6 Murder at the Art & Craft Fair

by Steve Demaree

  “Boy, is your dad at home?”

  He stopped hammering long enough to answer.

  “Yep.”

  There was silence until he started hammering again. I wondered if I’d already met his grandmother, who lived next door to another one of our suspects. I decided to reopen the conversation.

  “Could you get him for us?”

  “He’s out back.”

  Lou and I took off around the house. The delinquent caught up with us.

  “You might not want to get too close. He’s in the outhouse.”

  The delinquent ran ahead.

  “Hey, Pa! There’s a couple of men here to see you.”

  “Who are they, Boy?”

  “Remember the time you took me to the circus and all them clowns got out of that little bitty car.”

  “Sure do.”

  “Well, I think two of them clowns have come to see us. The others might still be in that little car they come in. But these guys got guns.”

  “Boy, tell them we ain’t got no still.”

  I told the boy we weren’t there about a still.

  “Pa, he says he ain’t here about no still. Can’t tell if he’s lying or not. His lips is moving.”

  There was no response from inside the outhouse, and then the outhouse door banged opened and Vernon Pitts walked out.

  I decided to take charge.

  “Are you Vernon Pitts?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Lt. Dekker with the Hilldale Police Department. This is Sgt. Murdock. We need to talk to you.”

  “I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

  “I didn’t say you have, Mr. Pitts, but we still need to talk to you. Alone.”

  “Boy, go back around the front and do whatever it was you was doing. This won’t take long, will it? I have to make the boy some supper. I promised the boy wieners and beans tonight. Ain’t nobody likes wieners and beans like my boy does, and he says ain’t nobody fixes ’em like I do. I would invite you to stay for supper, but we ain’t got but one pack of wieners, and I ain’t much on eating with cops anyhow. Let’s get this over with. What say we go on over there and have a seat on the lawn furniture?”

  I didn’t see a pump where he washed him hands, and Pitts wasn’t the kind of guy who used sanitary wipes, so we refrained from shaking hands. Besides, he didn’t look like a hand shaking kind of guy.

  Boards led from the house to four rusty metal chairs. It was the closest thing to lawn furniture in sight, so we followed Pitts over, and when he sat in one chair, Lou and I followed suit and plopped down in two of the others.

  “What’s this here all about?”

  “Mr. Pitts, tell me about Saturday.”

  “What about Saturday?”

  “What did you do?”

  “Let me see. Oh, yeah! The boy and I went to town. Had to buy a few things, and then I told him if’n he was good I’d take him to that fair. Wasn’t much of a fair. The boy got bored. Wasn’t much for him and Jay Bob to do.”

  “Jay Bob?”

  “My sister’s boy. We met Jay Bob and his pa in town. The boys wanted to check out that fair thing. About all the boys liked was the food. My boy ate four chili dogs. My boy can really put it away, he can.”

  “So, was your boy good?”

  He grinned.

  “Depends on your definition of good. Boys will be boys from time to time.”

  “Did he do anything to upset anyone?”

  “No. Well, come to think of it, there was this here one guy who got a might upset when my boy ran into his tent and almost knocked over some of his stuff. He got rough with my boy. The boy come and told me about it. I went over there and walloped the guy a couple of times. After that, he didn’t bother my boy no more.”

  I refrained from telling Pitts that the way some other people told the story he, Pitts, was the one who received the walloping.

  “This guy have any problems with anyone else?”

  He grinned again.

  “Yep, there was this here one guy. He was mad about something. He had one of that guy’s wooden sculpture things in his hand and he acted like he was going to hit him over the head with it. I was hoping he would, but he chickened out.”

  “Did you offer to take his place?”

  “I would’ve likened to.”

  “Anybody else seem to have a problem with him?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t hang out there watching him all day.”

  “But did you go back later and see the guy with the puzzles?”

  “What guy with the puzzles?”

  “The guy who had a problem with your son.”

  “Thought about it, but no, I didn’t. Wish I had, though.”

  “So, what time did you leave the park?”

  “I don’t know. Wasn’t too late?”

  “Before dark?”

  “Oh, way before dark.”

  “Mr. Pitts, we have some people who say they saw you there about dark and you were looking like you wanted to go back and do something to that man.”

  “Well, I thought about it, but I was afraid he would raise a ruckus, call the cops or something. Is that the reason you’re way out here? Did he call you guys on me?”

  “Didn’t have a chance. Someone murdered him on Saturday.”

  “Well, I declare. Serves him right, but it weren’t me. He was still breathing when I left.”

  “So, you beat him up a little before you left?”

  “Just that one time I told you about.”

  I wondered what Pitts had or had not done. At least I knew I was able to add another name to my list of those who wished harm to Kincaid, but claimed not to have murdered him. The list was getting longer. My job was to shorten the list to one name. I wondered if Pitts was the one name I should keep on my shortest list. I hoped not. I didn’t wish that boy of his on anyone else. There was something about him that told me he couldn’t be trusted any more than his dad.

  I figured I wasn’t going to get anywhere with Pitts, and I didn’t want to press my luck because he had been behaving so far, so I told him that was all the questions I had at that time, but I might be back. He didn’t seem too happy about a return trip. I didn’t care whether he was happy or not. I didn’t relish a return trip, either. Maybe I would send George to pick him up. After all, George was familiar with the area.

  I got up and Lou followed suit. I refrained from following the line of boards around the house, or the ones leading to the back door, and walked around the house to the hammering delinquent. The tree stump continued to take his abuse. When he heard us, he stopped hammering, looked at us, and grinned. There was something about his grin I didn’t like.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Pitts’s yard was much wider than Foggy Bottom Road, so I did one-half of a figure eight and headed off toward the dirt path. I floored it. We had at least fifty feet to the first rut.

  “Well, Lou, what do you think about this guy?”

  “Well, if the weekly Bible study is at his place, I don’t want to take part.”

  “I don’t see that happening anytime soon. What about the likelihood that he’s our murderer?”

  “I’m more inclined to think it was his son.”

  I laughed.

  “Me, too, Lou. Me, too.”

  I counted the bounces until Lou continued.

  “Well, Cy. I’d say he’s up there with a couple of others. Still, I wonder if something like this is enough to cause one man to strike another man down. All Kincaid did was reprimand his kid.”

  “Of course we don’t know the tale his kid told. Maybe the kid stole Kincaid’s cash box and Kincaid caught him and was going to turn him in, and Pitts stepped in and hit Kincaid to keep his son from going to jail. It could be that the murderer didn’t mean to murder Kincaid. Maybe just steal his money. And after he or she found out the first blow killed Kincaid, they hit a few more times to try to disguise what happened.”

  “Those blows definitely disguised
Kincaid. That’s for sure.”

  “And as you know, Lou, we’ve seen men murder for a lesser reason that grabbing someone’s kid by the collar. Still, there must be something missing. Someone must have had more of a motive than we’ve been able to discover. And while we’re going over our list of likely suspects, let’s don’t forget the women. Even though both of them seem like they belong at the bottom of our list. Maybe today’s clue will give us some insight. What was it again?”

  “A nightmare.”

  “That’s it. I’d forgotten all about my next-door neighbor. She must have done it. Frank didn’t say anything about the body having any bite marks that might have been caused by a yippy dog, did he?”

  “You’re the one who talked to him, Cy. But I think your next-door neighbor might have been more likely to bite him. Did Frank check his neck?”

  I laughed, although the way we were bouncing up and down going from one rut to the next, it sounded more like a hiccup.

  Our venture away from Pitts’s emporium on Crawdad Lane seemed as slow as our ability to ferret out a murderer. I counted the murder of crows watching us from the dead trees and wondered if Alfred Hitchcock was nearby. It seemed like our return to civilization was actually more sluggish than our trip out, but it might be that it seemed that way because darkness was approaching. Well, we still had several minutes of daylight left, but definitely less than an hour. I looked out through the dead trees, thought I saw a guy with a chainsaw and no face. I increased Lightning’s speed to six miles per hour.

  A couple or three days later, we burst out of the overhang of dead trees and spotted a real road and the overgrown brush in the field on the other side of it. I also noticed an outhouse. I assumed that at one time there was a house to go with the outhouse. I slowed and thought I saw the remains of a foundation, or a poor man’s imitation of Stonehenge. Well, there were a few stones, but I don’t know how many of them were unturned.

  Lightning lurched up onto the road and turned toward town but seemed to limp along like she had done on the dirt path. It was then that I heard the sound I most didn’t want to hear. No. There weren’t bullets whizzing by over our heads. Nor was my next-door neighbor standing by the side of the road hitch-hiking. No, it was much worse than that. Well, not much worse. Just in the same neighborhood.

  Panic gripped my face as I heard a “thump, thump, thump, thump.” Lou turned and looked at me, a terrified look on his face.

  “Lou, I hope that’s your heart I hear.”

  “Sorry, Cy. Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

  “Lou, this ain’t the movie Bambi, and there’s no rabbit with big feet out there. Well, there may be a rabbit, but not an animated one.”

  The next thing Lou said told me he wasn’t thinking rationally.

  “Don’t you have AAA?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do, Lou. Do you by any chance have a blanket, some wood, and some matches?”

  It took Lou a minute to comprehend that the only way men with landline phones would reach AAA would be by smoke signals.

  Dejectedly, two men about to be late for their dates crawled out of the car. I walked back and looked at the driver’s side rear tire. An optimist would have said, “Well, it’s only flat on the bottom.” At that point I wasn’t an optimist, and the fact that my hand rested on my gun kept Lou from commenting.

  I opened the trunk, and gave a sigh of relief when I spotted the spare tire. Another sigh escaped when I found the jack and was able to slide it under the car. I jacked up the car. Lou removed the lug nuts. By the time we were ready to replace them we needed my flashlight. I looked at my watch. We weren’t late for our dates yet, but we would be by the time we made it back to town, and we no longer looked like we were spruced up for a date. I tossed the flat tire into the trunk, slammed the trunk shut, and let out another sigh of relief. Lou and I got back in the car and I started Lightning up again and took off.

  “Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.”

  “Cy, don’t tell me you changed the wrong one.”

  “No, dummkopf. Don’t you get it? That juvenile delinquent didn’t pound all of his nails into that tree stump. How many years do you think they’ll give me if I go back and let off a little steam?”

  “Maybe we just sneak by and steal Pitts’s truck.”

  “I’d say if we go back there after dark for anything we’d end up dying of lead poisoning.”

  “You’re probably right, Cy. Two of us might make too much noise. Why don’t I wait here with Tweetie, while you go and steal the truck?”

  “Her name is Lightning, and she’s mine. I’ll listen for the sound of the truck, be ready to jump in when you get back.”

  Our nonsense was making us even later for our dates, so Lou and I got out again, slammed the doors shut. I don’t know why. The second series of thumps had to be another flat tire. This time Lou identified a tire flat on the bottom on his side of the car. Well, he did after I handed him the flashlight. I contemplated driving Lightning back to town with one flat tire, wondered how much damage that would do. I lifted the trunk, hoping that a second spare tire would materialize. It did not. I stood there, hands on both hips, wondering what my next move would be. Somehow I figured the next motorist to pass by would be Pitts when he went to work the next day. I wondered how likely he would be to give us a ride back to town with me with a stranglehold on his son.

  “Any ideas, Lou?”

  “Let’s get back in, sit down, and mull this over.”

  We both turned toward the car, walked up and pulled on the door handles at the same time. I can’t exactly say that our feeling was euphoric when we discovered that Lightning’s doors were locked. I wondered what I’d done to make God so angry. I didn’t know, but I thought back to a conversation from a few minutes earlier when Lou had reminded me that God’s message for the day was “a nightmare.” It was indeed that, and I couldn’t see where our clue of the day was going to help us solve a murder. My most brilliant idea of the day was one of my first, when I heard the clue of the day and told Lou that we should stay home.

  Lou interrupted my thoughts.

  “Cy, I don’t think it can get any worse than this.”

  Immediately, I wished he hadn’t uttered those words, because I knew they would come back to haunt us. It didn’t take long. Less than five minutes later, as two less-than-stellar cops stood on a poorly-paved country road angry and dumbfounded, we learn that all the rain doesn’t pour down in April. God saves some of it for October.

  “Cy, do you have an umbrella?”

  I refrained from telling him there was one in the backseat. Instead, I reached into the trunk and yanked the tire out.

  “How does that help, Cy?”

  He soon found out. At least the trunk would provide a little bit of protection from the rain. He climbed in beside me, wondering whether or not he should pray for someone to come along. I didn’t echo his prayer. Thoughts of dueling banjos still rattled in my head.

  Some people learn the first time they make a mistake and don’t repeat the same mistake. Lou isn’t one of those people. Once again he uttered those famous last words, “It can’t get any worse than this.” Once again it got worse.

  The sky lit up. The light wasn’t from a second moon. More of a jagged streak accompanied by a loud noise. Then God repeated them for effect. Let’s just say that we were wise enough that we knew that one type of lightning meant we were to scurry from another Lightning.

  Quickly, I hopped out of the car, hoping to do so before I became fried. Rain pelted down upon my head, and every other part of my anatomy. I’d heard never take cover under trees during the rain, even if those trees are already dead. Another lightning flash motivated me.

  “Let’s go, Lou! Let’s head for that outhouse.”

  A rational man wouldn’t have said what I did, nor would he have taken off running, but there were no rational men on Soaked Cop Road, or whatever road we were on that night. I clutched the flashlight in my right hand, m
uch like I clutch the controller for my Wii every day. I huffed and puffed most of that quarter mile back to that outhouse, but thankful that my Wii Fit routine each day got me in good enough shape that I was able to reach the outhouse without having a coronary. Lou kept pace, even passed me when I hit a patch of mud, slid a few feet, then, ran out of one shoe. I went back and retrieved the shoe, just in case I lived long enough to need both of them. I ran up to the outhouse and stopped, turned the wooden slat, and opened the door. I shined the light in, closed the door again.

  “What’s the matter, Cy? Someone in there?”

  My brain was too waterlogged to realize whether he was serious or making a joke. I opened the door again, shined the light on all those cobwebs. At least there were no occupants. At least I hoped there were none of the four-legged variety that I’d failed to see. I didn’t even think about those kind with six or eight legs. Surely there were some of those. And then I thought of those crawly creatures. I wondered if Lou and I were bitten and died in an outhouse if someone would eventually find us. I wasn’t sure. No one would be curious if a strange smell emanated from an outhouse. I wondered if Lou had similar thoughts.

  God got our attention again as another flash of lightning and clap of thunder motivated me some more. I used the flashlight like a light saber or a man playing the Swordplay game or Wii Sports Resort. I ridded the only dry place within a mile of as many cobwebs as possible. I got so carried away I banged the flashlight against the side of the outhouse, hurt my hand, and dropped the flashlight. I managed to rescue it just before it fell into the hole. I’d always been told to be thankful in all things. At that point, the only thing I had to be thankful for was that it was a two-holer. I offered Lou his choice of holes. He stepped in, sat down. I did the same. I turned off the flashlight, hoping that doing so would make our sanctuary seem better. I took stock of my situation. As best I could ascertain, I had one square inch of dry underwear. It didn’t take me long to realize that it gets cooler at night in the fall. I followed that up by realizing that it’s even cooler when you are wet. I shivered.