Murder at the Book Fair (2 page)

I didn't want to injure any of the
players standing behind the other platform, so I took careful aim. I failed to
factor in that I was tossing the bag into a headwind. Two-thirds of the way to
its destination the bag fell to the ground like a wounded pigeon. A quick
perusal of our new friends showed me that a lot of hands went up in front of
mouths to stifle a grin. I went to retrieve the bag only to realize that my
errant toss had eliminated an ant colony. Only those off to a picnic had been
saved. All eyes were upon me. I had no direct path to the car. One of the young
ladies in the group walked up and handed me another bag and took the faulty one
before I could hand it to Lou to clean off the ants. She encouraged me to try
again. Once again I measured the distance, allowed for the headwind,
wind-milled my arm, and let go. I was so caught up in figuring out how I could
get my arm back in its socket that I almost didn't hear being reprimanded by a
blue jay that was trying to steal food from another bird. Evidently the
platform had moved toward me as I was in my follow through. I looked on the
positive side. I had set a distance record in the cornhole bag throw.

The same young lady came up to me
again. Maybe she was the Patron Saint of Cornhole Neophytes. But she didn't
bless me or pray for me. Maybe she was going to trip me if I even acted  like I
was going to toss another bag. But instead she said something I had no trouble
grasping or agreeing with.

"Here. Watch me."

She was easy on the eyes. And she
had good form. She tossed the bag and it disappeared into the hole. At least I
think it did. I was too busy watching her great form, and I was standing behind
her so I  wouldn't be in her way.

"That's how you do it. Just
one fluid motion."

No matter how long I would have
stayed there I wasn't going to match her fluid motion, whether I tried to toss
another bag or not. But she encouraged me again. I took the bag, visualized her
fluid motion, and let her rip. The bag came to a skidding halt a mere six
inches in front of the platform. I received a smattering of applause from
everyone except the Ukrainian judge.

Evidently these people had a
limitless collection of bags because the young woman was back at my side with
another bag. But I was a quick thinker.

"Here. Let's let my friend
try."

I wanted Lou's self esteem to take
a hit, too.

He walked up with a smile that
matched the one on my face.  I stepped back, made sure he had plenty of room,
and no excuses for a misfire. When the bag Lou tossed landed on the platform a
couple of inches from going into the hole, all but one of those in the group
applauded vigorously. I would have too, but my arm still hurt from my
record-setting throw. I had heard of beginner's luck and took a bag from the
young lady and quickly handed it to Lou before he could strut away, victorious.
I watched as the bag took flight, collided with Lou's other bag, and followed
it into the hole. It was enough to make me want to find a hole of my own to
crawl into. To Lou's credit, he didn't gloat until we were safely back inside
of Lightning, and all he did then was say, "Cy, before we take off, don't
you think we should say a little prayer for that ant family?"

That night I thought I heard a
noise at my back door. I'd never had prowlers, except for my next-door
neighbor, so I thought I was hearing things and dismissed the thought. I had
just returned to my recliner when I heard a knock at my back door. Curious as
to whom it might be, I rushed to the door and flung it open. There was no one
there. But I did find two cornhole platforms, one with a ribbon around it, and
eight cornhole bags. There was a card too, but when I opened it the only words
written on that card was, "I think you need lots of practice." It
didn't take me long to get the hang of it, and, with daily practice, in less
than three months I managed to toss a bag that landed on the board. I thought
with all that practice I had to be better than Lou. It wasn't until a couple of
weeks later, after Lou and I had played a few times at my place, that I found
out that Lou and the old ladies who live in his building had been playing
cornhole a couple of mornings a week.

Fall had set in and winter would
be here before we knew it. One full season and parts of two others had come and
gone since Lou and I retired in early May. We had enjoyed our retirement
vacation in Gatlinburg so much that we returned in October to see if turning
leaves in Gatlinburg look like turning leaves in Hilldale. I found out what I
suspected. The leaves looked the same, but most of the trees we saw in
Gatlinburg were on mountains. I know there are some of those in
Kentucky
too, but not in my neighborhood.

On our second trip to Gatlinburg
we took along our girlfriends, Jennifer and Thelma Lou. Lou had his timeshare
unit. I had mine. And we found a third one with two bedrooms that the girls
could enjoy for a week. We took them places we had loved on our first trip
there. And we discovered some new ones with the girls in tow. Both Jennifer and
Thelma Lou discovered that God meant for women to shop, and He meant for them
to shop longer than He did men. Sometimes Lou and I waited for them on benches
near the shopping area. Other times we camped out in our suites back at
Westgate, while the women spent hours trying to decide if it was worth spending
the money on the latest trinket they had found. I understood buying. I had yet
to understand shopping.

While we were there someone
mentioned that we needed to return at Christmas, and take a side trip over to
the Biltmore House in
Asheville
,
North Carolina
as part of the same trip.  I learned that the Biltmore is
the largest
house
built as a residence in the
U.S.
and that it looks so beautiful
when it's decorated for Christmas. I can't remember how many Christmas trees
they decorate each year, but it's more than are decorated in my neighborhood. 

+++

The four of us had just returned
from the Smokies when Lou and I realized that we had neglected one of our
friends far too long. It had been a couple of months since we had visited our
good friend Myrtle Evans, owner of the Scene of the Crime Mystery Bookstore.

Rather than pull into the parking
lot behind the store and go in through the back door, I parked on the street in
front of the bookstore. As always, I could tell we weren't the only readers
paying the store a visit that day. The bookstore is located in a residential
neighborhood, in a large, two-story, frame house with rooms that house tens of
thousands of books. All  mysteries. And each type of mystery has its own room.
Traditional mysteries occupied one large room, while classics, cozies,
thrillers, police procedurals, historical mysteries, and other types of
mysteries occupied other rooms in that large house converted into a bookstore. 
     

October was rapidly making its way
through my life and was almost at an end, and on the day we visited the
bookstore the wind had picked up and was blowing leaves across the yard. I
hopped up onto the wooden porch and opened the door. There was Mrs. E. seated
behind the counter, as she usually was. She smiled when she saw us.

"I figured it was about time
for you young boys to come and see me. I made sure that I had two copies of the
next book in each of the series you are reading."

"We appreciate all the work
you do, Mrs. E., so we can just have fun reading."

"And I appreciate your
business. By the way, do the two of you plan to go to the Kentucky Book Fair?
It's coming up in just over two weeks."

"What's the
Kentucky
Book Fair. I've never heard of
it."

"It's the biggest author
event in
Kentucky
. It's held in
Frankfort
each year, at the Convention
Center. They've been having it for over thirty years now. There will be around
two hundred authors there."

"All mystery authors?"

"No, a little of everything,
both fiction and nonfiction. And most of the authors are from
Kentucky
or write about
Kentucky
."

"I didn't realize there are
that many authors in
Kentucky
."

"More than that if you count
everyone who has a book. But for an author to be invited to the Kentucky Book
Fair he or she has to have a new book out."

"So you think the chances
that we'd run into Agatha Christie there are remote?"

"Pretty much so. She wasn't
there last year, either."

"Do you really think it would
be something we'd be interested in? We only read mysteries, you know."

"There are usually five to
ten mystery authors there, and some of them are quite good. More than likely
there won't be anyone there you have read, but David Baldacci and Sue Grafton
have been there, so there could be. Wait a minute! There might be a couple
there you've read. You've read Bill Noel and Laurien Berenson, haven't
you?"

"Yeah. Will they be
there?"

"Probably."

"Then Lou and I might go.
It's only an hour and a half drive from here."

We got the information from Mrs.
E., then looked over the books she had ordered for us. As usual she had stacked
the classic mysteries on top. I was familiar with the top book, even though I
hadn't read it. Everyone knows about
Murder on the Orient Express
by
Agatha Christie. Underneath it was
The Case of the Stuttering Bishop
,
one of Erle Stanley Gardner's more acclaimed mysteries. And my favorite classic
mystery author is S.S. Van Dine, and Mrs. E. had included one of his,
The
Garden Murder Case.

Most of what I read are
contemporary mysteries, and she included several of those in my stack;
All
Around the Town
by Mary Higgins Clark,
Mint Julep Murder
by Carolyn
Hart,
I Is For Innocent
by Sue Grafton,
The Sudoku Puzzle Murders
by
Parnell Hall,
The Street Lawyer
by John Grisham,
Stone Cold
by
David Baldacci,
One Shot
by Lee Child,
Hold Tight
by Harlan
Coben, and
The Accident
by Linwood Barclay. There was also a short stack
of second books by authors I had read only once. I nodded that we would take
them, too. So we also left with
Don't Tell a Soul
and
First Degree,
two
different kinds of mysteries by David Rosenfelt,
A Fatal Grace 
by
Louise Penny, and
The Killing Hour
by Andrew Gross. True, none of them
had come out within the last year, but Lou and I didn't get started reading
until we were almost ready to retire, and most of these authors started writing
a long time before Lou and I started reading.

All in all it was quite a haul.
Mrs. E. made enough from us that day to pay a year's worth of electricity for
the bookstore. And Lou and I didn't do too badly ourselves. I had contemplated
paying Mrs. E. in pennies, but I knew that I couldn't lift that many pennies
without being taken to the hospital afterward. Instead I tossed two one hundred
dollar bills on the counter.

"How much more are you taking
me for, Mrs. E?"

It'll be another thousand if you
want the victim returned unharmed."

"Lou, you pay the rest. You
always did like her better than I did."

We shared a few more laughs with
Mrs. E., thanked her for letting us know about the Kentucky Book Fair, and
asked her where the wheelbarrow was, so we could cart out our books. She told
us it was in the same place we had left it on our last visit, but I suspected
that Lou and I weren't the only customers of the Scene of the Crime who read a
lot.

Two weeks passed quickly. I had
some good books to read, and the weather sucked enough that Lou and I got to
rest our cornhole arms. We had read and discussed three of the books we got
from Mrs. E., and it was time to head off to
Frankfort
to see how many books we would cart home.

Lou and I had changed in some ways
since we retired, but one of the ways I hadn't changed was I still was in no
mood to wake up the rooster. From what I knew about the Kentucky Book Fair they
weren't giving away books to the first so many people to arrive. And Mrs. E.
assured me that we could visit with all of the authors in far less than a day.
Besides, I didn't want to visit with all of them. I had no reason to check out
the children's books, and I was sure that I would walk by some of the other
authors without stopping. I hoped that none of them would take it personally.

On Friday night, before we left
for
Frankfort
on Saturday morning just after
breakfast, Lou called and surprised me.

"Cy, would you like for me to
drive tomorrow?"

Lou didn't sound like he had been
drinking. And I'd never known Lou to drink an alcoholic beverage. But neither
had I known him to volunteer to drive anytime except when we double-dated. And
he only volunteered then because we didn't want to subject our girlfriends to
my less than cavernous yellow VW bug, affectionately known as Lightning, as in
lightning bug. Instead, we rode in his immaculately clean red-and-white 1957
Chevy that he had failed to name, because he lacked my imagination. I tried to
remember if Lou had ever driven his car out of town. We had rented a van when
we took the girls to Gatlinburg, but had we ever taken Lou's pride and joy out
of town? I couldn't remember it if we had.