Foul Play at the Fair

by Shelley Freydont

  Liv lifted her hand. “May I please just interrupt here to say never, ever do anything like that again. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “So what happened?”

  “That old truck was there, so I knew they were home. So I hid my bike in the bushes by the stream and crept closer to get a better look. I saw him coming up the path from the lake with a bucket of water. I followed alongside of him trying to see better. I thought the bushes would hide me. I was real quiet.” She frowned and said in a smaller voice, “I must have made a noise, and he turned around and looked right at me.

  “At first he was really mad. He dragged me out of the bushes and I was kinda scared. But he was my uncle, black sheep or not, whatever that means. So I told him who I was. Then he was much nicer.”

  Liv just bet he was. She imagined him playing on the girl’s trust to get what he wanted, which, according to everyone in town, was to cause trouble. This was not looking good.

  Roseanne paused. Liv waited, not sure she should be listening. Surely Roseanne should be telling this to Bill. But Roseanne wasn’t ready to put her trust in either Bill or Ted. For some reason she’d come to Liv.

  Liv smiled encouragingly, though encouraged was the last thing she felt. This story was leading right to more trouble. But somebody needed to hear it, and unfortunately that somebody seemed to be her.

  Roseanne looked up, her eyes round and frightened and guilty.

  Liv jumped in with both feet. “Go on.”

  “He was real nice after that. Offered me a soda and stuff. But I felt a little creeped out. I mean, he was my uncle, but he was also a stranger and…Well, I just didn’t feel all that okay with it. But we walked and he started asking me questions, and I was sure not to tell him too much, ’cause suddenly I began to feel like I shouldn’t be there.”

  She sniffed. “But he seemed nice. And he even said he’d been pretty wild when he was a kid, and he didn’t blame Dad for kicking him out. That he deserved it. So I asked him why he didn’t come back to make up with Dad. He said he’d thought about it a hundred times, but he was”—her voice cracked—“too afraid. And now he’s dead.”

  Liv’s conscience got the better of her. “Maybe you should tell the rest to Bill.”

  “No way. He’s an old stick-in-the-mud. He’ll just tell me to mind my own business. And I haven’t even gotten to the worst part.”

  Oh holy moly, thought Liv.

  “It’s really bad.”

  Liv shifted to sit beside her. Whiskey sighed contentedly. Liv felt slightly nauseous. She pushed the same strand of hair back behind Roseanne’s ear. “Go on.”

  “He said if I thought he should try to make it up with Dad, he would.”

  A tear seeped out of her eye and rolled down her cheek. She dashed it away with the back of her hand. “And I told him I thought he should. I mean, hell, it had been thirty years…and families should be together.” She snatched at the package of tissues and buried her face in a handful of fluff. Her shoulders shuddered as she cried, and Liv automatically pulled her close, stroked her back.

  What the hell could she say? Roseanne was no dummy. She knew that she might have been the catalyst that would eventually send her father to jail.

  “It’s all right. I’m sure your dad would never hurt his brother even if he was mad at him.”

  “But he said Dad would never let him in the house. He’d have to surprise him and make him listen to his apology. Dad can be pretty hard-nosed. He’s fair, but he’s tough. You know?

  “Then Uncle Pete said I should unlock the door to the store and get Daddy to go down there where they could talk it over. And nobody would bother them. Part of me thought it was a good idea and part of me said no way. But I had told him how I wanted to go to New York but Momma got sick. And he said when we were one big happy family again, we’d all go to New York. He’d been lots of times, and it was fabulous and he knew all the best places to see. And he’d take me to the Hard Rock Café, and I—I said okay.”

  Liv didn’t try to stop her. She’d let the girl start down this road, and there would be no stopping it until she got to the end. And Liv dreaded where and to whom that road would lead.

  “So I did, but then I got nervous and told Donnie. He got pissed and told me I was an idiot. He said he’d go lock the store because Pete was up to no good. But I guess he didn’t get a chance before…” She trailed off. “Dad was in the house asleep all night.”

  Dad might have been, thought Liv, but Donnie had gone to the store, and if Pete was already inside…Thankfully, Roseanne seemed oblivious to the fact that she may have cleared her father but had implicated her brother in the murder of Pete Waterbury.

  “Promise you won’t tell.”

  “Roseanne, you need to—”

  “Promise.”

  Liv took a breath. “Okay, I promise, but you have to promise me that you’ll think about all this and tell Bill. It’s important that they know all the facts.”

  “Not if it means…He didn’t do it.”

  “Then the facts will help them find out who did.”

  Liv held and rocked Roseanne until her breathing steadied and they heard a car in the driveway. Roseanne sat up and wiped her eyes. Liv went to get the door.

  “Of all the lamebrained things,” Ted said as he strode across the living room and peered at Roseanne down the length of his patrician nose. “What do you think you were doing, coming here in the middle of the night?”

  “Liv is going to help me find out who really killed Uncle Pete.”

  “What?” Liv exclaimed at the same time Ted barked, “The hell she will.”

  Roseanne’s mouth drooped. Whiskey climbed onto Roseanne’s lap. Liv stared. This fiery temper was something she hadn’t seen in Ted until this awful murder.

  “She promised.” Roseanne hugged Whiskey to her chest. “Didn’t you?”

  “I—” Liv began.

  “Will stay out of this,” Ted finished, his expression set, his normally mild blue eyes cold as a frozen lake.

  “Now, just a minute.”

  “Come on, I’m taking you home.”

  “No.”

  “Roseanne Elaine Waterbury. Now.”

  Whiskey sat up and barked. He obviously didn’t like Ted’s tone of voice, either. Roseanne pulled him close and shook her head, but her lip trembled.

  The kettle whistled, and they all jumped.

  “How about we all have a nice cup of tea,” Liv said, feeling like a cross between a Stepford wife and Miss Marple. “I’ll just get the tea things.”

  “I’ll help,” Roseanne said and slipped past Ted to the kitchen before he could stop her. Whiskey jumped off the couch and, after giving Ted his most disapproving look, padded after her.

  Liv and Ted were left looking at each other. Liv deliberated for two seconds on whether to explain things or to avoid his questioning eyes.

  “Don’t upset her any more than she already is,” she whispered as she and Ted followed Roseanne and Whiskey into the kitchen.

  But as soon as they reached the kitchen, Ted said, “I think it’s time that you explain yourself…and yourself,” he added, turning to Liv.

  Liv poured hot water into three cups, two with hot chocolate mix and one with a tea bag for Ted. “Roseanne needed to talk to someone.”

  “Try again. She has a whole town to talk to.”

  Liv hesitated, took a deep breath. “You know how people talk to bartenders? Sometimes it’s easier to say things to people you don’t know very well, because they have no preconceptions.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, Ted,” Liv said, exasperation getting the better of her. “I love you dearly, but playing dense is not one of your better qualities.”

  Ted opened his mouth.

  “Don’t be angry with her, Uncle Ted. It’s not Liv’s fault.”

  Ted raised a sardonic eyebrow.

  “Roseanne seems to think that, being from Manhattan, I’m an expert in murder.”


  “Ridiculous. What would an event planner know about murder?”

  Roseanne shrugged. “I don’t know, but somebody has to do something. And you and Sheriff Gunnison are just standing around with your—”

  “Roseanne,” Ted warned.

  Roseanne huffed out a long, disgusted sigh. “Are doing nothing about getting Dad out of jail. At least Liv listens to me.”

  That was a stretch. A couple of sentences about funeral food this afternoon. And a garbled explanation about her father’s arrest. Or non-arrest, as the case might be. But Liv wasn’t about to risk losing the girl’s trust.

  “Let’s just all sit down and discuss this rationally,” said Liv, placing mugs on the table and reaching into the cabinet for something to accompany them. The only thing she found was a box of animal crackers, left over from her going-away bash the night before she left Manhattan. She poured them into a bowl and put them in the center of the table. Rosanne automatically reached for one. But Ted wrinkled his nose.

  “Best I could do,” Liv said. “I don’t bake.” Or cook, or do any other domestic duty if I can get away with it.

  She sat down, took an animal cracker, and bit at the edge. She had some serious decisions to make, and she needed to make them soon. She couldn’t tell Ted or Bill what Roseanne had told her. She just couldn’t break the girl’s confidence that way. She’d have to help Roseanne tell them herself. It wouldn’t be easy. Roseanne refused to look at Ted, and she’d already told Liv exactly what she thought of the sheriff.

  They drank their tea and hot chocolate in silence; then Ted told Roseanne he was driving her home. “No arguments. Get whatever you brought and let’s go. Donnie can pick up the truck tomorrow.”

  Roseanne shot Liv a desperate look, then slid out of her chair. As soon as she was out of earshot, Ted said, “What was this all about?”

  “Ted.” She couldn’t tell him; she’d promised. “I couldn’t begin to say.”

  She saw them to the door and locked it behind them. Whiskey laid a paw on her foot.

  “Yeah, I know, baby. There’s more trouble ahead.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Liv didn’t even attempt to make it to work on time the next morning. She hoped Ted had decided to make it a late day, too.

  She let Whiskey out, dressed, then went into the living room to pack up her computer. Her laptop was open. She tapped a key and the screen lit up with an article about Chaz Bristow. She’d forgotten all about her Google search once Roseanne had showed up at the door.

  She sat down and scrolled through the article. Bristow was thorough. He’d ratted out one meth lab, followed the trail to a ring of labs, and was taking notes as the cops took a high-profile drug lord off to jail.

  She clicked back to Google and brought up the most recent articles, written five years before, about the kidnapping of the wife of one of LA’s most prominent bankers.

  The banker paid several ransom demands, but his wife wasn’t returned. There was speculation that she was dead. Speculation that the husband had been in on it. Speculation that it was revenge for an illicit scheme gone wrong. The husband stopped paying. Chaz’s articles stopped.

  Maybe that was the end of it. The cops would keep looking for a while; then it would be declared a cold case. Chaz would have been put on another story. And in the meantime the editor of the Clarion died and left it to Chaz.

  Liv leaned back in her chair, stared at the screen until her screen saver appeared. Would Chaz be interested in pursuing the murder of Pete Waterbury? Was he already doing research? She could imagine him in his office, head bent over old newspapers, following the lead…right to the couch where he’d lie down and dream of catfish.

  Liv huffed out a breath. There would be no help from that direction. And she should be getting to work instead of thinking about the murder.

  It was so frustrating. The worst thing she usually had to deal with was the weather, an overbooked venue, or an off-season flower order that froze in an airline cargo hold. Those were the problems she knew how to deal with. She had protocol in place.

  She’d once had to postpone a retirement banquet because the retiring CEO dropped dead of a heart attack before he could be feted. A week later in a new venue, she took charge of the memorial service. But she never in her wildest dreams thought she’d be broadsided by murder.

  And she didn’t like it one bit. And the sad truth of it was that no one had even liked the victim. He wasn’t part of their community, and no one mourned him. But they were afraid of it happening again.

  “Grrrr.”

  Whiskey barked once from the doorway.

  “It’s all right, baby. Just me.” She got up and went to get her coat and keys, while Whiskey gamboled around her feet. “Sorry, fella. You have to stay home until I get this mess sorted out. Maybe Miss Edna will let you help her in the garden again. But. Do. Not. Dig. Up. Her. Carrots. Capisce?”

  “Arf.”

  “And we’ll go on a long walk tonight when I get home.”

  Whiskey cocked his head and took off for the bedroom. If she followed him, she’d find him hiding under the bed. To Whiskey, an evening in front of the television trumped exercise any day.

  “See ya,” she called and headed to town hall.

  The temperature had dropped overnight and she walked briskly to get her blood pumping. She could have gone back to get her winter coat, but she refused to be the first person to give in to the cold. Liv Montgomery could take it with the best of Celebration Bay’s old-timers.

  There seemed to be plenty of them on the street this morning. It was a Thursday; there were no special activities outside of the usual October fare, but nearly every parking space was filled.

  She passed three men confabbing on the street corner.

  “Morning, Liv.” Otis Deal touched his fingers to the bill of his John Deere cap. “Heard any more about what’s happening with Joss?”

  Liv shook her head automatically. Why did he think she would know anything?

  “Well, it’s that damn fool Bill Gunnison, letting the damn state people come in and push their weight around,” said his shorter companion.

  “I don’t think he had a say in it,” said the third man. “He must be pretty darn frustrated.”

  “Then he should have hurried up and arrested one of the Zoldoskys instead of going to funerals and hobbling around like an old man.”

  The door to the bakery opened and Edna and Ida Zimmerman came out carrying a large bag.

  “Well, good morning, Liv,” Ida said. She was dressed in a tweed skirt and sensible shoes with an old green car coat buttoned up to her neck. “Now, you boys run along and stop gossiping like a bunch of old women.”

  “Yes, Miss Ida.” The three middle-aged men hightailed it across the street.

  She turned to Liv. “We saw Joss’s truck parked on the street last night and Ted’s car at your place in the middle of the night. Did they let Joss out of jail? Did he ask you to help him?”

  Of course they would know everything that went on, especially in their own backyard.

  Before Liv could think of an answer, Edna took her sister’s elbow and practically dragged her to the curb. “Well, I for one am not going to stand here and gossip all morning.” She turned to Liv, frowned, then cut her eyes back toward the bakery, the meaning clear. Something’s up. “Come along, Sister; we’d better get home before these buns get cold.”

  Liv smiled good-bye and stepped inside the bakery.

  Dolly was bent over what appeared to be a tray of sticky buns. She was dressed in civilian clothes: khaki slacks and a pink sweatshirt. It was the first time Liv had seen her on-site not wearing one of her gingham dresses. Only the ties of the white apron gave a nod to baking.

  “Good morning, Dolly.”

  Dolly squeaked and whirled around. Her face was chalky. She wore no lipstick and no smile of welcome.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Which was odd in itself, considering the Zimmerman sisters had just left
and customers came in all day long. Edna had sensed something was wrong, and she’d given Liv a heads-up. But what was she supposed to do?

  Dolly put her hand on her chest. “I was just off in a blue study. Didn’t even hear you come in.” She smiled; it was forced. Liv had been around people who smiled like that for far too long. That was why she’d moved to Celebration Bay. She wanted to take Dolly by the shoulders and shake her. Don’t do this to me. I’m not the enemy.

  Or was she? Was Janine already spreading her venom? We never had a murder before she came. She brought the evils from the city with her.

  “What can I get for you?”

  Some truth, some honesty, and two of those sticky buns.

  “Just got these sticky buns out of the oven,” Dolly said too brightly. “Ted loves them.”

  “Fine. I’ll take two.”

  Dolly turned away and lifted two buns into a white bakery box. She set the box on the counter. “That’ll be three twenty-five.”

  At least Liv was still getting the local rate. A tourist would pay that much for each bun. She counted out the change and handed it to Dolly. Dolly took it with trembling fingers.

  Liv looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was coming inside. “Dolly. Is something wrong? You seem a little uneasy.”

  Dolly shook her head. “No, no. It’s just…Well, this awful thing about Pete, and Joss being arrested.”

  “I heard he had just been taken in for questioning. That’s understandable. He was a family member.” Liv tried to sound reassuring but didn’t really succeed.

  “That’s not what Harry Ellis over at the pub said. The local cops go there after their shifts. They said state detectives brought him in and are keeping him. They won’t even let Bill talk to him.”

  Liv frowned. State detectives? Still, wouldn’t it be a common courtesy to let the local sheriff in on the investigation? “What does Bill say?”

  Dolly threw up her hands. “I have no idea. No one’s seen him. I swear if that man—if he—oh—” She clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Dolly, what’s the matter?”