by Anne Hagan
“Well, probably back to Cleveland to stay while my rehab continues. Then, I’ll have to be medically evaluated to continue in my normal duty assignment...”
She glanced over at me and then quickly turned her gaze back to the road. “And, if you can’t? Do your normal assignment, I mean?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
Mel grew quiet and I got lost in my own thoughts as she drove me wherever it was that she was taking me. “It’s a surprise,” she’d said.
I thought about the Chappell mission that had just ended for me as an investigation but that might be with me physically for the rest of my life. I thought about how the jurisdiction battles between my employer the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service, and both the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the courtroom battles over that case might rage for years and I thought about what the end of the actual ground case meant for any possible relationship I might have with Mel.
Mel drew me out of my reverie and we talked about the case for a few minutes. After a time, I asked her, “So, where are we going, anyway?”
“Actually, we’re here,” she said.
She pulled the car into a lot past a teenager waving an orange traffic flag. There were rows of cars ahead of us. She drove toward the front of the lot and parked near an entrance gate. My view of the goings on was blocked by a crowd of people waiting to enter.
“I present to you, the Morelville Mushroom Festival!” She smiled and her eyes beamed her mirth.
I remembered a statement she had made to me about “not staying around for the mushroom festival” in one of her police interrogation rooms during our inauspicious first meeting and I laughed so hard, tears formed in my eyes.
Mel parked, retrieved the wheelchair from the trunk and then maneuvered me out of the car. We bypassed the main gate and entered through a side gate reserved for the handicapped. I hated that but I resolved to make the best of it. My resolve, however, would be short lived.
Chapter 2 – Is it Murder?
Just after Mel wheeled me through the entrance gate, a Sheriff’s Deputy approached us at a dead run. He pulled up short and, breathing hard said, “Boy Sheriff am I ever glad to see you! The main gate radioed that you had pulled in here.” The officer eyed me, in my hopefully temporary wheelchair, even as he spoke to Mel.
“Pulling security detail today Joe?” Mel asked him.
“Nope, got an emergency response call to come over here.”
“What’s going on?”
“We um, have a little situation.” The Deputy was clearly uncomfortable addressing her in front of me but I was completely out of my element and virtually powerless to go anywhere. I looked up at Mel.”
Mel tipped her head to the right. “Let’s step over here.” She wheeled me right along with them. Once we were away from most of the entrance throng, she turned back to Joe. “It’s okay. You can talk in front of Special Agent Rossi,” she said, trying to put the deputy at ease.
He nodded. “It’s just that, well, one of the cooking contest judges is...dead.”
“What? How?”
“They say he tasted a dish that he was judging and he just keeled over like.”
Oh boy! Just what I want to hear at a food festival!
Mel scowled. “Lead on. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”
We followed the deputy as he picked his way through the growing crowd. Mel continued to push me in my chair. We stopped at a large, white tent that was completely sealed off from view. All of the tent flaps were pulled shut. An ambulance was parked beside it, lights flashing. Another Sheriff’s Deputy stood near a closed flap where a sign declared “Closed - Food Judging”. He glanced at me and then nodded to his co-worker and to Mel and then lifted a flap for us to pass through into the tent.
The mood inside the judging tent was somber. A little knot of people wearing Mushroom Festival nametags with ribbons that said “Judge” were standing not far from where we entered, toward the left side of the tent, looking on, not talking, just staring. Three rows of tables laid out with dishes to be judged stretched from left to right in front of us. Behind the right end of the middle row of tables, a man was laying prone on the floor as two EMTs stood helplessly over him. He was too far gone for them to save. Another of Mel’s deputies was standing with a tall balding man and a teenage girl a little to the right of the dead man.
Mel wheeled me toward the deputy, the man and the girl. She stopped just short of their little group and nodded toward the balding man.
“Craig...”
He nodded back. “Mel... er... Sheriff.”
“Either is fine, buddy. So, what’s going on here?”
Craig wore a badge that identified him as “Craig Stroud, Festival Director”. He drew himself up a little taller and then he shook his head no, wordlessly. He added a shrug. “Darned if I know, Mel.” He gestured toward the little knot of judges across the tent, “We just got this group started on today’s food judging category; side dishes.” He tipped his head toward the dead man. “I assigned him to start with this end of the second row. He dropped to the floor as he tasted his third dish. By the time I got to him, he was already dead.”
“He looks familiar. Who is he?”
“Ben Tracy. He’s the owner of...was the owner of...‘The Hive’, the little organic foods restaurant downtown. This was his third year here as a judge.”
“He’d already tasted two dishes?”
“Yes, numbers 20 and 21. Each judge tastes ten to start. We have six judges today and thirty entries. You don’t think...” Craig trailed off.
“That it was the food he tasted?” Mel finished the thought for him. “I don’t know. I have to think of all possibilities.” She turned toward the deputy that was standing there with Craig and the girl. “Get the Coroner over here. We’re going to need him to do forensic analysis on this one.”
“The Coroner Mel?” Craig’s face clouded. “If he shows up, it will ruin us. I mean, I feel terrible but, well, can’t the squad take him out of here?”
“Craig, I don’t know what we’re dealing with here. I have to shut at least the food judging competition down.” His shoulders sagged in defeat. Mel continued, “I need a list of all of the contestants and the numbers assigned to their judging dishes. I need anything not plated for judging from contestants 20 and 21 and I also need to know if either of the providers of those two dishes is providing any other food on the grounds.”
Craig sent the teenager off to pull the list.
Mel ran her hand through her short black hair and glanced around. She looked back at Craig. “Hell,” she said, “you better just put a hold on everything that isn’t plated and no more tasting of anything else out here. Also, put a hold on the food vendors period, until we know if this is isolated or not. We just don’t know what we’ve got here yet.”
I glanced over at the remaining five judges. They’d heard what she said and they were all nodding in agreement. I turned back in time to see Craig’s neck and ears turn a pretty vivid shade of red.
“You’re shutting the festival down?” His anger was obvious. It just oozed out of him.
Mel reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. She looked him in the eye and said, “No. Not yet anyway...but I do want you to make a general announcement that all food vendors are to stop serving for the next hour. You just opened for the day, so that shouldn’t put anyone too far out of their way and it ought to give us enough time to see if any contestant here is also a vendor.”
Craig looked demoralized. “I can tell you right now, a few of them are but most aren’t. The ones that are have been doing this for years, Mel. I don’t think...” He trailed off as the teenager came back with the contestant list and handed it to him. He glanced through it and then handed it to Mel.
Mel looked at the list. “We need to get contestants 21 and 22, Jenna Mae Rodgers and Lucy Sharp in here immediately, if they’re on the grounds. Announce that too.”
She addressed the two deputies, “I want witness statements from the staff and the judges. I’ll interview the two contestants myself.” Turning back to Stroud she said, “Get those announcements made first and then go over this list with me and tell me who is a contestant that is also a vendor.”
A sudden coughing spell that I couldn’t help drew Mel’s attention back to me.
“I’m so sorry Dana, but duty calls. I’ll have to have a deputy run you back to Genesis.”
“You don’t have to do that Mel. I can wait.”
“I may be a while...A long while...” She shook her head. “It’s best I have some one run you back. I really am sorry.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
###
I hated to see Dana leave. We just couldn’t seem to catch a break, she and I. She’d been in the hospital for the past few weeks and was only just now deemed healthy enough to be able to step out and not risk infection. I was afraid she would be released from the hospital soon and shipped back to the Cleveland Port Office or even to her home base, the Chicago Field Office, by the Customs Service before we really had a chance to establish any sort of relationship together.
“Sheriff?”
A few minutes later, I realized Craig had been trying to get my attention. I smiled, trying to lighten his mood. “Yes?”
“This is Lucy Sharp, contestant 22.”
A white haired, slightly stooped old woman stood before me. I looked her over quickly. She must be at least 80... “Hello Mrs. Sharp. I’m Sheriff Crane.”
“I know who you are young lady. How can I help you?”
Well her name fits her! She’s sharp as a tack! “There’s been a little mishap with one of the judges for the contest you entered today. I just need to ask you a few questions.”
“Mushroom Surprise.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My side dish entry. I call it Mushroom Surprise.”
“Is that right? What’s the surprise?”
“Well now Sheriff, I can’t be giving away all of my secrets. There wouldn’t be any point to me entering these contests then year after year, would there?”
“No ma’am. I suppose you’re right. How many years have you been entering dishes?”
“Longer than you’ve been on God’s earth young lady, I can tell you that! I know exactly what I’m doing when it comes to using wild mushrooms. My eyes are just fine and I’m real careful. I’ve won contests here with my food more years than I care to count!”
I bet you know exactly how many contests you’ve won here and every dish you’ve made for every contest! I could see that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with Lucy Sharp. I’d already mentally crossed her off of any sort of suspect list anyway.
###
An hour later, I was driving away from the fairgrounds. My interview with Jenna Mae Rodgers had been no more enlightening than the one with Lucy Sharp. My deputies had taking of the rest of the witness statements well in hand. I needed to go and inform Ben’s next of kin of his untimely death before the unofficial word leaked out.
After a quick stop at home to put on a uniform, I pulled up, still in my sister’s car, in front of the home Ben Tracy had shared with his wife Liberty Tracy. My truck had been wrecked during a counterfeiting case I’d been working on with Dana. I was still fighting with the insurance company over that since it had been destroyed while performing my official duties. The county was probably going to get a bill...one they could ill afford. There just wasn’t time to go back to the department and get an official vehicle. Kris’s car would have to do.
The Tracy home was a neatly kept Victorian in the Putman neighborhood in Zanesville. Putnam Avenue and the homes and businesses along it have become an urban renewal project of sorts for residents and shopkeepers, if you could really call Zanesville urban. The three block area was populated by artistic types whose community revival efforts had given the area a different feel than the rest of a city that otherwise lay at the foothills of Appalachia.
I stepped out of the car and mentally shook myself. I was about to do one of the tasks that I least relished as a law officer.
Liberty Tracy met me at the door.
Chapter 3 – Taking Liberties
“Mrs. Tracy?” I addressed the flame haired, fortyish woman standing on the doorstep before me dressed in what my mother would probably call a muumuu.
“Yes?” She eyed me closely. “May I help you?”
“I’m Sheriff Crane. I need to speak with you ma’am.”
“What is it Sheriff?”
She was standing firmly in the doorway. “I have some news Mrs. Tracy. May I come in?”
Several seconds passed before Liberty Tracy said anything or even moved a muscle. Then, slowly she leaned toward me and peered directly into my eyes. Her actions were odd and I was unnerved.
“Mrs. Tracy?”
She leaned back and then stepped partially sideways. “I suppose you’d better come in.”
“Thank you ma’am.” I could help but brush her as I passed her. I stopped just beyond her in a small entry foyer. A staircase went up to my left. Straight ahead of me was a center hall that led, presumably, into the back areas of the house and the dining room or kitchen. To my right was a doorway leading to a small living area that, in more formal times, would have been called a parlor.
Liberty passed around me and then, muumuu flowing slightly, led the way into the parlor. The room had the smoky cloying scent of incense having been recently burned. My nose twitched from the lingering smell as I glanced around. The room was clean and neat but furnished in a decidedly retro, hippy vibe style. She took a seat on a small sofa and motioned for me to sit next to her. I tipped my head in deference but chose to take an orange colored arm chair to her immediate left that faced back to the doorway we’d just come through.
“Your news, it isn’t good is it?”
Way to get right to the point... “No ma’am, it isn’t.”
“What’s happened to Ben now?”
“Now ma’am?”
She waved her hand at me. “Oh, you know, he’s been in and out of the hospital a couple of times with heart issues.”
“I see. Well, it’s something more than that this time. I regret to inform you that Ben died this morning, Mrs. Tracy.”
I leaned back and waited for the reaction and the inevitable questions and emotions. Liberty Tracy just stared back at me. She appeared to be a million miles away.
“Mrs. Tracy, did you hear what I said?” Seconds passed and then she looked at me.
“I guess he’s really done it this time.”
“Done what ma’am?”
“Lived hard enough to die.”
“Pardon?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she hung her head and covered her eyes with her hand. Her shoulders began to shake. I just feel so powerless when another woman cries in front of me.
“I’m so sorry Mrs. Tracy.”
Her head came up. She looked at me through eyes rimmed with tears. “Libby. Everyone calls me Libby, and it’s not your fault Sheriff. Ben did this to himself.” She paused and leaned forward to take a clove cigarette from a pack on the table. I stifled a shudder as a smell worse to me than the incense scent that already permeated the room rose from the tip of her newly lit smoke. She spoke again, “Where was he found?”
I thought her question odd. “He wasn’t “found” Mrs....err, Libby. He was judging a cooking contest at the Mushroom Festival over in Morelville when he keeled over. Staff and medics that were on site weren’t able to revive him.”
“Oh, that’s right. I remember him saying something about that the last time I saw him.”
Interesting way to phrase something again...I asked the question that was left hanging for me, “When did you last see him?”
Libby tipped her head toward the ceiling and appeared to think about my question. Instead, she asked, “Can I get you something to drink Sheriff?”
“No thanks ma’am.” This woman
just won’t answer a question! “I do have to ask you though, were you and Ben estranged?”
“Estranged Sheriff?”
“Separated? Divorcing?”
“Oh, no no! Nothing like that!” She paused for a second and then swallowed hard. “Ben and I, we had...had an open marriage.” She visibly shuddered then continued, “He though took far more advantage of it than I did. Sometimes days would go by before he’d come home. He always had time for that restaurant though. That’s his pride and joy...was his pride and joy, I guess I should say.”
“So, Ben hasn’t been home lately?”
“I guess you did ask me when I last saw him, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“Well, let’s see...He was here Wednesday evening because we had a beautification committee meeting early in the evening and he never misses those. I think he must have left right after that.”
“Today is Saturday ma’am. You haven’t seen Ben since Wednesday?”
“Libby, Sheriff. Please. And, no, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been back here since then. Of course, I’m not here twenty four/seven. He may have been in and out to get clothes or to nap or something.” She trailed off.
Nap? “Where does he go when he’s not here?”
She glanced away from me. Again, her head dropped and her shoulders began to shake. I could see that I wasn’t going to get any further with that line of questioning and, really, I didn’t suspect any sort of foul play so questioning her as she grieved - or felt whatever it was that she was feeling - wasn’t really necessary.
“Libby, is there anyone I can call for you?”
She sniffled and looked back up at me. “I’ll be okay Sheriff. I need to pull myself together and start calling Bens family. Can I see you out?”
I was being dismissed. “No ma’am; that isn’t necessary.” I stood. “I do have to let you know though that coroner is doing an autopsy. He thought it best since Ben passed away while doing a food judging. It’s just a formality.” She did say he had heart problems... “I’ll be back in touch myself as soon as Ben’s body is released.”