“A double-cassette time-lapsed one!” he said with implied obviousness. “Look, you don’t need to understand! We just need to move!”
“All right!” I shouted back. “Let’s go then!”
We both jogged a couple hundred feet up the slanted Main Street into town before we slowed to a walk. I obviously needed to get back into running … and Freddie needed to start.
I took a moment to pant before I said, “What are the odds it would have caught anything, though?”
“Did you not hear me?” Freddie gasped. “It’s on that old pole right on the edge of the fairgrounds!” He jogged a few more feet before slowing to a walk again. “It’s the best shot we have. Besides, it’s not like Mr. Masterson was a fast walker. We should be able to see at least a little something of what he was doing before the ride … who he was with … if he was eating or drinking anything.”
My heart pounded even harder in my chest at all that could mean. “I can’t believe you only thought of this now!” I upped my speed-walking pace.
“Hey, I didn’t know we were dealing with a murder until just a few hours ago! Then there was the whole being mad at you. And the beer,” Freddie added, huffing and puffing.
I stopped dead in my tracks when another thought hit me. “I also can’t believe Grady hasn’t thought of this. Was he at the meeting?”
“Of course,” Freddie said, waving me forward. “I’m sure he knows. Then again, it was a pretty wild meeting.”
“This is going to be another one of those things that makes him look bad, and you look good, isn’t it?”
“We don’t have time to worry about your boyfriend’s self-esteem right now!” Freddie shouted as best he could through his panting. “We’ll figure that out once we have the tapes.”
I jogged to catch up with him.
“Besides, how bad do you think it’s going to look when everybody else figures out that there was a video of Mr. Masterson’s killer and all the law enforcement figures in town let it get taped over?”
“Good point.”
Finally, we made it to the crest of the small slope.
“Come on,” Freddie said, waving me over to a heavy steel fence the carnival had put in place. He dropped his chest and belly onto the railing, swung one leg up … and fell over to the other side, landing hard on his back.
“Ow!” he yelled, rolling in the dirt.
“Wait,” I said, suddenly stopping in place. “We’re just breaking into the fair?”
“Um, I don’t see an open ticket booth, do you?” He threw his hands into the air, looking like a flipped turtle. “Get in here.”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. Just then a swirl of dried leaves skittered across the pavement by my feet.
“Thirty-six hours, Erica!” Freddie yelled, getting to his feet. “What time is it now?”
“Fine! You’re right.” If my math was correct—which was always questionable—we had only minutes left to lose. I hustled over to the fence and tried Freddie’s move to get over … which ended just as badly. “But so help me,” I said, pushing myself to my feet, “if any clowns jump out at us or … or your pumpkin people, you’re handling it.”
Freddie’s face dropped as his eyes darted about.
“Freddie?”
“That was a really terrible thing to say.” He met my eye. “Why? Why would you say that?”
“Wow, you might need some therapy for your trauma,” I said, yanking his arm. “But not now! We’ve got to go!”
We started running again toward the foul line pole sticking up in the distance. Once we got past the midway, we had to turn into the concessions area. All the little booths cut the path into what felt like a maze, forcing Freddie and me to slow to a fast walk.
“This wind is driving me nuts,” I said, darting a look behind. “Someone could be sneaking up on us, and we’d never hear them coming.”
Freddie nodded. “Or they could be hiding in one of these tents.”
Just then a flap of canvas covering a booth snapped.
We both jumped and clutched each other’s arms.
“Come on,” Freddie said, pulling my elbow. “We just need to get through this cluster, and we’re there.”
We hurried toward the opening that led to the field. The old baseball diamond had been left open for the smash-up derby. Even though it was dark, I could see the wooden pole with the bump at the top that had to be the camera.
“Quick. Let’s go.” I had only jogged a few steps before I realized that Freddie wasn’t with me. “What are you waiting for? Come on.”
Freddie’s body was turned in the opposite direction, toward the cluster of RVs for the carnival workers.
“What are you doing?”
Freddie still didn’t answer, but he was rolling his shoulders.
“What is your deal?” I asked, running over to him.
Just as I made it to his side, I heard him mutter, “And here I thought all the carnies would be tucked snug in their beds.”
I focused my gaze where Freddie was looking between the vehicles. “So they’re having a little bonfire. What’s the big deal? Come on.”
“What’s the big deal? What’s the big deal?” Freddie’s voice rose into the night wind. “Don’t you think it’s a little windy for a fire, Erica?”
“That’s it,” I said sharply. “You can’t drink either anymore. Not when we’re on the job.”
Freddie turned and smiled. “I got tingles when you said that just now.” Then he snapped his attention back to the bonfire.
“Seriously, we don’t have time for this. I’m sure they need a little stress relief after dealing with people … and probably vomit all day. And while we’re on the subject, I don’t think you can call them carnies. It’s—”
Freddie whipped a finger at my face. “Don’t you politically correct me!”
“No booze. No more. Now come on.”
Freddie turned slowly in my direction, eyes trailing behind. “You’re right. We need to—” Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks and pulled back again toward the RVs.
“Freddie!” I shouted after him. “What is your problem now?” I looked back over to the group of people gathered by the fire … and I saw him. “Oh Freddie, no,” I pleaded. I knew it was a lost cause, though, because there standing by the fire, guitar in hand, foot on a cooler, was Rex, the man with the handlebar mustache from the water gun game.
“You go.” Freddie pressed a set of keys into my palm. “Run. I’ve got to bust someone for an illegal bonfire.”
“Freddie, no. I can’t let you go over there alone.”
“We don’t have time to argue.”
I hopped angrily on the spot for a few times. “This is nuts! Leave it. We have to—”
“Tick-tock, Erica,” he said, hiking up his pants. “I would hurry. That VCR could be taping over Mr. Masterson’s murderer as we speak.”
“Gah! Don’t get killed!” I then spun and ran for the box, yelling behind me, “This may be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, Freddie.”
It was hard to hear what he said in return, but if I had to guess, it was something about the curse of the lawman.
Light was coming from weird angles—streetlamps, the RVs, not-too-distant houses—so it was hard to see the grass in front of me. I moved as quickly as I could without risking an ankle break on a discarded beer can. When I finally made it over to the pole, I crouched to look at the old wooden cupboard with rusted padlock anchored at the bottom.
I fumbled through the keys Freddie had given me, trying to find one even close to the size I needed for the lock. The dark wasn’t helping much. Neither was the wind. It was starting to freak me out again. I glanced up from the lock to make sure I was alone, then got right back to fiddling.
A moment later I found the right key and snapped it into place, but when I tried to turn it, the tumblers wouldn’t budge. “Come on. Come on,” I muttered. I jiggled the key around some more. I didn’t want to snap off t
he body in the lock. It needed just an ounce more of press—
Click!
“Yes!” I lifted the padlock off and threw it on top of the box.
I dropped to my knees to get a better look at what was inside. Well, would you look at that. Perhaps I didn’t give Freddie enough credit—or Coach Waters. Someone had jerry-rigged a Tupperware container to protect the VCR from the elements. I snapped the lid off. The glowing numbers of the timer were counting up. That was good. At least it was working. I scanned the front but couldn’t read anything in the dark, so I began hitting random buttons around where I thought the eject control might be. A second later the machine made a clunk, then a whine, then spit a cassette out … and then another.
I inhaled deeply, looking at the tapes in my hand, sending out a mental prayer to the powers that be.
I slipped the cassettes into the inner pocket of the coat I had borrowed from Freddie. Men’s jackets had way better pockets then women’s. I closed the box’s doors and slipped the lock back in place. I almost had it snapped shut when—
“Erica?”
“Wah!” I jumped up and spun in the air so quickly I don’t think my feet touched the ground. “Matthew?”
Chapter Seventeen
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out at the exact moment he asked, “You okay?”
We both chuckled awkwardly. He then pushed his hair back from his forehead. “I was just going for a run. Couldn’t sleep.”
I eyed Matthew’s outfit. He was wearing black running tights with a matching long-sleeved running shirt. Black, but with reflective stripes at the arms and around the thighs. Definitely running clothes. I couldn’t help but notice those stripes ran exactly in the best places to accent his muscles. Those designers sure knew what they were doing. They should maybe get an award—Focus, Erica. “You ran all the way from your place to town? On a night like this?”
“Yeah. I decided to take a shortcut across the fairgrounds. I run at least a few days a week. Good stress relief.” He shook his head. “Hobby, I guess.”
Huh, a really sweaty hobby that somehow managed to look good on him. When I ran, I looked like one of those jowly dogs with the loose facial skin flapping everywhere, but Matthew looked like—looked like nothing! Because it was a totally inappropriate line of thinking for me to take! What was going on with me? I had way too much on my mind to be thinking about what Matthew looked like when he ran. And I had way too much Grady in my life to be thinking anything about Matthew at all. It was just … selfish.
“So,” he said, taking a look up the pole before leaning slightly to the side to see the box behind me. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh,” I said, looking down at my feet. What the hell was I doing here? It didn’t seem right to say, Oh I don’t know. Just looking for evidence to free my pseudo-aunt who might have already been arrested for your father’s murder. “I thought … it was a rabbit hutch?” I inwardly groaned. I was a terrible liar.
“Is that a VCR?” Matthew stepped back to get a better look up the pole. “And a camera?” His eyes dropped back down to mine. He paused a moment then said, “You were looking for evidence to clear Tweety.”
“I’m sorry, Matthew. I—”
He halfheartedly raised one hand. “You don’t need to explain. This is a really complicated situation for a lot of us.” He moved forward and bent in front of the box. He slipped the lock off. He then looked inside and fiddled with the same buttons I had before saying, “No tape.”
He craned his head to look up at me, causing a damp lock of hair to fall back on his forehead … a damp lock of hair that I suddenly had the insane urge to brush back … but of course I couldn’t, and not because of Grady this time, but because my right hand was busy holding steady my jacket full of tape!
“I know,” I said quickly. “I thought maybe—”
“Maybe the police already have it,” he said, straightening up.
I blinked a few times then nodded before wrapping my free hand across my guilty, guilty arm, still under the jacket making sure the tapes weren’t sliding around. Hopefully I just looked like I was staying warm. “Totally. Yeah.”
“That would be something at least.” He looked up at the now starry sky. A moment passed before he said, “Erica, I’m not sure if I should ask you this, but…”
“Anything. Ask me anything,” I said quickly. Anything to make me feel less like the horrible person I knew I was. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Matthew to see the tape—or even give the tape over to Grady—but as wrong as it was, I wanted to watch it first. If it was somehow incriminating, I’d turn it over to my uncle and let him decide how to handle it.
“You know Tweety as well as anyone on this island,” Matthew said. “Do you really think she is capable of murder?”
“No,” I said, using my free hand to push back the hair whipping around my face. “I don’t.”
He nodded.
“Look Matthew, she’s far from perfect. And I can’t say with any certainty that she didn’t have something going on with your father, but she’s not some calculated killer. I know people like Marg Johnson are talking—”
“Good ol’ Otter Lake.”
“But here’s the thing. The twins, they’re hot-blooded animals.” I moved to touch his arm but caught myself before I actually made contact. “If Tweety was angry enough to kill someone,” I said, pausing to look back toward town, “everyone would know it.”
He nodded and gave me a sad smile.
“I’m really sorry you’re going through this.”
“I’m sorry for you too.”
I jerked a little at that.
He cleared his throat. “I mean, I’m sorry for what your family is going through. I know that this can’t be easy.”
“Please. Don’t worry about us. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose your father in this way.”
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “Not really how I expected him to go.”
I bit my lip, debating whether or not I should ask the next question. “Matthew?” I hated myself, but it was for Tweety. “I can’t believe I’m going to ask this, but—”
“Go for it,” he said. “Believe me, after all the questions Grady’s asked us, I’m prepared for just about anything.”
I laughed slightly, but it didn’t feel very happy. “Is there anyone else you can think of who would want your father dead?”
He scoffed and kicked at the grass with his toe. “You mean besides my mother?”
I felt my eyes widen as Matthew turned to look at something behind me. “What’s going on over there?”
I whipped my head around.
Freddie!
The quiet little bonfire I had seen earlier had grown to near-epic proportions, flames clawing their way up to the sky—high enough that we could see it over the tops of the RVs.
I spun on my heel. “I gotta go.”
“Where are you going? Are you going to warn them about the wind?”
I didn’t have time to answer him. I took off in a sprint.
“Freddie!” I called out. “Hang on! I’m coming!”
I didn’t know if he could hear me. The wind had gusted and whipped the words right from my mouth.
I made it to the first break between RVs, when I heard something strange coming from the direction of the fire. It sounded like … like a guitar and … singing.
“Erica?” Matthew asked, jogging to my side. “What’s going on?”
I turned the corner of the RV then stopped dead.
I had half expected to see Freddie on a spit … but there at the campfire—blazing a little less furiously now—stood Freddie, guitar in hand, leading a bunch of people in song.
I took a few more steps forward, enough that Freddie saw me.
“Erica!” he shouted, letting the guitar swing from his hands by the strap around his neck. “Come on! Bucket chicken!”
Chapter Eighteen
“Hey everybody,” Freddie shouted. “This is
my friend Erica. Actually, not just friend, soon-to-be partner. She just needs to get over this really weird obsession she has with having a normal job with normal people.”
A few individuals raised their beer cans at me, including Freddie, who had bent over to pick his up. Great. Just what this situation needed. More beer.
“And this,” Freddie announced, swinging his beer can over, “is the ever-gorgeous Matthew Masterson.” He briefly flashed me some questioning uh-oh eyes before adding, “Somebody get that man a beer. He could use it.”
I was fully expecting Matthew to decline, but instead he looked over at me and shrugged before reaching for the beer a man sitting on a cooler was holding out to him.
“Um, Freddie,” I called out. “It’s kind of late. Don’t you think we should be go—”
“Boo,” someone shouted, rapidly joined by about ten other people.
Freddie spread his hands out wide. “You heard the people. Can’t disappoint my fans!” He harshly strummed a chord on his guitar. “Now who wants to rock?”
The small crowd cheered.
A moment later Rex, the man with the handlebar mustache, walked over to me holding out a beer. “You want one?”
A waved my free hand out in front of me. “Can’t. I’m boating.” My eyes darted back to Freddie. “Uh, everything cool between you two? It’s Rex, right?”
He nodded. “It was the weirdest damn thing,” he said, shaking his head. “Your friend came busting in here shouting something about taking us all in, and all I did was hold up some chicken saying he should chill out, and then he was all, I love you man … and here we are.”
I nodded.
“Erica, come on,” Freddie shouted, waving a hand at me. “We’re just about to do another round.”
Matthew scooted over on the giant cooler he was now sitting on and patted the spot beside him.
Oh boy.
I spent the next hour or so trying to make up excuses for why we needed to leave without tipping Matthew off—and trying to ignore the signals my body was sending me thanks to sitting so close to him. Unfortunately, Freddie wasn’t having any of it. Not while there was chicken, and strangely enough there was a lot of chicken. After a while I had to admit it was actually kind of fun … well, it would have been if I hadn’t been feeling so guilty.
Pumpkin Picking with Murder Page 11