Murder in a Basket (An India Hayes Mystery) (2 page)

“What’s up, ladies?” I asked my nieces as I wiggled their tiny feet. They gurgled at me and flashed their beautiful gummy smiles.

“
India, tell this colleague of yours I had permission from Martin to use the practice football field last night.”

Coach eyed me. I couldn’t decide if the perplexed look on his face was due to my outfit or because he couldn’t figure out who I was. Probably both. We didn’t exactly roll in the same collegiate circles.

“Well?” Carmen prompted when I didn’t say anything.

“
I’m sure you have the situation well in hand,” I said.

Carmen’s
gray eyes, which at present were the color of gunmetal, narrowed. “Of course, I do.” She glared at Coach once again. “This conversation is over. I suggest you talk to the provost before you approach me again.”

He looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth.
“Trust me, I will.” He stomped away.

Carmen made a checkmark on her clipboard.
“You’re late.”

I’d hoped she was so annoyed by the coach that she’d forget
the time. Sadly, Carmen forgets nothing.

“
The festival doesn’t open for another hour.”

“
The reason I asked all the crafters and vendors to be here two hours before opening is so all the preparations will be complete before the first guest arrives. It’s unprofessional to look like you’re scrambling at the last minute.”

As if setting up p
icture samples and face paint bottles would take two hours, I thought. But I knew better than to argue.

I started toward the crafter area and made it all of two steps before my sister stopped me again.

“Don’t drag your skirt through the grass,” Carmen said. “It’s an antique.”

I looked down at the pink gingham skirt and repressed a shudder.
“Why in the world would you give me an antique to wear?”

“
I wanted this festival to be authentic.”

I rolled my eyes. Right. Just like the acrylic-based paints I would be applying to the children’s faces were available in the 1800s, not to mention the synthetic brushes.

My eyes widened as a disturbing thought occurred to me. “Where’s your pioneer garb?”

Carmen looked down at her polo shirt embroidered with
Stripling Founders’ Festival
over the left side of her chest. She wore a turtleneck underneath it, her dark bobbed hair tucked behind her ears. I looked at the people around me and the vast majority of them were wearing shirts like Carmen’s. There was a smattering of pioneer dresses and men in period breeches, but it was most definitely the exception. “Where is their pioneer garb?”

Carmen sniffed.
“I gave each vendor the option to wear period dress.”

I crossed my arms over my ruffled apron.
“There was an option?” Oh, the humiliation.

“
It was hard enough to convince these people to sell their merchandise at the festival. I couldn’t very well tell them to wear a mobcap, now could I?”

“
That’s what you told me.”

“
You’re different.”

Oh, right, I thought, I was the baby sister. There was no question I could be ordered around.

Carmen gripped the handles of the stroller and did a quick about-face. “Oh, the Indian taco guy is here. I need to talk to him.” She thrust the stroller onward. I hoped the girls didn’t have whiplash.

You’d better run
, I mentally told the Indian taco guy.

I moved on to my booth, hoping the festival wouldn’t flop as it had in past years
. If it did, my baby pink gingham humiliation would be in vain. Stripling held the festival every year in honor of Jem Stripling and his wife, Adel, who, like many middle class folks from Connecticut in the early nineteenth century, left their comfortable homes to settle Connecticut’s Western Reserve, which now comprised the land from the Ohio-Pennsylvania border to the rollercoaster-happy Sandusky and as far south as football-crazy Canton. Stripling is on the far eastern side of the Western Reserve, just north of the city of Akron in Summit County. The festival had been in a downward spiral over the last five years. The committee had trouble booking quality artisans and food vendors, and attendance was discouragingly low. The
Stripling Dispatch
even declared the festival dead, and it was, for all intents and purposes, until last spring when my sister got involved.

At the time, Carmen, was pregnant with the twins and
, therefore, unstoppable. She announced she would be taking over the festival committee. Carmen, a high school biology teacher, decided at the end of last school year to take a break from teaching to be a stay-at-home mom. This didn’t mean she would actually stay at home. The day after her decision, she was already offering the time and energy she’d reserved for teaching to the festival committee. The group knew better than to say no to a Hayes on a mission.

The committee might not have been pleased with Carmen’s heavy
-handed micromanager approach, but both they and I had to admit she produced results. The caliber of the vendors this year was something Stripling hadn’t seen in my lifetime. For food options there was roasted corn on the cob, barbequed ribs, apple dumplings, fried cheesecake, Italian sausage, beer-battered fried veggies, and just about everything else that gives cardiologists the cold sweats. The aroma enticed me as the sweet smell of barbeque mingled with the scent of freshly made bagels. Even the Italian sausage smelled good to me, and I’m a strict vegetarian. Just because I won’t eat it doesn’t mean I don’t like a whiff of meat now and again. Please don’t tell my mother.

My stomach growled, but I knew better than to stop. If I didn’t finish setting up my booth in record time, Carmen would be after me. I didn’t want to be her main target for the day. Beyond the food vendors, I came upon the crafters
’ booths. These too were at a higher level than Stripling had seen before. There were beaders, broom makers, papermakers, weavers, milliners, quilters, and even a blacksmith. It was apparent all the artisans were old hands at the arts and crafts fair scene. Their booths were professional, custom-made, and situated to display their wares to the best advantage. Even though I was doing this festival as a favor to my sister, I couldn’t help wallowing in a little bit of booth envy.

I assessed my booth as I approached. What a joke. It consisted of two cafeteria-length tables with green table cloths from my mother’s church and four eight-foot rods of PVC pipe holding up a bright blue tarp, which only some island-bound reality TV contestant would consider a tent. The booth could certainly use a spruce up, but that, just like the fried cheesecake, would have to wait.

I pulled the face-painting supplies and other items out from under one of the tables. In addition to the face paints, I arranged a selection of my paintings in an attractive cluster. The cost of each piece was discretely marked on the back with what I considered a reasonable price. Being an artist is a constant battle to sell yourself, and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by.

“
What do you think you’re doing?” an irritated voice demanded, causing me to knock over my painting of the town square. Lately, I’d found townsfolk were more interested in buying simple landscapes than portraits of their family members, with the exception of beloved pets. There’s a commentary of American life in there somewhere, if I had the patience to worm it out.

“
Excuse me?” I asked.

A pear-shaped woman with a tight bun knotted at the nape of her neck glared at me over her reading glasses. She wore pioneer clothing: a white high-collared blouse, a straw bonnet, and a drab prairie skirt, which brushed the grass.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Her tone told me she wouldn’t approve of my answer, whatever it might be, but I gave it a shot anyway.

“
I’m setting up my booth,” I said in the most pleasant voice I could muster. I reset the painting on its wooden stand.

The woman put her hands on her ample hips, which made her look the
Hollywood version of a stern schoolhouse marm. “What is this jumble?”

Jumble
? I mentally snorted.

She gestured at my painting of the town square.
“This is the face-painting booth for the children. What are these paintings doing here?”

My jaw clenched. I was no longer finding her irritation amusing.

A voice came from behind me. “Goodness sake. Drink some tea, Lynette. I can sense your chi is constrained by stress.”

I spun around. The newcomer was also middle
aged, round all over, and had long dishwater blond hair that hung loosely down her back. She wore purple-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of her nose, and jeans and a festival polo under a blue windbreaker. And her hands were red. Bright red. Crimson red. Vermillion red. Fake blood red.

I glanced down at my own hands; the nails were a strange olive green. Strange
-colored hands were a painter’s occupational hazard. Whoever this second woman was, I bet she was an artist of some sort, or a butcher. I hoped for the former. The second occupation could be a real problem if she ran into my animal activist parents.

She held a hand-thrown mug of soupy-looking tea in those red hands and offered it to Lynette.

“This is none of your concern, Tess.” Lynette glared at the mug.

Tess’s eyes widened.
“Trust me. This tea will change your life. I picked the mint fresh this morning.”

Lynette recoiled, acting as if lighter fluid would be a more appealing beverage.
“No, thank you.” She turned to me. “I’m a member of the Founders’ Festival Committee, and I know this booth”—she gestured wildly at my setup —”is intended to benefit the children. It looks like you are selling your artistic jumble instead.”

This conversation was going downhill fast. I really wished she’d stop referring to my life’s work as
“jumble.” Art was subjective, but no creative person really wants a direct attack on the ego.

“
These paintings aren’t jumble. Look at this painting of the library. It’s so real, it’s like I’m standing right in front of it,” Tess said.

I had no time to revel in Tess’s praise as Lynette snorted.
“Do you have a permit to sell here?”

I riffled through my fanny pack, pulled out my permit, and handed it to Lynette. She sniffed and made a big show of reading it over. Perhaps she thought I forged it. She wrinkled her nose.
“India
Hayes
?”

I sighed, although I should be accustomed to this reaction to my name by now.

“Are you related to Lana and Alden Hayes?” she asked with a slight tremor in her voice.

No use denying it.
“They’re my parents,” I said.

She thrust the paper back at me as if she was too disgusted to hold it. I took it, folded it, and slipped it back into my fanny pack. She sniffed and patted her fraying bun.
“Well, then, I can see how you got a permit so easily. Seeing how your sister’s running the event. Some of us had to fight for our slots even as decade-old members of the committee.”

Tess sipped her rejected tea.
“I’m sure India earned her place here. Her paintings really are lovely. True pieces of art.”

I smiled my thanks and tried not to preen under her praise. It was a challenge, and I can’t say I was completely successful.

Lynette prickled. “I’ll have you know my tea cozies are pieces of art, too. They’ve sold very well on the Internet. There’s nothing worse than a cold cup of tea.”

“
I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t an equally talented artist.” Tess tested the temperature of her own brew with her finger. “Warm tea is very important. Perhaps we can make some type of agreement. I think my tea would sell well next to your cozies.”

Lynette scowled at me.
“Don’t think you’ve heard the last from me about this blatant favoritism.” She spun on her heels, skirt swaying with annoyance.

Tess shook her head as she watched Lynette stomp back to her tea cozy booth
just a few yards away. She held out her hand. “Hi, neighbor, I’m Tess.”

I shook her hand, liking her immediately.

She crooked a thumb to the booth directly to my left. “That one is mine.”

My eyes followed her gesture. Baskets everywhere. Dozens of them. Big baskets. Little baskets. Short baskets. Tall baskets.

Tess caught me staring at her red hands.

“
I was dying maple slats this morning to be woven into baskets. I do all the dying myself and only use natural dyes.” She held up her hands. “This vibrant red color comes from crushed cochineal beetles. I import the beetles from the southwest, mostly from Arizona and New Mexico. They live on cacti and other hot weather plants that could never survive here.”

Ick. Tess’s hands were covered in beetle guts. I discretely wiped my shaking hand on my skirt.

“I make my baskets in the Shaker tradition.” She rose and held up a heavy block of wood I recognized from art school as a basket mold. She screwed the mold onto a stand. I realized I was about to get a lesson in basket weaving. Not that I wasn’t interested. I’m always on the lookout for another art form to dabble in. However, I drew the line at crushing my own beetles. My parents would kill me.

Tess patted the mold.
“This is a messenger basket mold and makes this basket. You weave each basket upside down.” She held up a medium sized basket with wooden handles. She touched a large mold on her table with four pointy corners on what would be the completed basket’s bottom. “This is a cat’s head mold. One of the most difficult to use because of the curved bottom. See the pointy corners. They resemble cat ears. It’s one of my favorites.” She patted the mold lovingly. “On the other side of me is my husband Jerry’s booth. He’s a blacksmith. Very well known in his field.”

My booth inferiority complex reared its ugly head. Both the basket weaver and the blacksmith booths were custom
-made. Tess’s was a polished oak cart that look like it had jumped out of the pages of a German fairytale, and Jerry’s was a twisted iron monstrosity, shaded by a large forest green awning. I looked up at my sad blue tarp, which was listing heavily to the left.

She waved her husband over. He was a tall loose-jointed man with long silver hair pulled back into a ponytail with a thin piece of leather. A large chocolate
brown dog whose curly coat looked like it had recently received electroshock treatment followed him.

Tess squatted in front of the dog and gave him a big bear hug. The animal gave her sloppy doggie kisses up and down both sides of her face. Tess giggled.

“Hey, no loving for me?” Jerry said, his handlebar mustache tickling his nose.

She stood up and planted a kiss on him.
“And this is Zacchaeus. We just call him Zach for short.”

I immediately thought of the old Sunday school song about the small man named Zacchaeus who climbed up the sycamore tree for a better view of Jesus. I wondered if the dog’s name was a pun. He certainly was not a wee little dog. I suspected he was at least one
-quarter bear, but he was friendly enough. I offered my hand to sniff and patted his head. It felt like cured wool. “What kind of dog is he?”

“
A labradoodle. He’s a sweetie. He didn’t get any of the poodle smarts, but he sure got the lab’s temperament.” She rubbed his cheeks. “Didn’t you, boy?”

Zach’s expression was pure adoration.

“I’m surprised the committee allows pets.”

Tess blushed.
“We didn’t exactly get permission to bring Zach.”

“
My motto is never ask permission, just forgiveness,” Jerry said.

“
We couldn’t leave him at home,” Tess said, a little breathless. “There are some special circumstances.”

Jerry squeezed her arm.

I wondered what that meant but quickly decided I didn’t want to know. “You’re secret’s safe with me. But you’ll have to excuse me if I make myself scarce when Carmen comes by.”

Tess’s grin was wide.
“Understood.”

Lynette glared at us from the safety of her tea cozy booth. My guess was it wouldn’t be long
before the entire festival knew about Zach’s presence and my relation to Carmen.

Later that afternoon, I returned to my booth with a warm vegetarian Indian
taco in one hand and a fresh-squeezed lemonade in the other. Who knew face painting was such hard work? I wondered. I’d had barely a moment to myself since the festival began. It seemed like every child, college student, and grandmother clambered for war paint.

I inhaled the intoxicating scents of my lunch. Despite the risk of cardiac arrest or diabetic coma, I love fair food of any kind. I was already contemplating my dessert options. Should I go for the strawberry shortcake or a fistful of the hand-dipped buckeyes? I mused. Buckeyes are a local
Ohio delicacy. They are candies shaped like the buckeye nuts that fall from Ohio’s state tree. If you ate a real buckeye, you’d break a tooth or die from the nut’s toxic poison, but the candy ones are pure heaven. I decided to choose the buckeyes. In my horrendous outfit, I thought strawberry shortcake might be a little over-the-top.

As I approached my booth, a man in an expensive dark suit stood with his back to me, his feet squarely planted in front of Tess’s booth. Tess appeared unperturbed by his presence as she wove a berry basket and nodded in response to whatever the man said. I was a little taken aback by the man’s outfit. The festival was definitely a jeans and sweats affair. Well, at least for the visitors, I thought forlornly as I looked down at my pink gingham nightmare.

I noted the ribs of the basket were red. Another batch of cochineal beetles bit the dust. The closer I got to the booth, the further my stomach began to fall. I knew that suited back and its owner. It belonged to my boss, Samuel L. Lepcheck, provost of Martin College.

Should I run the other way? Should I ditch my lunch? I wondered. I looked down at the delicious Indian taco, fried bread leaden with veggies, melted cheese, and black beans. No way was I choosing option number two.

Lepcheck was of medium height, a sturdily built man who sported a trim Vandyke beard and rimless eyeglasses. He ran his hand through his lush silver hair. “I don’t think you understand the position you’ve put me in.”

Tess glanced up from her berry basket, spinning it on its tripod.
“I didn’t put you into any position, Sammy.”

Sammy? I wondered. Bobby was going to love that.

“I’ve talked to my lawyers. They said we can contest Uncle Victor’s will if you’re willing . . .”

Tess looked up sharply.
“Well, I’m not.”

“
Be reasonable. The college was promised—”

“
There you are, India,” Tess said.

I stood five feet from Lepcheck at that point, holding my lunch as if it were some type of high-caloric shield. I dropped my lemonade. The plastic lid popped off of the paper cup and lemonade splattered the hem of my skirt. So much for the spotless antique.

Tess left her booth and rushed over. “Let me help you with that.” She bent over and picked up the half-empty paper cup.

Lepcheck spun around and gaped at me. I wasn’t sure if he was more shocked by my presence or my appearance. Probably both.

“Have you met India, Sam?” Tess asked.

“
We’ve met.” I glanced down at my damp skirt. Carmen wouldn’t be happy, I thought glumly.

“
She’s on my faculty,” Lepcheck stammered.

“
Oh?” Tess said with surprise. “Really? Small world, huh? India, Sammy’s my older brother.” She gave me quizzical look.

“
Your brother?”

“
Sam just stopped by to talk about Uncle Victor’s . . .”

“
Tess,” Lepcheck snapped. “Our conversation is none of Ms. Hayes’s concern.”

Tess frowned but, much to my relief, said nothing more. Truly, I didn’t want to know what they were arguing about. The less contact I had with Lepcheck the better.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said and smiled at Tess. “And thanks for helping clean that up. I’m such a klutz.”

“
I have a cooler of pop under my table. You can grab a can if you like.”

“
Thanks.” I scurried over to my booth, stashing my taco under the table. No way would I be able to eat in front of Lepcheck.

I pulled a paperback novel out of my backpack and pretended to read. As I was trying to become as small as possible, Jerry with Zach in tow approached the siblings. Zach wasn’t leashed and ran ahead of Jerry. The dog stuck his nose into Lepcheck’s backside.

The provost said something that would shock the faculty, and then, “Control that animal.”

Jerry grabbed Zach’s collar and glared at Lepcheck.

Lepcheck glowered at the dog with distaste. “That thing is the center of this entire mess.”

Tess scowled.
“His name is Zach, and I’d much rather spend my time with him than with you. Your aura is a mess, Sam. You should consider getting it realigned. There are some masters I can suggest. They’d be happy to help.”

Lepcheck looked like he’d rather swim through a sea of lava.
“We’ll finish our conversation later.”

Lepcheck spun on his designer loafers to leave. As he turned, he stumbled into a little girl, knocking her down in the process. The girl wailed. Lepcheck stammered an apology and fled. The young mother helped the little girl up, but the crying didn’t stop. I got up and squatted down in front of her.
“Sorry that man bumped you. I’m sure he’s sorry, too,” I said, knowing nothing of the kind.

She sniffled.

“Do you want your face painted?” I looked up at the mother, who nodded her thanks. “It’s my treat. Whatever you want.”

The sniffles stopped.

“How about a teddy bear or a butterfly?” I suggested.

The little girl looked at me, her face scrunched up with concentration.
“I want a skull. A big one and make it black.”

“
One black skull coming up.”

I caught Tess’s eye, and she smiled her thanks. She and Jerry walked a few feet away. When I looked for them five minutes later, as the little girl with the black skull was leaving, they still stood off to the side, deep in conversation. Zach lay under Tess’s booth, asleep with his head on his paws.