Read Foul Play at the Fair Online
Authors: Shelley Freydont
“Ah,” Liv said. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen and put on some water for Ted’s tea?”
“He’ll be here any minute and—” Roseanne’s mouth twisted. “It’s all my fault.”
The girl’s distress trumped Liv’s better judgment. She sat down on the edge of the coffee table facing Roseanne. “That’s the second time you’ve said that. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
Roseanne made use of another tissue. “Donnie and I were going into town, and we stopped at Gonzo’s for gas. It’s out of our way, right off the highway, but it has a really good snack bar, so…” She recollected herself. “I went inside while
Donnie filled up, and while we were there this big silver trailer pulled up to the pump. You know, those old-fashioned kinds.”
Liv nodded, encouraging her to get on with the story.
“So I’m curious ’cause it has a tumbling sign on the side, and I figure maybe they’re coming to the fair. Then this guy gets out and starts walking toward the snack shop, and I do a double take. I really did. ’Cause he looks just like Daddy in that soccer picture you were looking at.”
She shrugged. “That’s why I took it away from you. I didn’t want you to see how much they looked alike. I mean, I could tell because it’s my favorite picture and I’ve looked at it, like, a thousand times, and it was so weird. I mean, it was like looking at my dad five years ago.
“I was standing next to the magazine rack, so I grab a copy and pretend like I’m reading it, but I’m really staring at him. He looked at me and I knew it was Uncle Pete. I knew it.
“I couldn’t think what to do. I wanted to tell him who I was, but everybody in my family hates him. They don’t say why, just that he’s a big disappointment. But it had to be more than that, right? I mean, like, every family has somebody that’s kind of sketchy, but they don’t pretend like he doesn’t exist.
“Then Donnie comes in and I drag him down the aisle and tell him to look. He does and gets really weird. Says that he doesn’t look anything like Daddy or Uncle Pete.” She made a face. “Like he’s ever seen him.”
“So did you introduce yourself?”
Roseanne shook her head. “Donnie said we should stay out of it. That it probably wasn’t him, but if it was, he’d better watch his back, because plenty of people in town hated his guts. And he was asking for it coming back to Celebration Bay.
“I tried to reason with him, but he can be a real butthead sometimes. He got all mad and pulled that ‘I’m older than you and you’ll do what I tell you’ crap. And he said to forget it, because I didn’t know what I was talking about.
“But I did, and I knew he did, too.”
She straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chin as if she expected Liv to scold her. When Liv didn’t react, she went on. “The more I thought about it, the more I was positive it was Uncle Pete, so I decided to make sure.”
“Please tell me you didn’t confront him.”
Roseanne grimaced and played with Whiskey’s fur. “Well, I did. Sort of. I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be a confrontation. I was just going to get a better look. I knew they’d be staying at Andy Miller’s pasture, so I rode my bike over there.”
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.”
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.