“How are you doing?” Maggie asked her. Delia suffered from a variety of health problems, but she didn’t list them and fret over them like some people.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, patting herself down as if checking. “There are still lots of years left in this old carcass.”
She turned and pointed at Scott, who was helping Patrick shift the kegs so the weight was evenly distributed in the back of the truck.
“When are you going to make an honest man out of that one?”
“Probably not until his mother dies.”
Delia tut-tutted but smiled.
“I know Marcia Gordon well,” Delia said. “I can see why you’d want to wait, but please don’t defer your happiness. You never know what life has in store, and I’d hate for you to miss out.”
“I’m just not sure,” Maggie said. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“I blame Gabriel,” Delia said. “He left you while the bloom was still on the rose, and now you think no one can take his place. No man is perfect, Maggie, and you need to take Gabe down off the pedestal before you miss your chance with Scott.”
They were interrupted by Patrick, who grabbed the keys to the truck off the desk where Delia worked on the bookkeeping for the bar.
“Are you done then?” Delia asked Patrick. “Because we’re freezing to death in here and heating the whole town on our gas bill.”
Patrick answered by leaving and kicking the door shut behind him. Maggie hurriedly told her aunt goodbye so she wouldn’t have to talk anymore about Gabe, saying it was so Delia could get on with her bookkeeping. Delia let her go with a sad smile, and Maggie went out the front door of the bar, locking it behind her. She went around to the side of the building where Scott and Patrick had just removed the plywood from the doorway and slid it in the truck bed for use in transferring everything into the caravan at the festival grounds.
Scott hopped out of the back of the truck and came toward Maggie.
“Are you ready for this weekend?” he asked her, smiling that ornery smile of his, the one that knew her so well and still loved her.
Maggie had a sudden urge to hug him, and moved toward him to do so. Just then however, they were startled by a scream from down at the field where the festival was being held.
“That sounds like Hannah,” Maggie said, and started running down Peony Street toward the entrance to the site, with Scott and Patrick right behind her.
She could hear Hannah yelling, “Scott!” at the top of her lungs, and the slender figure came running toward them as they rounded the entrance to the site.
Hannah was white as a ghost and frantic, could hardly talk she was so shaken up. She fell into Maggie’s arms.
“A body!” she said, breathless and gasping, “Blood!”
A crowd of people working on various caravans quickly gathered, and Deputy Skip came running out of the security shack, where he had fallen asleep.
“Skip, you keep everyone back,” Scott directed him. ”Radio Frank to get down here. Hannah, can you show me where it is?”
Hannah, with Maggie and Patrick supporting her on each side, led Scott to where she had been working. Hannah had been preparing one section of the festival site for the snowball throwing competition by using a snow blower to create a low flat area where the competitors would stand and throw snowballs at a row of soft drink cans perched on top of a wall of packed snow at the far end. At the end of the flat area she had created, after six or seven passes with the snow blower, she had uncovered, encased in a solid wall of compacted snow, an arm clothed in a dark nylon coat sleeve. The snow beneath the arm was soaked red with blood. Hannah had suddenly noticed bright pink snow flying out of the snow blower, and that had alerted her to what she’d uncovered. Luckily the snow blower blades had not touched the arm, just the blood-soaked snow next to it. The hand and wrist looked like that of a small adult. The jacket sleeve was made of insulated nylon, like a hundred others they saw every day during the winter months.
Hannah was making a funny sound, and when Maggie turned to look at her friend she realized Hannah was saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” over and over, with her hand held over her mouth.
Scott squatted down to look at the arm, the unclothed part of which was a bluish white color, and decided there was no point in checking for a pulse.
Patrick said, “Who is it?”
“I don’t know,” Scott said, but he gave Maggie a pointed look.
Then they both knew.
“You okay?” Scott asked her.
“Yeah,” Maggie said. “It doesn’t even look real.”
“Take Hannah somewhere and get her something warm to drink,” he said, “and let me know where you are later.”
“You’ll have to call Sarah,” Maggie said.
Scott nodded, but said, “Go on now, take Hannah someplace warm.”
Maggie and Patrick led Hannah back to the entrance of the festival grounds, where Frank was just arriving.
“C’mon girls,” Patrick said. “Let’s go back to the Thorn, where it’s nice and quiet.”
Once he had delivered Hannah to Delia inside the bar, Patrick wanted to go back to the festival grounds to set up the caravan, but Maggie made him wait. Her Aunt Delia made Hannah some coffee, and Maggie called Sam, Hannah’s husband.
“She’s okay,” Maggie assured him, but he just said, “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
When Patrick heard Sam was coming, he went outside to make sure the handicap parking space next to the bar on the Peony Street side was shoveled, and cleared a path from it to the side door, which had a ramp. After that was done he went back to the festival grounds.
Delia was sitting on a bar stool next to Hannah, with a hand on her arm, talking to her in a soft voice.
“Sam’s coming,” Maggie told her.
Hannah had started crying now that the shock was wearing off.
Maggie asked, “Do you want your Dad?”
In response Hannah started crying harder, but nodded, so Maggie quickly crossed the street to the service station and brought her Uncle Curtis back with her.
“Here now, little bird,” the older man said tenderly, when he got to his daughter. “What’s this I hear about you murdering people at the festival?”
As Hannah let herself be gathered into her father’s arms, Maggie teared up, and had to blink several times to get control of her own emotions. She felt a sudden urge to go see her own dad, who was probably snoring in his recliner at home. It had been a long time since Fitz had been able to be strong for her, and she missed that just now, terribly. When Sam arrived, Curtis handed Hannah off to him, and went back to the service station, shaking his head.
“There’s been far too much murder going on in this town lately,” he told Maggie and Delia as he left.
Now that Hannah’s husband Sam was there, Maggie felt like it was okay to leave Hannah. She told her she would call later, and not to worry about the festival, that they would handle it.
Maggie ran-walked down to the bakery to tell her Aunt Alice, who was Hannah’s mother, what had happened, but her aunt’s only response was, “Well, why in the world was Hannah running a snow blower? Weren’t there any men around who could do that?”
Maggie was not surprised at her reaction, which was typical.
“We’re too busy for me to go down there right now,” Alice told Maggie. “She’ll just have to cope without me.”
Maggie told her that Sam was with her daughter, and Alice said, “What is she thinking, dragging Sam out in this weather? He shouldn’t be driving in this.”
Although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the roads were clear, and Sam was completely capable of driving in any weather, Alice always treated him like an invalid, even though it drove Hannah crazy.
Maggie’s mother was more concerned over what would happen with the festival.
“They won’t cancel it, you don’t think?” Bonnie fretted. “I’ll lose a pot of money if they do.”
Mag
gie hadn’t considered that aspect. She thought of the store full of employees she was paying and selfishly allowed herself to worry a bit too.
Ed Harrison heard about the body from Mandy, who came over from the bakery to tell him. He grabbed his camera and rushed down to the festival grounds, where Scott’s small team was taping off the area and keeping people back, but Scott refused to let him photograph the body.
“Sarah’s on her way,” Scott said, “and we don’t know who it is yet.”
“C’mon,” Ed said, “just a photo of the general area.”
“I’m not trying to be a jerk,” Scott said, “but if a picture of that body ends up in the paper on Sunday I will be seriously pissed off.”
“I swear I’ll just get the area, and you doing your job.”
“Okay, just a few, but hurry. Sarah should be here soon and I don’t want her to start off mad at me.”
Ed kept his word, and avoided the actual murder victim as he took photos. He did however, get a good look, and a thought occurred to him.
“Is it Margie, do you think?” he asked Scott.
Scott frowned at his best friend and shook his head.
“No comment.”
“Off the record.”
“Yeah,” he said as he nodded. “I think it probably is.”
Ed whistled low.
“I know she was a pill, but who’d want to kill her?” Ed asked.
Scott shook his head, knowing he really shouldn’t discuss his suspicions with anyone but Sarah.
“She was an awful gossip,” Ed said. “But if people got killed over that, half the town would be dead.”
Scott couldn’t go into the suspected blackmail aspect of Margie’s recent behavior, so he just shook his head again.
“Will you keep me informed?” Ed asked.
“As much as I can,” Scott said, “but you’ll probably find out more about it than I will.”
“I’ll let you know.”
Sarah Albright and her team arrived within an hour and quickly took over. To his chagrin, Scott’s role was reduced to mustering town forces to do Sarah’s bidding. The festival was not cancelled. With Sarah’s approval, Scott directed the city snowplow driver to create a path at the end of the alley behind the fire station down the steep hill into the field near where the body was, keeping an eye out for additional bodies, should there be any, however unlikely.
The volunteer firefighters put up snowdrift fencing all around the area and covered it with tarps to shield the crime scene from view. It was far enough from the main thoroughfare that it wasn’t obvious to anyone passing, but word spread fast, and Skip and Frank had their hands full keeping curious people away from the area. A concerned Mayor Stuart Machalvie was walking around assuring vendors and townspeople that no one was canceling the festival, and imploring them not to scare the tourists away by talking about it as anything other than an unfortunate accident.
“Yes, a great tragedy, but purely an accident, I’m sure,” Scott heard him telling someone. “Some poor drunk fella probably picked the wrong place to pass out, and must’ve frozen to death.”
Scott had seen the amount of blood around the “poor fella,” and didn’t think that had been a side effect of passing out drunk. He was convinced it was Margie Estep’s body, but couldn’t imagine how she came to be there.
Maggie was working the first shift in the bakery caravan by herself, and although business started out slowly, by four o’clock she was running low on brownies and had to call for backup merchandise. Patrick was selling cups of draft beer and hot mulled cider from the Rose and Thorn caravan next door, so he couldn’t leave to fetch anything, and there was no one available to send. Hannah was supposed to have been assisting her, but Maggie didn’t expect her after what she’d been through that morning.
It surprised her then to see Hannah show up with several boxes of baked goodies, escorted by her husband Sam in his wheelchair.
“What are you doing here?” Maggie asked. “You should be at home.”
Hannah said, “I have to have something to do or I’ll go nuts.”
Sam seemed determinedly cheerful, which was not at all like him. He hated crowds and Maggie knew this was not his idea of a fun day, at all. Maggie asked Sam if he wanted to work in the caravan.
“If you can get me up there,” he said
With Patrick’s help, they got Sam up into the caravan and onto a chair, where he handled the cash box while Hannah sold the baked goods.
Maggie left them to it and walked around the festival a bit, stretching her back, which was stiff from working in cramped quarters most of the day. The police had done a good job of hiding the crime scene. The two city fire trucks were parked in such a way that they blocked the area, and you could not see what was going on. Maggie glimpsed the back of Scott’s jacket through the gap between the trucks and decided to buy him and the team some hot coffee. She stopped at the nearest caravan and bought a dozen large coffees, which they placed in two cardboard carriers for her. Skip and Frank were grateful for the gesture, and took the carriers from Maggie, promising they would make sure Scott and the sheriff’s team got cups as well.
Maggie saw her sister-in-law Ava supervising the mitten fishing game, where little children “fished” with a piece of sticky hook-and-loop tape at the end of a string attached to a stick, trying to “catch” two mittens that matched in order to win a prize. It wasn’t a hard game, the little kids loved it, and Ava made sure everyone won something.
Ava was glad to see her, saying, “Could you run things for a minute? I have got to go to the bathroom.”
Maggie took over, and Ava was back in five minutes, thanking her for the break.
“I just cannot make myself use the porta-potties,” she told Maggie, “so I ran up to the bar.”
Ava asked her if she could sit with the kids that night, and Maggie said she could.
“I promised to help the guild ladies cook the bacon and sausages for the pancake breakfast in the morning, and we’ll be up at the community center until at least midnight.”
“I’ll be glad to do it,” said Maggie. “I’ll take them to the bonfire if they want to go.”
Maggie decided her mother and aunt could probably use a break at the bakery, so she headed back toward town. She met Caroline and Drew walking down Marigold Avenue toward the festival. Upon seeing Caroline dressed warmly in the clothing Maggie had lent her, Maggie felt a sudden immature urge to avoid her, but instead gave the pair a tight smile and said hello.
Caroline immediately ran up and hugged her, gushing, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
It was all Maggie could do not to push her away, but she stood still and made no effort to hug Caroline back. When Caroline let go and looked at her in concern Maggie stared her straight in the eye.
“I’ve been working for two days in a bakery that has my last name written on the outside of it; that shouldn’t be too hard to find, should it?”
Caroline just rattled on as if she hadn’t heard her, very much for Drew’s benefit, Maggie could tell.
“I was telling Drew how wonderful you and Hannah were, driving all the way up to Pittsburgh to get me so early in the morning, and then lending me these clothes,” she said. “It’s just so great to have such good friends!”
Drew had a goofy smile on his face, obviously entranced with Caroline.
“Did you find everything you needed at the store?” Maggie asked her pointedly.
“Oh yes!” Caroline enthused, “and Jeanette gave me the bill, which I will take care of just as soon as I get some U.S. currency.”
“The bank’s open until 6:00 p.m. on Fridays,” Maggie told her, pointing in the direction of the bank. “You still have time to get there before they close.”
“Oh no,” Caroline said. “I don’t want to think about that kind of stuff until next week. Right now I just want to rediscover Rose Hill, play in the snow, and have all my old friends around me.”
“And some new o
nes too, I guess,” Maggie said, watching Caroline snuggle up to Drew and nuzzle his neck. Drew looked drunk on her attentions. Maggie had seen that look on Caroline’s boyfriends’ faces before. She had also seen their devastated, tear-stained faces when Caroline discarded them just as suddenly as she picked them up.
‘He’s a big boy,’ Maggie thought. ‘He’ll have to look out for himself.’
“Hannah’s down at the bakery caravan, Patrick’s next door, and Ava is running the little kids’ games,” she told Caroline, “if you still want to help.”
“Sure,” Caroline said, without much enthusiasm. “We’ll stop by and see them.”
Maggie knew Caroline was not going to be any help to them this weekend. She just hoped that by offering her work every time she saw her, she would make sure Caroline avoided her.
“I’ll call you later!” Caroline said as they parted.
“I won’t hold my breath,” Maggie said as she walked away.
Back at the bakery, Bonnie and Alice looked worn out, and Mandy looked thrilled to see Maggie.
“Mandy and I can handle this,” Maggie told the older women.
After they left, Mandy and her son Tommy both breathed a sigh of relief.
“You know I love all y’all,” Mandy said, in her Chattanooga drawl, “but those old women were gettin’ sorta cranky.”
Maggie put on a Fitzpatrick Bakery apron and washed her hands.
“They’ve been here since 4:00 a.m.,” Maggie said. “I’m surprised they didn’t have you both in tears by now.”
Mandy showed Maggie where they were in preparation for the next day’s sales. She, Tommy, and Maggie worked flat out until 6:00 p.m., when Ava called to remind Maggie she was sitting with the kids that evening.
“I’m just now leaving,” Ava told her, “and they’ll be fine until you can get here. My place is full up with guests but I’ve got help.”
Mandy needed to get down to the Rose and Thorn caravan to work her evening shift. After a quick phone call from Maggie, and a generous bribe, two bookstore staff members agreed to cover the last couple hours at the bakery caravan, until it closed at 8:00, so Hannah and Sam could leave. Maggie called Hannah to let her know, and then she and Mandy filled a big box with bakery goods for the evening shift to take to the caravan.
Morning Glory Circle Page 11