Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 08 - Wed and Buried

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “I remember who Mike Cooper is, Laurie Anne,” Junior said.

  “Who’s Mike Cooper?” Belva asked.

  “I’ll brief you later. Or at least I’ll tell you what I know. I’ve always thought that I might have missed something about that case.” She gave me a long, hard look.

  I looked right back at her. “Junior, if I really believed that there was a connection with this case, I’d tell you right now, but I don’t think there is. If I find out something that convinces me otherwise, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” she said, which I took as quite a compliment. “Belva and I will go ahead and check on Cooper’s background and his alibis, and we’ll go from there.”

  Then I gave Junior a rundown of our various interviews, except the one with Burt, but we really didn’t have anything concrete for her, and she didn’t have anything else for us.

  Finally I said, “I’m lost, Junior. What about you? Have you had one of your hunches?” Junior’s hunches were both well known and well regarded.

  “I’m a police officer,” Junior said sternly, “not some carnival fortune teller. I rely on facts, not hunches.” That might have worked if she’d been able to keep a straight face, but her grin gave her away. “Sorry, no hunches this time. I wouldn’t bet on any of these folks, but then again, I wouldn’t bet against any of them, either.”

  “Great. Here we are, all working together, and we’re still lost,” I said. “Maybe we should go back to working against one another.”

  “No,” Richard and Junior said in unison. We all laughed, and Belva plopped Alice back into my arms, saying, “Let’s see you try to be grumpy with this little doll looking at you.”

  I tried; I really did, but babies have a way of cheering you up, whether you want to be cheered or not. That must be one of the reasons why parents put up with two A.M. feedings.

  Chapter 22

  Even with the dose of baby-induced euphoria, Richard and I were tired, and we headed back to the house after that. I really didn’t know where to go next, other than for a talk with Mike Cooper, and we were giving Junior a chance to do her stuff first.

  “I guess we could go back through Big Bill’s threatening letters,” I said halfheartedly. “We might have missed something. Or we could go visiting and see if we can scrape up some more gossip.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Richard said.

  “Good,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “We’re taking tomorrow off.”

  “We can’t—”

  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” Richard said in a tone that brooked no argument.

  “That’s not Shakespeare.”

  “No, but it’s true. Listen, Laura, we’ve got Big Bill as safe as we can get him, and we’ve followed up on every lead we’ve got. Not to mention the fact that we’re taking care of a baby.”

  “My aunts have been taking care of Alice,” I said.

  “They’re not covering the two o’clock feedings, are they? Or nursing her first thing in the morning and last thing at night?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then no buts. We’re taking tomorrow off, and tomorrow night we’re going to the Halloween carnival.”

  “I’d forgotten the carnival was tomorrow,” I said. “I would like to take Alice.”

  “And you promised me a chance to dress up. So here’s my plan. Tonight, we’re calling out for pizza and getting to bed early. Tomorrow, Alice is going to visit Aunt Edna and I’m going to hunt up some costumes for the three of us.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re going to lounge about.”

  I opened my mouth to object, but Richard’s plan sounded too good to resist. After all, who was I to argue with the world’s most thoughtful husband? So what I said was, “You’re not going to make me dress up in anything ridiculous, are you?”

  “You’ll just have to trust me,” was his airy reply.

  We stuck to Richard’s plan for the rest of the evening, with one slight modification. Though we did indeed get to bed early, we didn’t get to sleep right away. Since that kind of activity can ultimately be even more relaxing than sleep, Richard was willing to let me get away with it. In fact, he cooperated quite enthusiastically.

  Though I did take care of the two o’clock feeding, that was the last bit of child care I did for the day. Richard was the one to go get Alice when she woke up in the morning, and he brought her over for me to nurse. Then he pushed me back into bed, got himself and Alice ready, and took her to Aunt Edna’s before disappearing himself. I slept until ten, then got up to find a note reminding me to lounge and announcing that I would have company for lunch.

  When Aunt Daphine showed up at twelve, not only did she come bearing takeout from Pigwick’s, she had a box full of supplies for cutting my hair, doing my nails, and giving me a facial. I’d never been one to mess with a beauty regimen, but there’s something about having a baby that had made me crave pampering, and Aunt Daphine was happy to oblige. While she worked me over, we talked about everything under the sun except for Big Bill Walters’s situation, and I continued to lounge, in accordance with Richard’s stern instructions.

  After Aunt Daphine left, I lay down and took a nap on the couch even though I wasn’t worn out from sitting up with Alice all night. By the time Richard arrived with an armload of intriguing bundles, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and only a little apprehensive about the Halloween costume he’d picked out for me.

  “Stay down there,” he ordered as he lugged it all upstairs. “I want to arrange things first.” I waited more or less patiently until he called, “Okay, now you can come up.”

  When I got to our bedroom, I saw that he’d laid my costume out on the bed: an Inverness cape, a deerstalker cap, a meerschaum pipe, and the biggest magnifying glass I’d ever seen.

  I burst out laughing. “Sherlock Holmes?”

  “What better way to remind you that you’re the world’s greatest detective? Or at least Byerly’s. Do you like it?”

  “I love it.” I wrapped my arms around him in a way that Sherlock himself would never have done, and gave him the world’s greatest kiss. “Are you going to be Dr. Watson?”

  He shook his head. “Though I admire the good doctor, his style of dress isn’t nearly flamboyant enough for my taste. Feast your eyes on this!”

  The outfit that Richard pulled out of the closet with a flourish was indeed a feast for the eyes. Purple leggings, gold sandals that would lace up his legs, a tunic with gold and purple diamond shapes and a slew of sequins, a shiny crown with purple fur trim, and if that weren’t enough, a pair of wings lavishly feathered in purple, and of course, more sequins.

  “Behold, Oberon, King of the Fey!” he announced triumphantly.

  “Where on earth did you find that?” I said. “I’m going to need sunglasses just to look at you.”

  “A group in Rocky Shoals put on a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream last week,” he said. “I saw a poster still up, which included a picture of their Oberon. So I asked around until I could arrange to borrow the costume. Having Dorcas make the request for me didn’t hurt.”

  “What about the ears?” I said, but I should have known better.

  He pulled a pair of rubber pointed ears from a bag on the bed, looking more than a little pleased with himself.

  “I don’t think I need to bother getting dressed up at all,” I said in mock exasperation. “Nobody’s even going to see me with you around.”

  “The costume for Titania is available,” Richard said.

  “No, thanks,” I said quickly. “I’ll stick with Sherlock. What about Alice?”

  “She was the tough one,” he said. “For some reason, there aren’t a lot of choices for seven-month-olds.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “But I did find this,” he said with a grin. He reached back into the closet to produce a blue dress with a white pinafore, blue-and-white-striped tights, a
nd a headband with a white bow on top. “Alice in Wonderland.” There was even a plastic Cheshire cat for her to chew on.

  “Perfect,” I said, and smooched him again. I might have done even more to reward his mighty efforts, but Aunt Edna was going to be bringing Alice back in an hour, and I figured it would take every bit of that time for Richard to get himself fixed up. I hurried through my own preparations, both because they were so much simpler and because I couldn’t wait to watch him try to get his ears straight.

  Alice looked a little confused when she saw Richard dressed like a fairy king—especially when Aunt Edna nearly fell over laughing—but eventually accepted Richard as her daddy. She had no problem with me dressed as a man, and I wasn’t sure if I found that comforting or not. We took charge of her while Aunt Edna rushed home to get into her own Halloween getup.

  Alice looked adorable in her Wonderland costume, of course, and after we took a ridiculous number of pictures of her and ourselves, we headed for the carnival.

  Chapter 23

  I’m always a little nervous when approaching someplace or something I loved as a child, not knowing if it will still appeal to me as an adult, but after ten minutes at the Byerly Halloween Carnival, I knew it was exactly as much fun as I remembered. The decorations were just as cheesy, and I could smell cotton candy, and everybody was in costume, and almost everybody was cheerful, even the vampire trying to lure people over to the haunted house. Alice looked as happy as a clam to be surrounded by so much noise and so many people as we pushed her stroller through the throng.

  Byerly High School was built in the shape of a U, with the grassy quadrangle in the middle crisscrossed with sidewalks for students going from one wing to another. Most of the carnival booths were set up in the quad, with more spilling out onto the football field. The cafeteria, library, and auditorium were in the center of the U and, since they were open to the quad, were being used for the snack bar, white elephant sale, and costume contest.

  “Where to first?” Richard asked.

  “I want to take Alice on her first pony ride,” I said.

  “Laura, she can’t even sit up by herself.”

  “They’ll let you walk next to her to hold her up.”

  Richard looked unhappily at his pretty sandals.

  “It’s a great photo op,” I wheedled.

  “Let’s go!”

  Having helped with the signs, we had no problem finding the area where two dozen kids and their parents were already waiting for their chance to ride one of the sturdy little ponies around the cross-country track. “You go ahead and get in line. I’ll get tickets.”

  I was standing in front of the ticket booth, trying to figure out how many we’d need, when a voice said, “Nice costume.”

  “Thanks.” I turned to see Mike Cooper smiling at me, dressed as Luke Skywalker. Since Richard had forbidden me from calling Junior on our day off, I didn’t know if he was still a suspect or not, so I felt a little awkward. “You, too.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad I ran into you. You and your husband must think I’m a major flake for not remembering y’all the other day. You two are the ones who came to talk to me after my father died, aren’t you?”

  “That was us. We didn’t place you right away, either.” That was mostly a lie. I’d known him as soon as I saw him; I just hadn’t recognized his name right away. “It was kind of a surprise, finding you in Byerly.”

  “Just one of those crazy coincidences. I met Mr. Walters at the placement office at State, and we really hit it off, so when he offered me a job, I jumped at it. I’m really enjoying the work, and Byerly is a great place to live. I know this is where Dad…” He paused for a second. “I know this is where Dad got hurt, but I also know it was just some crazy person. Every place has those.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  He looked away for a minute. “Chief Norton said you had a lot to do with finding the person who shot Dad. I wanted to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome” just didn’t seem like an appropriate response, so instead I said, “I was glad to be able to do that much for him. I never met your father, but I understand he was a good man.”

  “Yeah, he was.” He looked around the carnival. “He’d have loved this for sure. Dad was crazy about dressing up.”

  “Is that right?” I said, thinking that Mike had no idea how true that was. Or did he? I couldn’t picture the young man in front of me prowling with murder on his mind and then acting so normal. Still, his father had deceived his own family, as well as the town where he’d grown up. Maybe Mike had learned how from him.

  Mike looked behind me. “Excuse me, but I think that fairy wants to get your attention.”

  I turned around and saw Richard waving wildly. He and Alice were nearly at the head of the line. “Tickets!” I yelped. “Excuse me, but I’ve got to get tickets for Alice to ride a pony.”

  “Hey, I wouldn’t want her to miss that. I used to love pony rides.”

  I hurriedly bought far more tickets than I should have and ran back to get to Richard just in time.

  Alice giggled the whole time she was on the pony, and as I marched around the cakewalk with her, and while all three of us took the hay ride. Then, with the suddenness only an infant can attain, she fell sound asleep, and we loaded her back into the stroller.

  “What next?” I asked Richard.

  “Does this carnival have games?”

  “Of course. Milk bottles, darts, water pistols, ring toss, all the usual suspects.”

  Richard got a gleam in his eye I usually only saw when Shakespeare was being discussed. “Then let us hie ourselves thither.”

  “Which one?” I asked as we approached Game Row.

  “All of them,” he said eagerly. “I want to win something for Alice to take home.”

  With some trepidation, I handed over the rest of our tickets. “You go ahead. I think I’ll go see how Aunt Maggie is doing at the white elephant sale.”

  “Don’t you want to try out some games?”

  “Not right now.” I didn’t want to tell him how bad I was at carnival games. I’d never forget the time when I played the one where all you have to do is pick up a plastic duck and look at the number written on its bottom, and I managed to find the only duck in the pond without a number.

  Aunt Maggie had done her usual outstanding job getting merchandise for the white elephant, and the library was filled with people hoping to replace the unneeded items they’d donated with different unneeded items. My cousin Augustus, who regularly worked the flea market and auctions with Aunt Maggie, was helping her out, so I didn’t feel guilty in pulling her aside for a minute.

  Though Augustus made a very dashing pirate, the only concession Aunt Maggie had made to the holiday was a T-shirt with a pumpkin on it and a witch’s hat. Even then, the hat had a price tag on it.

  “Is everything all right at the house?” I asked her.

  “Just fine, other than Bill not having a nurse with him. Vivian got sick, and we couldn’t get a hold of Anne or Jan.”

  “He’s alone?” I said, alarmed.

  “No, Irene said she didn’t care anything about the carnival so she’d stay with him.”

  “That was nice of her.”

  “Not really. She only did it so she could make me look bad for abandoning my ailing husband. But Bill told me it was all right for me to come.”

  “Good for him.” I shouldn’t have asked the next question, but I couldn’t resist. “Have you and he made up?”

  “None of your business,” she retorted, but she was grinning like Alice’s Cheshire cat when she said it. The grin faded when she looked toward the door. “Lord almighty, can’t that man find a spot and roost?”

  Tavis Montgomery, dressed in his volunteer fireman uniform, had just come in. Spotting Aunt Maggie, he came over and asked, “How is everything going, Mrs. Walters?”

  “Everything’s fine, Tavis, just like it was the last time you asked.”

  “Do you w
ant a cup of cider or a bathroom break?”

  “I’ve been going to the bathroom by myself for a long time, Tavis.”

  “Good, good.” He started to lift the lid of the cash box, but Aunt Maggie slapped his hand away. “Don’t you mess with my money.”

  “Just checking to see if you needed more change,” he said, but he must have been used to Aunt Maggie, because he didn’t sound offended.

  She heaved a mighty sigh and went to help somebody sort through the piles of used clothing.

  “You’ve done a great job with the carnival,” I said to Tavis.

  “Thank you, Laurie Anne. It’s been a lot of work, but when I see happy children like yours, I know it’s worth it.”

  Since Alice was still sound asleep, I’m not sure how he knew she was all that happy, but I was willing to concede the point. “Nice costume,” I said.

  “Yours, too. Very appropriate.” He glanced at his watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure everything is running smoothly.” He slipped out the door, smiling and nodding like a politician trolling for votes.

  Aunt Maggie was still busy with her customer, so I waved at her and Augustus and went to find Richard. He was at the dart booth, and in the short time since I’d left him, he’d collected a bundle of stuffed toys that included a mouse, a cat, two unicorns, and one thing that looked like a carrot. “What are you doing?”

  “I told you,” he said as he took aim, then let the dart fly. It burst a balloon to reveal a gold star. “Winning souvenirs for Alice.” The man tending the booth handed him a stuffed Scooby-Doo. “She’ll love this.”

  “Richard, she’s seven months old. If she can’t chew on it, she’s not interested.” But when he looked disappointed, I quickly added, “So we’ll have to put it all up until she’s older.” How we were going to get it all home, or where we’d store it when we got there, were questions I didn’t want to think about.

  “Good idea,” he said. “Wait until you see what they’re giving away at the ring toss.” He started to gather up his prizes but ran out of hands. “Maybe I should take a load out to the car.”