Stay At Home Dad 03-Father Knows Death (3 page)

Ah, motherhood.

4

Julianne took Carly over to the games and rides on the midway and I wandered back to the food stand just in time to see a large, yellow rental truck backing up toward the building. A toothpick-thin guy in a long red wig with horns poking from it and aviator shades guided the truck backward. A cigarette dangled from his lips as he waved a lazy hand at the building, then held it up to signal the truck to stop.

The driver’s door swung open and a woman in her seventies hopped out. A tight Afro of gray curls sat on top of her head and thick, black, cat-eye-shaped glasses framed big brown eyes. She wore jeans with an elastic waist along with a Carriveau County Fair T-shirt and white running shoes.

She scowled at the guy in the red wig. “Dang it, Bruce! Get outta the way!”

A befuddled Bruce held his hands out, wondering exactly what he was in the way of. She pushed past him and unlocked the latch on the back of the truck, sending the door up on its tracks. “Now get this out of here, pronto!”

Bruce’s shoulders slumped and he pulled out the ramp in the truck. “Yes, Mama.”

Mama yanked her walkie-talkie from her hip and muttered into it. She glanced around waiting for a reply when she spotted me and headed in my direction.

“I been wantin’ to meet you,” she said, squinting at me. “You’re the Winters boy, aren’t you?”

Boy? “I’m Deuce, yes.”

She held out a bony hand. “I’m Mama Biggs. Chairwoman of the fair board. I run the show around here. Your daddy used to work for the bank, right?”

So this was Matilda’s mother. And that made Bruce Matilda’s brother. I looked at the thin guy in the red wig and couldn’t believe two people of such opposite builds could come from the same gene pool. I shook her hand and it was stronger than I expected. “Pleasure. And, yes, he did.”

“That’s what I thought.” She gestured at the truck. “New freezer. On account of George bein’ dead in the other one.”

“Right.”

Bruce backed up slowly with the freezer up on a dolly. It was identical to the other—stainless steel, upright, double doors with a massive handle—and could hold a ton of meat, along with the body of an adult male.

“Now that all that yellow tape is gone, we can get back to business,” Mama said. She eyed me. “Matilda said you were the one that found him.”

“That’s right.”

“I ain’t never seen a dead body before,” she said. “Was he tough to get outta the freezer?”

“Uh, I didn’t try to take him out. Generally, you don’t want to disturb the victim before the authorities get to the scene.”

The walkie-talkie crackled and someone said something about mini-donuts.

Mama rolled her eyes and held the walkie-talkie up to her mouth. “You tell Eugene that Mama says he either keeps the mini-donut shack open until midnight or I’ll come push him in the deep fryer myself.”

“Roger that, Mama,” the voice said.

She shook her head. “Every year, that dummy wants to close up early. I need a new donut guy.” She eyed me. “You do donuts?”

“Make them? No. I just eat them.”

“Shame,” she said, pulling up on her jeans. “All right, listen. You’re one of them private detectives, right?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“And you got that midget as a partner? The bald one that sorta freaks everyone out?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“All right, then,” she said as if I wasn’t even there. “I’m gonna need you to figure out what happened with George. But you’re gonna need to keep it quiet. You report only to me. I don’t want no jabberin’ about it to anyone.”

Bruce was struggling under the weight of the freezer, his steps wobbly and unsure as he backed down the ramp.

“Bruce, I swear to the good Lord,” she yelled. “If you drop my new freezer, yours’ll be the next dead body they find! And they won’t have to look for it in a freezer!”

“Yes, Mama,” he groaned as he struggled to get it off the ramp.

“Now, I don’t know what you charge,” Mama said to me. “But the fair board will be happy to pay a reasonable fee. Nothing ridiculous and if you try to scam me, I’ll find out and then you’ll be in for it.”

“Ma’am, I can’t . . . ,” I said.

“It’s Mama, not ma’am,” she barked at me. “Ma’am was my grandmother. So you just figure out what happened to old George and you let me know.”

“I think the police are handling it.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Oh, well, isn’t that peachy? We oughta know something right around
never,
then, right? Those clowns couldn’t find a hot dog if you gave ’em the bun and the ketchup!”

Bruce finally made it off the ramp and Mama stomped over to it, picked it up, and slid it back into the base of the truck. She reached up and pulled the cord on the truck door and slammed it down, locking up the hitch.

She pointed at me as she yanked open the driver’s door. “Only me, Deuce Winters. You don’t talk to no one else. Not that dim-witted son of mine, Bruce, not Matilda, not another soul.” She turned on the engine and the truck roared to life. She scowled at me. “You hear me?”

Mama Biggs was already pulling away before I could even try to answer.

5

I stepped over to where Bruce was struggling with the freezer and helped him balance it on the dolly before he was squashed beneath it.

“Thanks, man,” he said, the cigarette bobbing in his mouth. “This sucker’s heavy.”

I helped him maneuver it so that it was up against the back wall of the food stand’s kitchen. We lowered it down easily and Bruce slipped the dolly out from under it, wiping streams of sweat off his face.

“Guess that’s as good a place as any,” he said, staring at it.

“Good enough,” I said. “As long as the cord reaches the outlet, we can get to it right there.”

“You workin’ in there today?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Score me a hot dog or somethin’?”

“We don’t get free food. Sorry.”

He frowned and I got the distinct impression he thought I was an idiot.

“Can I ask why you’re wearing a wig?” I asked.

He grinned, exposing yellowed teeth. “It’s tradition.”

“Tradition?”

“Every year, I wear it,” he explained. “I had too many beers one year and put it on and wore it. Just took off. It’s kinda become a thing. Plus, everyone knows who I am. Kinda hard to miss it.”

“I’ll say. Are you on the fair board, too?”

He nodded. “Yep.” He leaned against the freezer. “That’s why I’m doing all the heavy lifting.” He dissolved into laughter at his own joke.

“You know George?” I asked.

His laughter died out and he stared at me. “Why?”

“Just asking.”

“You heard something?”

“No, I was just curious.”

“Hmm. Right.” He shrugged. “Sure I knew him. Everyone knew him. He was always around here.” His mouth twitched. “But we weren’t like buddies or anything, all right? I mean, like, I’d wave at him and say what’s up, but not like we went drinkin’ together or anything like that.” He shook his head.

I started to respond, but he wasn’t finished. “So maybe I didn’t really know him. I shouldn’t say that. I was
aware
of him. Yeah. That sounds better.”

I was almost sorry I’d asked the question. “Okay. Got it.”

“You hear anything different from anyone, you correct them, all right?” he asked, craning his neck at me.

“Sure. Yeah.” What an odd request, I thought.

He seemed satisfied with that answer. “All right, then. I’m gonna go get me a beer over at the garden. Board members drink free
over there
.” He grinned. “I’d invite ya, but I guess you gotta get back to cooking hamburgers or something.”

I nodded and headed for the stand. Anything was better than spending another moment talking to Bruce.

Leon Cotter was standing near the back of the stand, chewing on a toothpick and adjusting his Rose Petal Sheriff’s Department hat on his flat, wide head.

He nodded at me. “Deuce.”

“Sheriff,” I said. “Busy morning, eh?”

The toothpick shifted from the left side of his mouth to the right. “Could say that.”

Leon had just stepped into the sheriff’s role in town and no one really knew how to take him. He was quiet and tended to keep to himself. Tall and lanky with a ruddy complexion, he was completely bald beneath the hat. He wasn’t seen out and about very often and, given that Rose Petal didn’t have a whole lot of crime, that was okay.

“You thinking about looking into Mr. Spellman’s death?” he asked, casting a sideways glance at me.

“I don’t think so, no,” I said, unsure of how to answer after my meet-up with Mama Biggs.

“Good,” he said, nodding. “We probably won’t get the ball rolling on this until the fair ends.”

“Really?”

“We don’t want anything getting in the way of the fair,” he said. “It’ll be fine. He’ll still be dead.”

“But don’t you think letting the investigation sit still might put you at a disadvantage?” I asked. “I’d think you’d want to act quickly.”

“Which is why I’m the sheriff and you’re not,” he said, half a grin settling on his mouth. “This fair is the most important thing in town. We’ll preserve evidence. We’ll begin the preliminaries. But the biggest crime would be letting something like this overshadow the entire fair week.”

The fair might have brought in a lot of money for Rose Petal and community organizations, but I couldn’t have disagreed more. Letting a crime investigation sit idle seemed criminal in and of itself. If Victor had taught me anything, it was that once you found a trail of evidence, you didn’t let it grow cold. Letting George Spellman’s death go unlooked at for several days almost assured that the trail wouldn’t just go cold. It would ice over.

“So if you do decide to do some of your own investigating or whatever it is you and that short fella do, I’d appreciate it if you two wait until the fair is over,” he said. He tipped his hat in my direction. “And I’d be mighty appreciative if I didn’t have to tell you a second time.”

6

The stand was busier than before the discovery of George’s body, a combination of hungry people and curious onlookers. Pete and I couldn’t keep enough meat on the grill, as the orders came fast and furious. When our relief showed up, I had to double-check my watch to make sure the four-hour shift was over.

“Well, that may have been the most exciting food-stand shift ever,” Pete said, collapsing on a wooden bench outside the stand. “My goodness.”

“You can say that again,” I said, sitting down next to him and wiping down my forehead with a paper towel.

The fair was in full swing now. The grounds were overrun with fairgoers, most clutching mammoth-size lemonades or waving cardboard fans in their pitiful attempt to escape the heat. Lines for the Tilt-A-Whirl and Kamikaze snaked sideways, kids whining as they waited their turn to defy death on the rickety rides.

“Not often we lose an hour to a corpse and still do more business than normal,” he said, a sly grin on his face.

“I can’t believe they’re letting us keep it open.”

He raised a sweaty eyebrow. “Really? Not me. With all the stuff that goes on around here at the fair, nothing surprises me anymore.”

I shrank back as a woman carrying a toddler with a dripping ice cream cone passed by. “That right?”

He nodded. “Yep. Nothing stops the fair.”

“Clearly.”

Pete chuckled. “Right? You’d think something like this might’ve put a dent in the day. But if they’d tried to shut us down, she would’ve come out guns blazing.”

“She? Mama?”

He nodded again. “Oh, yeah. Mama Biggs and her entire crew.”

“Crew?”

“Matilda. Bruce.” He waved a hand absently in the air. “Woody and Wendy. Probably others I don’t even know about. That seems like one family tree with a lot of goofy branches.”

“Who are they?”

“They’re actually in charge of all the fair food,” he said. “They’re on the fair board, too. It’s like a clan or something. Or maybe
gang
is a better word for them. I’m not sure what the best word to describe them is.” He stretched out his legs and rubbed his knees. “But I didn’t for a second think the police would shut down the food stand. Pretty sure Mama’s got some under-the-table deal with them.”

“Are Wendy and Woody related to Mama, too?” I said. “And, just so you know, I can’t believe we’re grown men referring to a grown woman as Mama.”

He laughed. “Me, either. But I don’t even know her real name. I’m not sure if Woody and Wendy are related to Mama. I don’t think so. That might be a little too overt to make every member of her family a board member, even for Mama. Woody and Wendy are married, but you wouldn’t know it. They fight like cats and dogs most of the time. Woody should be here any minute.” Pete chuckled again. “You can’t miss him.”

It amazed me that even after living in Rose Petal my entire life, there were still people I didn’t know. The town felt so small and so insular that I was always surprised when I heard a name or saw a face that I didn’t recognize. I’d known about the fair board as a group for years, but it wasn’t until I’d gotten roped into helping with 4-H that I’d learned any of their names.

“And you didn’t hear it from me, but there have been lots of whispers about all of them,” Pete said.

“Whispers?”

He leaned forward. “None of them have real jobs. All they do is the fair.” He raised an eyebrow. “And the board positions are all volunteer.”

“None of them are paid?”

“Think Mama might get some sort of nominal stipend for being the chairwoman, but other than that?” Pete shook his head. “They’re all unpaid volunteer positions.”

I leaned back and watched a stream of people walk by on their way to the free stage and wondered what show might be drawing such a crowd.

“So where are they getting their money?” Pete sighed. “Midway. Food stands. Ticket booths. You name it.” He winked at me. “But, remember. That’s just whispers.”

Skimming from a county fair was probably more common than I knew. But I didn’t like the idea that they might be stealing from local organizations that depended on fair revenue to survive. Like Carly’s 4-H group.