Murder at the Art & Craft Fair (19 page)

Chapter
Thirty-
Four

We emerged from The Twisted Sifter and walked a couple
of blocks back to Constitution Square State Park. Maybe our short jaunt, fully
loaded down with goodies, would offset what we had consumed from those two
great bakeries. We took our purchases and walked over and took seats on a
couple of the benches. We sat, nibbled, and tried our best to get most of the
cupcakes in our mouths. Icing has a habit of wanting to take up residence on
the outside of the mouth, and cake crumbs want to dribble down the front of
whatever it is you are wearing.

We took a few minutes to enjoy the autumn breeze, and
the colorful trees that adorned the park. I had no idea what Constitution
Square State Park was, or why there was a state park downtown, but from the
look of the buildings we saw scattered here and there, I figured whatever led
to it becoming a park happened a long time ago. Maybe it could have something
to do with one of the Constitutions I studied in school, the document or the
ship, or maybe it has something to do with Kentucky that I didn’t have to
study, or that I forgot. I felt that if I got bored, or needed exercise after I
polished off my share of the cupcakes, I could wander over and read a plaque.
Every park of this type has a plaque. I just had to find it.

Twelve bites past enough, we called a truce, and saved
the rest of the cupcakes, the cheesecake, and all that we had purchased at
Burke’s and had yet to eat, in case we had to spend the night in a four-holer
outhouse. Lou and I had the girls check us out for cake crumbs on our shirts
and icing on our lips. We were about to question someone in regard to our
murder case and we wanted to look our best when we did. Because we had work to
do, I refrained from finding and memorizing anything stated on a plaque, and
took the next step to finding Joan Arrington.

I had Googled Joan Arrington’s address, and printed
the map, so we didn’t waste any time trying to find her street. I was thinking
she didn’t work except for making crafts, so I figured we could find her home.
Our luck was improving. The house was in town. I saw no nosy neighbor on the
porch next door, and saw no little boy with a hammer and nails. And I saw a
minivan in Joan Arrington’s driveway. Lou drove two doors past her house and
parked. Joan Arrington had seemed nice, but I wasn’t sure how she would react
if two couples showed up at her front door, or if she looked out and spotted
two women in Lou’s car. Besides, it wouldn’t have looked all that professional.
But then I forgot to realize at the time that most people would be
uncomfortable if two men knocked on their door. Even one stranger knocking
makes most people uneasy. Two strangers usually mean someone stopping by to
invite you to a church you don’t want to go to or to convert you to their
religion. Or it could be one door-to-door salesman training another. One
stranger, almost always means a young salesman who, more than likely, will be
off to another job or another town next week. At least our chances were good
that Joan Arrington would remember who we were. I’ve been told I make a lasting
impression.

Lou and I got out of the car, told the girls we didn’t
know how long we’d be gone, and told them to come running if they needed a
policeman. Then, we walked over to Joan Arrington’s house and I rang the bell.
I felt relief when I heard footsteps walking toward the door. Joan Arrington
opened the door, took a minute, and then recognized us.

“You’re those two policemen from Hilldale. What in the
world are you doing here?”

“Well, we had to come to Danville anyway on other
business, and we had a couple more questions for you, so we decided to stop
by.”

“Well, come in. This is a surprise. So, what can I
help you with?”

“Mrs. Arrington, when we talked to you before, I think
there were a couple of things you forgot to tell us.”

The smile that had been plastered on her face left in
a hurry.

“Like what?”

“We’ve had two or three witnesses tell us that you and
Mr. Kincaid were kind of cozy Saturday night.”

“We were not.”

“Are you saying he didn’t touch you?”

“No, he didn’t touch me.”

“Not even when you stumbled when you were on the
ladder?”

“Oh, I forgot that. He merely grabbed me to keep me
from falling. It wasn’t anything romantic. Besides, I thought I already told
you that. The guy’s married for Pete’s sake.”

“At first you forgot to tell me that the two of you
had dinner together Friday night, and then you didn’t tell me that he was seen
holding you Saturday night.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it holding me. He kept
me from falling. It wasn’t like a hug or an embrace of some kind. Don’t tell me
somebody complained because he caught me when I fell.”

“Not to me they didn’t. One other thing, Mrs.
Arrington. You also didn’t tell me that before you left Saturday night that
Earl Clements stopped by your tent and gave you the Statue of Liberty he bought
from Kincaid, and asked you to return it to Kincaid, and to tell him that he
was stopping payment on the check he gave him.”

“What? Maybe the reason I never told you that is
because it never happened.”

“Clements said he gave it to the woman whose tent was
next to Kincaid’s, that he gave it to her as she was zipping her tent getting
ready to leave.”

“Well, if he told you that he’s either lying, or he’s
mistaken.”

“I have no idea if he was lying, but I doubt if he was
mistaken. No other woman would be zipping your tent. At least I don’t think one
would. Do you?”

“Of course not.”

“You didn’t find anything missing from your tent
Sunday morning, did you?’

“No. Was there something missing from someone else’s
tent?”

“No, but we haven’t any report that someone was
standing next to anyone else’s tent. Did you see Clements Saturday night, about
the time you were getting ready to leave?”

“Not that I recall. I told you about that other man,
the man who came to buy some puzzles from Tom. Best I can remember, he was the
only person I saw just before I left, and he was still with Tom when I left.”

“Clements knew about that man, too, so Clements had to
have been there. Do you have any idea why he would say he gave the statue to
you?”

“Of course not. Well, not unless he’s the one who
killed Tom, and he’s trying to place the blame on someone else. Or I was the
most likely person he could think of to say he gave the puzzle to. Maybe he saw
me with Tom and felt I was as good of a person to blame as anyone. I have no
idea whether he was there or not. All I know is that neither he nor anyone else
gave me anything to give Tom.”

“I don’t guess you would have happened to find one of
Kincaid’s Statues of Liberty on the ground shortly before you left.”

“Of course not. If that guy you are talking about was
really there on Saturday night, he probably came after I left. Of course there
were still a few people in the park when I left, but I can’t tell you who,
other than Tom and the guy who came to buy some puzzles. The others were merely
shadows in the distance. I didn’t pay any attention to any of them except to
know that we weren’t the last people to leave the park. As for whether they
were male or female, I have no idea. The only ones I saw close enough to
identify was Tom’s late customer and the guy set up on the other side of Tom.”

“Speaking of the guy next to Kincaid, did you see or
hear him pull off?”

“No. Really it’s a blur as to whether he left first or
I did. I know he went by one time when Tom was helping me with my tent, but I
can’t remember if he came back again as I was leaving, or not. I thought he
did, but maybe he didn’t.”

As far as the returned puzzle was concerned, there was
nothing I could do. It was one person’s word against another.  I couldn’t see
Joan Arrington killing a man she was falling for, even if she wouldn’t admit
that she was interested in him. I knew that at least part of what Clements said
was true. But why would he admit to being there, if he was the murderer, and
why would he make up a story about Joan Arrington if he wasn’t the murderer?
Like each of the people I’d questioned earlier, there wasn’t enough evidence to
arrest Joan Arrington, and I couldn’t think of any other questions to ask her,
so it was time to end our abbreviated conversation.

“Well, I guess that covers it for now. Thank you for
your time, Mrs. Arrington.”

“I’m sorry you had to come all this way for nothing.”

“Oh, it wasn’t for nothing. Like I said before. We had
other business in Danville. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else you
can help me with.”

“I can’t imagine anything else I can do to help you. I
think you’re better off looking somewhere else.”

“Maybe you’re right, Miss Arrington. Maybe you’re
right.”

Chapter
Thirty-
Five

I looked at my watch on the way back to the car. It
was 2:47. Still early. We got to the girls and conferred with them to see how
they wanted to spend the rest of the day. They said if we weren’t in any hurry
they would like to stop and have dinner in Lexington, since Lexington had many
more choices than any other town we would go through. Lou and I said it was
fine with us.

On the way back to Lexington on a road that the locals
had told us had been under repair for quite some time, we found a store that
sold all kinds of handcrafted items. Since none of us had bought a handcrafted
item since Sunday, we felt we needed to stop in and peruse the aisles. There
was a lot to see, so we were there almost an hour, which I’m sure was longer
than most people spend there.

When we left that store we knew we had approximately
forty-five minutes to come up with a place for dinner. Lou and I deferred to
the girls. They chose our restaurant in a way quite different from the way Lou
or I would have chosen. They took out their phones, touched different places on
the screen, and connected to places I wouldn’t know how to connect to, unless I
was on my computer. When Jennifer saw that Lexington had a Carrabba’s she told
us that she had one near where she lived and she loved their food. The fact
that both Sutton’s and Carrabba’s were Italian restaurants did nothing to
defuse Jennifer’s suggestion. While Sutton’s is an Italian restaurant, I was
the only one of the four of us who ordered anything Italian for lunch, and I
can eat Italian several days in a row.

Carrabba’s is in a shopping district the locals know
as Hamburg. Some people who live in Lexington tell me that Hamburg is the
German word for confusion. They say if you can find something in Hamburg, it
means you are lucky, the place you are looking for can be seen from the street,
or you have stumbled upon this place before. Carrabba’s fits description number
two. It can easily be seen from Man O War, if you are brave enough to take your
eyes off your texting and/or the traffic that is surrounding you. And believe
me, if you are around Hamburg at some time other than when wolves are howling
and vampires are prowling, there will be traffic around you. The trade off,
according to the locals, is that most places in Hamburg are worth going to.
Hamburg has more restaurants than most towns in Kentucky, and according to
those who have been there, Carrabba’s is at or near the top of that list.

Most restaurants have the same appetizers. Maybe the
look of the onion, potato, or nachos varies slightly from one restaurant to
another, but it’s basically the same thing. It was refreshing to find a
restaurant like Sutton’s that gave us a unique appetizer in pepperoni pups at lunch,
and once we arrived at Carrabba’s and had a chance to check out their menu, we
found some unique possibilities there, too. We decided to split two appetizers.
I suggested that one of them be zucchini fritte. No one had a problem with
that, and once the slices of zucchini arrived, everyone complimented me on my
choice. The dipping sauce was worthy of sucking through a straw and ordering
more, and although I might have considered doing something like that at one
time, I figured I had been refined, and refrained from doing so. Even if I
haven’t been refined, I would have done my best to improve my manners with the
girls with us. The menu called the sauce for the zucchini roasted garlic aioli.
I had no idea what that was. I know what garlic is. It’s something that is
supposed to be good for you unless your objective is to kiss someone who hasn’t
partaken of any garlic. While I hoped for a few kisses, the person I planned to
kiss had partaken of said garlic. At any rate, whatever the aioli was, it was
good. And it was a word that would make Pat Sajak and Vanna White proud. No
other word with so few letters contains more vowels that can be bought.

For our other venture into the pre-entrée course, we
ordered a grilled chicken pizza. It had an Italian sweet and sour sauce, pine
nuts, scallions, and Romano, fontina, and mozzarella cheeses. The pine nuts
reminded me of Euell Theophilus Gibbons, although his choice of tree nuts was
wild hickory, and the scallions, reminded me of rapscallions, which I assume
are a little different. I wasn’t smart enough to tell one cheese from another,
but I liked the blend. So did the others.

We each ordered a different entrée. My choice was
Spiedino Di Mare, which for all you non-Italians was shrimp and scallops coated
in bread crumbs, grilled, and topped with lemon butter sauce. It came with a
salad with dressing you can’t see through, and for my side I chose Tag Pic Pac.
That’s a fancy way of saying really good spaghetti with tomatoes and those
other things that make it taste good. Jennifer ordered Mezzaluna, which is
half-moon ravioli with chicken, ricotta, and spinach, in a tomato cream sauce.
Lou chose Lobster Ravioli, and Thelma Lou selected an Italian favorite of many
people I know, Chicken Marsala. Like so many of their dishes, we were stuffed
before we got to the dolci (dessert). We waited a few minutes before we paid
the bill and waddled out the door. Boy, was my Wii going to be upset with me.

+++

As Lou drove back to Hilldale, I couldn’t help but
think of how different our last few days had been because the girls were with
us. If Jennifer hadn’t come to town I would never have ventured to the Hilldale
Art & Craft Fair, and wouldn’t have added a few new Kentucky authors to my
reading list. Well, I would have, but only after someone discovered Kincaid’s
body. Who knows? Maybe no one would have gone inside of his tent before the
event ended if I hadn’t done so. And I don’t want to think of what my life has
been like after I questioned those first few suspects in town. Even if I discounted
the fact of who knows how we would have gotten back to town if the girls hadn’t
reported us missing, our trips to West Liberty and Danville would have been
much different without the girls. Instead, we would have taken a couple of
months to recover from out trek out into the country during which time
Lightning would have rusted from neglect. Then, we would have hopped over to
West Liberty and back in the same day, without a stay at the Days Inn. The next
day, we would have made the longer trip to Danville, but minus our stops at
Sutton’s, Burke’s, The Twisted Sifter, and Carrabba’s. More than likely we
would have pulled through a drive-thru at lunch, and eaten dinner alone when we
returned home. Sometimes we forget how much better our world is when we have
females in our lives. But we don’t forget for long. At least, I don’t.

Thelma Lou interrupted my daydreaming with a comment
and question from the front seat.

“You know that Jennifer is leaving in the morning. Do
you have time to come over here for breakfast and to see her off? We’ve got all
these goodies we bought. None of us are in any shape to finish them off
tonight. What do you think of a sugar rush tomorrow morning?”

I spoke before Lou could.

“Jennifer can give me some sugar any time she wants.”

She laughed and took the hint. Lou gave me a look that
said, “Cy, next time you can drive,” and then refocused his eyes on the road.

It was well after dark when we arrived at Thelma
Lou’s. To be almost exact, it was a little before 9:30 when we touched down
accompanied by fond memories of our day. It was a great day, but I wasn’t sure
we were any closer to apprehending a murderer. Thelma Lou asked us what time we
wanted to reconvene for our bon voyage party, and Lou and I, at the same time,
said, “Noon.” Cooler heads prevailed, and we agreed to show up at 10:00. We
would sleep in. Maybe I would catch a murderer in my sleep.