Shadows at the Fair (13 page)

“Ben may be slow about some things, but he understands right and wrong. And he’s not violent!”

“You just never know, Maggie. Why, back in Iowa there was a boy like Ben. His parents lived about four farms down from where my folks lived. They kept people at home in those days, you know. They couldn’t afford one of those institutions, and no boys like that went to regular schools until very recently. Not that they get that much out of it, anyway, but that’s what the federal government says people have to do. This boy—his name was Alfred, as I remember—well, Alfred helped around the farm, feeding the chickens and doing other chores and such. One of his jobs was chopping firewood. Back when I was a girl, you know, a lot of people still used wood-burning stoves, and that’s what his folks had. Well, one day he was out chopping wood, and his mother, dear soul that she was, the very definition of patience, she came out and asked him, was he almost finished? And, nice as could be, he just turned about and started chopping at her. And then, when there was no point in doing that anymore, he finished chopping the wood, and was sitting there, all covered with his poor mother’s blood, when his father came home from the fields.”

Maggie just looked at Lydia. “Well, I don’t think Ben would do that. Or anything even close to that.”

“That’s just my point, dear. With those people you never really know, do you?” Lydia patted Maggie on the arm. “Now, just you relax. I’m sure the police are doing everything they can. That nice detective was over here this morning, and I’ve seen him wandering about during the day. I’m sure he’ll do the right thing. I just wish Susan would eat something. She’s looking paler all the time. I’ve been giving her a lot of honey in her tea, for energy, you know? But I’m not sure she can hold up for the rest of the afternoon.” Lydia shook her head. “Such a horrible situation. Poor Harry. And now Susan, left to cope with everything.”

“You’re right. I think I’ll ask if she’d like someone to watch her booth for a while. My booth is the closest to hers.” Maggie got up. “Customers are quiet at the moment, anyway.” And helping Susan would get her away from Lydia and her stories.

As Abe headed toward the concession stands with a list of orders, Maggie walked around the corner of Susan’s booth. Lydia was right; Susan didn’t look well. Everything that had happened during the last twenty-four hours must have been hitting her. She was slumped in her chair, her head on her hand. Next to her was a half-empty cup, and three prescription bottles: one held white capsules with a blue band around the middle; one tablets; and one small, round white pills. “Susan, are you all right?”

Susan looked up slowly and seemed to have trouble focusing. “No, not really. I took my medication.” She waved toward the pills. “It usually helps me. And I’ve been drinking teas that should help, too. But I’m so tired. And I guess I’m too nervous to eat anything. My stomach is really upset.” She hesitated. “Maggie, I can’t believe that Harry’s gone.” One tear dripped down the side of her nose and she didn’t even bother to wipe it away. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”

Maggie put her hand on Susan’s shoulder in sympathy.

“At least your husband died in an ordinary way. No one murdered him!”

That was a strange thing to say, but Susan was under stress. Vince had said she had felt faint several times on the Far East tour. Maggie wondered if she was going to faint now. “Do you feel light-headed? Do you want to put your head down?”

“No. I don’t think so. I just feel so foggy. And nauseated.” Susan looked up. “How can I feel nauseated when I haven’t had much to eat? I had some breakfast, and you brought me that tuna fish for lunch, but I couldn’t get much of it down.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. Can we get you something else to eat? Abe just went out for some snacks for us; he could get something for you, too.”

Susan shook her head listlessly. “Lydia already asked me. I told her I didn’t think I could keep any food down. All I want to do is sleep.”

“Susan, if that’s what you need, then let me take you back to your van. I’ll ask Will to look after your booth, and Gussie to look after mine. Then I’ll come back here, and between Gussie and me we’ll take care of everything for the rest of the afternoon.” Maggie glanced at her watch. “It’s almost four-thirty; the last hour and a half are always the slowest anyway.” Susan really didn’t look well. “Let me take you back to your van to rest. Please.”

“Maybe that would be good. I do think I need to lie down.” Susan reached under one of her tables for her small soft-sided cooler.

“Just give me a minute.” Maggie made hurried stops to talk with Will, Gussie, and Lydia, who all agreed to help. She then came back and helped Susan find her pocketbook, put most of the cash from her cash box in it, picked up the cooler, and put her arm around Susan as they headed out the building, dodging a few customers. Susan stumbled as though she’d had a little too much wine for lunch.

“I don’t know why I feel so awful,” Susan said as they walked slowly toward her van. “Sometimes I get faint and tired, but not this bad. I guess it’s the shock. All I want to do is sleep.”

“You’ve been doing too much,” Maggie said. “Harry’s dead, and you’ve been trying to carry on as if nothing had happened. You need to take care of yourself. You’re just exhausted, physically and emotionally.”

Susan’s van was farther off than Maggie had remembered. It was a relief when they finally got there, and Susan lay down on a cot.

“You’ll feel better soon.” Maggie covered her with a blanket.

But Susan was already asleep. She looked dead to the world.

Maggie realized her hands were shaking.

Harry’s death had been so sudden; like Michael’s. Maggie concentrated on the steps she was taking, the vans she was walking around, the people milling around the food stands. Anything but remembering the pain of coming home to an empty house after Michael’s funeral.

She had walked in, exhausted, and relieved that finally everything was over.

But Michael was everywhere she looked. The oil painting of the Duomo he had bought for her on their honeymoon to Florence, the houseplants he had carefully moved outdoors to the patio every spring, the chair where he always put his feet up to read the Sunday
Times
.

She had walked from one room to another, seeing Michael in the choice of colors and furniture; the lavender and magenta vase his parents had given them that both of them hated. The Civil War histories he read, the jazz he listened to, the burgundies he had preferred in the wine rack.

She’d felt smothered by physical possessions that represented whole years of memories. Michael would never be really gone from her life; he would just not be present.

Now Susan would have to live through the same realization. Being a widow meant starting down a new road, but it also meant carrying the weight of what was, and what might have been.

But what had to be focused on today was the Rensselaer County Spring Antiques Fair. Maggie had spent long hours in March and April preparing for this show, as she did every year. She’d checked the inventory and replaced prints sold in last year’s shows and matted new ones. She’d have to decide what categories to feature this year. Sporting prints? Botanicals? Perhaps the work of one person—Maxfield Parrish or Winslow Homer?

Maggie had made the decisions for this year with difficulty. It was so hard to concentrate on anything, and with Michael gone this year’s antiques shows seemed more important than ever. The money was important; the independence was important; coming home to an empty house after a full weekend was important. They were all steps toward the freedom Maggie had always assumed she had, but in which she now felt isolated.

Maggie had chosen Currier & Ives prints to feature this year because sorting through them had been familiar and reassuring. Her first antiques print purchase had been
Maggie,
one of a series of Currier & Ives prints depicting women with popular nineteenth-century names. At the time Maggie hadn’t realized it was one of a series. She was just a starving college student on her way to join friends for pizza at a small shop on Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair, New Jersey, where she was a history major at Montclair State. She had turned a corner and was stopped by the portrait of a smiling woman in the window. When she got close enough to see that the print was titled
Maggie,
she knew it was meant for her.

The elderly antiques dealer, pleased at a young woman’s interest, let her make a deposit on it and agreed to accept the money in ten weekly payments. Although at $35 ($3 a week) the print was certainly not the most expensive that Maggie had ever bought, it remained one of her favorites. It had always hung in the room she used for her inventory and study, reminding her of the young woman who had seen herself, around a corner, in the past. Earlier this spring she had moved it to a prominent place in her living room.

That print had led to her investigation of other prints, especially American prints. As a graduate history student, Maggie had written a series of papers on American prints as reflections of American life and culture, and for her doctoral dissertation she had written about Thomas Nast’s influence on the American political conscience.

Collecting prints for her own enjoyment and for her research had led Maggie down the road that had brought her to the Rensselaer County Spring Antiques Fair this warm Saturday May afternoon. But she had never moved totally away from seeing prints as illustrations of America’s intellectual and social history, and she often shared prints with her students, as illustrations for her lectures. Over the years she had also created a small following of young people interested in prints—some from a historical perspective, and others just for the joy of bringing a little of the past into their lives.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur: Maggie and Will watched Susan’s booth and made a few minor sales for her, although neither of them were experts in the early-twentieth-century items Susan and Harry stocked.

Maggie herself sold several botanical lithographs and four prints of different varieties of New York State apples to someone who planned to frame and hang them in a kitchen overlooking an orchard. And she spent about twenty minutes with a woman who was interested in herbs, and who, in addition to looking through the group of prints Maggie had labeled “herbs,” also looked through the rest of the botanical prints to find plants that could be used in cooking. Nasturtiums, the woman swore, made a delicious and colorful addition to any tossed salad.

Maggie smiled and nodded and tried to pay attention to her booth and to Susan’s. The abbreviated sleep she’d had the night before was showing. She hoped Susan was getting some good rest.

“You’re trying to do too much, dear,” counseled Lydia from across the aisle. “Too many irons in the fire. Just take some deep breaths. It’s almost five-thirty; we only have to get through another half hour. Why don’t you try some chamomile tea?”

Maggie smiled. She had just sold a chamomile lithograph.

“Sorry. I think I need a little caffeine. In fact”—she yawned—“maybe a lot of caffeine.”

Before Lydia could make another comment about caffeine’s effect on the heart, Joe stepped across the aisle, now only partially filled with customers. “I need a break, and I was going to bring back coffee. I’ll get one for you, if you’d like.”

“Thanks, Joe. But I think I’ll just open another can of cola.”

“Are you sure I can’t get you something? We’ve all had a rough weekend.” Joe looked as exhausted as Maggie felt.

“No, I’m fine. It seems incredible that it’s only Saturday afternoon. We have tomorrow yet to go. It feels as though we’ve been here a lifetime.”

Joe nodded and headed out toward the rest rooms and concession stands.

Maggie stood midway between her booth and Susan’s so she could keep an eye on both of them. A white-haired woman in a tailored pink pantsuit had just leaned her gold-headed cane against one of Susan’s tables and was looking closely at some Japanese porcelains. She had better not leave that cane for long; it was a beauty, and canes were becoming more collectible every year, with baby boomers approaching the age at which canes became a necessity. If the baby boomers started using them, canes would become the fashion accessory of 2010, and antique canes with gold heads would shoot up in value.

Maggie thought of the antiquarian-book sale she’d been to recently. She often looked for “breakers”—books with tattered bindings and missing pages that were not of great value to a book dealer or collector, but, especially when their plates were hand-colored, might be valuable to a print dealer. First editions of Little Golden Books—those inexpensive little books everyone’s mother had bought for him or her in groceries and dime stores in the 1950s—were selling for $30 and more!

The most valuable were the original 1940s editions with blue bindings complete with dustcovers encouraging the purchase of U.S. Savings Stamps. Other titles escalating in price were those that had not been reprinted many times, such as
Little Black Sambo,
published in 1948 and later viewed as racist; or books that still included the puzzles or gimmicks they had come with, such as
Dr. Dan the Bandage Man
(which had come with bandages), or that featured television characters of the fifties, such as Howdy Doody, Hopalong Cassidy, or Rootie Kazootie. First editions featuring Disney characters were among the most valuable.

Any parent who had tried hard but had never actually got Johnny to read should check the attic. If Johnny’s books were in pristine condition, they might now be minor treasures.

You’re getting old when your childhood memories turn into someone else’s antique, Maggie, she told herself. She wished she had a child to share those memories with, and to help create a few for the next generation.

Ever since Michael’s death Maggie had found herself thinking more and more about being a parent. She wasn’t too old. There were ways, with or without a husband. Or maybe she’d adopt. If parenthood was something she wanted, then she would have to do something about it. In the near future. She and Michael had put off too many decisions too long. She didn’t want to make the same mistake again.

On the other hand, how would she ever be able to cope with being an antiques dealer and having a child? Day care centers would help with teaching hours, but she would never be able to just pop a baby into a carrier and hustle off to a two-or three-day antiques show. Reality, Maggie, she thought to herself. Get real. You’re thirty-eight years old.

“Lady, you’re looking depressed as well as exhausted. Let me keep an eye on Susan’s booth while you sit down in yours for the last half hour and talk with Gussie. She looks as though she could use some company.”

Will’s voice brought Maggie back to today.

“Thanks, Will. I’ve just about had it.”

“Figured out whodunit yet?”

“No way. Actually,” Maggie admitted as she looked around Susan’s booth, “I keep coming back to Susan. She had both motive and opportunity. She was the one who found Harry. They’d had an argument that night. He was leaving her for someone else; she needed money for some reason, and now she’ll get not only the business, but also any insurance he might have had.”

Will nodded. “It’s hard to believe, but you’re right. A lot of people weren’t thrilled with Harry, but I can’t think of anyone else who had a strong motive. And”—he glanced down the aisle at Joe’s booth—“who was here last night.”

“I hope it wasn’t Susan. But I’m sure it wasn’t Ben, and he’s the one the police have in custody.”

“Has Gussie’s friend gotten him out?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been so busy here I haven’t even talked with her in the last hour.”

“Well, why don’t you do that? I think she needs a friend.”

Maggie nodded as Joe stopped on his way back from the concession stand. “We’ve got just a short time left, and then I’m going to go check on Susan and see if I can take her out for some dinner.”

It might look strange to others, but Joe had been a friend to both Susan and Harry. He seemed sad as he went to his booth.

“You’ll need to eat, too, Maggie, and we do have a deal. I’m not letting you out of the agreement, although I won’t hold you to paying,” Will said. “What if I give you an hour or so to collapse, and then I come over and we find someplace with wine and peace?”

Maggie looked at him. The top three buttons of his blue tailored shirt were now open, revealing smooth skin dotted with five small, dark spots. She had to resist the urge to connect the dots. “Wine and peace sound wonderful. Thank you.”

He nodded. “I’ll see you at about seven-thirty, then?”

“I’m in Kabin A twenty-three. First row on the left as you drive in to the Kabins.”

Maggie tried to remember whether she’d brought anything more interesting to wear than the pantsuit she’d planned on putting on tomorrow.

“I’ll find you.” Will winked, and Maggie returned to her booth, wondering how she was going to cope simultaneously with a suddenly attractive man, a murder, and exhaustion. Life didn’t play fair. That was for sure.

Gussie grinned at her. “Great news! One of the dealers came forward and told the police he saw Harry walking out from in back of the rest room about quarter to ten Friday night. And the autopsy results show Harry had a bruise and small cut on the opposite side of his head from the blow that killed him. They’ve released Ben, although they still want him close by. Jim went back to the motel to make some calls. He’s still trying to find a decent local criminal attorney, just in case. But it looks as though Ben is off the hook!”

“Gussie, that’s wonderful! But why can’t Jim be his lawyer?”

Gussie shook her head. “He’s great at small-town wills and mortgages, not criminal law in another state. But he knows people who know other people, so he’s playing his networks.”

“How’s Ben holding up?”

“All right, I guess. He told my sister that the policemen were really nice, and the food wasn’t bad, but that he was missing his practice times on the track.” She paused. “He also asked whether he was going to be hanged or put in an electric chair.”

Maggie winced. “Not good.”

“No. But it’s hard for him to focus on everything. Right now I suspect he’s back in the motel taking a nap.”

Maggie shook her head. “There’s an answer to all of this. An answer that does not involve Ben.”

“Have you found out anything new?”

“Not since I talked with you last.”

“You got Susan to rest?”

Maggie nodded. “I took her back to her van. She really didn’t look well. I think the shock of the whole situation was beginning to get to her. Joe’s going to check on her after the show and make sure she gets something to eat.”

“Good for him.” Gussie nodded approvingly. “He’s not exactly had a terrific day himself, but he’s thinking about other people. And that’s the first step in getting your own life in order.”