Food Fair Frenzy

by Abby L. Vandiver

  And each time Mac leaned forward and scanned the road ahead for Robert Bernard. “Not yet,” Mac patiently replied.

  “You want my glasses?” She reached up to pull hers off. “So you can be sure to spot him.”

  “No!” I said. “Don’t take them off!”

  “I don’t need them, Vivee,” Mac assured her.

  I didn’t know how he could stay so calm.

  “Miss Vivee,” I couldn’t keep my voice at a normal level. “Please keep your glasses. You need them to see,” I said, fear eking out in every word.

  I don’t know why I thought her wearing her glasses would make a difference in her driving. She was terrible at it. Right now, I just wanted to put a chokehold on whoever renewed her driver’s license. I took in a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves.

  Other cars were passing us, blowing their horns. We were moving, as Miss Vivee would say, slower than molasses in January. I didn’t know how we’d ever catch anyone. Plus, Miss Vivee had no sense of gage for the pedals. She’d hit the brake too hard and pitch us forward, or press down on the gas, and thrust us back in our seats. The whole time not driving over 20mph. I was getting motion sickness, and I knew I’d have whiplash before it was all over.

  “There he is,” Mac said and pointed to a Mars red Mercedes SLC Roadster convertible stopped at a traffic light. “Hurry Vivee, make the light, he’s turning the corner.”

  “Oh no! Miss Vivee,” I said. “You can’t follow that car.”

  “My car can keep up with any car on the road,” Miss Vivee said proudly.

  Not with you driving it!

  She hit the gas, and did a hard turn, turning so deeply that she barely missed running up on the curb. I slid to the other side of the car and hit it with a thud!

  “You can keep up with it, Vivee.” Mac smiled at her. “Good job.”

  Miss Vivee pressed on the gas, and at the same time took her eye off the road to smile at Mac.

  “Watch it, Vivee!” Mac cautioned. She was barreling into the back of the car in front of us. She hit the brakes like she was stomping out a fire, and I let out a yelp.

  “For cryin’ out loud,” Miss Vivee said and glanced in her rearview mirror at me. “If you don’t stop all that ruckus back there, you’re going to make me cause a wreck.”

  Lord give me strength.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I wanted to get on my knees and kiss the ground.

  Robert Bernard had evidently arrived at his destination and parked his car in front of what appeared to be a government building, making Miss Vivee finally stop the car. We had probably gone no more than six or seven miles from the Walmart we had visited, although the ride seemed so much longer to me.

  “Okay,” Miss Vivee said opening the car door, the car still running.

  “What are you doing, Miss Vivee?” I shrieked, my voice and legs shaky.

  “I want you to park it,” she said. “I’m not good at parallel parking.”

  No kidding.

  “Well, you just can’t stop in the middle of the street and get out.” She was in one of the two driving lanes. I turned around and looked out the back window. Cars were started to pile up behind us.

  “Well, you can’t park it if I keep driving it,” she said and stepped out of the car paying no never mind to me or the oncoming traffic. “C’mon, Mac. Let’s see what this man is up to.”

  “Are you going to wait until I park the car?” I asked and climbed out the backseat.

  “Do you want us to lose him after I followed him all the way here?” she said. “You know following behind that little red racing car of his was no easy feat.”

  You’re telling me.

  “I’d hate for all my hard work to go for naught,” she added.

  “Fine,” I found myself saying again. “I’ll park and you go and find your murder suspect. One, I might add, who has given you no reason to think he’s done anything murderous.”

  “He’s in my notebook. That’s all the reason I need.”

  I rolled my eyes. He was only on her list because she wrote his name there. I didn’t care what Gavin Tanner said, there was nothing making me think he had killed Jack Wagner. He’d have to be pretty bold to still come and see Widow Wagner if he had.

  I eased behind the driver’s seat, closed my eyes and took in a breath. I opened them and stared at the dashboard. I needed to figure some way to disable the car after today so what just happened would never happen again.

  Maybe I could set it afire, I thought as I pulled off.

  I circled around the block amid lots of traffic and lights, and tried to find a spot in the parking lot next to the building once I made it back around. Nothing available. So, I drove back out onto the street and pulled into a spot right in front of the building in almost the same spot where I’d dropped them off. Robert Bernard’s red car was nowhere in sight and neither were Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Clyde.

  Oh crap.

  It was probably karma that I was having such a wild day with Miss Vivee. I had insisted that she get those glasses when she couldn’t have cared less about them.

  I parked the car and got out. I needed to find where they’d gone. And knowing Miss Vivee, the quicker I found out where they were, the better for everyone concerned. As I walked briskly to the door, I figured they couldn’t have gotten too far because driving or walking, they didn’t move fast.

  The brown brick building that I’d parked in front of was the John H. Ruffin, Jr. Courthouse. I passed under the massive ivory-colored columns and in through the glass doors.

  Great. Right into the den of the law. I’d never have enough money to bail Miss Vivee out for all her criminal offenses.

  When I got inside, and made it through the metal detector, Miss Vivee was standing on the other side, waving me to hurry in.

  “What took you so long?” she asked pulling me in close.

  “We’re in the middle of downtown. It’s a lot of traffic out there and no place to park.”

  “Phooey,” she said. “I could have had it parked in a jiffy if I’d had my parking glasses.”

  Parking glasses?

  “I had to send Mac to follow that Robert Bernard so we could see what he was up to because he would’ve recognized me,” Miss Vivee continued. “I wish I had thought to bring a disguise.”

  How she thought she could masquerade as anything other than the five-foot-nothing, ninety-something, nosey Nelly that she was, was a mystery to me.

  “Why do we even care what he’s doing here, Miss Vivee?”

  “Because he’s up to something,” she said.

  “Yeah. Probably minding his own business,” I said and sighed. “Where did they go?” I asked. “Because Robert Bernard’s car isn’t outside anymore. Mac didn’t leave with him, did he?”

  Miss Vivee clicked her teeth. “Of course not.”

  I had to ask because it was no telling with them what was going on.

  “So where is Mac, then?” I turned around to look for him.

  “He had to go to the little boy’s room. He’ll be right out.”

  I took in a breath. “So why are you hurrying me along?”

  “Mac told me that when he followed Robert Bernard he saw him go into Probate Court.”

  Was that supposed to be an answer to my question?

  “O-kaaay.” I said, not sure if I should attach some significance to what she said. “And what did he do there?”

  “I don’t know,” she said and flailed her arms. “Mac’s bladder couldn’t hold out long enough for him to tell me.”

  “Well there he is now.” I pointed. “He can tell us.”

  “Mac!” Miss Vivee called as if he hadn’t seen us. She motioned him to move a little quicker. He tried but his limp slowed him down. I shook my head. “What did you see,” she whispered to him.

  “He looked at a file.”

  “Do you know which one?” she asked.

  “No, but he had to sign it out. I figured we could check the
ledger.”

  “Oh my Lord,” I said. “Are we really going to check on a file he looked at? What are the odds that it has to do with anything we know something about?”

  “You can come with us, or you can wait in the car,” Miss Vivee said. “But I’m going to look at that file.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  When we got to the probate office there was a big opening in the far wall with a sign over it that said File Room. A counter was fitted in the opening, and behind it was a room filled with files, and sitting behind a desk, I guessed, the file attendant. He had thin dark brown hair and his face was round and flushed. His blue and gold stripped tie fit loosely around his neck, and he had flecks of the powdered donut he was eating all over it and his mouth.

  “That’s what he signed,” Mac said and pointed to an 11x14 card stock sign-in sheet with lines on it filled with writing. It sat on the marble-like counter. I pulled it close to me and looked at it. Miss Vivee saddled up next to me, put on her glasses she’d been holding in her hand, and perused the sheet.

  “If you want a file you have to sign it out,” File Attendant guy told us in between bites of his donut.

  “We want a file,” Miss Vivee said, her voice exuding confidence, but I knew she didn’t know what she was asking for.

  The man stuffed the rest of his powdery pastry in his mouth, licked his fingers and then wiped them on a napkin. He got up from his seat and wobbled over to us, the waist of his navy dress pants under his ginormous stomach, and the button on his light blue shirt pulling apart.

  Miss Vivee ran her finger down the list and stopped on “Robert Bernard.” She pointed to his name and I followed with my finger across the sheet to the “Case No.” column. He had checked out file 2016 EST 102546. Whatever that meant.

  “We want this one,” Miss Vivee said pushing my finger out the way.

  “You have to sign for it,” the File Attendant and I said at the same time.

  I picked up the pen that had long silver chain hooked to one end and attached to the wall at the other. But before I could write, Miss Vivee leaned over to me and said, “Put Mac’s name on there.”

  I looked at her questioningly. She frowned in response. “Well, I don’t want anyone to know I did it,” she said.

  I shook my head and wrote “Dr. Macomber Whitson,” on the ledger. It asked for the time, so I glanced up at the clock on the wall. 10:30.

  Still early, I thought. Plenty of time left for Miss Vivee to get us into some kind of trouble.

  I put the time down and copied the case number off the line with Robert Bernard’s name. Once done, I pushed the clipboard toward the File Attendant who was waiting patiently by, still chewing on the mouthful he had stored in his cheek.

  File Attendant guy turned the ledger around to face him and said, “102546.” He looked at us. “Pretty popular file today.”

  “What do you mean?” Mac asked.

  “I had two other people come in this morning to look at this file. One just left.” He went over to his desk and pulled a brown folder from his wire mesh file holder. “I hadn’t even had the chance to put it back yet.”

  “Do tell?” Miss Vivee said and reached for the folder.

  “You can take it out if you need to make copies. Copy counter is down the hallway. It’s ten cents a page. And they’re tables over there,” he pointed through an archway into a smaller room that annexed the one we were in. “If you need to sit down and read through it.” He looked at Mac and Miss Vivee.

  “Thank you,” Miss Vivee said taking her glassed off, she smiled sweetly.

  I knew it was all fake.

  We went to the next room. It was small and had several long wooden with wood chairs placed around them. Mac and Miss Vivee picked a table and sat on one side of it and I went around to the other side. She held the folder in her lap and placed her purse on the table and started digging down it.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t ask who the other person was that looked at the folder,” I said to Miss Vivee. I pulled out a chair and sat in it.

  “Didn’t have to,” she said. She took out her “Suspects” notebook, and her No. 2 pencil. She flipped open the pad, finding a clean sheet she starting writing across the page. “They had to sign it out,” she said as she wrote. “So, I looked at the ledger. It was checked out at eight-thirty this morning by ‘Heritage Consultants.’” She tucked her notebook back into her purse and put her glasses on. She picked up the folder. “Well, looka here.” She smiled and slid the folder across the table to me.

  The brown, innocuous folder marked 2016 EST 102546 was in fact, the file for the Estate of Jackson Wagner.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Filled with paperwork, that included a will, a motion to contest the will, and an application to administer the estate, the contents of the file folder that Robert Bernard has checked were nothing more to me, than a bunch of legalese. But the one thing we all understand was that Miss Vivee’s suspicious land developer was interested in what Jack Wagner had left behind. And that’s all Miss Vivee needed to know.

  “See. I told you,” she said with a big smile on her face. “He is up to something.”

  “Doesn’t mean he killed him,” I said.

  “And it doesn’t mean he didn’t,” Miss Vivee said she picked through the papers in the folder.”And why is someone contesting the will?” She lifted the stapled pages from the folder and stared at it.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess they didn’t like what was in it.”

  “Well of course they didn’t, I know that. But what didn’t they like?” Miss Vivee said as she flipped through the pages and then pushed it over to me. “Here. Tell me what it says.”

  I stared at it too. I didn’t know what all that stuff meant.

  “We’d need a lawyer to understand what’s in this folder,” Mac offered. “Lawyer speak always looks a lot of mumble jumbo to people who aren’t trained in the field.”

  “Oh phooey,” Miss Vivee said. “It couldn’t be that hard to understand.” She gave me the rest of the pile of papers from the file. “See if you can make heads or tails of it.”

  I whipped out my phone. “No need to,” I said. “My uncle and my brother are lawyers. I’m going to email my brother, Micah, and attach copies.”

  “He’ll be able to understand it?” Miss Vivee asked.

  I didn’t bother to answer. If he couldn’t my parents would be very upset with all the money they dished out for that law degree of his. I started taking pictures with the camera on my phone and sending them to Micah.

  “Okay,” I said, clicking send on the last email. “He should get back with me in a bit.” I put my phone in my pocket. “So what now?” I asked. “We ready to head back to Yasamee?

  “No,” Miss Vivee said, and it looked to me like she rolled her eyes. “We go and visit Heritage Consultants.”

  “What? Why?” I asked.

  I could feel lies and trouble a-brewing.

  “To see what their connection is to Jack Wagner.”

  “And how do you plan on doing that?” I asked, although I was sure I’d regret the answer.

  She racked the file folders contents back towards her, hit the ends of them on the table and put them neatly back inside. “We have to follow the clues.”

  “Okay.” I stood up. No use in arguing. I’d go along, and brace myself for the worse. But what I wanted to tell her was that the only clue I knew we had for sure was the one recited in the note. But, I also knew she’d all but dismissed that poem after she decided none of the flowers in it had killed Jack Wagner, even if the flower names did spell the murder weapon.

  I looked at the two of them. “Let’s go.” I reached across the table and picked up the folder. I headed back over to the File Room counter to return it, and spoke to them over my shoulder. “And I’m driving,” I said.

  ɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜɛɜ

  We piled back in the car and sat with the air on outside of the courthouse whil
e I Googled Heritage Consultants. Miss Vivee made me read out loud everything I found. And what I found was unbelievable – at least to me. I discovered that Heritage Consultants was owned by a Debra and Lance Goodall. I clicked on the link that the search engine had provided and a great big ole grin came across my face as I read their home page.

  Heritage Consultants were an archaeological firm.

  I felt like Miss Vivee with the flowers at Krieger Gardens. Happy. It was like Marigold had said, you don’t meet an archaeologist just anywhere. But now we were going to visit two of them.

  I read the “About” section on their website out loud to Miss Vivee and Mac. It said that they provided archaeological impact evaluations, historical research, preservation, and structure surveys, and cultural resources investigations for real estate development, and government agencies in the southern United States, such as those that work under the National Historic Preservation Act.

  I couldn’t wait to talk to them.

  Their office was located not too far from where we had started out at Walmart. I clicked on directions and did a U-turn – not the best decision on a busy street, but certainly not as reckless as Miss Vivee’s driving.

  I got out of the downtown area and headed back down Wrightsboro Road. I had flashbacks of Miss Vivee driving down it the entire time we were on it, and exhaled a sigh of relief when I turned off onto Walton Way. Their office, 2122 Central Avenue, was a small brick storefront, attached to a larger one that had a huge yellow sign across the top, with red writing that read, “Going Out of Business Sale.” The stones on the front of their side of the building had been painted white a long time ago, and were now dingy with chipping paint.

  Definitely not what I had expected.

  There were diagonal parking slots out front, and I found a spot without any problem. I helped Miss Vivee out of the car, and the three of us went up to the door.

  “Heritage Consultants” was painted in white on the glass door, which was flanked on either side by two huge picture windows. A little bell tinkled as we opened the door and went into a small office. There were a couple of chairs, an older green couch, and a desk that was cluttered with papers and folders. A shelf sat behind it, with maps, 3-ring binders, a printer, and office supplies. And there was no one in sight.