by Molly Macrae
She stopped a few steps away and said over her shoulder, “Not happy, not happy at all,” then stalked off.
“Problem?” Sally Ann asked. “Because it’s a busy day, you know? I have to get back and Mel sure won’t be happy if these come back with me. Sixty-eight even.”
“Reva Louise didn’t pay?”
“Now, that really is a ‘ha-ha,’” Sally Ann said.
Ardis was talking to some of the visitors but looking toward us. I smiled and waved so she’d see that the situation was all good and wonderful. If Reva Louise had been there, I might have “good-and-wonderfulled” her upside her head.
“Will you take a check?” I asked Sally Ann.
“Cash is good,” she said, glancing at the cash drawer on the table.
“I’d rather not deplete it to that extent.”
“Check is good, too.”
“Then if you don’t mind a detour to the Cat, I’ll write you one.”
“Then quick would be good, too,” she said, starting to unpack the totes.
All the boxes were marked HAM and all the bottles were, indeed, water. I didn’t bother asking what happened to the beef and cheese or roasted veg options. Grabbing a couple of the boxes and bottles for Ernestine and John, I mouthed, “Be right back” to Ardis, and led Sally Ann around the back wall of the tent, across the street, and around the corner to the Weaver’s Cat. Mel’s was down on the next corner, so at least the detour wasn’t taking Sally Ann in the wrong direction.
Up the steps and through the door and even though she was in a rush, Sally Ann stopped with a soft “Dang.”
“Is that for all the colors?” I never got tired of people’s reactions when they were hit by the rainbow blast of our yarns and embroidery threads.
“Uh-uh,” Sally Ann said, drawing her shoulders up. “It’s for all the warm fuzzy you’ve got going on here. It reminds me of the dusty, old lady crochet I used to see back home. Gives me the willies. You got that check? I’ve been gone way too long, and this place has set me to itching. Sorry. Nothing against you or the shop.”
I added a generous tip to the check to make up for the delay and the itch.
“Poor thing,” Ernestine said, tut-tutting as she opened her lunch. “Mel must be right about the fiber gene coming from her father. Oh, and what a nice surprise—not roast beef at all. I must have misheard Reva Louise when she asked what we’d like.”
“Yeah, sorry about the mix-up. I hope ham is okay?”
“Of course it is,” John said. “Kath, about that check you just gave Sally Ann. I’m being nosy, I know, but it wasn’t for the sandwiches, was it?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about it. It’s just part of the mix-up. You guys enjoy your lunch. Is everything going all right in here? Do you need anything?”
“John, didn’t we already pay Reva Louise?” Ernestine asked.
“Out of the till,” John said.
“I thought so,” Ernestine said. “She told us you’d authorized the payment, so you might want to check with Mel about that. I’m sure she’ll straighten it out. Otherwise, business is steady but nothing we can’t handle.”
“It looks like most of the fun is going on out there,” John said, “so you’d better run along and get back to it. We’ll be fine.”
“Fine and happy to help,” Ernestine said.
• • •
“Jackie’s vegetarian,” Ardis announced when I got back to the tent. “I apologized for the ham sandwich and gave her my slaw. And yours.”
“Slaw?”
“Not a spinach leaf in sight.”
I waited until she’d finished her sandwich and half of Jackie’s, then handed her my cookie and told her about the money from the till. I regretted giving up one of Mel’s double chocolate chunk masterpieces, but I knew it was for a good cause. Ardis said nothing. She ate the cookie and calmly went back to selling spindle kits and yarn without acknowledging she’d heard a single word about the double payment for the “free” lunch.
As time for “The Blue Plum Piglet War” approached, the crowds around the tents dispersed. A souvenir festival tabloid, put out by our weekly newspaper, featured a map with piglet icons showing the main areas of action and we assumed spectators were moving to those places. As J. Scott Prescott had said, they were mostly around the courthouse, but there were also piglets on Main Street, one near the gazebo in the park, and one very near the Weaver’s Cat on Depot—the street between the parking lot and the shop. I hadn’t noticed that and wondered if I should be suspicious. That was uncharitable, I decided, and instead thought wistfully of Mel’s double chocolate chunk cookies and how virtuous and charitable I’d been in contributing mine to Ardis’ mental health. She was on the same wavelength.
“Bless you, hon. I owe you a cookie and I’ll make it two and call it a wise investment. The whole thing was my fault for trusting her and I promise that I will wring her neck the next time I see her and when I buy the cookies I will tell Mel she’s looking for trouble if she doesn’t rid herself of that, that b . . .”
“Boll weevil?”
“Close enough.”
“Take deep breaths, Ardis, and let the aggravation of that lunch and Reva Louise slide on past. You know that’s what Granny would say.”
“Lord, I miss that woman. If she were here today we wouldn’t have a weevil problem. Shall I tell you something I miss about Ivy? What made her the High Empress of the Whole Enchilada for All Time and not just for Blue Plum Preserves? She knew how to get rid of people. Permanently.”
“Um. Do I want to hear this? What are you talking about?”
“Not that kind of permanent, hon. She would simply have found a way to talk her out of ever stepping foot in the shop again. I didn’t see it happen more than two or three times, because we don’t generally have that kind of trouble. And I don’t know what she said, except that she was gentle and calm. And she gave each of the wretches a parting gift of wool. That seemed to cement the deal—without an angry word spoken. Hon, you’ve gone pale. I didn’t mean to upset you talking about Ivy.” She patted my back and fanned my face with a Blue Plum Preserves tabloid.
“Woo—woo—” I cleared my throat. “Sorry. Wool she dyed?”
“I suppose it was. Yes, now I think about it, of course it was. That was so like her: offering a generous, personal gift to slide on past a difficult situation. I tell you, it was a secret talent she had and I wish I knew what it was.”
I was pretty sure I did know and wished I didn’t. But that uncomfortable inkling didn’t get a chance to slink beyond the edge of my mind—the next second it fled in holy terror as gunfire erupted in downtown Blue Plum.
“Pig skit,” Ardis said without blinking an eye.
Of course. It was straight-up two o’clock and time for the war.
Chapter 9
And then the whooping and hollering started.
“That must be the famous Blue Plum Piglet War yell you told me about,” Ardis said, continuing to be calm and unaffected by the increasing level of noise over by the courthouse. She saw me jump with each new volley of gunfire and said, “I’m used to it, hon. Daddy loves his Westerns, but he watches with the sound cranked up.”
I wondered if I should introduce Geneva to Ardis’ daddy. They were two peas in a pod with their taste in television shows. Thinking of Geneva made me wonder how she was faring with the ruckus. Was she frightened? Excited? Oblivious? I stepped around the back of the tent to look for her in any of the windows on that side of the building and stopped, surprised by the transformation of our humble block of Depot Street.
People ranged up and down the street, mostly in whatever shade they could find. They lined the front porch of Jenkins’ Flowers and an insurance office to the left of the Cat, with children sitting on the porch railing. There were people in lawn chairs on both sides of the street and people crowding the end of the Cat’s porch, with more children balancing on our railing.
“Piglet War!” a child next to me shouted
, and children up and down the street took up the chant, “Pig-let! Pig-let! Pig-let!”
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and called the shop. Ernestine answered.
“It sounds very exciting out there,” she said.
“How are you and John doing? There are an awful lot of people on this end of the porch.”
“Isn’t it amazing they all fit? There’s almost no one inside. I’ll send John out to watch and tell me what’s happening. But you’ll have to let me go now, dear. I think someone came in the back door.”
• • •
I slid my phone back into my pocket and looked up at the Cat’s windows. I wasn’t sure what I expected to see. A flicker? The silhouette of a ginger cat with his nose pressed to a pane hoping for a glimpse of a pig? There was nothing, not even in the deplorably cobwebby window at the gable end of the attic. But when I looked up and down the street, again, I did see something—Reva Louise. She turned the corner from Main Street, scanning the crowd, her phone pressed to her ear.
With the whoops and hollers of battle in my ears, I was surprised I didn’t suddenly feel a surge of bloodlust and launch myself at her. But with all the happy families around, it wasn’t really the time or place. And I wasn’t much for public confrontations. Often, anyway. But Ardis might be. I ducked back into the tent.
“It’s getting lively out there,” Ardis said. “Anything worth seeing?”
“No!” I couldn’t let her go out there and see Reva Louise. She might kill her and call it an act of Piglet War.
“Hon, you need to chill,” Ardis said.
“I know. Sorry. The kids are excited. No pigs yet. Everything’s fine. Ernestine and John are fine. Aw, and look at that.” I grabbed her arm and turned her toward the front of the tent. “Jackie’s got that little girl spinning on the wheel. She looks like a natural. Isn’t that adorable? And there’s Aaron, the Smokin’ Smoky Dr. Carlin himself. First time I’ve seen him all day.”
Ardis knew misdirection when it grabbed her sleeve and tried to hold her in place. I let go her sleeve, tried to brush away the wrinkles my fist had crushed into it, and smiled my most disarming smile.
“The action’s over there on the other side of the courthouse,” I said, flicking a hand in that direction.
“I’d say the action’s getting closer by the minute,” Ardis said, crossing her arms. She ignored Aaron Carlin and the adorable, precocious child using Jackie’s spinning wheel. Instead she looked at me, one eye narrowed.
I countered with a pooh-poohing face. “Probably won’t amount to much—Yeeow!”
Gunshots cracked through whatever vapid remark I’d been about to make—but from where? Right behind us? I’d nearly leapt into Ardis’ arms. She wouldn’t have caught me, though, because she’d jumped, too. Those shots were followed by others, not nearly so close, and a series of Blue Plum Piglet War yells coming around the corner from Main Street into Depot.
“Did they even think about heart conditions?” Ardis asked, obviously annoyed at her own reaction. “Or hearing loss? Why are they making an action movie out of our simple pig skit, anyway?”
“Because watching pigs wander back and forth across a disputed boundary line wouldn’t be very exciting?”
“And what in heaven’s name is that?”
“That” was a piglet. The snout of one, anyway, trying to push its way under the back of the tent.
“Behold yon trespassing piglet,” an amplified voice said to laughter from the audience.
“From action movie to bad Shakespeare,” Ardis said with a disgusted tsk.
The trespassing piglet obviously wasn’t impressed by either genre and didn’t want to continue in its starring role. It squealed and tried harder to get into the tent.
“The poor baby is terrified,” Ardis said. “I have half a mind to call the SPCA. I wonder if we should help it escape and hide it.” She bent down. To get a closer look? Grab its trotters and pull? The little pink thing blinked at her. It had beautiful pale eyelashes. “Help me here, Kath. You’ll have to hold it firmly and soothe it once you get hold of it.”
“Me?”
“Your bacon or your life, sir!” the actor’s amplified voice rang out again.
Before I could do anything, the piglet was retracted with a squeal. More shots were fired and someone farther down the street yelled, “I am hit! I die! And now my bacon is cooked.”
“And yet he runs!” the first voice cried. “After him!”
More laughter and more shots, but farther down the street, and the action moved on to the next staging area. From the sound of it, most of the audience followed.
“Well.” Ardis straightened. “If we’d taken the pig, it would have been a more authentic reenactment of the original wandering livestock feud than what’s going on out there, but I expect it’s just as well we didn’t. I can only imagine what Cole Dunbar would say if he had to arrest you for stealing and harboring a pig.”
“Me?”
Then two more shots cracked—as close as the first ones that had made us jump—making us jump again. Even the tent seemed to shudder.
“Now what?” Ardis said. “That’s very poor staging to move the audience in one direction and then have the action spring up again behind them. I don’t know about your Mr. Prescott, Kath. Very amateurish. And what on earth has happened to the back of the tent?”
Toward the left, down toward the bottom, it had a bulge. Maybe the tent actually had shuddered because something had fallen against it. Then we heard voices on the other side of the canvas.
“All that fake blood’s kind of a waste,” the first voice said. “I mean, some is good and I get that she’s supposed to be dead, but after a point it’s just eew, you know? She gets the prize for realism, though.”
“Not with those shoes,” a second voice said. “They take me right out of the moment.”
“Yeah, well, you could see some of the others breathing plain as day. At least this one knows how to hold a pose.”
“In this heat, too. Hey, you know what? I feel like ice cream.”
The voices moved off and Ardis and I looked at each other. Then we were in one of those dreams, moving against a current of water, taking forever to get around the back of the tent, knowing we were going to finally get there and that finding something terrible was inevitable.
It was the worst kind of terrible. It was Reva Louise.
Chapter 10
As soon as emergency personnel and police arrived, our section of Depot Street was effectively shut down. That included the four tents in the parking lot and at the florist’s. Sheriff’s deputies stood at each end of the block directing tourists and gapers in other directions.
The skit was over by then and more deputies were sent to track down the actors and determine who’d fired the fatal shot. Blue Plum Preserves continued all around our small, stalled part of it. We heard strains of a jaunty old-time fiddle tune coming from the stage on the courthouse steps to prove it, but it was going to be a while before our spinners had an audience again. Ardis and I apologized to them. The two younger women in long skirts had followed us when we ran around the end of the tent and had seen Reva Louise. They were shaken and packed up to go home. Jackie picked up her PVC wheel and basket of wool and went to find shade where she could spin and hear the music better.
“Spinning is meditation,” she said. “It’s what I need right now to set my rhythm right again. I’ll check back later to see if you’re able to reopen. That poor woman. Bless her heart.”
The teenaged woodworkers had stood at the edge of the parking lot and watched until the Mennonite woman came and led them to the chairs in our tent. She and her husband hadn’t left their booth earlier, but he came over now and they asked us what happened. Ardis told them the little we knew—that Reva Louise had been standing behind the tent; she’d apparently been hit by live fire; it might be a while, but the deputies told us the street would reopen. The Tent of Wonders was quiet; we saw no sign of Aaron Carlin.
The teenagers called their parents, taking turns assuring first their mother, then their father that they were all right. The parents were operating a funnel cake booth on the other side of the courthouse, and it was decided the kids would stay with the tools in the red tent, either until the street reopened or until someone could come help them pack up. They looked uneasily toward the back of our tent, then returned to their own and went back to work. I hoped the rhythms of the drawknife and lathe were what they needed, too.
The Mennonites also stayed. They’d invested time, money, and travel to be there.
I called Ernestine and John. If I’d realized they didn’t know what had happened, I would have gone across the street to tell them in person. But the sheriff’s deputies and ambulance had arrived with a minimum of whooping sirens, avoiding the pedestrians on Main Street by coming up Depot from the other end.
“We knew something was going on,” Ernestine said, “but we thought it might be a fall or . . . oh my goodness.”
“Ernestine?”
She’d handed the phone to John. “She’s taking a moment, but she’ll be fine,” he said, easing my panic. “What can we do?”
“Are you all right there in the shop? It seems almost indecent to hope they’ll reopen the street soon.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “And we’ll both be fine. Business is quiet, but we’ll find things to do. Now, would you like to hear an old man’s cynicism? It was a terrible accident, an avoidable tragedy, but the street won’t stay blocked for long because neither the mayor and his board of aldermen nor the Chamber of Commerce would hear of it. Nor the Blue Plum Preserves steering committee. Don’t worry about us. We’ll see you later.”
I knew John was right and I was thankful he and Ernestine were still happy to keep shop for us. Ardis and I had decided that at least one of us should stay with the tent. Even if spectators were being kept away, the authorities hadn’t drawn an impermeable cordon around the area and we didn’t want to leave our merchandise unattended. One of us could have gone to relieve Ernestine and John, but we didn’t really want to leave each other unattended, either.