Fatal Festival Days Read online

  “I better sit in the back,” she said. “You’ll want him in the front with you to keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t pass out or get sick.”

  The last thing I needed was for him to pass out. I’d never get him out of Monica’s car. I figured Roy getting sick was a long shot since he was always drunk. His body was in its natural state.

  The roads were icy, but deserted. The whole town was home behind locked doors, wondering who on earth would want its only Olympian dead.

  We crossed over the frozen canal. The Soapy Savant was shut up tight, and the lights were out in Read and ReRead. But over the bookstore, Brenda’s bedroom light was on and I knew she was tucked in bed perusing a mystery novel, wondering about our town’s latest victims.

  “How were Clayton Banks and David Dixon tied together?” I mused aloud.

  “They were inseparable back in school. Starnes Buntley was the third in their trio of friends,” Johnna said without pause. “Those three did everything together. I used to baby-sit Starnes when he was just a boy. His wife inherited the family farm and they moved out to a farm by Hamilton, Ohio, about thirty years ago now.”

  “Wonder if anyone’s told him what happened.”

  “I imagine someone has. He and Lana will probably come into town for the funerals.”

  “Maybe we should take a drive out there and make sure he knows,” I said. “He might take it better coming from you since you knew him as a boy.”

  Who was I kidding? I wanted to find out what he might know, who he thought might want to murder his two friends.

  “Guess we could take a drive over tomorrow,” she said. “Betty was close with Lana’s mother, and like a second mom to Lana. They’re related in some way, I don’t recall how. On Betty’s husband’s side, I believe, God rest him. She might want to go along. I’ll give her a call.”

  “Good idea.” I parked in the alley beside Johnna’s house and noticed her porch steps were cleared. “Who shoveled your porch?”

  “Andy always makes sure it’s done. Cass better keep that one. He’s a good catch.”

  “He sure is,” I said. No matter how many grand ideas Andy had of leaving town and making big films, I had a feeling his roots had grown right down into Metamora’s soil.

  I waited until Johnna got inside with her door locked behind her before heading back across the bridge. “Where do you live anyway?” I asked Roy, who was staring out the car window and staying oddly silent.

  “Over yonder,” he said, nodding straight ahead. “Mike’s disappeared.”

  “Metamora Mike?” I asked to make certain we were talking about the town’s duck who lived in the canal with his harem of feathered females.

  “You know another Mike?”

  “What do you mean he disappeared?” I searched to the right and left, looking in the canal and around its banks.

  “What does disappeared mean? He’s gone.”

  “Maybe he flew south since the canal froze.”

  “Mike never flies south. He never leaves town. Not once in all the years I’ve been alive has Mike left town. He sleeps in the horse stalls, but he hasn’t been seen since the canal froze.”

  The draft horses that pull the canal boat, the Ben Franklin III, from the banks were kept in stalls across from the train depot, alongside the canal when they weren’t busy lugging it through the water.

  I never knew Metamora Mike bunked down in their hay at night when they were back on their farm in a cozy barn.

  “Where would he be?” I asked. “He has to be around somewhere.”

  Roy shook his head. “Clayton, Dixon, and Mike. Who’s next?”

  “You don’t think he’s dead, do you?” Good gravy! Metamora Mike, dead? I couldn’t imagine. That duck was thought to be immortal. It sounds crazy, but what about this town wasn’t crazy?

  “Time will tell, Cameron Cripps-Hayman. Time will tell.”

  Roy was quiet, pointing me along the route home in silence.

  It was so unlike him, I sensed he really, truly was shaken by the murders.

  “You know,” I said, “the cases we’ve solved all had a motive. These will, too. They weren’t random.” I hoped he’d realize that as long as there was no reason for someone to come after him, he’d be okay. We all would.

  “Right here,” he said, opening the door before I’d slowed down to a stop.

  I slammed on the brakes in front of a dilapidated mobile home with stacked cinder blocks for steps to the door. The ice and snow hadn’t covered the frozen mud that surrounded the base of the trailer. A crooked screen door banged in the wind.

  It hit me that I didn’t know a lot about Roy. His sarcasm and jibes worked like barbed wire, not letting anyone get too close. Did his alcoholism lead to this life, or was it the other way around? Did he have family?

  Watching him sway and stumble into his house, I made a promise to myself to find out who Roy really was.

  Johnna, Betty, and I headed east into Ohio the next morning, leaving Roy and Logan in the church basement to call the ice carvers about their picks. Anna hadn’t shown up again and Logan wasn’t talking about whatever had happened the night before. He looked even more downtrodden than when he’d left my house. I made Roy promise not to get him drunk. The last thing I needed was to be arrested for contributing to a minor’s underage drinking.

  I made Monica promise to check in with them. She said she would as long as I started looking for my own car, then she tossed me her keys. I didn’t know what the big deal with me driving hers was anyway. She walked everywhere in town and if she was going somewhere else it was with Quinn and he drove them in his pickup.

  “Are we almost there?” Johnna asked for the tenth time. “I have to tinkle.”

  “We have about twenty more minutes,” I said. “Do you want me to stop at the next exit?”

  “No, I can hold it.”

  It was an hour drive, but you would think we were going to the ends of the earth. Betty sat in the backseat clutching a tin filled with an assortment of cookies. Her shiny blue-black hair had dulled to an almost lavender color. Cass died it for her so Betty wouldn’t have to spend the money to go to the beauty salon. Results varied.

  “Betty, how long has it been since you last saw Lana?” I asked.

  “Let’s see, they were over for Old Dan’s ninetieth birthday. Was that two years ago now or three?”

  “More like five,” Johnna said. “That was the year we were all at Ellsworth House on Christmas Eve since it was Old Dan’s birthday. Irene and Stew still lived there. It was before Cameron moved here.”

  “That’s right,” Betty said. “I know I’ve seen Lana since then, though. That was such a long time ago. Oh, I know. It was Canal Days last year. She brought me a few loaves of bread made with wheat from their farm, and I gave her some strawberry shortbread cookies, Starnes’s favorite.”

  “It’s too bad she doesn’t come to town more often,” I said. Betty didn’t drive, so I knew it was hard for her to travel to see anyone.

  “She used to, but over the years it’s not as easy to find the time, even for an hour drive.”

  “The farm must keep them busy,” I said.

  “Lana finds ways to keep herself busy,” Johnna muttered.

  “You don’t believe that,” Betty said, giving Johnna a playful swat on the shoulder. “I never knew of any proof, and she and I have always been close.”

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “Vicious rumors,” Betty said. “People always liked to talk about Lana because she spent time at the Cornerstone without Starnes.”

  “She likes the men, that one does,” Johnna said.

  “Rumors!” Betty sat back in a huff.

  “I guess that’s as good of a reason as any to stay away then.” If I were the subject of town gossip, I wouldn’t come back for visits, either.
“It was nice of you to bring the cookies,” I said, bridging to another topic I had to get out of the way, and it was good that Johnna was in the car to hear it. “Speaking of baking, did Clayton Banks try to trade you a bunch of wheat flour for anything in the past week or so?”

  “No,” Betty said. “He knew better than to try to barter with me. I wasn’t ever having any of it. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason. We heard he was trying to wheel and deal with Carl Finch so I wondered if maybe he’d done the same with you.”

  “He knew I run a cash-only business. I don’t bake on trade.”

  Johnna was true to her word and we didn’t have to stop until we got to Hamilton Wheat Farm and pulled up to the house. Acre after acre was covered in snow. You could see for miles in every direction. A few pine trees stood around the white farm house, two trucks and a car sat parked in the gravel driveway, and smoke rose from the chimney. We hadn’t called first, and we were lucky that it looked as if they were home.

  A dog raced up to the car, barking with her tail wagging. She was a big, tan mixed breed hound dog, and happy to see visitors.

  “May Bell!” a trim woman with dusky blond hair who must be Lana called from the porch as we got out of the car. “May Bell, heel!”

  The dog continued to trounce around us, bouncing and wagging, tongue lolling.

  “Hello,” Betty called, waving. “Hope it’s okay that we stopped out to see you.”

  “Betty! What a surprise. And Johnna. Come on in.” She turned her head to the side and called into the house. “Starnes! We have company!”

  I wiped my feet on the mat and followed them inside. “This is Cameron Hayman,” Betty said. “Irene and Stewart’s daughter-in-law.”

  “I heard Ben got remarried,” Lana said, shaking my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Cameron.”

  “Nice to meet you, too.”

  She ushered us into the front room, which had a large open archway to the kitchen. A man, who I assumed was Starnes, waved and opened a door off the kitchen. “Good to see you. Compressor on the furnace is on the fritz. Just going down to do some work. You ladies have a nice chat.” He slung a coil of copper tubing over his shoulder and tromped down the basement steps.

  An enormous pot steamed on the kitchen stove, and Lana rushed in and turned it off. “Just making a big batch of corn bread,” she said, and patted a big burlap bag of cornmeal with the Metamora Grist Mill’s logo on it.

  “Enough for an army, looks like,” Johnna said, plopping down in a swivel chair beside the fireplace.

  “It freezes well,” Lana said. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “I brought cookies.” Betty stepped toward the kitchen, but Lana rushed toward her taking them. “I hope those shortcake cookies are in here,” she said, patting Betty’s arm. “You know how much we love those.”

  “Of course! I made them special for you.”

  “I’ll take some coffee,” Johnna said.

  “I’ll help you get it,” Betty offered, but Lana shooed her back to the sofa.

  “You sit and get comfortable. I’ll be right there.”

  Lana wasn’t a bad-looking woman, and I could see how in her younger years she would’ve turned the heads of men. That alone could earn a woman an unwarranted reputation.

  I took a seat in a wooden rocking chair between the sofa and fireplace. On the mantel there were photos of families, parents posing with teenage kids. I figured it must be Lana and Starnes’s kids and grandkids. Their kids might’ve gone to school with Jason Banks and Ben. “Did David Dixon ever have any kids?” I asked, wondering who stood to inherit.

  “What’s this about David Dixon?” Lana asked.

  I realized my blunder instantly. Had word got around about Dixon’s death?

  “He’s dead,” Johnna said, not looking up from her knitting.

  “Dead? What? How? But I thought Clayton … are both of them gone?” She sat on the sofa next to Betty, her face void of expression. The news hadn’t hit her yet.

  “It’s terrible,” Betty said. “Awful. He was killed last night at the winter festival.”

  “Killed? Both of them?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand how this is happening. Who would’ve … ”

  “We’ll find out,” I said. “I mean, my husband will find out. Ben.”

  “That’s right. He’s the sheriff in town now, isn’t he?” Lana’s brows lowered as she eyed me.

  “He is. Yes.”

  A beep sounded from the kitchen. “That’s the coffeemaker,” Lana said. She rose from the sofa and padded across the carpet back into the kitchen.

  “She’s taking the news hard,” Betty said.

  “How could you tell?” I asked. “I couldn’t read her expression.”

  “I know Lana. I can tell. She puts on a brave mask, but inside she’s hurting. It’s been a shock to us all.”

  “I’m sure it has.” Ties ran deep in Metamora.

  In the end, we only stayed a little over a half an hour. I didn’t find Lana Buntley overly welcoming. Perhaps it was the shock of the sudden deaths of two long-time friends. Perhaps it was her desire to have an empty house when she broke the news to Starnes. Maybe it was a fear of her husband being next on the murderer’s list considering his connection with the two victims.

  Whatever the case, we were back on the road in less time that it took to get there and Johnna was regretting downing a cup of coffee. “You’re going to have to pull over this time, Cam,” she said. I made a note to not let her have any beverages before or during our next car trip.

  • Six •

  A family dinner Sunday night was just what the doctor ordered. We all needed some time to come together in the warmth and safety of Ellsworth House. I even invited Irene and Stew. Fortunately for everyone’s stomaches, Monica agreed to cook.

  Ben hovered while I set the table in the dining room that we never used outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas. “Why are you nervous?” I asked.

  “I’m not nervous,” he said, straightening the fork I just laid. “Why would I be nervous? I am curious, though.”

  “About?”

  “This dinner. Do you have some announcement to make, Cam?”

  “Announcement?” I placed the last silverware setting on the table and looked at him. “Oh … ” I knew where this conversation was heading. Irene wanted us to either make up or break up, no more hemming and hawing around dating and seeing if we could get back together permanently.

  Ben wanted to move back in. I’d told him I’d think about it. That was a few months ago now and I honestly had kept it in the back of my mind where it didn’t get a whole lot of consideration.

  I was for not messing with the status quo.

  It worked.

  We had our movie nights. He stopped in whenever he felt like it. Mia lived here with me, he lived in Carl Finch’s gate house, and all was right with the world.

  “No,” I said, taking a couple steps toward him. “I mean, that’s not what I had in mind for tonight. I just thought it would be nice to get together after what happened last night—and the day before. I guess I felt like having family around.”

  He nodded and gave me a reluctant smile. “It’s a nice idea. I like family dinners.”

  I knew what his words implied. He’d like a family dinner with me and Mia every night. It was like I was actually inside his mind sometimes. The trouble was when we did have family dinners every night, he worked through the majority of them. But that was in the past. We were trying things again. “We should do it more often,” I said, meaning it. Our relationship was going well, so why not?

  Ben reached out and rubbed my arm. “I’d like that.”

  “I would, too,” I said, and he leaned down and kissed me lightly.

  “What’s this then?” Quinn asked, rushing in with a couple trivets and serving spoons.
“Am I interrupting?”

  “No,” Ben said. “You’re not interrupting. Does Monica have anything else she wants brought in? I’ll go ask her.”

  He strode into the kitchen, and Quinn raised a brow in silent question.

  “Nothing new to report,” I told him.

  “With this special dinner put on, I couldn’t help wondering.”

  “Neither could he. If I knew that’s what everyone would think I would’ve just put on my pj’s and ordered a pizza.”

  “And miss out on Monica’s pot roast and potatoes?”

  “You’re right. It’s worth every question. It smells heavenly.”

  The doorbell rang right before I heard the front door open and Irene call, “Hello? We’re here!” in her shrill, overly happy voice. Something told me she was expecting this to be the big announcement, too. The start of Ben and Cameron’s reunion tour.

  The dogs were barking, their nails tip-tapping on the hardwood as they scampered up the hallway. “Better go say hello,” I said.

  “I’ve got your back,” Quinn said, chuckling as he followed me into the kitchen. As always, his dog, Conan, the dignified Irish Wolfhound, was sitting calmly, out of the way by the back door while my obnoxious pack jumped and licked and pawed at Irene and Stewart saying hello. Except Isobel, who stood in the living room growling because all she wanted in the world was to be left alone in her old age.

  “Down!” I shouted. “Gus! Zack! Cody!”

  “Zack and Cody?” Monica yelled from the kitchen. “What show is that from?”

  “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody,” I called back. “It used to be on Saturday mornings.”

  “A kid’s show, no doubt,” Irene said. “I’ve never heard of it, and these beasts don’t deserve such nice names.” She picked up a magazine from the hall table where I dumped my mail, rolled it up, and waved it around in front of her, threatening the dogs.

  “What happened to Nicky and Alex?” Monica asked, sweeping down the hallway to where we stood. She lured the dogs into the family room with her Bounding for Blueberry Dog Treats.