll keep the offer in mind, Vince.”

  “Never close an option, Maggie.”

  She shook her head in amazement as he turned to consult with Joe.

  Never close an option. That sounded like something Lydia might say.

  But options were getting narrower. Joe! Poor, bereaved Joe. She had been assuming he was destitute and without friends. She glanced over at him. He seemed to be talking to Vince about the Art-Effects inventory without its causing him any undue stress. Harry had left Joe. Joe was angry. Joe might have lost some friends, but he’d gained a million-dollar business. People had killed for considerably less.