State Fair (12 page)

“Where are you?”

He laughed, his voice turned intimate and teasing. “Why, want to meet at the Ferris wheel? I’ll bribe the operator to stop it at the top so we can look down on everyone else. Do you think the chief will mind?”

“I need you in the Family Farm exhibits.”

His voice immediately sobered. “What’s wrong?”

“I think . . .” I inhaled deeply and lowered my voice. How many more times in my life was I going to have to say these words? “I think I’ve found a body.”

“I
’M TWO MINUTES AWAY. HOLD TIGHT.” HE CLICKED OFF AND I stood next to the exhibit, unsure what to do next.

Aunt Garnet was occupied, searching through her tan pocketbook for something, so I decided to stay put until Hud arrived. Should I call Gabe? Dang, should have called him first, I thought, instantly feeling guilty.

But it
was
Hud’s jurisdiction. Gabe was a civilian at the fair. Still, I knew he would be annoyed. Then again, what if this wasn’t a dead body? Maybe it was a joke, a mannequin someone had slipped into the exhibit to tease Milt and Juliette.

Minutes later Hud came through the building’s double doors. His face was composed and expressionless, but I could see the agitation, even anticipation in his face. He was beside me in a minute, close enough that I could smell his Juicy Fruit gum.

“Show me the body,” he whispered into my ear, then chuckled.

Of course, at that moment Aunt Garnet chose to look up and, by the expression on her face, didn’t like what she was seeing. She pursed her lips and frowned.

I elbowed Hud in the chest. “Step back. My great-aunt is watching.”

He turned and nodded at Aunt Garnet, sliding a finger across the rim of his Stetson.

Her frown deepened and she shook her head like she used to in church when she caught me swinging my legs and flipping pages in the Baptist hymnal, not paying close enough attention to the preacher.

“Legs,” I hissed, hoping none of the people milling about looking at the exhibits could hear. “Under the truck. They weren’t here yesterday. Maybe it’s a practical joke, but when I touched one, it felt”—I took a deep breath—“real.”

He patted my shoulder. “Ranch girl, go pacify your uptight auntie and I’ll check out Mr. Legs. It’s probably a joke. Milt Piebald’s annoyed a few folks in his life and this is probably righteous payback.” He looked back at my aunt and grinned at her.

“Quit making eyes at my aunt. You’ll only give her fodder to lecture me on how married women shouldn’t be flirting with other men.”

“If you want, I can assure her with complete honesty and disappointment that you never, ever flirt with me.” He made an exaggerated sad sack face.

“Check out the body,” I snapped.

I began defending myself when I got within five feet of my aunt. “That wasn’t what it looked like. Ford Hudson is the sheriff’s deputy in charge of security here at the fair. There’s something . . .” I sat down beside her, considering my words carefully so she wouldn’t be too shocked. “The Piebald exhibit. There might be a body in it.”

She stared at me, the mention of a possible homicide the only possible thing that could keep her from commenting on Hud’s flirting. “As in a
dead
body?” Her blue eyes were grave; her voice held an odd-sounding tremor.

“Yes . . . well, maybe. It’s probably a joke, but those legs you saw under the truck shell? They weren’t there yesterday and when I touched one, it felt . . .”

“Cold? Clammy? Was there rigor mortis?”

Wait. That wasn’t a frightened tremor in her voice. That was . . .
excitement.
And the expression on her face was somber, but not swooning like one would think of a proper, dyed-in-the-wool, Southern Baptist lady whose favorite authors were Jan Karon, Janette Oke and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

She dipped her head and whispered, “Are they sending for the bone wagon?”

My mouth literally dropped open. “What?”

She looked at me like I was the one talking crazy. “You know, the morgue van. Y’all have one, don’t you? What is the forensic team’s ETA?”

“I suppose they’ll send one. If it’s actually a . . . wait a minute. How do you know a term like bone wagon?”

She sat up straight, settling her handbag in her lap. “I watch a little television. And I read.”

“What do you read that talks about bone wagons?”

“A little of this, a little of that.”

“Who?” I demanded, keeping my eye on Hud who’d climbed over the fence and was pretending to rearrange the display. The look on his face and how quickly he opened his phone and started punching numbers told me I hadn’t been wrong.

“James Lee Burke,” Aunt Garnet confessed. “Though I’m not sure I learned that particular phrase from him.”

I turned to stare at her rosy cheeks. “You read James Lee Burke?” He was one of Gabe’s favorite authors, mine too, but there was no doubt his books were pretty violent and often more than a little crude. Definitely not what I’d expect my straitlaced aunt to read.

“And a few others.”

I didn’t have time to quiz her any further about her surprising reading habits because Hud was standing in front of us.

“Ranch girl, you sure know how to find ’em. I think we got ourselves a genuine homicide here. Unless, of course, some poor fella just up and had a heart attack underneath the Piebald’s truck shell, which seems a might unlikely.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Couldn’t exactly pull the old boy out and look at his face,” Hud said. “Besides, it might be a
she.
Before we do anything, we need to secure the building, interview everyone we can.” He glanced over at the double doors that suddenly opened. Levi, followed by three security guys, entered. Behind him—my stomach lurched—was my stone-faced husband, whom I still hadn’t called.

Gabe moved around them and reached us with three long strides. Levi was seconds behind him.

“Are you all right?” he asked me, completely ignoring Hud.

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just that—”

“We’ll get your statement in a minute. First we need to secure the building.” He turned to speak to Levi but was stopped by Hud’s exaggerated throat clearing.

“Excuse me all to heck, Chief Ortiz,” he said, his Texas twang deliberately exaggerated. “But I reckon that, despite your outranking me in, say, the general law enforcement world, this here, well, it’s pretty much my little rodeo.” He smirked at Gabe.

If Gabe were a cartoon character at that moment he would have been one of those bulls with the steam coming out of his nose. I looked at Gabe, at Hud, then back to Gabe. I could see my husband almost literally counting to ten in his head.

“Absolutely, Detective,” he said stiffly. “My apologies.”

Aunt Garnet’s eager eyes took all of this in like she was watching an episode of
Law & Order.
Or a James Lee Burke book come to life.

“What do you want us to do?” I asked, not looking at either of them. I wasn’t about to get in the middle of that little testosterone battle.

“Just relax,” Hud said. “We’ll take your statement, but we need to get the forensic team here without causing a huge amount of panic.”

“Fat chance,” Levi said, speaking up for the first time since they’d walked in. His expression was a composite of anger and frustration. “This will be the headline story for the next month. And
that’s
going to make a lot of people really happy.” The bitterness in his voice caused us all to look to the ground, knowing that he was right.

“But Detective Hudson is right,” Levi continued. “We need to secure this building and make things as easy as possible for law enforcement to do their job.” He turned to Hud, his face all business. “What else do you need me to do?”

Within a few minutes, Hud called more sheriffs’ deputies to the scene, a couple of highway patrol officers, and a good half-dozen Paso Robles police officers. He stationed officers at each of the building’s two entrances to keep people from entering and used the rest to quietly ask people to follow them over to a back room normally used to store maintenance equipment. Sheriff’s detectives would take down their contact information, ask a few questions, then let them go on and enjoy the fair. Even Gabe would have to admit that Hud expertly coordinated all the agencies to initiate the investigation without too much hullabaloo.

Aunt Garnet sat next to me on the bench, her moist blue eyes animated, absorbing everything. “It’s just like
Hill Street Blues
,” she whispered.

“They can’t really do much,” I whispered back, “until they identify who was under the truck and what happened to him.”

“Or her,” she corrected. “There’s no confirmation about whether the victim is male or female. I hope they remember to look for latent fingerprints.”

I tried not to laugh. A nutty picture popped in my head of Aunt Garnet wearing a houndstooth Sherlock Holmes hat and holding a magnifying glass.

After the building was emptied of curious fair attendees, the investigative team carefully moved aside the white picket fence surrounding the Piebald exhibit. Supervised by Hud, six officers placed themselves on both sides of the truck shell. On the count of three, they lifted and pushed it over on its side, promptly wrecking Milt and Juliette’s winning display. The blue ribbon flew off the front of the truck’s hood and landed on the concrete floor.

“What the—?” one of the forensic people said when they saw the body.

“Hey, Ryan, get a photo of this! He looks like a mummy!”

There were so many officers standing in front of the body I couldn’t see what they were gaping at.

“What is it?” Aunt Garnet said, standing up. “What does he mean he looks like a mummy?”

“I don’t know,” I said, jumping up on the bench to see over the people crowded around the body.

“Oh, crap,” I said, catching a glimpse of the victim. “Double crap.” I didn’t even care that Aunt Garnet might smack me or quote Bible verses about using crude and foolish speech.

“What is it?” she said, stretching her neck to see. “What?”

“I think they’ve found the missing Harriet Powers quilt.”

“T
HE HARRIET WHAT?” AUNT GARNET TUGGED AT THE LEG OF my jeans.

I stretched myself taller trying to see more. Please, please let me be imagining this. But, no, there was no doubt. The victim’s upper body, hidden before by the truck shell, was wrapped in the Ebony Sisters’ beautiful replica of the Harriet Powers story quilt. I could see one edge, the square that showed a spotted animal resembling a donkey and the blue-gray crook of a figure’s arm—Adam and Eve naming the animals.

I got down from the bench. “It was a copy of a famous appliqué quilt made by this African American woman who was born a slave. The original hangs in the Smithsonian. The copy was part of an exhibit over in the home arts building. Someone stole it last night.” I pulled out my cell phone. “I have to call Maggie and Katsy.”

I tried Maggie’s number first. She answered on the first ring. In the background I could hear the sound of clippers and blowers, the muffled squawk of the PA system announcing some event. “This is Benni. I have some news about the quilt.”

“What?” she yelled. “You found the quilt! Hallelujah!” The background noise made her next words undecipherable.

“What?” I yelled.

“I’m helping at the Beef Barn,” she yelled back. “Let me move to somewhere quieter.” Her breathing was audible as she walked, the sound of the agitated cattle and the crackly PA voice retreating further in the background.

“There,” she said with a loud sigh. “I’m far enough away to actually hear you now. Where is the quilt? Is it okay?”

I was silent for a moment, wishing I didn’t have to be the one to tell her.

“It’s not good, Maggie. They found it . . . wrapped around a body. In the Piebald Family Farm exhibit.”

She was quiet for so long that I thought we’d lost our connection.