A Killer Maize

by Paige Shelton

  Finally, I shook my head a little and said, “Boy, you just never know what’s going on down the road until travel down it and ask.”

  “I like that. True. Now, tell me about the farmers’ market idea.”

  I wasn’t totally unprepared.

  “Well, yes, I talked to Lucy briefly. So sorry for everything that happened at the fair.”

  “Yes. Dreadful set of circumstances this year. I’m the one who’s sorry, though.”

  I nodded. I had more questions along those lines, too, but I didn’t want to rush into them.

  Renard ordered us coffee and sweet rolls as I told him about the eventual success we Bailey’s vendors had had at the fair and how he should consider opening a market. I lied and told him that Allison would be happy to meet with him and give him some direction. Actually, she would, but I hadn’t asked her yet. I told him I was a self-appointed advocate for buying local products. I was, but that wasn’t exactly my true motivation today.

  He listened intently and then asked intelligent questions about location, electrical needs, potential profits for the market owners, et cetera. I answered most of the questions fairly well but had no problem suggesting he talk to Allison for those I was unsure about.

  “Well, I think it’s a great idea and might offer more employment for this area, too. I’m sure I’ll contact your sister. Thank you for bringing this to me,” Renard said when we’d covered most of the pertinent details.

  “You’re welcome.” I paused politely. “Uh, do you mind if I ask you some questions about your community?”

  “Shoot.”

  “The fair. Gosh, Renard, I don’t know how to ask this without insulting you.”

  “You’re wondering why we allowed it to even open, right?” Suddenly Renard’s dashing and gorgeous green eyes weren’t smiling.

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  He took a sip of his coffee and pushed a sweet roll crumb around on his plate with his fork.

  “It was a mistake to open it, but there was a reason, a good reason,” he finally said.

  “What was that?”

  Renard sighed. “I can’t tell you.”

  A chill zipped up my spine. Renard’s good looks and stunning eyes suddenly seemed a little more good-looking and stunning, but in an exaggerated and wicked way. The transformation from pleasant to alarming had happened in a blink. What was going on in this town?

  “Gypsy magic?” I said, but I swallowed quickly after I said the words.

  Renard glanced up from his crumb-covered plate. After what seemed like forever, he simply said, “No.”

  “Tell me about Lucy,” I said with far too much forced cheer. I sensed I was going to lose him if I continued down the gypsy-magic path.

  His smile returned, but the dimness stayed in his eyes. “Lucy’s amazing. She’s a godsend to me and my family.”

  “Did you work out of the trailer on the fairgrounds?”

  “No, never. That’s Lucy’s domain. Honestly, I didn’t even like to travel out there. The entire thing made me nervous.”

  I shook my head. “You’re so powerful. I really don’t understand why you allowed it to open.”

  “Again, there was a very good reason. Let me restate that: we thought there was a very good reason. Hindsight tells us it wasn’t such a good reason after all. If only hindsight could change things.”

  “There was a good reason to open an event with rides that seemed dangerous?”

  “Yes. Well, we didn’t think they were as dangerous as they turned out to be. There’s . . . well, I suppose I can tell you this. There’s an investigation into the rides. Sabotage is suspected. What I’m trying to say is that when we agreed to open the fair, the rides might not have been perfect, but they weren’t dangerous. We think someone messed with them.”

  “Would that person have killed Virgil?”

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “It does, except . . . why?” I said.

  “I do believe that’s the question everyone is asking themselves.”

  “Why do I think that the answer has something to do with why you opened the fair in the first place?”

  Renard’s eyes flashed. “You’re a smart woman, Becca. You might be right. Might be.”

  “Do you know Scott Triplett?”

  “Of course,” he said, but he cleared his throat as though he’d answered too quickly. “Yes, he had the shooting gallery at the fair.”

  “He and I used to be married.”

  “You’re that Becca?”

  “So you do know him better than just as the shooting gallery owner.” I smiled this time. It was fun to catch people trying to hide something.

  But Renard didn’t answer. He took a sip of his coffee and looked at his watch. He pulled some bills out of his wallet and set them on the counter, then he turned on the stool and stood.

  “Ms. Robins, it’s been nice meeting you. I’m now fully aware that you didn’t want to talk to me about setting up a farmers’ market, but I’m not sure I understand your curiosity. I suppose . . . well, no matter what, I’ve enjoyed talking to you.”

  “Thanks for your time.”

  Renard bit at his lip for a moment and then said, “Becca, we’re a very small community and we’re very much out in the boondocks, so to speak. We’re far away from what a lot of people consider civilization. Things might happen here that only happen in those sorts of out-of-the-way places. You might want to keep that in mind.”

  Was I being threatened? I didn’t like that idea at all. I sat up straighter and squinted at Renard, but I didn’t have anything else to say, for the moment at least.

  I watched him leave and then swiveled my stool back to the counter. I’d been in some scary situations, but never had I been told to leave town or else. I wasn’t totally sure that’s what had happened, but it certainly felt like it.

  I should have gotten in my truck and hightailed it out of Orderville, South Carolina. I should have gone home. In fact, I should have gone to Bailey’s and sold some jams, preserves, and syrups. I had plenty to do other than stick around a place that had been proven dangerous and where I wasn’t welcome.

  But, of course, I didn’t.

  Twenty

  Ward Hicken’s alfalfa farm was easy to find. I drove out the other end of town and came upon a huge farm with a convenient sign hung above a long gravel driveway: “Hicken & Sons Alfalfa.”

  I hadn’t planned on finding Ward Hicken; I’d hoped to just drive around a little more, see if I could better understand Orderville or uncover where Stephen King was hiding. But Ward’s farm was a lucky discovery, and visiting it gave me something substantial to do.

  Farming was a big part of my life, and I had a solid grasp on what it took to grow strawberries and pumpkins, but I wasn’t quite so familiar with other crops. Alfalfa, in particular, was one I knew very little about. It always seemed like a whole bunch of purple-flowered groundcover. I had learned that alfalfa was a feed crop and not directly a part of our dinner tables, but that was about it.

  Ward’s farm was enormous, stretching out on one side of the road as far as the eye could see. But his house was surprisingly small for such expansive surroundings. This farm deserved a huge mansion with pillars and perhaps a carriage or two out front, but disappointingly, there was only a one-story clapboard with chipped paint and a shutter missing from one of its two front windows. A huge and much more well-maintained whitewashed barn loomed behind the house, further dwarfing the smaller structure.

  I pulled into the long gravel driveway, planning to park at the end right next to the house, but something flashed in my vision and caused me to step on the brakes.

  At first, I thought a black ball had rolled across the driveway. I waited, foot still on the brake, expecting a child to come chasing after it
.

  No child appeared, so I put the truck in Park, got out, and walked around to the front. On the ground, directly in front of one of the tires, was a small black kitten. It looked up at me, all big green eyes and wobbly legs, and gave one short “meow.”

  “Hello, there,” I said as I reached for it. “Where is your mama? You shouldn’t be roaming around out here all alone.”

  It had been some time since I’d picked up a kitten. I’d held a few in my day, but I was more experienced with the full-grown variety. And I hadn’t had a cat myself in a long time.

  As I put my hand around the creature that was as small as stick of butter with legs, it ferociously dug its tiny lethal claws into my skin.

  “Uh, oh, that hurts,” I said, but I didn’t dare let go. I didn’t remember if kittens could move quickly, and I didn’t want it to run away.

  “Put her to your chest,” someone called from the open front door.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Hold her to your chest, up by your neck where it’s warm. You’re scaring her the way you’re holding her. She thinks you’re going to drop her. She’ll feel secure up close to you.”

  “I won’t drop her.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that that’s what she thinks is going to happen. Put her to your chest.” Ward had come out of the house now and stood with his hands on his hips.

  I pulled the mewing kitten to my chest and said, “There, is that better? Ouch.”

  The creature had turned and dug the claws from all four of its miniscule feet into my chest. Fortunately, my shirt helped mute the pain from her back claws, but her front claws had landed on exposed skin, piercing me like two little knives.

  I tried to pull her away, but using some magic I didn’t know existed, the kitten dug in more. She was close to becoming a permanent fixture.

  “Uh,” I said.

  “There, that’s better,” Ward said.

  “For her maybe,” I said quietly.

  “Now, just keep her there and come on in.”

  With the black furry alien clinging to my chest and neck, I made my way into Ward’s small house.

  The inside was nice, not elegant or modern, but clean and kind of sparse. The TV room was off the small entryway, and to my right, a door, slightly ajar, led to a bedroom. Ward pulled the door closed after I walked by, but I’d already noticed that the bed was made.

  “Though you’re always welcome, can’t say I don’t wonder what you’re doing here, Becca,” Ward said as he signaled that I should sit on a clean but vintage 1970s beige couch. After the kitten and I took a seat, Ward found one in the matching chair with wide armrests.

  “Well,” I began as I grabbed the kitten and pulled, to no avail. I looked at Ward for help, but he clearly didn’t think he needed to assist me. Shrugging internally, I soldiered on. “I’m not totally sure. I was just driving by and thought I’d stop and see if you’d be willing to tell me why your town is kind of creepy.” The claws in my chest had given me the desire to be blunt, to not beat around any bush or lie. That, plus the veiled threat from Renard Bellings had set me off and the rebel in me wanted to tell the truth just to see what reaction I’d get.

  “Creepy?” Ward said after a moment, though he didn’t sound offended.

  “Yeah, what’s going on around here?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. You seem upset. Can I get you some lemonade or something?”

  “No thanks,” I said just as the kitten seemed to relax into the spot right above the collar of my shirt. She still had her claws in me, but at least she’d withdrawn them from the middle of my lungs.

  “Could you take the kitten?” I asked.

  Ward thought a moment. “I think it’s best if she stays there. She’s been dumped by her mama. I’ve been taking care of her, but she keeps finding a way to escape. She’s calm and not trying to run away. She seems pretty happy. If you don’t mind, just keep holding her. She’ll start purring any second.”

  “Her mother abandoned her?” I said.

  “Yeah, it happens. She’ll be fine. I’m taking good care of her, but she’s definitely an escape artist, one of the best I’ve ever seen. My guess is that Mama didn’t have the patience to keep rounding her up, so she let her go on her way.”

  The kitten suddenly relaxed a little more. She wasn’t purring yet, but she was becoming more tolerable.

  “What’d you do to yourself?” Ward pointed to his own chin.

  I realized then that I hadn’t seen him at the fair on Sunday, when everyone else had commented about me needing stitches.

  “I fell and hit a table. Where were you on Sunday? I looked for you.” I was counting on the fact that he, indeed, hadn’t been at the fair.

  He shrugged. “Too much to do around here.”

  “What do you make of the breaking roller coaster tracks?”

  He shrugged yet again. “It happens.”

  “Not really, not much in fact.”

  “But it does. Look, Becca, I’m sorry if the events at our fair seem creepy to you—I guess they are to me, too. But I’ve got the history.” He tapped at the side of his head. “I’ve got the memories of what the Swayton County Fair used to be. They’re good memories.”

  “I don’t get it, then. Why was it allowed to fall apart?”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “But it did.”

  “It wasn’t allowed to, though. It just happened.” He rubbed his chin and squinted at me. “The fair wasn’t huge. We haven’t had big crowds in years. Virgil’s death brought a new wave of interest, but if that hadn’t happened, the fair might have gone on and finished without a hitch.”

  “The tracks were in bad shape.”

  “Maybe that was because there was such a crowd. The coaster got a workout like it hadn’t gotten in a long time. It was bad, but it was bad because of circumstances that weren’t necessarily foreseeable. And now it’s shut down.”

  I wanted to point out that I didn’t think the circumstances had been that unforeseeable, but I could tell Ward wasn’t buying into whatever conspiracy I was trying to vocalize. If I continued to press him on the topic, we’d only end up talking in circles.

  I didn’t realize that I’d started to pet the kitten. I noticed it when her tiny tail swung up and grazed my chin, the side without the butterfly bandage. The creature had started to purr, but just as I was beginning to enjoy the sensation, she started kneading into my chest. I was certain she was drawing blood.

  “The night of the poker game you all mentioned how important the fair was because it brought the community together.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And that’s really true?”

  “Yes, completely true. It’s a way to see our closest and yet geographically distant neighbors.”

  “Did the Bellingses make all the money from the fair?”

  Ward laughed. “Oh, sorry, but that is funny. No one really made any money. I know the Bellingses liked to let people come in with food trailers and such and those people made money, but most of us were volunteers.”

  “Wait, Virgil was a volunteer?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “How did that man pay his bills? He had odd jobs and then worked as a volunteer at the fair?”

  “I suppose, but he did fine with his military retirement pay. His house was paid for. He inherited it from his aunt some twenty years ago, remember.”

  “Did you know his aunt?”

  “Sure. Ethel Jackson.”

  “Did she mention Virgil?”

  “Well, before she died I didn’t know much about her, and then Virgil just showed up one day.”

  “What about the rest of her family?”

  Ward rubbed at his chin again. “She didn’t have any that I
recall.”

  “Hmm,” I said, now afraid to move even a little bit. The stiller I stayed, the less kneading occurred.

  “I see where you’re going. You want to know if anyone knew of Virgil before he came and claimed that Ethel was his aunt. I don’t know. But he couldn’t have just taken over her house. Someone would have stopped that from happening.”

  “I suppose,” I said, but I wondered. “Do you know where Virgil lived before he came to Orderville?”

  “Of course . . . he moved here from . . . well, I’ll be, I don’t remember offhand.”

  I looked at him, and when he looked back at me, I felt like I might have actually said something that made him begin to wonder, too. It was strange that he didn’t know where Virgil came from, or so I thought.

  “You know, Virgil did move here twenty years ago. He might have told me way back when and I’ve just forgotten.”

  So much for getting him to think deeper. I’d probably overdone it when I mentioned that I thought Orderville was creepy. Most people didn’t like to hear their hometown described in such a way. But since I didn’t have anything to lose really, I tried another route.

  “What about Jerry, the guy who sold the corn dogs?”

  “He came from California, that I know.” Ward was pleased with himself. “He hasn’t been here all that long. He only moved here six months or so ago.”

  “Right, but what do you think of him?”

  “I guess I don’t think of him at all. He’s nice enough, I suppose. He’s never asked me for a job, but I know he’s asked plenty of other people.”

  “I’m trying to get him a spot at the farmers’ market where I work. We could use a corn-dog trailer, at least for a little while to see if there’s a market or not.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Why would Dianna Kivitt tell me to stay away from him? She seems afraid of him,” I said.

  I hadn’t thought much about sharing what Dianna had said and done. If she knew I’d just told Ward about her warning, she might be angry, but again, I didn’t feel like I had anything to lose.