Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 05 - Tight as a Tick

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “Good morning, Maggie,” China said. Her hair was snow-white, her eyes bright blue, and her smile wide and genuine. Like Aunt Maggie, she was wearing a cash apron, but hers was gingham with ribbons and ruffles.

  “Hey there. China, this is my great-niece, Laurie Anne Fleming.”

  China and I exchanged how-do-you-dos.

  “Looks like you’ve got your booth put back together,” Aunt Maggie said.

  “Fortunately the vandals didn’t do too much harm. They ripped apart some sachets and stomped on my geese, but there’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a needle and thread or some soap and water. Did you lose much?”

  “Just enough to make me mad. A few pieces got broke, and some book covers got torn from being thrown on the floor.”

  “What is the world coming to when young people break into a place for fun?”

  Either China believed Belva’s theory or she was an excellent actress.

  Aunt Maggie said, “China, if you’ve got any spare cash aprons, I could use one.”

  “What color would you like?” she asked, pulling out a box of aprons as ribboned and ruffled as her own.

  “Don’t you have something plainer?” Catching the hurt look on China’s face, Aunt Maggie added, “These are pretty, but you know how dirty money is. They’d be filthy in no time.”

  “That’s all right,” China said. “You can throw these right into the washing machine. I checked the material and trim myself, and they won’t fade or shrink.”

  Defeated, Aunt Maggie picked out a red checked one that didn’t have quite so much ribbon as the others. She paid for it and said, “Here you go, Laurie Anne.”

  “Thanks,” I said, not at all enthusiastic about wearing it.

  “China, Laurie Anne is thinking about setting up a little business on the side, so she’s checking out how we do things around here.” To me, she added, “You could do all right with this stuff. China sews her own merchandise, and you could do that in your spare time.”

  Actually, I could barely sew on a button, but I nodded anyway. What China said next confirmed that I wouldn’t be going into the country craft business any time soon.

  “I even grow the herbs for the sachets. I could give you some seed catalogs, if you’d like.”

  There was no way I was going to grow herbs. Though the Burnette family had farmed for years and years, the bloodline had thinned out by the time it got to me, leaving both of my thumbs decidedly brown. I said, “My husband and I are going to be doing this together, so we’ll have to discuss it before we decide anything.”

  “It’s so much nicer when you can work with somebody,” she said, looking sad for a minute. “We do the best we can alone, don’t we, Maggie?”

  Aunt Maggie nodded politely, but I knew it must have hurt her to do it. She’s always said that the best company on earth is herself.

  “Does your husband not work with you, Miz Upton?” I said, having noticed her wedding band.

  “No, I’m a widow.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I am, too,” she said, but she was smiling when she said it. “Stan has been gone a long time now, so I guess I’m as used to it as I’m going to get.”

  Aunt Maggie said, “China, Laurie Anne is a little nervous about what happened to Carney, especially after the break-in, but I told her nothing like that has ever happened before.”

  “Never,” China said with a little shiver. “Until last week, the worst we’ve had was a little shoplifting.”

  “It’s funny not to see Carney over there, isn’t it?”

  China looked in the direction of his booth, and shivered again. “Poor man.”

  “He sure was sweet on you,” Aunt Maggie said.

  This time China didn’t so much shiver as shudder. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I’m afraid I didn’t return his feelings, and he didn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

  “He was pretty pushy,” Aunt Maggie agreed. “Always coming over here to talk to you. He never did anything else, did he?” She looked hopeful.

  China shook her head. “No, he just talked, but that was bad enough. Stan Junior would never have stood for it if he’d been here.”

  “Does your son sell out here, too?” While I couldn’t picture China killing Carney, I could see a strapping youth wanting to protect his mother.

  “No, Stan Junior passed away a couple of years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “Don’t be sorry. Stan Junior was a fine son, and I was blessed to have him as long as I did. I’m just glad I was there to care for him when he needed me. If you ever have children, you’ll know what I mean.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” That led to her asking if I wanted children, a question I don’t usually like answering, but since I’d stirred up so many sad memories, talking about future babies seemed like the least I could do.

  China sure didn’t sound like somebody who’d stab a man to death. Bloodstains don’t go with gingham. But I reminded myself that I shouldn’t jump to conclusions right away—there’d be plenty of time to jump to conclusions later on.

  Aunt Maggie must not have considered China a likely suspect either, because she said, “We better be moving on. I want to show Laurie Anne around before Bender opens up.”

  As we walked away, I said, “What happened to China’s son?”

  “She’s never said.”

  “Did Carney ever try to see her away from the flea market?”

  “How would I know?”

  I was starting to get exasperated. Last night she hadn’t known much about the victim, and now she didn’t know anything about the suspects. “Aunt Maggie, I don’t know these people. If you can’t tell me about them, how are Richard and I supposed to solve this?”

  “I’m sorry, Laurie Anne,” she said, and she did sound sincere. “The only place I see most of them is out here and at the auctions. I don’t always know if people are married, or where they live, or if they have kids. I’ll tell you about what goes on out here, but that’s the best I can do. Is that going to be enough?”

  I sighed. “There’s no way of knowing until I try.” Besides, I had other resources. Aunt Nora knows more about people in Byerly than Bill Gates knows about making money, and Aunt Daphine runs the town’s only beauty parlor, where they go through more gossip than hair spray.

  “Talking to China didn’t do us much good, did it?”

  “What did you expect?” I asked. “Even if she did kill Carney, she’s not going to just tell us.”

  “Then how do you figure out who killed somebody? The other times, it looked to me like you just went around and talked to people.”

  “That’s a lot of it,” I admitted. “If I ask enough people about the same thing, usually I’ll catch somebody in a lie. If somebody’s lying, there’s usually a reason. So I talk to other people and try to figure out why that person lied and what the truth is.” Aunt Maggie looked dubious, and I didn’t blame her. It wasn’t exactly scientific or systematic. So I echoed what she’d said to me earlier. “After a while, you get a feel for it.”

  Chapter 12

  The booth next to China’s was actually a small trailer, the kind where they sell popcorn and hot dogs at carnivals and fairs. I could smell something heavenly cooking, and it wasn’t popcorn or hot dogs. The sign over the service window said “The Donut Man,” and hand-printed signs taped to the side listed prices for donuts and fried pork skins. I was looking forward to making friends with this dealer.

  There was nobody visible through the window, but we could hear clattering and an electric mixer from inside.

  “Obed!” Aunt Maggie called out.

  A second later a man’s head appeared from under the counter, and I do mean from under, as if he’d been hiding down there. He was an older man, with deep-set eyes and thinning gray hair.

  “Hey there, Maggie,” he said.

  “Hey, Obed. I know you heard about the break-in. Did they get you, too?”

 
; “They dumped some of my donut mix onto the floor and threw some of my pots and pans around, but I’ve got it all squared away now. I’ve got my first batch of donuts about ready to come out of the fry vat, if you’re interested.”

  “No, thanks, I didn’t come for donuts. I wanted to introduce you to my great-niece, Laurie Anne. She and her husband Richard are helping me out this weekend. Laurie Anne Fleming, this is Obed Hanford.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said, and stretched his arm over the counter to shake my hand. It was a stretch, too, because his arm wasn’t as long as I expected it to be.

  “Laurie Anne and Richard live in Massachusetts, and they’re looking into starting something on the side. Have you got any advice about the donut business?”

  “There’s no better way to make a living. I was on the road as a performer for years, but when the circus stopped running sideshows, I switched over to concessions, and I never looked back.”

  Aunt Maggie must have been able to tell that I was confused. “Obed’s a little person, Laurie Anne.”

  Obed waved it away. “Little person, nothing. I’m a dwarf, but people decided that it’s not politically correct to be a dwarf. I used to tumble, but selling donuts is better—I get to be my own boss. I retired a few years back, and just set up here on the weekends to keep my hand in.”

  “Are you from around here, Mr. Hanford?” I asked.

  “Mama and Daddy traveled with Ringling Brothers, and I was born on the road, so I’m not from anywhere. I ended up here because I thought North Carolina would be a good place to settle down. I got a map of the state, closed my eyes, and pointed. Rocky Shoals is where my finger landed.”

  “You’ll have to come hear some of Obed’s stories,” Aunt Maggie said.

  “Some of them are even true,” he added with a chuckle. “When you travel enough, you see pretty much everything.”

  “Is that right? Then tell me, did you ever see anything like what happened to Carney last week?” Aunt Maggie said, in a smooth change of subject.

  He shook his head. “I’ve seen killings, but they were always crimes of passion. A roustabout drinks too much and starts a fight that gets out of hand, or a woman finds out that her husband has been teaching some sweet young thing more than bareback riding. I never knew anybody to try to hide a body like that.”

  Just then, a bell went off inside the trailer. “Excuse me, but I’ve got to get my next batch in the vat. Stop back by, Laurie Anne, and try out my donuts.” He disappeared back inside the trailer, and we walked on.

  “You could have warned me about him so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself,” I said.

  “You mean about his height? Tell you the truth, I’ve known Obed so long that I don’t even think about it anymore.”

  “How tall is he, anyway?”

  “He comes to about here,” she said, holding her hand to the middle of her chest.

  “Then he’s out of the running for killing Carney.”

  “Just because he’s little doesn’t mean he can’t use a knife. He’s as strong as an ox—I’ve seen him lifting bags of flour and sugar that must weigh as much as he does.”

  “I’m not talking about strength,” I said. “I’m talking about height. Dr. Connelly would have known from the angle of the wounds if the knife had come from below.”

  “That’s right,” Aunt Maggie said, sounding impressed.

  But I had to go and ruin it. “Of course, he said he was a tumbler, so he might have been able to rig something. Heck, for all we know, Carney was pushed down and the killer stabbed him while he was on the ground.” Then I thought of something else. “Of course, Obed couldn’t have driven Carney’s van away.”

  “Yes, he could have,” Aunt Maggie said. “He puts blocks on his car’s pedals, and he’s got a pillow to sit on. It wouldn’t have been any trouble to move them into Carney’s van.”

  “Then he’s still a possibility,” I said. “Assuming he had a motive for wanting Carney dead, that is.”

  “He had a motive, all right. First off, they never got along. The first time they met, Carney asked Obed if he’d always been a short-order cook. He made short jokes where Obed could hear, too.”

  “That’s mean,” I said.

  “Obed just ignored him, because he’s used to it. But a while back Carney bought a bag of pork skins from Obed and broke a filling eating one. He wanted Obed to pay his dentist’s bill, but it turned out that Carney had bought them the week before and let them get stale. Obed says that if Carney didn’t have any more sense than to eat a week-old pork skin, he deserved to lose a filling.”

  “I take it that Carney didn’t agree.”

  “You got that right. Not long after that, Obed’s business started to fall off. He didn’t think anything of it at first, but after a while, he did start to wonder. One day, I overheard somebody telling a new dealer that he ought not buy any donuts because Obed’s trailer was infested with roaches. He said that somebody had bit into a donut and a roach crawled out. That’s not even possible, because Obed fries those donuts too long for a roach to survive. Besides which, I’ve been in that trailer. Obed keeps it as clean as Nora’s kitchen.”

  “Do you think Carney was the one to make up the story?”

  “I know he was. The next day, I saw him talking to a customer who was eating a bag of donuts. I didn’t hear what he said, but I saw that man take a half-eaten donut out of his mouth and throw it and the rest of the bag into the trash.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “That’s the kind of man Carney was,” she said. “I didn’t like to cause trouble, but Obed needed to know what was going on, so I told him. Obed got so mad I thought he was going to bust a blood vessel. He said circus folks knew how to take care of people like Carney.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got him calmed down, and we went to the other dealers to start spreading the real story. A bunch of us made a point of buying donuts or pork skins every day, and waving them under our customers’ noses. It wasn’t too long before Obed was selling more than ever, but after that, I don’t think Obed would have sold Carney a cup of pee if he was on fire.”

  I laughed, but I still wondered what it was about such an unlikable man as Carney that made Aunt Maggie so determined for me and Richard to solve his murder.

  Chapter 13

  “Tattoo Bob isn’t here,” Aunt Maggie said, looking over at his booth. “Let’s go talk to some of the outside dealers.”

  “What about these folks?” I said, nodding at other dealers who were cleaning up from the break-in. “Aren’t they suspects?”

  “Not the Samples—they weren’t here last week. The first week of the month, they set up at the Metrolina Flea Market in Charlotte.”

  She was talking about a couple whose double-sized booth was filled with pieces of furniture that were either antiques or amazing reproductions. I was afraid to look at anything more closely for fear that I’d fall in love with it.

  Aunt Maggie glanced at the other booths, filled with everything from beads for do-it-yourself necklaces, to toys from when I was a little girl, to plastic-wrapped comic books. “I don’t know these folks as well, and as far as I know, none of them had anything against Carney.”

  Since so many people had known motives for wanting Carney dead, I was perfectly willing to start with them. If none of them panned out, I could always check out the other dealers later.

  The building’s main door was a metal roll-up door, like in a garage. It was still closed, but there was a regular door next to it, and that’s where Aunt Maggie was leading me.

  I noticed that the booth right in front was empty, and said, “I thought inside booths were at a premium.”

  “That’s Ronald’s spot, but he doesn’t leave his things here during the week. Evan put him up here because he really puts on a show—draws the people right in. I bet he’s working outside until we open up.”

  Sure enough, a crowd was gathered around a table set up in front of the bui
lding.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “Making jewelry. Go take a look.”

  I’m short enough that I had to squeeze my way right up to the table to be able to see. A middle-aged black man was twisting a long piece of copper wire in his hand. Every few minutes, he’d pick up a handful of tools, toss them around, and pick up the one that landed on top. Then he’d use the pair of pliers or vise to work on the piece, which was quickly turning into a bracelet.

  All the while, he kept talking to a short woman with brown hair shot with gray. “This will help you with that arthritis. There’s nothing like a copper bracelet for arthritis.”

  As if all that activity and conversation weren’t enough, he had a tape player on and was moving his feet to the music, too. I don’t think I could have counted to ten with all those people watching, let alone made jewelry while holding a conversation and dancing, but Ronald seemed perfectly at ease.

  By then, Aunt Maggie had gotten up beside me. “Hey, Ronald,” she said.

  “Hey there, Miz Burnette. You didn’t lose too much in the break-in, did you?”

  “Nothing I can’t live without. Bet you’re glad you keep your things with you.”

  “You know I am.” He looked at me. “This young lady must be related to you.”

  I nodded, a little surprised. I’m good at spotting family resemblances, but I’d never seen much similarity between Aunt Maggie and me.

  “Laurie Anne is my great-niece,” Aunt Maggie said.

  Ronald wove in the last piece of copper and used a cloth to polish the bracelet. Then he displayed it with a flourish. “How do you like that?” he asked his customer.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said with a smile.

  Ronald held it up to look at it for a few seconds longer, then brought it to his lips and kissed it. “That’s because there’s a piece of me in there, and I want to thank God for letting me share it,” he explained. Then he took the woman’s hand and slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. It fit perfectly.