The Morelville Mysteries Collection

by Anne Hagan

  I went back into the stands. The crowd had thinned out just a little since the Sale of Champions. I thought Beth would do just fine. Kris’s boss was still in the stands. I made my way up to him and his wife.

  “Hey Rod, Alicia, good to see you both. Thanks for coming out.”

  He smiled. “You know we wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Well, we all appreciate it and we really appreciate you bidding that grocery buyer up for Cole. He was sweating it down there for a minute.”

  Rod chuckled, “Bid him up hell! That was a nice looking steer that would have looked even better in my freezer. We weren’t going to sell it back. We were going to butcher it. That guy got a hell of a deal.” Rod shook his head ruefully, “He’ll get top dollar on the steaks and roasts from that beast.”

  We all laughed.

  “Tell you what though; I won’t be buying it from him. Beth sent us a real nice letter and she’s got a nice looking steer herself. We’ll give her a good price for it.”

  “That’s great of you to do. We keep telling those two how important it is to do those letters.”

  “We get dozens you know,” Alicia said. “Once you buy here once, every kid at the fair sends you one. We just like to buy from the kids we actually know.”

  After thanking them again, I headed back over to mom, dad and Dana but I kept mum about my conversation with Rod and Alicia. I just winked at Dana but, as for mom and dad, I figured it would do them good to sweat it out a little with Beth. Dad looked more healthy and full of life than I’d seen him in months.

  The auctioneer was moving kids and steers in and out of the ring pretty quick. You could tell the kids who’d sent out buyer letters easily. They were getting $1.50 to $1.60 a pound or so. Kids that hadn’t bothered were lucky to make a dollar a pound for all their hard work until they dropped the ball on the crucial piece, the sale.

  The first of the two Harpers entered the sale ring, Nate. He was dressed neatly and he had a decent looking steer. He smiled and seemed to be relaxed and oblivious to the whispering spreading like wildfire through the stands.

  True to form, the auctioneer started his patter high, “Who’ll give me five, give me five, five, five? Who’ll give me five?”

  Nobody, including Nate expected anyone to open the bidding at $5.00 a pound. His smile didn’t lessen as the auctioneer dropped the price down from five dollars to one dollar a pound in rapid reductions. When nobody bid at a dollar a pound, Nate toed the sawdust a little under his feet.

  “Come on folks! Get your bidder numbers up. These young people work really hard. Who’ll give me Seventy-five cents a pound? Anybody at seventy-five, seventy five, seventy five?” There was near silence in the Coliseum stands. In the show ring, the color drained from Nate’s face.

  “Market is posted at $.63 cents a pound folks. Who’ll give me seventy cents? Seventy cents; who’ll give seventy? That’s a bargain if you turn it around! You’re only paying seven cents a pound. Who’ll give seventy?”

  No one moved. The auctioneer covered his mike and spoke to the Fair Board member recording the bids next to him. The semi-disguised Elizabeth Harper walked up behind their platform perch and said something to the two of them.

  The auctioneer banged his gavel. “Sold for $.65 a pound to Harper farms. Turn it around.”

  Dana was puzzled, “What just happened?”

  “Elizabeth Harper just agreed to buy her own son’s steer and resell it to a meat processor who’s buying at $.63 a pound today. She’ll be paying out about $24 bucks and change given the steers weight which the Fair Board will send in a check to Nate.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Tell me about it but, it isn’t over yet.”

  Tears streaming down her face, Nora Harper limped into the sale arena with her steer from one side while her brother left out the other side.

  The crowd was quiet again as the young woman sobbed. The auctioneer seemed to lose his place. He forgot to even introduce her before trying to begin his patter.

  A voice boomed out from one of the entrances to the building, “Enough of this bullshit!” Hundreds of pairs of eyes turned toward the sound as Nevil Harper Sr. strode into the Coliseum. “Stop the fake attempt at an auction. We’re taking it back and my own family will eat it. To hell with all of this!”

  He walked to the center of floor stopping just outside the confines of the sale ring. “Get out of there Nora. We’re going home.” Whirling back around to face the crowd, he raised a chastising finger, “Shame on all of you! You think you know something but you don’t know anything. You ought to be ashamed for taking your misperceptions out on innocent children!”

  Chapter 12 – Free Day...or Not

  Friday Morning, August 15th, 2014

  Beth was still on cloud nine after selling Hunter to Rod an Alicia for $2.45 a pound. She got up from her bunk in the camper and went to the barn to join Cole and take care of the calves with no prompting at all. Meanwhile, mom, Kris and I were grilling up sausage and eggs for breakfast sandwiches.

  Dana came out of the camper and was startled to see me still in the area. “What are you doing here?”

  “Good morning to you too!”

  “I mean...I didn’t mean...”

  I laughed. “Babe, it’s okay. I’m going to in a little late today and just for a couple of hours. After that, I’ll be back by here to pick you up.”

  “Why?” She peered at me through narrowed eyes.

  “Don’t be so suspicious!” I chuckled back at her. “Larry and Sharon rolled by here a little bit ago. You and I are going to have a little meet up with them and walk through their house later this afternoon. Since the sale is over, they decided to go ahead and pull out this morning.”

  “Already?”

  “Yeah, they’ve had enough of the fair until next year,” Kris supplied.

  ###

  I spent more than three hours at the station doing paperwork and catching up on email. I hit Shane Harding up too on his progress finding Sterling Moon. He had no new leads. The guy and his vehicle had completely disappeared. Word on the street Shane said, among the few he could find that knew him, was that he was in hiding.

  Without Moon I had nothing but what Olivia Stiers had told me and the memory of her little side show at the morgue. All of that, so far, had led to another big hill of nothing.

  Completely frustrated with the total lack of progress in the investigation, I went back to the fairgrounds to get Dana. At least maybe we can make some progress on the personal front...

  Dana followed me back to the house in her own car which had mostly sat parked on the grounds and collecting dust for the week. We’d decided that she’d stay at home on Saturday and work on the weeks’ worth of laundry for everyone had accumulated while I went back and helped wrangle the two feeder calves going back to the farm and all of the other various equipment and supplies we had in the barn.

  We were in the driveway unloading packed full laundry bags for everyone but mom and dad when Larry came around the side of his house carrying a rake. He leaned it by the porch and hustled over to us.

  “Here, let me help you with that Dana.”

  “Oh, thanks. I can get some of it.”

  I was dumbfounded, “What am I; chopped liver over here?”

  “You’re not injured. You don’t need help.” He grinned.

  “She’s not your type, you know.”

  “Who’s not his type?” Karen had appeared out of nowhere.

  “Larry is flirting with Dana.”

  “I was just trying to be a gentleman!” We all laughed.

  “So,” I said when the laughter subsided, “What did you two think of spending a week at the fair?” We moved toward the house I shared with my sister and her kids, each lugging a bag or two of laundry.

  Karen let out a long slow breath, “I’ll just say that the grandkids had a great time but it’s good to be home.” She looked at the half dozen bags we’d already brought in. “I don’t envy you this. We’re do
ing the same thing over there. I haven’t even stripped the beds in the camper yet.”

  “Where are the girls?”

  “Crashed out in the family room,” Karen smirked. “Their blessed TV show that they’ve ‘missed so much’ all week wasn’t on five minutes and they were both out like lights.”

  “Fair will do that to you.” I tossed my head toward Dana, “This one’s looking a little droopy too.”

  “Look,” Larry said, “Why don’t you two get this stuff started and then come on over to have a look around now. That way you have the whole afternoon to just come back here and relax and rest and maybe later, when you’re rested up, talk about making a deal to buy the place?” His grin had an air of hopefulness about it.

  “Sounds like a plan Larry. We’ll be over in just a few as long as you don’t think our visit will disturb your granddaughters?"

  Karen poo, pooed the thought, “A freight train wouldn’t wake those two up right now.”

  Dana stood in the center of the ‘sitting’ room sizing up what she saw. “I just can’t believe this woodwork! It’s beautiful.”

  Larry was all smiles. When we bought the house several years ago, it was all painted over. It took a few years of scraping and staining, when we had the time, to get all the woodwork and the floors back to this.”

  “I bet. It’s wonderful; you did an amazing job.”

  Karen beamed in the background where she stood beside me. She stepped forward and touched Dana’s arm then pointed at a closed door, “Now go on through there. Like we told you, the layout is similar to Mel and Kris’s house but we think you’ll be surprised with that.”

  Dana opened the door to the room in their house that would be the equivalent to the den in mine. I heard her intake of breath from where I stood, several feet behind her. She looked back over her shoulder at me, mouth agape. “Mel, you have to see this!”

  She moved into the room and I followed her. Larry and Karen stood in the doorway taking in our reactions.

  They’d taken out the sidewall and enlarged the room out into the yard another ten feet. A gorgeous king bed and bedroom set fit inside the space with plenty of room to spare.

  My head swiveled in amazement; unbelievably, all of the woodwork matched the original room and the rest of the house.

  “It must have been painstaking to match all of this up,” I said pointing at the moldings and the hardwood floor.”

  Karen’s nose crinkled and she gritted her teeth for just a spilt second. “You don’t know the half of it,” her expression relaxed, “but this isn’t all of it. There’s more.” She indicated two doors off to one side of the room where I had a single door in my den to a tiny bathroom by comparison.

  I opened one door and Dana the other. Mine led to a large by my standards, walk-in closet that beat the tiny, under the stairs, closet in my den by a mile. I shook my head and then stepped over to look over Dana’s shoulder. She was staring, speechless, into a cavern of a bathroom done in stone and tile with a Jacuzzi tub and separate shower stall.

  “You all right?”

  She didn’t say anything at first, just gazed longingly at the tub. “You might never get me out of that...”

  Back out into the sitting room, I couldn’t contain my excitement. “Guys, it’s beyond anything that I expected.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Dana added.

  “But you haven’t even seen upstairs,” Larry cautioned. “It’s not a mess or anything like that, but all we’ve done up there since Cindy and the girls got their own place is strip and finish the woodwork and sand and seal the floors. The extension of the bedroom down here includes the room upstairs above it too but we didn’t put a third bathroom up there.”

  “That’s not a deal breaker for us. We wouldn’t be using upstairs for anything but occasional guests anyway, right?” I looked at Dana. She half shrugged in response.

  “So, I gotta’ ask, what are you wanting for the place?”

  Larry looked at Karen and she nodded in some unspoken agreement to him. He looked back at me, “For the two of you, $120,000.”

  Dana gaped at him and I shook my head no vigorously. “Come on; be serious. It’s worth more than that Larry! Doing that bedroom and bath had to set you back fifty grand at least, and you’ve got a few acres or more of land here to boot.”

  “Let’s sit down and just hear us out, okay?” We all sat.

  Karen started talking first, “We bought this house and the little plot right around it 10 years ago for $30,000 sight unseen inside. The outside needed sided but, other than that, it wasn’t too bad. Inside here it wasn’t trashed but everything was severely outdated. The house was built in 1902. The wiring looked like it was added as an afterthought from the first days of electricity and the other bathroom looked like it had been added on in the ‘40s or ‘50s and never updated.” She shivered at the memory.

  “What she’s trying to say is that we did a lot of updating over the last several years but it’s all been cosmetic and sweat equity stuff except for the bedroom suite and acquiring some more of the property surrounding us. It’s all bought and paid for. We only want out of it, what we put in it.”

  “I think you deserve more than that out of it for what you’ve done.”

  Larry looked at his wife, “Listen to her arguing with me to charge them more!” A smile spread across his face. “I’m going to level with the two of you; it’s a good deal yes, but there’s still a lot of work to be done here. For one, you know that there’s only a tiny patio outside and no other outdoor living space yet to speak of. We never got around to that. The garage roof needs replaced and, quite frankly, that barn at the back of the lot needs torn down before it falls down.”

  “Those are all easy fixes.” I eyeballed Dana. Her own eyes sparkled back at me.

  “Tell you what, let us get back over there and rustle up something or other for dinner and talk about it and we’ll get back to you real soon.” Because we’ll be buying the house, I can almost guarantee...

  ###

  We’d emptied the fridge and cupboards of perishables before leaving for fair week. Karen took pity on us and sent us home with egg salad she’d just made fresh. While Dana moved laundry around, I ran up to the little general store before it closed for the evening and picked up bread and supplies for the next couple of days.

  I walked back into the house and closed the door firmly behind me. Dana was taking plates out of the cupboard. “Ah, domestic bliss.”

  She cracked a smile and then commanded, “Hand over the bread!”

  I unpacked the groceries and put them away wordlessly while she assembled our dinner in companionable silence. I didn’t know what she was thinking but I thought it might be the same thing I was; I really wanted that house. There were a few cons, sure, but there were a lot more pros. I didn’t want it to just be my decision though.

  We sat down facing each other to eat. She took a bite and rolled her eyes heavenward.

  “Such a simple thing and yet so good...”

  Smiling, I reached for a chip but I didn’t say anything.

  Dana tilted her head and looked at me sideways, “So, what are you thinking about?”

  “You know what.”

  “That house?”

  I nodded.

  “And?” She took another bite of sandwich.

  I shook my head, “No. You first. I want to know what you think.”

  “I love it. I thought that was obvious.”

  “I could tell you liked it babe but do you think it will work for us?”

  “Mel, I think it’s perfect for us.”

  I could feel my face light up with my smile, “So it’s settled then? We take their offer?”

  “Yes.”

  “It can’t really be this easy, can it?”

  She shot me a look, “Shh! Don’t jinx it!”

  I picked up my cell and dialed Larry’s number. When he picked up I simply said, “We’ll take the house.” He was overjoyed at our quick decision.
We agreed to get together to establish an agreement and pick a turnover date later the following week. He would have his lawyer draw up some papers.

  I hung up and smiled at my fiancé, “We’re going to be homeowners.”

  She smiled back and blew me a kiss.

  “Oh, I think we can do a little better than that...”

  Dana was hesitant, “So, we’re really going to be completely alone for the evening?” She looked across the table at me. Her eyes were twinkling, the egg salad sandwich in her hands hiding a goofy grin.

  I barked out a short laugh. “As far as I know.”

  “How long?”

  “All night, if they all told the truth. Dad’s at the farm and everyone else is staying at the fairgrounds for the concert then cooking out at the campers afterward. Why? What did you have in mind?” I wiggled my eyebrows as best I could.

  Her smile faded a bit and I watched as she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and nibbled nervously. The sandwich shook a little in her grip. “Do you...”

  I reached across the table and steadied her wrist, feeling her pulse jump erratically. “Whoa, Dana, calm down. I was joking. Tonight is all ours, finally.” Her gaze settled on mine and she gasped for breath. “No one will be here tonight. I promise.” It had been far too long since I had been able to make that kind of promise. Living in a house with family was a trying experience for any couple and we were proving that in spades living with my family.

  She calmed under my firm voice. “Great!”

  “Finish your egg salad.” I winked at her. “You’re going to need all the protein you can get.”

  Spitting out food, she laughed hard and then wiped away the mess and dropped the sandwich on the plate. “I’m not planning to waste the time we have. Are you?”

  I grinned, “Nope.”

  She stood slowly, one hand braced on the back of the chair until she found her balance then she hobbled toward me. All of the walking of fair week had really done a number on her. She seemed a little weaker instead of stronger.