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

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “They tried that,” Aunt Maggie said. “It got things so snarled up we like to never have figured out who bought what. This is much easier, believe me.”

  Despite being a computer nut, I don’t think you need a computer for everything, so I didn’t argue with her. I did spend the next few minutes figuring out how I’d set up a system for them. Even though computers have their failings, I find them easier to understand than a lot of people.

  Speaking of people I was trying to understand, as the barn filled up, I recognized a few people from the flea market. Tammy and J.B. were there, and I saw China Upton and Mr. and Mrs. Samples, the furniture dealers.

  “Aunt Maggie, are the other dealers here to sell or buy?” I asked.

  “Both, same as me.”

  “So y’all are going to bid for the same stuff, and then go out to the same flea market to sell it? I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t you remember what I said about how important it is to know your stuff? Well, we all know different things. China isn’t going to be bidding on books or Depression glass—she’s going to want fabric and maybe teddy bears she can fix up. The Samples are going to be buying furniture, stuff I couldn’t sell if my life depended on it.”

  Just then Vasti arrived with a tired-looking Arthur in tow. He sat down with us while she marched into the kitchen. I’d thought the food line had been moving pretty quickly, especially for a charity event, but Vasti soon had it moving as fast as a fast-food restaurant in a TV commercial. Vasti is nothing if not efficient. I looked at Arthur sympathetically. Efficiency isn’t always a good thing.

  Once she had the kitchen up to speed, Vasti headed for the back room, where the man Aunt Maggie said was auctioneer Red Clark was smoking a cigarette and joking with people. I don’t know what Vasti said to him, but he and the other auction workers were in place and ready to start within five minutes.

  “Vasti ought to come every month,” Aunt Maggie said loud enough for Red to hear. “Red hasn’t started on time all year.”

  Red just grinned at her, and said, “If everybody will take their seats, we’ll get this show on the road.” He introduced himself as Colonel Red Clark, briefly explained the procedure, and announced that we were there to raise money for Habitat for Humanity.

  “He doesn’t look like a soldier to me,” Aunt Daphine said. “What branch of the service was he in, Aunt Maggie?”

  “I don’t know that he was in the service,” she said.

  “He called himself Colonel Clark.”

  “All auctioneers call themselves Colonel. Even the women.”

  Whether he was a real colonel or not, Red deployed his staff like a veteran. They ran through an amazing amount of merchandise in an awfully short time, with Red telling folks, “Pay attention, people. You don’t see merchandise like this every day,” and “Looky here—this would be cheap at twice the price.” When an item wasn’t quite so impressive, he just said, “Remember, this is for charity,” or “This is a nice one. Whatever it is.” The more he talked, the more people laughed, and the more they laughed, the more they bought. As I told Richard, Red was the fastest-talking Southerner I’d ever seen.

  Aunt Nora came out to sit with us about halfway through the second dealer’s turn. “We ran out of chicken,” she said.

  “Shhh,” Aunt Maggie said. “I want to bid on this next lot.”

  She got it, too, but I didn’t know why she wanted a box of beat-up Christmas ornaments. “I thought you didn’t put up a tree anymore,” I said, because I couldn’t imagine that there was anything in the box worth selling.

  She grinned, clearly pleased with herself. “Did you see those three boxes of glass balls they held up?”

  I nodded.

  “You couldn’t see it from here, but the boxes were marked ‘Made in Occupied Japan.’ ”

  Even I knew that Occupied Japan collectibles were valuable. “Good catch!”

  She just grinned, and bid on another lot.

  When her turn to sell came, Aunt Maggie went up front to help out, telling Red what each piece was and cheerfully arguing with him over where to start the bidding. Everything she’d brought sold except for one of the quilts. I don’t know how much money she’d expected to make, but she was smiling when Red moved on to the next dealer.

  About then, my eyes started burning from the smoke. North Carolina isn’t known for sympathy toward non-smokers. At least Byerly isn’t. Too many families had grown tobacco before they went to work in the mill. There were an awful lot of people smoking, and even though it was a big room, a gray cloud had formed over our heads.

  “I think I could use some fresh air,” I said.

  Aunt Nora said, “I think I could, too. Besides, if I stay here much longer, Vasti is going to hunt me down to get me to help clean up the kitchen.”

  “Richard?”

  “You go on,” he said. “Aunt Maggie said the next guy has books to sell.”

  I handed him our number, just in case. We didn’t really need any more books, but if he bought some, that would even us up a little.

  Chapter 22

  With the auction going strong, everybody had gone inside except two women talking quietly at the picnic table farthest from the barn. We’d gotten paper cups of iced tea on our way out, so we picked a table and got comfortable.

  It was a beautiful night, just enough cooler than it had been during the day to cover the benches and tables with dew. There were crickets chirping and lightning bugs blinking past us. Right then, I didn’t mind missing Cape Cod at all. But unlike my planned trip to Cape Cod, in Byerly I had a job to do.

  “All right, Aunt Nora,” I said. “Now that I’ve got you alone, what can you tell me about the folks at the flea market?”

  “Not much.”

  “You’re kidding. You know everybody in Byerly.”

  “The folks at the flea market aren’t from Byerly. They’re from Rocky Shoals and Hickory and Granite Falls and Con-over and who knows where.”

  “I never thought of that,” I said. How in the Sam Hill was I going to find Carney’s killer without Aunt Nora’s help?

  “Can’t you ask Aunt Maggie about them?” she asked.

  “You know Aunt Maggie. She’s not interested in—In people the way you are.” I’d almost said gossip, but I was afraid that would sound rude. “She doesn’t know much about their personal lives. I was hoping you’d be able to fill in the gaps.”

  “I’m sorry, Laurie Anne, you know I’d do anything I could to help.”

  “I know you would.” It wasn’t her fault that I’d come to rely on her for information. “Are you sure you don’t know any of them? Wasn’t Carney Alexander from Byerly?”

  “Nope, his people are from Wilmington, and he lived in Rocky Shoals. All I know about him is what I read in the Byerly Gazette. He was single and had an apartment over his sister’s garage. The sister was out of town when he was killed, so she’s not a suspect.”

  “Is she married? Are there other brothers or sisters?”

  I asked, hoping for a family squabble.

  “Just the two of them, according to the paper. She’s been divorced for years, and their parents are long gone.”

  At least that eliminated some possibilities. “You know the Cawthorne brothers, don’t you? You were talking about them the other night.”

  “I used to know them because they grew up in Byerly, but Evan lives in Rocky Shoals now.”

  “Bender may still live here, depending on where the town line is.”

  “What do you want to know about them?”

  “Anything you know. Aunt Maggie hasn’t mentioned either of them having a reason for wanting Carney dead, but maybe you know something she doesn’t.”

  She took a sip of her iced tea. “I always felt sorry for the Cawthornes, particularly Evan. You see, they never had any money. We Burnettes never had any money either, but we always had a place to sleep, and clothes to wear, and enough food to eat. There were many times that the Cawthornes didn’t. Evan
and Bender’s mama died when Bender was six or seven and Evan was two, and their daddy Russ never was the same afterward. He kept saying that if he’d had enough money to live in town instead of out in the woods in an old shack that wasn’t fit to cure tobacco in, she wouldn’t have died. Russ always had been a hard-drinking man, but after that, he crawled into a bottle to hide and never came out. There was nobody to take care of those two boys. The church took them food and clothes every few months, but otherwise they were on their own.”

  She looked embarrassed. “Once when I’d been fussing because I couldn’t have a new dress, Paw sent me out there with the ladies from the church so I could see what it really meant to be poor. Those two boys shared a cot with sheets so dirty they looked gray, with only one blanket even though there wasn’t a bit of heat in the house.” She shook her head. “These days they take children away to take care of them, but they didn’t step in back then like they should have.”

  She took another sip of tea. “Anyway, I’ll give Russ credit for one thing—those boys were always in school. Of course, with them dressed in rags or hand-me-downs, they got teased all the time. It never seemed to bother Bender, like it did Evan. Evan tried to fight anybody who said anything, but the principal threatened to kick him out of school if he didn’t stop. So all he could do was try and keep whatever clothes he had clean and neat.”

  “He still dresses neatly,” I said, remembering those knife-blade creases in his khakis and how even his golf shirt had looked starched.

  “Despite all those boys had going against them, they both made it through school, and went to work at the mill.”

  No surprise there. Most of the young men and women in Byerly start out working at Walters Mill, and a lot of them stay there, including many of the Burnettes.

  Aunt Nora went on. “By then Bender had already started drinking, just like his daddy.”

  “Is Bender his real name?”

  “You know, I’m not sure. It seems like I remember Paw and Maw talking about Russ calling him that because he was out on a bender when he was born, but I don’t know if that’s what they put on his birth certificate or if it’s just a nickname. I never heard him called anything else, not even in school.”

  No wonder Bender drank. With a name like that, it must have seemed inevitable.

  Aunt Nora said, “Anyway, it wasn’t too long before he drank himself right out of his job. After that, he’d do odd jobs, seasonal work, whatever he could to keep himself in Rebel Yell.”

  I nodded. Rebel Yell Whiskey is the cheapest way I know of to get drunk, but it tastes terrible, so the only ones who drink it are kids who don’t know any better and drunks who can’t afford any better. “What about Evan?”

  “I don’t think Evan’s ever taken a drink in his life. That’s what having a drunk in the family does. You either drink like a fish or you won’t have anything to do with it. The Cawthornes ended up with one of each. Evan did real well at the mill, and got to the point where he was making enough money to get himself a little room away from his father. It was the first time he’d ever had a decent place to live. Of course, this being Byerly, nobody ever let him forget what kind of life he’d had growing up until somebody tried to steal his truck.”

  “What truck?”

  “One of Big Bill Walters’s trucks. Evan was driving a load from the mill to Raleigh, and he stopped to eat at some place by the side of the road. While he was inside, a couple of yahoos tried to hot-wire the truck, but Evan saw them and went after them like a bat out of hell. He jumped into the cab and pulled out a big old monkey wrench and knocked the fool out of those boys.”

  “Really?” I said, trying to picture that pompous man in a fight. “You’d never know it to look at him.”

  “Big Bill was so impressed by his loyalty that he declared him a hero and got his picture in the paper. He gave him a big bonus, too.”

  “Big Bill gave somebody a bonus?”

  “He figured that it would be a good example to the other workers at the mill. If that truck had been stolen, he’d have been out a lot more money than what he gave Evan.”

  “True.” I was willing to believe that Big Bill could be generous if he directly benefitted.

  “Anyway, Evan invested that money, and he was either smart or lucky, because it wasn’t too long before he had enough money to start his own trucking business. He just had the one truck at first, but he put every dime he made back into the business until he had a whole fleet. Somewhere along the way, he started buying up land.”

  “He told me he got the flea market lot in payment for a debt.”

  “That’s what I heard. It was the Rawson family’s pig farm, but the pigs up and died one day. The Rawsons never did find out why, so even when they got new stock, people were afraid to buy from them. Evan was the one trucking the pigs to market, and when they went belly up, they gave him the land. I don’t know how much the Rawsons owed him, but if they ever get the town line mess straightened out, I bet he’ll get his money back and then some.”

  “Aunt Maggie says he’s pretty fond of money.” After hearing how he’d grown up, I didn’t blame him.

  “I think he’s afraid of ending up poor again.”

  “Is he married?”

  “No, but I hear he’s been dating some woman out at the country club in Rocky Shoals. He wants to get himself established and then marry somebody fancy.”

  It sounded to me like he was well established already, but some people don’t satisfy easily. “I know Bender lives out there at the flea market, so I assume he’s not married. Does he have any friends?” Serious drinkers don’t always pick their friends wisely, and before Aunt Nora could answer, I’d imagined Bender running with a group of thugs who had taken advantage of his knowledge to get into the flea market. I didn’t think a random group of kids would have killed Carney, but I could picture an older gang doing the job. Unfortunately, it was a waste of imagination.

  “Not really. He’s got some drinking buddies, but the only one he spends a lot of time with is that dog of his.”

  So much for the Cawthornes. “Do you know Obed Hanford? He sells donuts.”

  “I’ve had some of his donuts, but that’s all.”

  “Tattoo Bob Tyndall?”

  She shook her head.

  “Ronald Lane? He makes jewelry. And there’s a Mr. and Mrs. Samples that sell furniture.”

  “Never heard of any of them.”

  “J.B. Doughty or Tammy Pruitt? Or Dulcy Lamar?”

  Okay, I didn’t really consider the little girl a suspect, but I was getting desperate.

  “Now that name rings a bell.”

  “Dulcy?”

  “No, Lamar. Who do I know named Lamar?”

  “Her grandmother is Annabelle Lamar.” Had I imagined it, or had one of the women at the other table looked up when I said that? Just in case, I lowered my voice. “Tammy used to be married to Annabelle’s son Roy.”

  “I met Annabelle over at Vasti’s house. They’re trying to put together a debutante ball.”

  “You’re kidding.” I couldn’t imagine anything Byerly needed less. “I know Annabelle wants her granddaughter to make her debut, but isn’t Vasti a little old for that kind of thing?”

  “She’s planning ahead. Vasti figures that if she has a girl, it’ll be running good by the time she’s ready to come out.”

  For a minute, I imagined Vasti’s reaction if a child of hers ever decided to “come out” the way most people talked about it these days. Then I shook my head and took a big swallow of tea. I had to be tired—my mind was really wandering. “What do you know about Annabelle?”

  “I know that she’s mighty full of herself. She’s not from Rocky Shoals originally. She and her boys moved there after her husband passed away. They’d been big shots in some town in Tennessee, but there were too many memories there, and she wanted to make a fresh start. The minute she got to Rocky Shoals, she started running things because she’s got enough money to get away with it.
She’s needed that money, too—her boys have been in trouble more times than I can count. Junior could tell you more about that. I know she’s arrested a couple of them.”

  Actually, I wasn’t going to be able to ask Junior, but I could ask Trey if I found enough of a connection with Carney to make it worth the trouble. “Thanks, Aunt Nora. You’ve been a big help.” Not as big as I’d hoped she’d be, but that wasn’t her fault.

  “You’re welcome, Laurie Anne. I want to tell you again how much I appreciate your staying in town long enough for Augustus’s party. It means a lot to him, and it means a lot to me, too.” Needless to say, her eyes teared up. “Come over here and let me hug your neck.”

  I was happy to do so, and I don’t want to make it sound like I wasn’t, but as I hugged her, I saw the two women who’d been talking get up. One went toward the barn, and I recognized Mrs. Samples. The other had her back to me and was wearing a hat, but as she picked her way across the field that served as a parking lot, she lost her footing and the hat slipped just enough for me to see her face, and I recognized her, too. No wonder she’d looked up when I said, “Annabelle Lamar.” It was Annabelle Lamar.

  Chapter 23

  Aunt Nora said she was going to claim some of her pots and pans from the kitchen, and I went looking for Aunt Maggie. The auctioneer announced that he was taking a five-minute break right then, so I thought I could get away with talking to her. Luckily, she was sitting by herself, rummaging through a box.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “Daphine is in the little girl’s room, Richard is carrying a box of books out to the car, and Vasti came and dragged Arthur away.”

  “Did you get anything good?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought I saw a piece of Autumn Leaf in here, but now I can’t find it. Oh, well. I usually get something worthwhile.”

  “Aunt Maggie, have you ever seen Annabelle Lamar at any of the auctions?”

  “After the way she acted out at the flea market today, I can’t see her wanting to spend any time with us lowlifes. Why?”