Foul Play at the Fair (28 page)

“Hey!”

They all turned to see Chaz Bristow running up the driveway.

Liv groaned and slapped her forehead. This whole day was becoming a farce. She might even laugh if she hadn’t been scared out of her wits several times in the last few hours.

“Chaz,” Liv warned.

He sprinted the last few yards, shoved an accordion file at Liv, and pushed her behind him.

“Chaz, wait.”

Chaz landed the first punch.

“Stop it,” Liv demanded.

Serge surged forward and threw his body weight and cast into Chaz’s chest. Chaz staggered back, and the third brother punched him in the face. After a stunned moment, Chaz rebounded. Anton grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him aside.

“Serge, Georgi. Go back to the truck.”

The two brothers stopped fighting, but stood fists clenched and scowling. Then they turned as one and disappeared into the growing darkness.

Anton glanced over at Chaz, who was nursing his eye. “You are not hurt much. I apologize for my brothers, but you are much too impetuous, my friend.” And he, too, slipped into the night.

“No shit,” Chaz said, fingering his cheek.

“Come inside. I’ll get some ice.” Liv unlocked the door.

Whiskey shot out the door, looked back at Liv and Chaz, then jumped into the bushes where the Zoldoskys had disappeared.

“Whiskey, come back here. There are bears in the woods.”

“Are not,” said Chaz, holding his face. “Well, maybe, sometimes.”

“Whiskey!”

The Westie’s head appeared out of the bushes, then the rest of him. He shot past them and back into the house.

“That bear threat really worked,” Chaz said.

“He knows it’s dinnertime.”

They followed Whiskey to the kitchen. Liv dropped the file on the table, opened the freezer, and got out an ice tray. Whiskey barked and sat down, looking up expectantly.

“You’ll have to wait your turn, buddy. We have an emergency on our hands.” She dumped ice cubes into a dish towel, twisted it into a bundle, and handed it to Chaz. Then she went back to the fridge and fed her dog.

“Do I get fed, too?” Chaz asked from behind the red plaid towel.

“Only if you want half a can of chicken bits in sauce.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Thought so. What’s in the file?”

Chaz pulled the file toward him and clutched it in his free hand. “First there have to be some ground rules.”

“Which are?”

“No more hitting, stomping, or slapping.”

“I apologize, but I didn’t slap you.”

“You would have gotten around to it.”

“Possibly. Now, I take it you came all the way over here, not to save me from the Zoldoskys, but to show me what you probably could have shown me before I wasted a whole afternoon looking for something that you knew wasn’t there.”

“Party of the third part.” Chaz grinned, which was a bit lopsided. Hopefully he wouldn’t have a fat lip as well as a black eye.

“You are so annoying.”

“Then how come you’re trying not to smile?”

Liv shook her head. “Because you’re that kind of annoying.”

Chaz gave her a look but opened the file and dumped a pile of newspaper articles on the table. “But I’ll expect dinner.”

“It’s only five thirty.”

“This might take a while.”

She pulled a chair next to him and watched while he arranged the yellowing, brittle papers with one hand. But she knew what they were about long before he had finished. Clippings from 1982. Articles on miscellaneous acts of violence and theft perpetrated on the citizens of Celebration Bay. Others reporting on the disappearance and subsequent search for Victor Gibson.

“Why are you showing me these now?”

“Because you’re not going to give up. And I’d rather know what you’re up to than find you, like tonight, standing
up to three crazy Romanians. Jeez. You could have been seriously hurt or killed.”

Liv shook her head. “They were angry because they caught me in their trailer yesterday.”

“Are you crazy? Do you have some death wish issue?”

“Put that ice pack back on your cheek. If you’ll calm down, I’ll tell you.”

Chaz jammed the towel against his eye. “Ouch.”

Liv rolled her eyes to the ceiling and explained to him about Janine and the forged check. “She said Pete accused her brother of killing Victor Gibson.”

“According to the police reports, Joe Tudor and several others were questioned about Victor’s disappearance. But since the others were minors, their names were not given.”

“You read the police reports.”

Chaz looked at the ceiling.

“You’ve been investigating this all along, haven’t you. Of all the disingenuous—”

“Now, don’t start using those hundred-dollar words again.”

“Ugh. You stop acting like some deadbeat hillbilly.”

Chaz stood up and tossed the ice pack in the sink. “Look. I don’t want to get involved in this. But more than that, I don’t want you or anyone else to get involved in this.”

“I know how to take care of myself.”

“So you’ve said. But it’s more than just you. You know Pandora?”

“No. Oh, you mean the goddess who opened the box and set all the ills on the world?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“And you think that’s what can happen here?”

“I know it can. And once it starts, there’s no telling where it will end.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“Yes. I just…Oh hell, go on and read to your heart’s content.”

Liv picked up the first article. An incident report of break-ins and thefts. Stereo equipment, jewelry, electronics. What you’d expect from petty thieves.

“Did you clip these?”

Chaz shook his head. “Not me. Must have been my dad or uncle.”

“Investigative reporting must be a family trait.”

“Curse.”

“But you found these because you were…” She trailed off, hoping he would finish the sentence.

“Because they were there. Are you going to read the rest or are we going to dinner?”

She gave him a look and carefully slid the second group of papers closer.

There was a notation in the margin,
Andy Miller
. It looked like an old entry. It seemed the
Clarion
had done a bit of investigating on its own.

Pete had killed Ted’s nephew. Ted had offered a reward. But except for that one outburst of temper, he’d taken Pete’s return with unnatural calm. Liv reached for the next article. “Local Boy Still Missing.” The police had exhumed the box, but what it contained proved to be not a body but stolen goods belonging to several local stores and nearby farms.

The next item was a piece of notepaper torn off a small spiral notebook with handwritten notes, ostensibly from the editor of the paper.

Liv cast a sideways glance at Chaz.

“It was thirty years ago.”

“Still, it wouldn’t look good for Joss if—”

“Not gonna happen. Those are the ramblings of some guy decades ago. Hearsay, even then. And unsubstantiated.”

“Except everyone knows that Joss sent Pete away after
that. He could have been pretty mad if he suddenly showed up and was back to his old tricks.”

Silence from Chaz.

The next article. “Dinghy Found at South End of Lake.”

“Oh God,” Liv exclaimed as she read through the details of finding the boat. “That poor kid.”

“Yeah. So now are you satisfied?”

“I think that is a poor choice of words. I understand better what happened.”

She read through the last two articles and slipped them all into the folder.

“Thanks for showing these to me.”

Chaz shrugged. For someone with such a glib tongue, he was being stubbornly quiet.

“Do you know more that you’re not sharing?”

“Not me.”

“Where are the boxes from these years?”

“Aw hell, Liv. They’re in the hall closet. Yeah, I got them out. It’s like an addiction, okay? I took one little peek inside, and that thing was sitting on top.” He lifted his chin toward the accordion file. “The rest is history.”

He sighed, and she heard him mumble under his breath, “And history repeats itself.”

Was he talking about Pete or something more personal? Liv just didn’t get him, and she was usually pretty good at reading people.

“It didn’t say anything about Pete’s blackmailing propensities. Of course, it wouldn’t. Blackmail is paid to prevent public knowledge.”

“Pete was blackmailing, too? He couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen then.”

“Well, he was, and as you said, history repeats itself.”

For the first time that evening, Chaz looked interested. “Since he came back?”

Liv nodded.

“Want to share?”

“I promised not to, but everyone seems to know anyway.” She told him about Dolly and about catching Janine in the Zoldoskys’ trailer.

“That it?”

“That’s as far as I’ve gotten. No one has come forward saying, ‘Guess what—Pete’s blackmailing me.’”

“But if he was and Joss found out about it…”

“But Joss didn’t know he was back,” Liv reminded him.

“So he said. Now can we eat?”

The restaurant in the inn was closed, but they were serving in the bar. A smiling hostess led them to a booth at the back where they were met by a smiling waitress. It seemed that Chaz was a favorite of all the staff.

“So Janine’s brother was one of the gang,” Chaz said, digging into a rare T-bone steak.

“That’s what she said.”

“So we know two of the culprits. I wonder who the other two were?”

“We could ask Joe Tudor,” Liv suggested.

“He lives in Detroit or someplace.”

“I think you should call him.”

“He might not be too anxious to recall those days, especially if Pete’s accusations are true. And if he thinks he might be incriminated, he might tip off the other two. One of whom might just be Pete’s murderer. Forewarned. Besides, they’re probably long gone.”

Liv sighed. “Okay, scratch that idea. I just hope the murderer isn’t someone we know and like.”

“Tough. You get what you get. And once you start, you can’t turn back. I learned that the hard way.” Chaz signaled the waitress, who hurried over and flashed him another toothy smile. “I’ll have another beer. Liv?”

Her wineglass was still half full. “No, thanks.” She played with a julienned zucchini strip. “So we have the Dolly, Fred, Bill, and Pete situation. Janine and Pete. Joss and Pete.”

“And it looks like you’ve questioned them all.”

“Not Joss, and I wouldn’t have to if somebody else in this town would lift a finger.”

“Don’t look at me.”

“I gave up on that days ago.” She was disappointed that he wouldn’t help, but she was no longer angry. There was more to Chaz’s reasons for leaving journalism than met the eye.

“I wonder if the police talked to Andy.”

“Liv, leave it. If they don’t catch someone soon, it will become a cold case and quietly fade away.”

“But that would mean the killer would go free.”

“Pretty much.”

“But there would be no closure. No one would feel safe.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Liv. Any one of us is capable of murder. Even so, just because it happened once doesn’t mean it will happen again.”

She stared at him, incredulous. “You don’t care if he’s caught.”

“Not really.”

“But—”

“Let me give you some advice. This was not a random psychopathic act. Pete was targeted. I think it’s over.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t.” He finished his beer. “Don’t listen to me. Are you finished? Then let’s go.”

Chaz insisted on paying for dinner, but Liv thought it was more about impressing the waitresses than it was about treating Liv. They certainly were appreciative, though Chaz didn’t seem to notice. Liv just couldn’t get a handle on the man. Infuriating and intelligent, though he spent most of the time acting like a rube.

They walked out into the night. Only a few of the inn’s lights shone in the dark, but the moon was full and it cast a shimmer of iridescence over the lake. It would have been romantic, and she was certainly beginning to like Chaz a little better, but the solitary pier at the far side of the parking lot put a damper on any romantic inclinations.

Without speaking, they walked toward the pier and looked out at the lake. Trying to see into the past and wondering if that was the reason Pete had finally met a violent end. A boy running for his life, bleeding and hurt. Did he make it to the boat? Or was he caught and beaten, left to drown? Or did they throw him into the boat and push it away from shore? Had he fallen overboard? Were his remains out there still?