“Okay, we’re game.”
John King had each of us select the see-through plastic housing for our masterpiece. Neither of us wanted any dainty piece of sand art, so we selected one of the larger possibilities. Then, John walked us through the process, much like he would a kid. A few minutes later, relatively pleased, both of us had completed our project. King held up a digital camera and asked both of us to pose with our creations while he took our picture. I was soon to learn how I’d been conned into something I would continue to pay for, at least in the immediate future. Just as Lou and I were about to pick up our artwork and turn away, a familiar voice spoke to us from just over my shoulder.
“So, what are you boys doing? Playing in the sand? Miss your little sandbox, do you?”
I turned around ready to throw sand in George Michaelson’s face.
“Uh, it’s for my nephew. He wasn’t able to come today. Chicken pox. I thought this might cheer him up.”
“Lou’s nephew have chicken pox, too? Cy, you might not have read this, but they say that people without brothers and sisters have fewer nieces and nephews.”
Before I could answer, George leaned over the counter, retrieved the camera that John King had used to take our picture, and George told him to keep the change from the twenty he gave him. I wondered if I should be more afraid that our picture would be in the newspaper, or if it made the Internet. Either way I figured Lou and I were toast. My mind was already at work wondering how we could get even with George. Shooting him was out of the question. There were times we liked him. That day at the art and craft fair wasn’t one of those days. I wondered if Lou and I could hire some kids to fork his yard and toilet paper his trees. No, it would have to be something Lou and I did ourselves, and I didn’t want to have to exert too much energy taking advantage of George.
Chapter Eight
Lou and I were sitting on one of the benches, doing our best to hide our sand art, when Jennifer and Thelma Lou walked up.
“So, you boys couldn’t wait to buy something, huh? Let’s see what you have.”
I set the sand art down and opened my bag containing the cream candy. Jennifer looked at it and laughed, then opened the only bag she had, which also had some of Mike Jackson’s cream candy. At least I’d bought vanilla and butterscotch and she’d bought strawberry and bourbon. We had all the food groups covered.
“What else do you have there, Cy?”
“Oh, we ran into George Michaelson from the department, and he told us that if Lou and I would do a sand art project that he’d pay for it.”
“Well, I think it’s cute. You did a good job.”
I then offered it to Jennifer as a small token of my embarrassment.
We talked for a couple of minutes, checked out the time, and then set off to take in Booths 16-30. We hadn’t gone far before Lou and I found one that interested us: Bill Noel, Louisville, Kentucky, Photographs and Books. One of his matted photographs, a photograph of a pier, taken on one of his trips to Folly Beach, South Carolina, interested me, and the price was right, and so I purchased it. We saw that he also wrote our favorite kind of books, mysteries, so Lou and I purchased Folly, the first in his series of mystery novels, and The Pier, the second book in the series, whose cover photograph looked something like the photograph of his I’d purchased. It wasn’t the same, but similar.
Lou and I completed the second fifteen booths with no additional purchases, met up with the girls again, and stalked off to attack fifteen more. It was in this group that we ran into our old classmate, Bill O’Connell. Lucky for us, Bill’s name was above his booth. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have recognized him. He had no trouble with us, however. He called us by name and reached out with a firm handshake and clasp on the arm as soon as we walked up. We were lucky in another way, too. Bill’s craft was making dollhouses and doll furniture. I didn’t know any little girls. Besides, if I’d purchased a dollhouse or doll furniture, I was sure George would emerge from behind the next tent. We’d have enough trouble living down our other fiasco, which I was sure would be on Facebook and YouTube before the day was over.
Bill had enough houses and accessories that he had two booths. One tent had nothing but houses, the other accessories. He had several styles of houses, including a southern mansion and something he called English Tudor, and while I had no interest in what he was selling, I admired his handiwork, which looked better than anything similar I’d seen in any store. We talked to Bill for a few minutes and told him to stay in touch before we marched on to the next booth. It was here that we ran into the first of two Freds in a row, Fred Money, who was there with his wife, Judy, made birdhouses. They were well done. I thought about buying one, but then I thought about Alfred Hitchcock. I wasn’t sure I wanted to attract too many birds. I thought about buying one for my next-door neighbor, but then I didn’t see any large enough to attract buzzards or vultures. Next to Fred Money was Fred Spoon, who made fine quality ink pens out of different types of wood. This Fred had some sharp-looking pens. I’m a sucker for a good photographer, so when we ran into a second photographer, Dean Hall, I purchased a second photograph to place on another wall at home. At our last booth on our next go-around, Booth 45, we met Raven and Delinda Felty, from Crab Orchard, Kentucky, wherever that is. While many of the others were focusing on Halloween crafts, Delinda made Christmas ornaments out of clay, and had quite a selection. I purchased one for my tree and another for Jennifer to place on her Christmas tree, when it came time to decorate. Delinda Felty took a pen and inscribed the year on the ornament, so we could both remember the year we met, and first attended the Hilldale Art & Craft Fair, which I was sure would become a big moment in my life.
Lou and I contemplated whether or not to take our purchases to the car, but decided to wait on the girls. We’d see if they had bought anything else, and then we could go to the car, while they got a head start on the next fifteen booths. I figured we would have no trouble catching up and passing them.
+++
Lou and I didn’t have to wait on the girls as long this time, because we had stopped and talked to Bill for a few minutes, but we did get to sit for a few minutes. We took a seat on the closest bench that was opposite the row of booths of our next conquest, because I wanted to get a look at what those closest to us had to offer. The first booth was actually a double booth, like our friend Bill had, and it was filled with women of all ages. I noticed the crowd of women before I noticed whose booth it was, and what she was selling. The name above the booth said Melissa Spaulding, Fairy Bow Mother, Winchester, Kentucky.
“Lou, did you have any idea that women buy that many hair bows? Look at that! There are four women lined up just to give that woman money.”
“Wonder what they do with them?”
Before I could give my shrug of an answer one woman knelt down to place a bow on her dog, while a grandmother-type took the hand of a little girl who was already wearing a hair bow. I could tell that some women were buying several bows. Since it wasn’t a guy thing, I wasn’t sure if that meant she was buying for several girls or that it would be a sin for a girl to wear the same hair bow twice, or at least twice in a row.
The crowd drawn by the Fairy Bow Mother almost kept me from seeing the man next to her, another author, Tim Callahan, from Middletown, Ohio. I sat there and watched Callahan operate in such a quiet manner. People were gravitating toward him. I got up and walked over close enough to hear what he was saying that enticed so many people to come over and to leave with an armload of his books. I wondered if he was offering free books, or if someone like George had paid for books for all these people. Instead, all he said was, “Can I tell you about my books?” and then he went into a description of the books he had for sale. Curious no longer, I went back to the bench and watched him operate. Person after person left his tent with three to six books, signed by the author. It was at that point I told Lou that we should skip the first two booths. For one thing, neither of us needed any hair bows. And for another, if no o
ne else could resist Callahan’s salesmanship, I doubted if I could, either. I couldn’t believe his voice, quiet, not boisterous. I wondered if maybe he was able to hypnotize these people into buying those books. After all, hypnotists don’t shout.
I was still thinking about him when Jennifer and Thelma Lou walked up. We talked for a few minutes, agreed that Lou and I would take all of the purchases to the car, and that the four of us would visit Booths 46-60 before taking a break for lunch.
Chapter Nine
The trek to the car and back made me smile. No, I wasn’t happy that I had to walk instead of ride on a Hoveround, but I knew that in the olden days walking preceded Wiiing for shedding a few pounds. I was shedding the old-fashioned way.
We returned, and it didn’t take Lou and me long to catch up with the girls. Jennifer and Thelma Lou had stopped in a colorful booth. As I neared the booth, I looked up to see what all of that colorfulness was. The sign said, Nell Demaree, Fobs, Purses, and Books. The books were being sold by some old guy seated at a table, and from the looks of things, he hadn’t done much else with his time except write. He had more different titles than the other two authors we had encountered. If the woman taking the money was Nell Demaree, and Nell Demaree was his wife, he didn’t waste all of his words on his books. At some point he must have fed that good-looking woman a line to get her to marry him. Of course, he probably looked better when he was younger.
Jennifer had learned that Nell was known as the Fob Queen, because at over four hundred choices she offered more fob possibilities than any of the other women who made fobs. Jennifer was right. I saw fobs for schools, animals of every kind, cartoon characters, fobs with every letter of the alphabet, fobs that looked feminine, and fobs that looked masculine. And Jennifer told me that sometimes a fob behind another was a different design because there was only so much room in one booth. She was so busy showing me all the fobs she was buying for every person she had ever met that I didn’t see what dangled at the end of her other arm, until she sat the two bags down. Then, I saw the bags, noticed their bright blue color, and realized that Jennifer too had succumbed to the charm of author Tim Callahan. From the looks of the two bags at Jennifer’s feet, Callahan might soon be out of books. I wondered if one event was enough to catapult someone onto the New York Times bestseller list. I turned to the author seated behind me, who had just finished signing a couple of books for someone, and glanced at his titles. I saw no reason Callahan should have all the book sales that day, so I turned back to the author, glanced down at his T-shirt, and laughed. It said, “Careful…or you’ll end up in my novel.” Any author who would wear a shirt like that deserved more sales, so I purchased three of his titles for my collection. Lou did likewise. While the author signed books for me, Jennifer continued to deprive his wife of her merchandise. A couple minutes later, I clutched a purple bag containing two stand-alone mysteries, A Gated Community and Photo Finish, and, Lexington & Me, the story of the author’s life growing up in Lexington in the 1950s and 1960s and what the town was like back then. Lou followed me, told the author “I’ll have what he’s having,” and soon he too had a purple bag with three books. The more I looked at the author, the more he reminded me of someone. At first I wasn’t sure, but then I thought, maybe it’s me, or Lou. But he was a lot older than I, and not nearly as handsome. But then, Lou wasn’t as handsome and charming as I was. Maybe that was it. Maybe I thought he looked something like Lou. They looked to be about the same size, but it was hard to tell with the author seated. I wondered if the author Wiied. I continued to stand there, daydreaming, until a woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me.” Evidently I wasn’t the only one willing to purchase some of the author’s books. Not wanting to return to the car so soon and figuring that Lou wouldn’t volunteer to go on his own, the two of us bid the two girls adieu and trudged off ahead of them.
I motioned for Lou to step out into the middle, away from the crowds descending upon each booth.
“Does that guy remind you of someone, Lou?”
“What guy you talking about? In case you haven’t noticed, there are tons of guys here.”
“I haven’t noticed. I’ve only noticed the women.”
“I’ll tell Jennifer.”
“That was the woman I noticed.”
“Evidently you noticed some guy, too. What guy?”
“That author.”
“It’s funny you should ask. I was thinking he looked something like you. Of course, he’s a year or two older.”
“A year or two. More like ten to fifteen. And I thought he reminded me of you.”
“That’s funny. I didn’t think of him as handsome.”
“I don’t either.”
“I beg your pardon. Hold on. I’ll call Thelma Lou over, so we can have a second opinion.”
I looked up and noticed that Jennifer had grabbed all the fobs she could carry or drag away, and had turned to look at the purses. I figured that sometime within the next hour she might walk out of that booth, and we needed to get a move on in order to stay ahead of the girls.
A couple of booths later, we ran into another vendor selling jewelry. The sign said Sandy (Zera) Hensley and, according to the card tacked above her booth, she and her husband lived in Shelbyville, Kentucky. She too had fine jewelry, but not a carbon copy of what Lou and I saw at the other booth. The two of us talked to her husband, Robert, and explained that we were looking for something for our girlfriends. He refrained from asking us if we planned to get our wives something, too.
We continued down the row, looking at crafters who made wreaths, pottery, wind chimes, soaps, and more wood-crafted items, until we came to our fourth author, Russell Vassallo, from Liberty, Kentucky. His wife, Virginia, was with him, and she had knitted shawls and scarves. I was impressed with the vibrant colors of her creations, and selected a scarf for Jennifer that went with her hair color and brought out the color in her eyes. Vassallo talked about his books, which were written on a variety of subjects, and Lou and I were fascinated by a book he wrote about the Mafia. The author told us he grew up around the Mafia in New Jersey, actually knew guys who belonged to the Mafia. While Lou and I usually read only mysteries, both of us were fascinated by his book about the Mafia. Both Lou and I purchased one of his Mafia books. If we liked it, he had another book that seemed interesting to me. I would get it next time, provided Jennifer and Thelma Lou hauled us back to the art and craft fair next year.
As we were leaving the fourth author’s booth, I glanced over at the next booth and did a double take. Most of the vendors I’d seen were crusty veterans. The petite blonde in the next booth looked like someone’s babysitter. I wondered if she was babysitting someone’s booth. Then, I noticed her name, Amy Casey, and saw that she was from Stanton, Kentucky. Amy sounded like a young person’s name. I was curious, so I asked her if she was Amy. Her voice and her smile matched her looks. Any guy between sixteen and twenty-five would either hang out in Amy’s booth, or go home and dream about her. Showing no tact I asked her her age and found out that she was twenty, and engaged to be married. Evidently one guy hung out in her booth more than the others. I was tempted to buy a hair bow, just because she was so sweet, but refrained, and walked off after wishing her good luck. While she was younger, she reminded me of Heather Ambrose.
A couple of booths down I saw a woman who had two of my weaknesses, murder mysteries and honey. Abigail Keam, Lexington, Kentucky. The woman reminded me of the fairy godmother in Cinderella. The mysteries were a series about a beekeeper. I paid for some honey and a mystery. Lou did likewise. As we were leaving her booth, I noticed that she was distracted. I followed her eyes and saw her looking at another vendor of honey across the way. She looked competitive, as if she wanted to make sure she sold more honey than the man did. I decided to try some of his honey too, but I didn’t walk directly over to his booth. I remembered she wrote murder mysteries, and forgot for a minute that I was a cop. I waited until she got another customer, then walked ov
er and purchased some honey from Nick Nickels, also from Lexington. He looked so contented as he sat there, much like a grandfather enjoying his grandchildren.
There was only one row of thirty vendors left, and even if Lou and I didn’t run into any more authors on that stretch we felt we still had enough books to read for a while. If it turned out we were wrong, we could always go back to the Scene of the Crime, although the books we buy there are not autographed. We ended the second of three rows of crafters by checking out some hand-made furniture that took up three spaces. One booth housed items made out of cedar, another walnut, and a third, cherry. I saw some nice things I would have loved to have purchased, but there wasn’t room in Lou’s car, and loading down Lightning was out of the question. Maybe I could find George and lift his credit card, and I could pay extra to have the furniture delivered.
Jennifer and Thelma Lou came sauntering toward us as if neither had a care in the world. Books, fobs, a couple of purses, and who knows what else provided Jennifer with ballast, but I’m not sure if it stabilized her or she was just gutting it out with a smile on her face. I smiled back as I gazed upon her finely proportioned body with no excess weight, but I groaned as I envisioned a second trip to Lou’s car and looked around to see if I spotted a U-Haul for hire. I saw none, and began to wonder if I could find someone to take our purchases. Jennifer was not among the people I considered paying to make the trip. I looked around to see if I could find George. He owed me one. I didn’t see him. I was sure I could find someone to take our purchases, but if I did, I would have to show them my badge and take their picture, otherwise our purchases might end up somewhere other than in Lou’s car. I could see the girls were tired and needed a break from all their shopping, even if neither of them had a clue that they were tired, so I patted the bench next to me and Jennifer crumbled onto it.
6 Murder at the Art & Craft Fair Page 5