State Fair (19 page)

“Good one, Aunt Garnet,” Emory said, grinning.

“What a nasty man,” she replied. Then she turned to me. “So, what now? Time’s a’wastin’. Most homicides are solved in the first forty-eight hours or they are cold as a Thanksgiving turkey carcass.”

Emory slipped a hand in front of his grin.

“You know, there’s still so much to see at the fair,” I said, picking up a program from a stack on the oak coffee table. I glanced at my watch. “It’s five o’clock now. At five thirty we have a choice of seeing the Kansas racing pigs or the San Celina County Cloggers or taking in the ugly lamp contest.”

“The what?” Emory said.

“It’s right here. There are two categories—Made Ugly and Born Ugly.”

“Definitely the lamps,” Emory said. “The pigs run every day during the fair and you can see cloggers any old time in Arkansas.”

“Okay, it’s the ugly lamps.” She pulled another hankie from her purse and patted her damp upper lip. It was downright chilly in the Bull Pen so immediately an alarm went off in my head.

Outside, I realized that the temperature had gone from blazing hot to come-to-Jesus hot. Hot enough to convince anyone that hell indeed existed and an August day in Paso Robles might be its first cousin. There was no way I could let Aunt Garnet walk across the fairgrounds to the El Camino Real building where the ugly lamp contest was held. So I flagged down a red golf cart, flashed my badge and my most winning smile. “Official business,” I said to the middle-aged Hispanic man driving. “We need to get to the El Camino Real right away.”

“Ugly lamp contest?” he asked, helping Aunt Garnet into the front seat. I climbed on back sharing the space with two boxes of chicken-shaped paper fans.

“You got it,” I said.

“I could’ve won that,” he said, pressing down the accelerator. The cart started with a jerk. “My mother-in-law gave us a lamp when we got married that she said was a pair of rare black swans, but they looked more like vultures. Think she was trying to tell me something?”

“Why didn’t you enter it?” I asked him.

He turned to grin at me. “Broke. It was an accident. I swear.”

The ugly lamp contest was more popular than I anticipated. There were only a few seats left in the corner of the small air-conditioned building so I found one for Aunt Garnet and told her I’d stand in the back.

“Let’s get a snack afterward,” she said. “How about nachos?”

“Sounds good to me.” Though I couldn’t imagine Aunt Garnet snarking down tortilla chips, melted cheese and jalapeño peppers. Then again, this was the new, improved, throw-good-eating-habits-to-the-wind Aunt Garnet.

I leaned against the wall and watched as twenty-five contestants and the tackiest lamps I’d ever seen paraded across the platform to the song “I Feel Pretty” from
West Side Story
. A photographer from the
Tribune
was frantically snapping pictures as each lamp seemed to be more horrible than the last. This would likely be one of the human interest stories they loved to report about the fair.

Each contestant had two minutes to give his or her lamp’s story. My favorite was the one about how the lamp was a wedding gift from a beloved aunt who had no taste and visited the owner regularly so they couldn’t ditch it. It had a glass lampshade that changed color as the lava lamp bottom roiled and gurgled. Every time the color changed, the audience laughed. A good many of the stories involved lamps given as wedding gifts. After the stories I heard, I swore to myself that from now on I was only giving checks or gift certificates for wedding presents.

After the contest, I found Aunt Garnet.

“What now?” I asked. “Want those nachos?” It was six thirty and though we’d had snacks in the Bull Pen, we hadn’t had a real supper.

“I’m a bit tired,” Aunt Garnet said. “And I’d like to spend a little time with my sister. I miss her. Do you know if she’s going to be home tonight?”

“Let me call her and see where she is. I’ll be right back. It’s too noisy to call her in here.”

Okay, now I was really worried. While Aunt Garnet used the ladies’ room, I told her I’d track Dove down. I knew she had to be here at the fair somewhere. I’d seen in today’s program that Isaac was speaking in the fine arts building this evening. He was the featured fair artist this year since his book of state and county fair photographs had recently been reissued.

Dove answered on the third ring. “He’s signing books now. Got a line clear out to the Haunted House ride.”

“I’m taking Aunt Garnet back home. She looks tired.” I hesitated a moment, then said. “You know, Dove, I think there’s something wrong.”

“You bet there is, she’s always wanted—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Something’s really wrong. She just said she missed you.” I didn’t want to scare Dove, but I had to say it. “Gramma, she might be sick or something. She’s been acting real strange. I think you two need to talk.”

There was silence on the phone.

“Ready to go?” Aunt Garnet asked behind me.

I jumped in surprise. “See you later,” I said to Dove. “Think about what I said.”

“Everything okay?” Aunt Garnet said when I flagged down another golf cart and asked them to give us a ride to the exit.

“Great,” I said, silently praying,
Please, God, make that be true.
“Dove’s at Isaac’s book signing, but she’ll be home soon.” I made that last part up, but maybe after hearing what I said, she’d come right home after Isaac’s event.

On the drive to the ranch, Aunt Garnet leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. I refrained from turning on the radio, afraid to disturb her. The quiet gave me time to contemplate Cal’s murder. Though I really had no horse in that race, there was a part of me that wanted to help solve the murder. I mentally listed the suspects—Dodge or Milt seemed the most likely. There was Juliette—that was certainly possible, though that was a stretch. How would she have moved Cal’s body? Unless she had help. She and Dodge? Also, if I was going to be fair, I should add Lloyd Burnside. Maybe he lied about his son not going back out after his friends brought him home. Maybe he helped Dodge kill Calvin Jones. That would make him an accessory, wouldn’t it? Had Hud considered that? Of course, then there were those unknown friends of Cal’s. Maybe one of them did it, using the Harriet Powers quilt as a slap in the face to Jazz and Levi. Surely Hud was looking into that possibility.

On the way down the Ramsey Ranch’s long driveway, gravel pinging against our doors woke Aunt Garnet. She straightened up, flustered that she’d fallen asleep. To cover her embarrassment, she blurted, “Sam told me that Dodge Burnside told him that Justin and Cal had a fight about Jazz right before Cal was murdered.”

My foot hit the brake. We jerked forward, then were caught by our shoulder belts.

“Whoa,” Aunt Garnet said, reaching out to grab the dashboard.

My hands squeezed the steering wheel. “I’m sorry. You surprised me. Are you all right?”

She nodded.

I started slowly driving again. “Run that by me again. Sam told you what?”

“Justin and Cal had a fight right before Cal was killed. Dodge Burnside told Sam.”

“When did Sam tell you that?”

“This afternoon when you spilled your drink and had to wash up.”

We pulled up in front of the ranch house and I turned off the ignition. Daddy sat on the front porch in a wood rocking chair drinking a glass of tea. Gabe sat in an identical rocker next to him, laughing at something.

“Is that all he said?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he tell me about it?” It annoyed me especially since I praised him earlier for being so truthful. He was a little like his father in that aspect. He told the truth . . . just left out something
significant
.

“He was afraid you’d get the wrong idea about his friend.”

Add Justin Piebald to the suspect list, I thought. I liked Jazz. She was a young woman whom I thought would go far in life. She was smart, kind and talented, but it was beginning to appear she wasn’t adept at choosing stable men.

I was helping Aunt Garnet out of the truck and up the porch steps when my cell phone rang.

“Benni?” Katsy’s voice was an octave higher than her normal alto. “I need your help.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Jazz has locked herself in the guest room and won’t come out. She insists she has to talk to
you
.”

“Me? Whatever for? Do you think she’d do anything drastic?” I sat down on the porch steps, aware that Gabe, Daddy and Aunt Garnet were staring at me.

Katsy made a sound halfway between a sigh and a moan. “I don’t think so. If we have to, we can break down the door. We have a key somewhere, but I have no idea where. We’re just not in the habit of locking things up here.”

“I’m at the ranch so it’ll take me about a half hour to forty-five minutes to get there.”

“Thanks. Honestly, this is enough to make a girl reconsider having kids.”

“What’s going on?” Gabe asked.

“Apparently Jazz has locked herself in the guest room at the Morrison ranch. She wants to talk to me.”

Gabe rocked slowly, a frown shadowing his face. “Why you?”

I shrugged. “She trusts me?”

“We’d better get going,” Aunt Garnet said. Her face sparkled with eagerness even though the tightness around her eyes had worsened. “No time to waste.”

“Maybe you’d better stay here,” I said. “Dove said she was on her way home and that y’all were going out someplace good for dinner.” It was a blatant lie, but I’d let Dove deal with that.

“I don’t like you getting involved with this,” Gabe said. “You should call Hudson and have him send a detective out.”

“No,” I said calmly. “She wants to talk to me, not some strange detective. We don’t even know if her meltdown has anything to do with Cal’s death. She’s probably just being . . . a teenager. She and I have talked some about losing our moms so young.” I glanced over at Daddy, whose face still took on a tinge of sadness whenever I mentioned my mother. I smiled at him. “Even when you have great dads, you sometimes just need to talk to a woman.”

“She has Maggie and Katsy,” Gabe said. “They’re family, or close enough to it.”

I went up the steps, plopped a hand on each armrest and looked deep into his troubled blue-gray eyes. “Friday, I don’t think this has anything to do with anything except a young girl who is sad and scared because her boyfriend was killed. Probably because of something in his past. Who was it that said the past always follows us?”

“‘The past is not dead,’ ” Aunt Garnet said. “ ‘In fact, it’s not even past.’ ” She cleared her throat. “Bill Faulkner.”

I turned and smiled at her, loving the way she said “Bill,” as if she and the famous writer had just eaten biscuits and gravy together that morning. “William Faulkner did have a way with words. Don’t worry, Chief Ortiz. If Jazz tells me something relevant to the case, I’ll call Hud right away.”

On the drive to Katsy and Maggie’s ranch, I contemplated what Jazz might want to tell me. Did she know about Cal’s troubled past? She must have. Had he truly broken away from his old racist friends? Could a person change so quickly, so completely? My belief in God’s grace told me that yes a person could make a 180-degree change. We had the free will to do so. But humans were fallible. We might want to change, but we are often lured back to the tempting patterns of our pasts. And, sometimes, when we are honestly trying to walk away, our past comes looking for us. William Faulkner was right about that. The things we do and say aren’t ever really finished. If more people understood that would they think twice before doing or saying something cruel? Most of history revealed . . . not often enough.

Those troubling thoughts accompanied me on my drive down the twisting two-lane highway to the remote Morrison ranch. Their nearest neighbors, the Seavers, trained cutting horses and lived a half mile away. I passed under the bleached wood archway carved with their greatgrandfather’s Circle LM cattle brand and pulled up in front of the wood frame ranch house. It was painted a deep brick red with white window frames and decorative shutters with cutouts of the distinctive bulbous heads of Hereford cattle. Maggie commissioned those shutters a few months ago from one of our co-op’s woodworkers. This was the first time I’d seen them on the house though I’d watched their progress in the woodshop. Maggie waited on the deep front porch.

“Hey,” I said, coming up the steps. “Is Jazz still incommunicado?”

Maggie opened the wooden screen door for me. “I’m worried, Benni. She’s so upset and won’t tell me or Katsy a thing. We thought about calling Levi, but we wanted to see if she’d talk to you first. Levi doesn’t look good. I know he’s not getting enough sleep.”

“Who can blame him?” I said, stepping into their living room. It was decorated with a plush navy sofa, two deep red leather chairs and a bevy of rustic antiques from old California—rusty horseshoes, Spanish-style spurs, a feed-store calendar from the 1920s. A matching red, white and navy Road to Oklahoma quilt hung over the sofa. Their mother had been born and raised outside of Tulsa.

“Last room at the end.” She gestured toward the long hallway. “The one with the closed door,” she added, her voice weary.

“Where’s Katsy?” I asked.

“Feeding the critters. Have you eaten supper yet? We’re barbecuing halibut steaks tonight.”

“Let’s see how things go with Jazz. If I can talk her out of her lair, maybe it would be better if I headed back home, let you all have some private time to discuss things.”

“Good luck. I’ll be in the kitchen making a salad.”

I walked down the hallway past three other bedrooms wondering briefly if Katsy and Levi did get married where they would live—here or in Paso Robles?

There was no sound coming from behind the closed door. I knocked softly on the knotty-pine door.

“Jazz, it’s Benni Harper . . .” I cleared my throat. “Uh, Benni Ortiz.”