Murder Goes to Market

by Daisy Bateman

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. This guy has probably been doing this for years,” Claudia said, as another question occurred to her. “How old would you say he was, anyway?”

  “Twenty-seven, according to him, but that was probably a lie too. I even suspected that at the time, just because there were some things he would get wrong. I just figured he was self-conscious, because I was younger. God damn, I was so young.”

  Claudia agreed that it was an unfortunate condition and tried to work the conversation back around to more relevant information.

  “What city were you in then, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Baltimore, but Steve didn’t live there. He said he was in D.C., but I never saw his place, so who knows. Why do you want to know all this, anyway?”

  Claudia was ready for that one.

  “Well, like I said, I found that list after Lori, the woman who was making it, was killed. I don’t know how much of the story you’ve been following, but nobody knows who did it, and now another man was murdered last night. So, you know, I’m feeling kind of nervous, and if there’s someone around here who isn’t who they say they are, I’d like to find out who it might be.”

  “Wow, okay. Yeah. Obviously, I didn’t have the best impression of Steve, but I can’t really imagine him as a murderer. But I can see why you would want to know. I wish I could draw a picture of him for you, or something, but that’s not really something I’m good at. Maybe I could use one of those sketch sets like they have for police artists?”

  “That would be fantastic,” Claudia said. “Anything you can do. I really appreciate you talking to me, by the way. I know it can’t be fun, revisiting all of this.”

  “You’re welcome. But it’s okay, actually. I’ve spent so long beating myself up about it, I never actually got to looking at what happened and what I did. I mean, I was dumb, but I’m okay, and it’s not the worst thing anyone ever did, right?”

  “Right,” said Claudia, who could think of a few worse things right off the top of her head. “Absolutely.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They talked for a little while longer, but there wasn’t much more Kara could tell her. The romantic hero formerly known as Steve Mann had been tall, probably over six feet, but not by much (though Kara revealed that, at five-foot-two herself, she wasn’t the best judge of heights), no younger than twenty-two and no older than, say forty-five, even with really good plastic surgery. Everything else about him could have been changed with time and cosmetic enhancements, though Kara thought that if she got a look at him she would be able to pick him out, regardless of superficial changes.

  Claudia promised to put together a set of pictures of possible candidates and send them to her, ignoring for the moment that that was something she absolutely did not have time for right now. But time was what you made of it, and for now Claudia was making herself some by drawing the curtains, turning off her phone, and taking her computer down onto the floor behind the couch so no one could spot her.

  She had no doubt now that this was what Lori’s list was about; the details from Kara and the comment from the mysterious BeccaC confirmed that. Unfortunately, with those answers came more questions, and there was one in particular Claudia didn’t relish asking, but she was going to need to if she was going to send those pictures.

  Brandon was too young, Elias was too old. Victor, Brandon’s father, roughly fit the age range, but he was unlikely to pass for Caucasian. Technically, Roy was still in the running, though she would have to find out if he had spent any significant time out of state early in his marriage. Orlan, the vegetable market owner, couldn’t be more than five foot six in tall shoes, and none of his regular employees would have been out of grade school for the critical time. That left her with Robbie, and Claudia didn’t appreciate the gift.

  He was the right age, height, and general attractiveness, probably more so if you shaved off the beard. She knew he and Emmanuelle had only been together for four years, and whenever he was asked about his previous life, he had a tendency to be genially vague about the details. What’s more, she realized, as she scrolled through his various web presences, for someone whose wife was so deeply involved in social media, there weren’t many good pictures of him.

  She put a few of the best she could find, plus a cropped image of Roy from Betty’s last Christmas card into an email to Kara, and included a link to a local website that had collected photos from various town events, just in case there was a familiar face there. After all, it didn’t have to be anyone associated with the marketplace at all, or even living in San Elmo. But it did have to be someone who had her and Brandon’s phone numbers, and knew enough to send them the messages.

  That certainly included her two main candidates, but there must have been someone else. What about Neil? Not that he was likely to have participated in his own murder, but could Lori’s ex-husband have been a con artist, and killed her when she tried to expose him? He hadn’t struck Claudia as a particularly attractive or charismatic man, but a lot can happen in ten years, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Still, that left the question open as to who killed him—Claudia thought it was stretching belief to have two separate murderers at work.

  But maybe there didn’t have to be. What if Lori hadn’t been a victim in the scam, but a participant? Maybe she had helped Neil identify the victims and string them along until he got them to empty their bank accounts. And maybe their latest victim had caught on and taken her revenge on both of her tormentors.

  That opened up her field quite a bit. Helen, Julie, Emmanuelle—if she was being open-minded about it, Carmen and Iryna could even be suspects. Which pretty much took her back to where she started, suspecting everyone and knowing nothing.

  That wasn’t completely true, but the theory did leave a lot of unanswered questions, like why Neil had showed up and made a point out of his connection to Lori if the goal was to keep from being exposed. The only reason he would do something like that was if there was some sort of evidence in Lori’s possession that was worth the risk to prevent anyone else from finding. The list was a candidate, Claudia supposed, though it seemed too vague to count as hard evidence. But there was no denying that Neil had been eager to get at Lori’s things, and agitated when he found out they were gone. Claudia was starting to regret that she hadn’t done a better job of searching, but in her defense, there had been a lot of bags in there.

  She was stewing over that when the rising noise of voices from outside pulled her back to the present. The outdoor market had been her idea, after all, and she could work on her theories and regrets while she set up tables.

  The sun was well up now, and the day was bright and sharp, without a hint of wind. By the time Claudia made it down to the parking lot it was already starting to crowd with people and trucks and a rising sense of chaos that served as a rebuke for her tardiness. She hurried to join them, trying her best to look like someone who had been detained by something important and unavoidable, and hoping no one had seen her close the curtains.

  Elias had come back with the truck and the tables he and Brandon had picked up the night before, and was directing them to be set up in exactly the wrong places. She spent the next twenty minutes or so sorting that out, and by the time they had been arranged to most people’s satisfaction, the rest of the vendors and the charity groups had shown up and were squabbling passive-aggressively over who needed to be where.

  Claudia brandished her plan, found herself ignored and brandished it a little louder. Eventually they got things settled down, with Carmen and Iryna having enough power to heat their offerings and Julie and Elias with enough shade for their cheeses, and the corgis kept well away from all of it. (Victor was helpful in that regard.) Throughout the activity, Claudia kept sneaking glances at all of them, trying and failing to reconcile the friendly, mostly helpful faces around her with the brutal murders of two people.

  “What do you think? Too harsh?”

  “I’m sorry?”<
br />
  “The colors. I’m worried the green and the purple together are ugly.” Helen was standing back and contemplating her display with a critical eye. “I was going to do red, but Brandon said that would look like Christmas.”

  “The green is pretty much unavoidable,” Claudia agreed, surveying the array of pickles. “I think the purple is fine. We want a festive atmosphere; this isn’t a New York cocktail party.”

  Helen was unconvinced, so Claudia said she’d leave it to her judgement and moved on. She would have liked to slip a question in about whether she had ever had a dalliance with a younger man who may or may not have stolen a lot of money, but it was difficult to introduce the subject. She ran into the same problem a moment later, when Julie came to her with a question about sales tax.

  “That should take care of it,” Claudia said, once they had settled the matter. “By the way, I’m sorry that you all got dragged into that scene last night, with the police and everything. I hope your father wasn’t too upset by it.”

  “Are you kidding? Pop hasn’t had that much fun in ages. I could barely get him to go to bed last night, he was so convinced that it was up to him to keep poor Brandon out of the electric chair. If we hadn’t had to be here this morning, he’d be over at the rental place, getting signed affidavits from the employees.”

  “Well, I’m glad he’s enjoying himself.” That sounded more sarcastic than Claudia intended, so she quickly backtracked. “I mean, this whole thing has been a horrible mess, and I appreciate you all sticking with me and having such a good attitude.”

  “Don’t think about it,” Julie said. “None of us are having it nearly as rough as you. Honestly, I’m amazed you’re doing all this. I have to admit, most folks thought you’d pack up and head back to the city.”

  It wasn’t the greatest vote of confidence Claudia had ever gotten, but she could hardly blame them for doubting her. It was no less than she had thought of herself.

  “Well, I didn’t,” Claudia said, unnecessarily. “And I’m not going to.” The activity level in the parking lot was picking up, and she didn’t have time for many more questions, so she decided to skip the formalities and get right to it.

  “By the way, yesterday, when you went to the library, you would go past Half Moon Cove, right? Is there any chance you saw Neil Hahn there, or anyone else?”

  Julie looked thoughtful, like she was trying to remember, then shook her head.

  “If I did, I didn’t pay them any mind. I never met Mr. Hahn, so I wouldn’t recognize him, and I wasn’t paying much attention to who was out and about anyway. If I’d seen someone walking along with a bloody knife, I would have mentioned it to the police, you know.”

  “Of course, sorry. It was a dumb question.” It was also a question that didn’t seem to rattle Julie at all by reminding her that she could be placed in the general area of the second murder. Not that that proved anything. It was possible that a person who was engaged in a campaign of murderous revenge might not be too upset by the occasional inconvenient question.

  The market was scheduled to open at eleven, and though it was barely past ten, a scattering of cars were starting to line up in the parking spaces along the road. Claudia hadn’t been expecting this, and from the way the rest of the vendors kept sneaking glances at the early arrivals, she guessed neither had anyone else. Except, it seemed, Emmanuelle.

  “Not bad,” she said, like a connoisseur surprised by an inexpensive bottle of wine. “My post from yesterday wasn’t tracking very well, but I had a nice uptick in faves this morning, so I think we’ll do okay. But it’s so hard to tell, you know?”

  “Oh, definitely,” Claudia said. (She didn’t know.) “By the way, is Robbie around? I was hoping he could help me with something.” She didn’t care to specify what that thing was, and fortunately Emmanuelle didn’t ask.

  “He’ll be here soon. He had a batch of bacon in the smoker, and he wanted to get it done in time to debut it today. He’s been experimenting with some new curing techniques, and trying a sort of honey infusion.”

  “That’s great. I can’t wait to try it. Is that what he was working on last night?” Claudia wasn’t sure whether bacon could be an alibi, but it was worth asking.

  “I think so. To be honest, I was kind of busy with some new greeting cards I’m designing for this collaboration thing, and I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry we didn’t come over to help with the setup, I’m sure you had a lot to do.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I had plenty of help.” And witnesses for her alibi, which Claudia couldn’t help noticing was something Emmanuelle and Robbie lacked. She also thought it was interesting that they couldn’t vouch for each other. Which might not mean anything, but it might mean a lot.

  But there was no time to get into that now, and Claudia was about to move on, when it occurred to her that there was something else she needed to ask Emmanuelle.

  “You know, I really appreciate you taking point on all the social media for this event. It’s been a big help. There’s one thing I’m worried about, though, with Lori’s murder, and then Neil Hahn last night, are people talking about that a lot?”

  Emmanuelle looked uncomfortable.

  “Well, it has come up,” she admitted. “Mostly just jokes, but there have been some theories. I guess I should warn you, there might be a few people who think they are going to come here and solve the murders themselves.”

  “That’s crazy,” Claudia said with a completely straight face. “Why would anyone do that?”

  Emmanuelle shook her head.

  “It’s the Internet. What are you going to do?”

  Claudia was still determined to get a conversation in with Robbie at some point, but he had just arrived with a carload of pork products and was too busy for chatting. She tried to make it over to him several times, but there were a few setbacks with getting the burners set up to cook the pierogis, and not lighting the rented tables on fire seemed like a slightly higher priority than whatever she was going to say to Robbie.

  She did get a chance to try some of the bacon, though, when Julie brought her a piece. It was good enough for Claudia to wonder if maybe some crimes could be excused for the sake of truly fine cured meats.

  There was one quiet moment, when all the tables had been laid out and before the gates were opened (or, more accurately, the piece of temporary fencing untied from the signposts), which Claudia was using to center herself and ask herself why she actually hadn’t left town when the trouble started, because that seemed like a pretty good idea. Naturally, this was when Robbie vanished into one of the portable toilets, where he stayed far longer than Claudia would have thought anyone would find bearable, and in the meantime she was approached by Carmen.

  “Have you tried the pear empanadas? Iryna wanted to call them ‘em-pear-nadas,’ but I put a stop to that,” she said with a snort. Carmen’s legendarily low tolerance for foolishness was respected and feared by everyone but her wife, who seemed to view it as a personal challenge. There were certain branches of the local grapevine that considered this a sign their relationship was doomed, but Claudia suspected they both thought it was part of the fun.

  “I did, and they’re great. When did you find the time to make them?” she asked. Carmen and Iryna hadn’t left the cottage until after nine, and judging by the setup at their booth, they had been some of the first arrivals that morning.

  “Oh, I hardly sleep anymore. Because I’m getting old, I think. My grandfather was the same way. So I figure, as long as I’m up, I might as well get something done, right? Papa used to make magazine racks in his woodshop. Do you know how many magazine racks a person needs? Not that many, I can tell you.”

  Claudia admitted that she had zero, and had never felt the lack. Carmen wasn’t high on her list of suspects, but since she had her, she figured she might as well take the opportunity.

  “I’m still getting over what happened last night,” she said. “I only met Neil Hahn twice, but I certainly didn’t exp
ect him to turn up dead like that. Did you run into him at all while he was in town?”

  “No. I hadn’t even heard his name before that oaf Lennox showed up and started tossing around accusations. You said he was Lori’s husband? The dead man, I mean, not Mr. Police Chief.”

  “Ex-husband, yes. Which is weird, isn’t it? It wasn’t totally clear what he was doing here, and now I guess we’ll never know.”

  Carmen shook her head. “What crazy times these are. The whole time we’ve lived in San Elmo, I don’t think there’s been a single murder, and now two at once. You don’t think of that happening here. A day like this, what could happen?” She gestured toward the distant view, where the bowl of bright blue sky met the sparkling ocean, as though nice weather was a guarantee against violence.

  “You were living in a big city before, on the East coast, right? I guess this doesn’t seem so scary by comparison,” Claudia said, trying another approach. But Carmen wasn’t biting.

  “It’s different here, though. And having it be someone I knew—not the man, but Lori at least. You don’t expect that.”

  “No, you don’t.” Claudia was trying to think of a way to work the conversation back around to whether Carmen had really never met Neil before, but before she had the chance, a luxury charter bus pulled up alongside the parking lot. The doors opened and a young woman with a clipboard leaned out and looked around.

  “Is this where the fine foods event is?” she asked, in what Claudia could only describe as an authoritative yelp.

  “Um, yes?” she said. She wasn’t aware of any promotional material that had used that wording, and she was definitely sure she hadn’t ordered a bus, but it seemed like the only plausible answer.