Murder at the Book Fair (9 page)

"Are you saying that scumbag,
I mean my brother, remembered us in his will?"

"Are you saying you don't
know?"

"How would we know?"

"Exactly. Sometimes people
who don't know kill someone anyway. Sort of taking a chance on fortune without
playing the lottery."

"We have witnesses that will
say we didn't do it."

"When didn't you do it?"

"Saturday. You said he was
killed on Saturday. We wasn't even there when he keeled over."

"The poison took a while to
kill him. He wasn't even there when he keeled over."

"See. That proves it. It
couldn't have been either of us."

"And why not? Somebody had to
do it."

"Yeah, but he got up and left
the table when he saw us coming."

"But he didn't take his food
with him."

"But we didn't touch it. I
already told you that."

"But maybe you followed him,
gave him something when you caught up with him."

"We didn't catch up with him.
He saw us. That was all we wanted. We even dumped the books we wanted him to
think we was buying on another table. We wanted him to think we was buying
everyone's books but his. And like I said, we wasn't there when he died. And
when we got home the neighbors invited us over to a cookout. Hot dogs, baked
beans, potato salad, cole slaw, potato chips."

"Thanks for sharing your menu
with us. I'm envious. We had to go to Serafini's instead."

"Bet we had more fun!"

"Let me share something that
I learned from my many years of investigating murders. It doesn't matter when
you put the poison in the food or the drink.  It won't kill them until they
ingest it."

"And I still say we didn't
kill him."

"Who came to the Book Fair
with you? Who walked around with you?"

"No one."

"So that means that no one
can verify that you didn't poison your brother."

"We ain't got no poison. Look
around. You'll see."

"Maybe you only had enough to
poison your brother. You don't plan to poison anyone else, do you?"

"We ain't ever had no poison.
Well, only what we got to kill those rats."

"I think that's the kind of
poison they said killed him. Rat poison. Should we take them in now, Lou?"

"No, wait. It wasn't
us."

"Who was it, then?"

"I don't know. We never saw
him. We don't know who else hated him enough to kill him."

"So,  what did you do with
the $50,000 he gave you last month?"

"We ain't got no $50,000. He
didn't give us none. And if he said he did, he was lying like a hound
dog."

"Fifty thousand dollars is
easy to find. If we find where you hid it, or where you spent a chunk of it,
we'll be back."

"I told you we ain't got no
money. Did somebody steal $50,000 from him? If so, and if he left that money to
us, you'd better find him. I want my money. Hazel, if he left us enough we can
quit our jobs."

"Who else would he have left
it to, Archie? The money has to be ours. We're rich!"

"Usually they hold off on
giving out the money until they find out who the murderer is."

"Well, get out of here and
find whoever did it! I want my money!"

"If I find out you have
anywhere near $50,000 in the bank, I'll be back."

"If we had anywhere near
$50,000 in the bank or otherwise, we wouldn't be living here."

"We may be back later."

"Hey, wait a minute! How much
did he leave us?"

"I didn't say he left you
anything. If the phone rings, I'd answer it if I were you. It might be that
lawyer calling, telling you where to pick up your dollar. He might even invite
you to the reading of the will, so you can see who gets most of the
money."

"It should be us. We was kin.
He ain't got no other kin."

"Maybe you should have sent
him a birthday card each year. It might have improved your chances of hitting
the mother lode."

With that I grabbed hold of the
couch arm and lifted myself up. We walked out and I called Bert McHugh. I asked
him to wait until we had finished our investigation before he had the reading
of the will, and not to answer any questions if Portwood's brother or sister
called. He assured me that he would definitely wait.

I ended the call and turned to
Lou.

"You were tough on them,
Cy."

"I know. I was trying to see
if either of them would crack and admit to murdering the guy, or blame it on
the other one. I wish I knew if the poison was administered to the sandwich or
shaken into the bottle of water he had at lunch. Let's call it a night. Are you
hungry?"

"Not as much after you talk
about poisoned sandwiches."

"Then, don't order a
sandwich."

Broadway in
Frankfort
isn't filled with neon lights
burning bright, but there is a railroad track that runs down the middle of it.
We found a place to park on Broadway, not far from Serafini's, almost in front
of  Poor Richard's Bookstore. We backtracked until we got to the restaurant. We
didn't dawdle because it was a little nippy out, and it was dark.

The restaurant was crowded, but we
were seated shortly after we walked in the door. We looked over the menu while
our server brought us our water with lemon, which was our drink of choice.
After perusing the menu, I decided on Spicy Shrimp Pomodoro, while Lou opted
for Chicken Marsala. We were working on a case again, so we refrained from
talking about the murder and instead talked about what a nice town
Frankfort
was. There certainly were some
good places downtown to eat and places of interest to visit. And we hadn't even
visited the Capitol building or Daniel Boone's grave. I wondered if anyone
named Boone ever visits that grave. I imagine they have.

A little over an hour after we sat
down to eat I pulled into the covered parking area at the
Capital
Plaza
. We refrained from taking the elevator to the main floor
lobby and walked up the steps. I'm always fascinated by fountains, so I took a
few seconds to watch the water flow. I decided against taking eight flights of
stairs to my room, and stepped into the middle elevator when its door  opened.
Lou and I said goodnight after we agreed to eat breakfast at Rick's White Light
Diner on the way out of town the next morning, and I bypassed the bed and the
TV and walked over to open the drapes and enjoy my river view. It was a little
tougher to enjoy it after dark. A few minutes later, I kicked off my shoes and
plopped down on my bed and tried to make sense about what we knew so far about
Portwood's murder.

Connie Crowe, Jenny Luscher, Amy
Smith, and Diana Munson, the four people I talked to who worked with the KBF,
all seemed too nice to have murdered Portwood, so I figured I should
concentrate on them. Actually I had talked to three people who could be deemed
suspects, but I felt the lawyer was too smart to have done it, and the brother
and sister were too dumb to have pulled it off in such crowded quarters. So, my
guess at the time was that Lou and I had yet to meet the murderer. Of course
both of us had been wrong early in some of our cases over the years, so I would
wait until we had talked to more people before I cast my vote.

The bed was roomy and comfortable,
but it wasn't getting me any closer to discovering Portwood's murderer, so I
pulled out my laptop that I'd had only a few months. But first I had to call
downstairs to find out how to connect to Wi-Fi. God was with me that night and
I was able to connect to the Internet.

I started with my friend Google
before I shifted over to Facebook to see if anyone had confessed. If so, he or
she wouldn't have been the first idiot to confess to something on Facebook. Not
only do dumb criminals not know that cops are sometimes disguised as teenage
girls on the Internet, but some people who get on the Internet have an IQ high
enough to report a crime to the police, provided someone wants to boast about
one. So far no one had boasted to me, in person or incognito. I checked out
Portwood's author page, but didn't find anything that would incriminate anyone.
I checked his personal page, too. He didn't post a lot, and he had more
followers on his author page than friends on his personal page. When I turned
in for the night, forty-five minutes after Wi-Fi and I had become friends, I
was no closer to discovering the murderer's identity than I was when Portwood
signed my books.

+++

One thing about being retired and
working for free is that you get to choose what time you get up. At least I
chose what time I got up. On Wednesday morning it was just after the maid
knocked on my door because I forgot to hang the stupid Do Not Disturb sign on
the outside of my door the night before. That's okay. Lou and I had a lot of
ground to cover and miles to go before we slept again. And maybe if I was
lucky, Lou would have another clue from God.

He must have been standing just
inside the door of his room waiting on me because he answered my knock in 1.2
seconds.

"Did the maid wake you,
too?"

"No, I was the one who sent
her to your door. I want to get away before
noon
."

"And during the many hours
that you've been awake did God happen to give you today's clue?"

"Well, no one wrote on my
wall. I'm glad. The hotel might have charged me for that."

"Not if it was spelled
correctly. I would vouch for you, that you never learned how to spell. But
enough about that. What's today's clue?"

"Somebody's lying."

"Somebody's lying?"

"Did you turn into a parrot
all of a sudden?"

"Why? Do you have a
cracker?"

"Maybe I can find a cracker
for you in that diner we're going to for breakfast."

"I'll pass on the cracker, I
guess we have to watch the people we question today to see if their lips move.
Then we'll know if they're lying or not."

"I thought we needed to watch
their eyes and their hands."

"Let's go eat."

+++

In a weak moment Lou and I decided
to walk to Rick's White Light Diner. It was only sixth-tenths of a mile, or a
thirteen minute walk. Besides that, we got to walk over the
Kentucky River
on the singing bridge to get
there. It would be a moment I could share with my great-great-great
grandchildren someday. Encouraging us to take our walk was a sunny day and
temperatures above normal for November. We had a good walk over, the bridge
sang but it didn't fall, and we arrived safely.

When I first saw the place that
was somewhat smaller than a walk-in closet, I had a feeling the diner started
out on
Folly
Island
but a strong wind lifted it and deposited it right next
to the bridge. When I opened the door and stepped inside I had the idea that
the walls were used for storage for someone's upcoming yard sale, and it didn't
take me long to zero in on the colorful character who was the owner.

Being the refined person that he
is, Lou selected eggs benedict for his breakfast. I was torn between the
buckwheat pancakes and Rick's Famous Crawfish Pie, and figured I could get
pancakes at McDonald's, but McDonald's doesn't serve crawfish pie.

As we sat there my thoughts
wandered back and forth between listening to the owner and thinking of the
diner where Lou and I used to eat most of our meals back home, the Blue Moon
Diner. The Blue Moon was larger and lacked the wall decorations that donned the
walls at Rick's, and when I was at the Blue Moon I was the biggest character
there.

I caught Rick's ear long enough to
tell him who I was and for him to deny he was wherever it was that the crime
that we were investigating happened. He admitted to knowing Bert McHugh, who
stopped by from time to time for breakfast or lunch, but he had no idea who
Cyril Portwood was. His guess was that it was a house wine in some restaurant
much different than the White Light Diner. He said that McHugh usually came in
with someone, but that he couldn't say for sure if he was there on the previous
Friday. As expected, our trip to the diner resulted only in some good exercise
followed by and preceded by a memorable meal.  

Lou and I talked on our walk back,
both about the case that had so far baffled us, and the food at and the owner
of the diner where we enjoyed breakfast. When we got back to the
Capital
Plaza
we took the elevator to our rooms to brush and floss. I
picked up a jacket, just in case the weather cooled down before we returned
from our travels of the day. November has a habit of being cooler than August,
so we have to be prepared to dress a little warmer. Once we zipped down the
elevator it was a straight shot after we popped up out of the garage, turned,
and headed up the hill toward Lawrenceburg.