Deadly Cost of Goods

by Margaret Evans

  “Good morning, Harry.”

  “Good morning, Laura. Looks like it will be a hot, sunny day for your dunk tank.”

  “We’re lucky,” she agreed. “I hope your walking tour tomorrow is just as sunny.”

  “Thank you.” He looked around. “We’ve never had a dunk tank before. I imagine if your parents were here right now, they would say, ‘Well, what do you expect, Harry? Laura’s back in town.’ ”

  She was laughing so hard, she grabbed his arm to keep from falling.

  “I suppose Charlie will be here to cover this exciting event,” she said, still chuckling.

  “Yes, he’s on his way, and so is Will. You know, we’re different, each of us, but we all like a good time. You’ve certainly provided that, Laura, with all your ruffles and excitement.”

  “Is that a compliment, Harry?”

  “I think so. It could be.”

  She gave him a hug and went back to her post by the dunk tank, her burning question for him left unasked. It had been her bargaining chip with Max and Nicky—that she agreed not to ask anyone about the never-ending help they gave her whenever Connor asked, if they each agreed to do a thirty-minute tank shift. She was surprised at how quickly they went for it.

  Sven was the first one up and was going over the steps with the assistant. Then he climbed into the booth and was in the hot seat.

  The trucks were all gone, craft booths were all set up, games were all operational, fish pond was filled, and Brenda’s empty booth was filled including the raffle cake looking like a dunk tank decorated with gold badges, police hats, and a fully dressed policeman sitting in the chair above the water. Ticket sellers were ready to take in money and pass out tickets. They opened the gates to a double line of children and adults, roughly five city blocks long, who poured through the gate and began to spread everywhere like a carpet of ants.

  “Now?” Erica asked in Laura’s ear.

  “Not yet. Let people come in and see what’s here.”

  “But we want them to spend their money here, not elsewhere.”

  “I know, but we don’t want to start just yet. Oh, Jenna’s not feeling too well today and she has to stay out of the sun, so I told her she could sit at the ticket booth under the tree all day and we’d bring her food and drinks.”

  “Wait,” Erica said. “We’re not the Fab Three; we’re the Fab Four. I’ll go talk to her.”

  Kelly brought over the big bin of softballs and set it next to the taped limit line where people had to stand. Then she picked up a ball and tested her windup.

  In the tank, Sven had just arranged himself when he spotted her in line.

  He swore.

  “What’s wrong?” Max asked him, next to the tank through the wire cage that protected Sven from stray balls.

  “I taught her to pitch in high sch—”

  And with those last words, Kelly pegged the target and Sven splashed into the water.

  Connor had come up behind Laura and the two roared with laughter.

  “You’re not buying any tickets when it’s my turn, are you?” he asked her.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Can you throw a ball?”

  “About as well as I can shoot a gun.”

  “Either hand?”

  She nodded.

  “I figured. Slow or fast pitch?”

  “Underhand fast pitch, like Kelly’s. Ooh. There goes Sven again!”

  Connor stared at his officer who came up coughing and sputtering this time. He was glad he planned to wear ear and nose plugs and was a strong swimmer. Glancing at Laura, he found her grinning at him.

  * * *

  By the time Sven finished his shift, the first of the fair, he was so waterlogged he had to sit down. Kelly had kept buying tickets, as had Connor, as had quite a number of teenage boys, and Mo Sanchez in his SpongeBob Squarepants costume which hadn’t hampered his pitching arm one bit.

  “I told you to wear the nose plug,” Laura said, scolding him. “Connor’s up next. Pull yourself together. Do you need an EMT?”

  He shook his head forcefully, then tipped his head and shook it again to get the water out of one ear.

  “He’s also wearing ear plugs. Think about doing that your next turn. I have a bag full of them. Here’s your wallet.”

  “When’s my next shift?”

  “In two hours. You have time to recover.”

  “You’re my new ally, Keene.”

  And with that, he took some deep breaths, flexed his muscles, and stood. A tower of a hulk. Off to the ticket table he slowly walked.

  All the teenage girls lined up to dunk Connor, but it was the boys with them, however, who were far more successful in their attempts at dunking him, as was Sven with his payback spurred on by Connor’s taunts about Sven’s noodle arm and something about his inability to hit the broad side of a barn. Jack Flynn got in his licks as well, dunking Connor with every pitch, just as he had hit his receivers with every throw of the football. It was Laura who got the biggest cheers when she dunked him sometimes using her right hand and sometimes, her left.

  By the time the first two peace officers had been thoroughly dunked, there was a thirty-minute break until Sammy and the firefighter named Alan Hall were up. The lines at the dunk tank were growing longer and Laura thought the time was right. She pulled Erica and Kelly over to the ticket table where Jenna was actually looking a little brighter.

  “I’ll do it from here, okay? Give me my poms and I’ll sing with you.”

  The other three pulled out four sets of pom poms from the two bags hidden under Jenna’s ticket table. They had come from Brianna’s box of high school memories. Then the four ladies began their cheers just as Sammy climbed into the seat and positioned himself. He got one look at them and heard only one cheer before he got dunked.

  “Wind ‘em up! Wind ‘em up! Pound that target hard!

  “Splash ‘em good! Splash ‘em good! Keep up the bombard!”

  A crowd formed around the women and a local television video operator was trained on them, along with dozens of phones. If they hadn’t thought themselves famous before, they certainly were now. To demands from the crowd to cheer again, they responded.

  “Wind ‘em up! Wind ‘em up! Pound that target hard!

  “Splash ‘em good! Splash ‘em good! Keep up the bombard!”

  None of them had ever been a real cheerleader, but they thrust their poms back and forth as practiced and did some simple steps forward, backward, and side–to-side.

  Applause, cheers and whistles brought more people over to see what the big deal was. Many more tickets were sold, and many more in the hot seat got dunked. Even SpongeBob.

  When it was Eric Williams’s turn in the hot seat, a very loud host of hollering and cheers went up, and he wondered if that meant he was on good terms with all these people. Sadly, he found out in very short order that they enjoyed dunking him.

  It was reported that one EMT standing by the ambulance said to the other, “I sure am glad I’m not in that tank.”

  Connor found Laura right before the women were starting another cheer.

  “I have to go, but at least I did my three sessions in the tank. I’ll text you where to meet for the fireworks day after tomorrow.”

  “Do we need chairs?”

  “No, I’ll bring a blanket. Oh, and it wasn’t too bad today.”

  “You’re just saying that because you wore ear plugs and a nose clip, and you and Kelly smeared Sven.”

  He laughed as he sprinted toward his car.

  * * *

  Laura showed up the next day at the New Library just in time for the crowds that came to see the display. It was gratifying to see the children and young adults who had never seen a real, live card catalogue of typed index cards they had to flip through to find a book, Fiction by alphabet, and non-fiction and reference by Dewey Decimal System numbers.

  Glenda Thursson gave the tour, leading small groups to each station where her assistants demonstrated how t
he catalogue was used and how the microfilm reader worked. Everyone who wanted to try them had an opportunity, and it was funny to watch the younger people looking for a keyboard. The other displays showed rows of very old books in which an assistant wearing white gloves turned pages and showed them how books were printed and bound a hundred years ago. They also pointed to where the Dewey Decimal System numbers were marked on the book spines with white paint or black ink depending on the color of the leather book cover. Most books had darker covers at the time, so the thin tracings of white painted book numbers or first letters of the author’s last name were common.

  The laminated sign-out sheet pages and the Library Rules were such a hit with the middle schoolers that Glenda sent one of her librarians off to make copies of the rules as hand-outs. Several teachers showed up to get ideas for school projects.

  Melba Coombs stood next to Laura as they watched everyone looking at the items behind the glass display case.

  “This is amazing. I’m so glad you came up with the idea, Laura.”

  “I think they’ll gain a new respect for librarians, don’t you?”

  Melba chuckled.

  “There was a gold mine in those boxes! I can’t believe what we found. That original letter from Samuel Rage granting the Old Library its charter and license to operate as a public institution? Can you believe that!? And the presidential letters of awards for the library with grants to buy books? Wow, I’m still in awe of what those librarians did and how they preserved everything. Today, we learn the Dewey numbers, help with research and reference, and keep on top of the latest books, but what they did was amazing. Without computers! And I’m so glad you were lucky enough to find those original library cards.”

  “I have one more card for your display. I don’t need to keep it any longer,” Laura said, pulling Lorelei’s card from her wallet and offering it to Melba.

  The librarian looked at it and smiled.

  “This is an important one for our town’s history. We’ll treasure it.”

  “I heard someone say a couple of years ago that they were concerned because we might be turning into a world of writers rather than readers. I don’t think that’s quite true.”

  “I can attest to that, Laura. People read more than they ever did.”

  “I agree. And it’s a natural progression from being more literate to writing more. People feel freer to share their stories or information or advice in a blog. Everybody wins.”

  They exchanged a grin when they heard a boy, pointing to the library cards behind the glass, ask, “Where’s the bar code?”

  * * *

  Laura and Connor watched the fireworks cross-legged on a blanket among hundreds of other such blankets with an appropriate number of people sitting on them.

  “Harry tells me the walking tour went well yesterday. More people and tickets sold than ever. But they all wanted to see where the drug bust was in the Old Library.”

  “What did he tell them?” Connor asked.

  “They’ll get to see it in a year or two. Can you imagine? It’s in a sealed trust for three more years with a completely unknown beneficiary which means nobody can touch it except the trustee.”

  “Maybe he knows something we don’t.”

  “Like who the beneficiary is? Hey…”

  “I’m not sure I like the look in your eyes. I hear the grinding of wheels, Laura. What are you thinking?”

  “Well, we may not need the beneficiary information after all. It’s the trustee who holds the purse strings. If we can make a good legal, common-sense argument for cleaning up the Old Library and how that would benefit both the town and the beneficiary, whoever it is, maybe we could begin cleaning it all up.”

  Connor was silent a moment.

  “Talk to Harry.”

  “I will. Hey, how did you get this time off anyway? Ooh! Look! That one was red, white, and blue! And it’s shooting off in lots of directions.”

  “Mallory wouldn’t let me work so my staff could enjoy this. He said I earned it.”

  “That was nice of him. So who’s minding the shop?”

  “He is. Should be interesting.”

  There was a really loud bang then two more.

  “I hate that kind; all they do is make noise. I want to see fire in the sky! So everybody’s here?”

  “No, they’re running short shifts tonight because it can get pretty intense with fireworks, accidents, burns, bottle rockets, cherry bombs, even sparklers, you name it. Doesn’t matter that it’s illegal for public sale. They find them.”

  “Do they still even make cherry bombs? How’s Sven, by the way?”

  “He’s fully recovered and asked Kelly out again. They’re going to the movies tonight when his shift ends.”

  “You’re kidding. He better give her the updated driver’s manual to read. Soon. Wow—holidays.”

  “Gotta love ‘em. Anything can happen. Whether I’m off or not, I know I’ll get a call.”

  And he did, within the hour but not before the fireworks finale. He dropped Laura off at her back door.

  She called out for Empress Isabella to show herself, begged, demanded, whined, politely asked, but the feline did not appear. She put out a small saucer of fresh milk tonight, as she did every night, in hopes her furry friend would come back.

  Chapter 44

  Friday, July 5, the official town holiday

  Invitees were to meet in the big field behind the breezeway between the police station and the community center. It was a select few that had grown up together, except for the years when Laura lived in Maryland. Some days it seemed as if she had never left; on others, it felt she missed a lot, especially the part about Kelly and Sven.

  Laura got there early and quietly hid bags of filled water balloons under several of the draped tables in three different areas along the north side of the field. No one knew her plans. Not Connor, not Sven, nor any other cops, not Eric, not Jack Flynn, not Jenna, Erica, or Kelly.

  Cookies and punch lined the tables, and Laura also brought a dozen Wiffle balls and plastic bats. The game started well and both teams—boys against girls—were almost even until Laura pointed out a bag of water balloons to Eric who couldn’t resist pegging Connor in the back.

  As bags under other tables were discovered, a volley of water balloons started among the men. Laura quietly pointed out other bags of water balloons to more people until the Wiffle ball game was totally disrupted and abandoned, and the field became a melee of bursting water balloons. Then Connor hit Laura with one and she laughed.

  “Those cookies better be good!” he called out to her before he got her with three more.

  Soon they were all soaking wet, especially Kelly, as they ate their cookies and punch.

  And for just a few hours, they all felt a little like kids again.

  * * *

  With the cat still MIA, Laura entertained the notion that maybe she should invite Will Kovacs over with his dog Peeks. That puppy would certainly be able to find the empress if she was still there. She would keep that in mind if the feline didn’t show up soon.

  As the day waned, so did Laura’s hope that she would find her mysterious cat today. It frightened her to think that maybe she could no longer see the cat, just like everybody else. And if that wasn’t the case, then what had happened?

  Crazy thoughts flew around in her brain, a gray kitten named Isabella and a big gray cat named Isabella. She refused to acknowledge any connection between the two. They’d put her on very strong meds if she did. Besides, she’d held the empress; she’d scratched her behind the ears, heard her purring. Empress Isabella was real. Other people just couldn’t see her.

  “I hope you’re okay, Isabella,” Laura said, looking under her bed and in the closet. “Wherever you are.”

  Chapter 45

  “How much did you make from the dunk tank?” Connor asked.

  He and Laura lounged in front of Laura’s gigantic screen TV, which was apparently now hers for keeps, with not too
many worries for the first time in a long time. Connor’s shoes were on the floor, his feet on the coffee table. Laura was curled up next to him.

  “Close to nine thousand dollars,” she said, punching in the number for the old movies channel, not liking what she saw playing now, and clicking on another movie channel. Somewhere, at this time on a Saturday evening, there was a movie playing that they both wanted to see.

  “So we’re just about at our goal of ten thousand then.”

  “We’re over it. I already had fourteen hundred and change from my shop’s fund-raisers. And with the TV coverage we got when the girls and I did our cheerleading thing, we got a few more checks in the mail. Big ones. I think the sign we put in front of the dunk tank saying what the dunking was all for, helped. We’re pretty close to fifteen thousand. If there’s anything left over after the repairs are done, you’ll have your own official slush fund.”

  He gave her a big hug.

  “How did you get this done?”

  “It needed to be done, so I did it.”

  He thought about that. If something needed to be done, a person just did it. Why didn’t more people think like that?

  “You know you broke your promise about controlling chaos at the dunk tank. You actually spurred them on.”

  She shook her head.

  “Nope, I didn’t. I spurred you on, and Eric and Sven. The kids saw you as people, not Robocops. They liked it. That’s why we sold as many tickets as we did, including the ones you guys bought to dunk each other.”

  “They’ll never respect me again.”

  “Sure they will. They’ll just look at you a little differently than they did before. You said once that you didn’t know how to keep the kids after kindergarten and first grade. This is how. Be part of the community and show them you’re just like them but your profession is safeguarding them.”

  “I used to live a quiet life.”