Food Fair Frenzy

by Abby L. Vandiver

  “This is your granddaughter?” Lance asked.

  “Oh honey,” Debra said. “I forgot to introduce you, this is Logan Dickerson. She’s an archaeologist.”

  “How did you know her name?” Miss Vivee said.

  “I read about her work on Stallings Island. I’m sure y’all are very proud of her.”

  Evidently not proud enough of me to leave me their imaginary land in the Black Belt.

  “We are, Mac said. “Now. We’ll get our copy of our property papers, old surveys, plat numbers and the like, and bring them all to you.”

  “Okay,” Lance said. He looked at his wife, both seemed surprised at the turn of events.

  “It’s a big project, Lance,” Mac said. “And an expensive one, I’m sure. But we’re prepared.” Mac patted his pocket again. “And we’ll need it done quickly because as you can see, we don’t know how much longer we’ll have.”

  “We understand, and we’ll keep that in mind,” Debra answered.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Have you ever met bigger liars in all your life?” Miss Vivee said. She pulled out her new pair of sunglasses and put them on.

  Yep. I thought. I’m sitting in the car with them.

  We had left Heritage Consultants without incident, in fact all had been quite pleasant taking into account Miss Vivee’s acts of thievery. But Miss Vivee’s sickly sweet smile evaporated as soon as we stepped out into the sunlight. And then she got started on them as soon as she got settled into the car. She pulled out her notebook, found a pencil, licked the tip of it and started scrawling.

  “I swear,” Miss Vivee continued her rant once she put the notebook up. “I have half a mind to call Bay right now and have him and Sheriff Haynes come and arrest those two.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Murder!”

  Oh Lord.

  “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, Missy” she said and smacked my arm. “Those two are guilty as sin.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Are you deaf? I told you, they murdered Jack Wagner.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?” she asked.

  “Why do you think they killed Jack Wagner?” I said.

  “Because they had stolen his money, and he had threatened to sue them. They would have lost their business, their livelihood and their reputation. So they put a stop to him telling anything to anybody. Permanently.”

  “Why do you say that? Is that what was in that file?” I asked.

  “That they killed him?” she said. “Why would they put that there?”

  “No, Miss Vivee.” I changed my question around. “What was in the file?”

  “Jack Wagner had hired Heritage Consultants to find out the history of his land,” Mac said from the backseat.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Is that all you can say?” Miss Vivee scrunched up her face and poked out her lip. “Why, why, why.” She swung her head from side to side. “Who knows why,” she said. “All I know is that they did it.”

  “I think that he’d found out that the land adjacent to his had been included in the historical registry,” Mac offered. “He wanted to see if his land had any historical value.”

  I wanted so bad to ask ‘why’ but I looked at Miss Vivee and decided against it.

  “So . . .” I started. I wanted to frame my question correctly. “I take it that the Goodalls took payment for the work, but didn’t complete it.”

  “See what happens when you use that noggin of yours?” Miss Vivee said.

  I still didn’t have enough information to come to the conclusion that they had murdered Jack Wagner. Evidently, Miss Vivee did.

  “If you cheat, you’ll lie, and if you lie, you’ll steal,” Miss Vivee was still venting.

  “What did they steal?” I asked.

  “Jack Wagner’s life!”

  “So, I take it, Miss Vivee, that you don’t like the Goodalls?”

  “There is nothing good about those people.”

  “I just wish someone would tell me what was in that file that’s got you so worked up,” I said.

  “Well, from what I understood from the file, in the little time we had it,” Mac said. “It appeared that the State of Georgia passed out federal grants to conduct historic preservation projects. They skipped over the land where Lincoln Park is located. So Mr. Wagner paid Heritage Consultants to do it. Survey it and find out if it should be listed in the registry.

  “I’m thinking that the state then reconsidered and gave them money to do the study on that plot of land as well. The Goodalls neglected to let Mr. Wagner know they got grant money, or that they’d been hired by the state after he’d hired them.”

  “What made the registry reconsider?”

  “Not sure,” Mac said. “Maybe it was just an oversight on its part in the first place.”

  “All this was in that file?” I asked. I hadn’t noticed much in there.

  “There were two letters that told the story,” Mac said. “One from the state, the other from a very upset Jack Wagner.”

  “But wh-” I started.

  “Don’t you say ‘why,’” Miss Vivee warned.

  “The Goodalls told us that there wasn’t any historical value to the property,” I said instead.

  “They lied,” Miss Vivee said.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “If all the land surrounding a piece of land is historical, you think one chunk of it sitting smack dab in the middle isn’t?” Miss Vivee shook her head. “Whatever made the other land special just hopped right over it, and continued its historical purpose on the other side?”

  I guess that made sense.

  “Is that the way you do your digs?” Miss Vivee kept going. “You find something in the dirt in one place, skip over the next acre or two then start digging again there?”

  “Okay, Miss Vivee,” I said and threw up my hands. “I get it.”

  “Well get it with your hands on the wheel.” She looked over at me. “Please.”

  “Was there some kind of report in that folder?” I asked. I put both hands on the wheel, flicked on the blinkers, and switched lanes. “A report from their survey?”

  “I told you that they didn’t do anything,” Miss Vivee said.

  “No,” Mac said. “We didn’t see any kind of report.”

  “What about means and opportunity, Miss Vivee?” I looked over at her. “They weren’t even at the fair.”

  “You didn’t see them at the fair. There’s a difference,” she said. “And then there was that framed blue ribbon hanging on the wall. Didn’t you see it?”

  “No,” I said. I’d only seen pictures of excavation sites. “A blue ribbon for what?”

  “Baking competition. Awarded to Lance Goodall.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He knows how to bake is what it means. That’s opportunity,” Miss Vivee said. “And as for the means, you said anybody could buy bitter almonds in South America. From the Amazon.”

  “From the Amazon?” I said confused.

  “Yeah, you read it off your phone.”

  “Oh,” I said understanding. “On Amazon.”

  “Right,” Miss Vivee said hesitating at the way I said it. “In South America,” she emphasized. “Wouldn’t take but a couple of weeks to get here.”

  I didn’t bother explaining the difference to her, but she was right, you could order them and have them mailed right to your doorstep. The dosage recommended to use to “cure” cancer wasn’t lethal, but certainly if someone wanted a person dead, it wouldn’t be hard to give him or her more than what was suggested as safe.

  Miss Vivee seemed convinced about those two. But I knew she wasn’t being logical about it. For some reason she just didn’t like Debra and Lance Goodall, and that had been all it took for them to make it on her list of possible suspects. I may not have known her real reason, but I couldn’t imagine it was because they were liars.

  That
would be pretty hypocritical of her.

  I tried to connect the poem and flowers with the Goodalls and I couldn’t do it. Debra Goodall, like me, liked to play in the dirt, but she probably didn’t know what grew in it. And she seemed nice. Plus, she was an archaeologist. We don’t murder people. But Lance . . . I wasn’t so sure about him. Did a geologist know that the kernel of some fruits contained a substance that our bodies could convert to a poison? That would be a big stretch – knowing the physical properties of the earth to knowing what the fruit bore that grew in that earth. Still, he did seem deceitful and overbearing. Could he have convinced his wife to do something as bad as murder?

  I couldn’t find a reference in the poem to them, nor could I figure out how or why (dare I say that word) they would have done it.

  Nope. I decided it wasn’t them. Couldn’t be. My money was still on Gavin Tanner.

  “Whoa!” Miss Vivee let out a yelp, startling me out of my thoughts. “Did you see that?”

  “Miss Vivee you can’t scare me like that when I’m driving.”

  “You scared me when I was behind the wheel,” Miss Vivee said. “Now you see how it feels.”

  “What did you see, Vivee?” Mac said.

  “That was Robert Bernard in that car that just past. He had the top down now, but I know that car.”

  “We’re not following him, Miss Vivee,” I cautioned.

  “Did you see who was in the car with him?” she asked. “The blonde woman?”

  “I didn’t see the car,” I said.

  “Who was it, Vivee?” Mac asked.

  “Couldn’t’ve been,” Miss Vivee shook her head. “It couldn’t have been her.” She looked over at me. “I think it must be these new glasses you got me. They’ve got me seeing things.” She pulled them off and looked at them before dumping them in her purse. Then she pulled out her prescription glasses and popped her old pair of sunglasses on top. “There,” she said. “That’s better.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Evidently, Miss Vivee wasn’t completely convinced that the Goodalls were the culprits in Jack Wagner’s death, because after we got home she asked me to take her to speak with Robert Bernard the next day. She looked troubled, like she had been trying to work out something in her head. And by wanting to see him, it appeared to me, she was still looking for the murderer. Why else, I thought, would she want to talk to Freckle Face?

  After the house got quiet that night, I stretched across my bed, fired up my laptop and pulled up the Georgia Department of Natural Resources website. The tabs across the top indicated that there was an Archaeological page. I was tempted to click on it, but knew it would be just a distraction, so I moved the cursor over to the Historic Preservation Division page and opened it up.

  Clicking through the pages I found that there were certain criteria and a nomination process for determining if a property should be registered. I found that to be considered “historic,” a property must have three essential attributes: sufficient age, a relatively high degree of physical integrity, and historical significance.

  The land at Lincoln Park was intact, well kept, and as land goes, I’m sure it was old. I didn’t know of any historical significance to it. All I knew is that there had been a murder there more than a half century ago.

  I learned a lot about the process reading the different pages offered on the site. Eventually I found a press release section. Among other news, it reported about ten Georgia cities that had received federal sub-grants from the Historic Preservation Fund to finance projects.

  I wonder was that the one that included Jack Wagner’s land?

  I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling. Miss Vivee was right. Everything we’d found out so far pointed to that land. Robert Bernard couldn’t have been checking on anything but Jack Wagner’s land at probate court. The Goodalls were supposed to have surveyed the land. Gavin Tanner was pulling up “expensive and exotic flowers” from an open field. A field that included lilies of the valley, which according to the poem were the most “grande.” And it was Jack Wagner’s land.

  But which one of them were desperate enough for the land to kill Jack Wagner? Which one of them couldn’t spell? And what the heck did that note have to do with any of it? The only person, or I guess I should say people, that the note tied to the murder were Camren Wagner, Gavin Tanner, and Miss Vivee.

  I rolled back over on my stomach and propped my head up on a pillow. I just didn’t see how anyone was going to figure this one out.

  I pushed my laptop aside and drifted off to sleep. That night I dreamt of little people with blue faces skipping through a huge field picking flowers that bloomed cherry

  pies.

  ɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜ

  We left early the next afternoon to go and find Robert Bernard. Miss Vivee came out the house with a dark tan-colored, leather blueprint tube that was almost as big as she was. I grabbed it, and we headed out. We took my jeep. When I announced I wasn’t driving her big ole car anywhere, I didn’t get one word from her. Perhaps she had given herself a fright as well. We swung by and picked up Mac, and for the third time in as many days, I drove up to Augusta.

  Mr. Bernard did have an office, one listed on the Internet, and a pretty fancy one to boot. It was located in one of Augusta’s historical districts, but unlike the Goodalls, he had a secretary who didn’t let us get anywhere near any files.

  Perhaps that was a good thing . . .

  “Don’t I know you?” he said after we got into his office. Mac and Miss Vivee sat down, she took her blue print tube from me, and I assumed my usual position holding up the wall.

  “We represent the Historical Society of Freemont and Augusta Counties,” Miss Vivee said.

  “I do know you!” He snapped his fingers and pointed at me, then to Miss Vivee. “I thought that you owned a thousand acres of land that you wanted to donate?”

  First time Miss Vivee ever got caught in one of her lies.

  How was she going to get out of this one?

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not in the historical society,” Miss Vivee said without missing a beat. “In fact, since I own more land than anyone else, they made me the president.”

  Man, she’s good.

  “A position she’s held for the past fifty years,” Mac added.

  “Sugar,” Miss Vivee said. “Not the last fifty years,” she tapped his hand. “You’ll have the man thinking I’m old.”

  Robert Bernard coughed.

  We all looked at him. “Excuse me,” he said. Something got caught in my throat.” He flicked his power-red necktie. “So, what can I do for you? You want to talk to me about that land you own in the Black Belt?”

  “Who is that woman in the pictures?” Miss Vivee pointed to family pictures sitting on the credenza behind him.

  He turned around to look, then turned back to Miss Vivee.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Is she your wife?”

  “No. Well yes. We’re separated.”

  “Didn’t know you liked blondes.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” he said, a small grin on his face. “So you were telling me about your land.”

  “No we weren’t,” Mac said.

  “We’re here about Lincoln Park,” Miss Vivee said.

  Well no beating around the bush on that one.

  “Lincoln Park? What about it?” he asked.

  “We want to know why you’re building condos there.”

  “What?” he said, his face knitted in confusion.

  “Camren Wagner told us that you were bulldozing that land to build condominiums.”

  No she didn’t. I thought. That was Gavin Tanner.

  “Do you think that that’s the best use for the land?” Miss Vivee asked, a smirk on her face.

  “I’m not building anything on that land,” he said. “At least not at the moment.”

  “What does that mean? At the moment?” Miss Vivee narrowed her eyes.

 
“It means that as it stands right now, I’m not building condos.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for in Jack Wagner’s probate file?” Miss Vivee asked.

  Robert Bernard lifted an eyebrow, then it suddenly hit him what she was asking. “How do you know that I looked at that file?” he said. He slammed his hand on the desk and glared at the two of them, his eyes narrowed. He stood up as if he was signaling the end to the conversation.

  “You seem upset, young man,” Mac said.

  “Sit down,” Miss Vivee said. “We’re just trying to find the best use for our land. Want to make sure you’re trustworthy enough. That’s a mighty big area we’ve got.” Miss Vivee patted her blue print tube.

  “We don’t mean any harm by our questions,” Mac said. “Might come out lucrative for you.”

  They were as good a tag-team as the Goodalls.

  Robert Bernard seemed reluctant, but he did sit back down. “It’s just that I could have made a lot of money off that deal. Lincoln Park is ripe for the picking.” He shook his head.

  “Best laid plans . . .” Mac said.

  “Believe me, it wasn’t because of a lack of trying.”

  “Did getting that land include wooing his wife?” Miss Vivee asked.

  Robert Bernard lifted an eyebrow, then let a sly smile creep up his face. “Now you’re doing too much,” he said. “But that little dalliance, if you want to call it that, had nothing to do with that land. Camren’s a beautiful woman – and an appealing one – in her own right. But, she’d never would have agreed to help me to convince him to let me build a condominium complex there. She loved it just as much as her husband did. But for different reasons.”

  “What was his reason for not building?” Mac asked.

  “Who knows,” Robert Bernard said and shook his head.

  “What was her reason?” Miss Vivee asked.

  “She wants to do a little developing of her own.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We left Robert Bernard’s office, none the wiser. At least in my opinion. Miss Vivee’s questions hadn’t seemed directed to finding out anything, and I hadn’t the faintest idea why she cared about the blonde woman in the picture with him, unless it was the blonde she’d thought she saw in his car the day before. Once we got back in the car my phone rang. It was my brother, Micah.