Murder at the Book Fair (10 page)

Sometimes people who volunteer at
certain places do so in order to benefit themselves in one way or another, but
I was working on the assumption that neither Arnold nor Susie Hammond had
murdered Portwood. So, I called them to make sure they would be home when Lou
and I arrived. They gave me directions on how to get to their house. I was glad
they did. It only took me two days to get there by car. Many miles after the
smells of a distillery were washed away by the smell of the
Salt River
we were far enough removed from
civilization that we found the
Hammond
's
house. They might have had company before, but I doubt if it was anyone from a
large city. Finally, when I came to a road that had white lines painted on the
outside of the road I figured I'd come to the right road, although whoever had
painted it had run out of paint before finishing their masterpiece. Either that
or it was okay to run off the road in certain places. Eventually I found their
house and upon seeing the couple my first impression was that neither of them
was a hardened criminal. They looked more like a couple you might want to share
a meal with, or someone who would be willing to tell you about their
grandchildren. But then only grandparents of hardened criminals don't want to
tell you about their grandchildren, and even then they place the blame for
their grandchildren's incarceration on someone else. I call it the That Woman
You Gave Me syndrome that first appeared in Genesis.

While I did tell the
Hammonds
over the phone that I was in law
enforcement and I was calling in regard to something that happened at the KBF,
I didn't tell them that the something was a murder, or that the murder happened
on their watch. I didn't know if it happened then or not. I just knew that one
of the authors they took water and lunch to had been murdered either somewhere
in Frankfort, on the way home from Frankfort, or after he arrived home
somewhere outside of Westport, but before he ran into the Ohio River.

I had no idea if the
Hammonds
get a lot of visitors out where
they live, but they did think enough of our visit that they offered us water,
coffee, or lemonade. Mr. Hammond went to fetch us something to drink while I
asked Mrs. Hammond how they liked living where they did. I got the feeling that
if they didn't like it there they would live somewhere else.

I began gently by asking them
about the KBF, and what they did for the event, before I mentioned any authors'
names. I focused on authors in general before I got to dead authors we all
might know. They were shocked to hear that Portwood had been murdered, and more
shocked when I told them it could have happened at the KBF. Neither knew of any
enemies he had, and neither of them seemed to know about his bank account. I
thought they were telling the truth so the words "$50,000" never came
up. Both of them told me they knew Portwood, but never saw him away from the
KBF. Then I asked them about Jake Cartwright. I was surprised they didn't know
him any better than they did Portwood, since he lived in the same county they
did. When I brought this up I learned that Cartwright lived on the other side
of the county. Actually, I already knew this, but I learned that they knew it,
too. The
Hammonds
said that they liked both men,
and that most of the authors they had met, famous or infamous, were nice
people, and not full of themselves. I figured those who were full of themselves
were invited to inferior book fairs instead. Or not invited anywhere. The only
clue I received from them was when I asked if they spotted anything out of the
ordinary. They said that someone was there posing as a volunteer, but they
didn't think the person had gone through the volunteer training, and maybe was
there for some other reason. Neither noticed the young man, whose name they
didn't know, go near Portwood or do anything out of the way, but he was helping
out on Portwood's row. But then both Mr. and Mrs. Hammond said that they were
responsible for a long row of authors and something could have happened when
they were on the other end. I remembered how long the row was and agreed that
someone could be murdered on one end of a row without anyone on the other end
knowing it had happened unless someone screamed. Of course both of the
Hammonds
pointed out that there were other
volunteers there too, so they weren't the only ones helping out. I got a
description of the fictitious volunteer, but thirty minutes later I hadn't
gathered any information to make me zero in on any one person. I planned to
talk to some of the authors who sat on the same row where Portwood sat. I would
see if any of them noticed anything out of the ordinary from one of the
volunteers. I still had trouble believing that anyone poisoned Portwood in front
of hundreds of people. If his water or lunch was poisoned, my guess was that it
happened before he received it. I would ask the other authors at Portwood's
table and see who might have handed him a bottle of water. With everyone paying
attention to the people in front of them, I doubted if anyone could tell me
much about what happened to Portwood.

Neither of the
Hammonds
knew exactly where Jake
Cartwright lived, but when I gave them the name of his road they wrote down
directions for me to get there. Sometimes a local's directions are better than
following a GPS. But then I'd had friends who had told me stories about ending
up on a dead-end street or next to a grassy field after following a GPS or a
local's directions.

If there had been somewhere where
we could have stopped for provisions for our trek back to Lawrenceburg I would
have stopped, but most of what we saw were farmhouses, and I didn't know if the
people who lived in them were the shooting kind or the neighborly kind. God was
with us so we didn't come up behind anyone seated on a tractor seat or a
horse-drawn carriage carrying Amish or English. In a couple days time we found
highway 127 and headed north past Lawrenceburg in hopes of finding Cartwright's
house. When I got back to a place where I had a signal I called Amy Smith to
see if any of her volunteers matched the description Susie Hammond had given me
of the fake volunteer. She said no one matching that description had gone
through volunteer training. I wondered if someone matching that description had
gone through poison training.

When we finally found Jake
Cartwright's house in an area as remote as the one the
Hammonds
lived in, I could see why they
didn't socialize with each other. I think I could have taken the
Martha Layne Collins Bluegrass
Parkway
and been in
Lexington
before I navigated my way from
one rural home to the other. And from what I had heard, I wasn't through seeing
rural
Kentucky
. Outside of
Westport
sounded more remote than outside
of Lawrenceburg, provided that was possible. But then I had to cross a river to
get from the
Hammonds
house to Cartwright's place, and
I was sure that all of my investigation anywhere near
Westport
would be south of the
Ohio River
.

Most of the time a guy's best
friend isn't the one who murders him, but sometimes it is. For that reason I
didn't call Cartwright to tell him we were coming and to put some cookies, or
bologna, cheese, and crackers, or hog jowls on a plate, so I hoped he would be
home when we got there. From what little I know about authors, I assumed that
most of them write during the day, and most of them do their writing at home.
Unless Cartwright does most of his writing in the barn, we didn't disturb his
writing time. The barn door opened when Lightning pulled up into what served as
a driveway. Cartwright  probably thought we were two lost guys who sold
insurance. He approached my side of the car, and informed me that the dog that
had followed him out of the barn wouldn't bite. He didn't say anything about
the bull that was on the other side of a fence.

"You guys look familiar, but
I can't place where I've seen you. You don't live around here, do you?"

"We bought the old Purdy
place."

"I'm afraid I'm not familiar
with the Purdy place."

"We weren't, either.
Otherwise we wouldn't have bought it. I opened the door and the whole house
fell down. I'm going back to see if I can get my money back."

Cartwright looked over at Lou.

"He's kidding, isn't
he?"

Lou nodded.

"So, where is it I know you
from? Wait! Now I've got it! You two came to the book fair and bought some of
my books, didn't you?"

"You'd be good at picking
people out of a lineup."

"Did you come to get more
books? You could have called. I would have mailed them to you."

"No, we came about Cyril
Portwood."

"Oh, Cereal. He doesn't live
with me. Only at the book fair. I bet you tried to read one of his books and
now you want to know where you need to go to return those you bought from him.
I always call him Cereal, but only because it infuriates him. He's probably the
only man outside of
England
with a first name like
that."

"Oh, he's a changed man now.
I don't think your calling him that will bother him anymore."

"Oh, you don't know Cereal
the way I do."

"How well do you know
him?"

"Oh, as well as a guy can who
only sees a fellow author two or three times a year. We usually eat together at
least once while we're at the book fair."

"What about this time?"

"You mean eating? Well, if
you don't count the fact that our tables were right next to each other on
Saturday, we ate lunch together on Thursday after we dropped our books off, and
then went and grabbed a bite to eat on Saturday before we both headed home. Why
so many questions about Cereal?"

"You don't know,  do
you?"

"You sound like something's
happened to him."

"Something has. He's been
murdered."

"Someone shot him. Who would
want to do that?"

"I imagine his brother or
sister would entertain that idea, but I'm not saying whether he was shot or
not."

"You're not kidding, are
you?"

"I'm afraid not."

"If this was in a book, if he
was shot with a small caliber gun, it's usually a woman. A more powerful gun
usually means a man did it. They say poison is a woman's crime. A man would hit
him over the head, shoot him, or slide a knife into his gut."

"What about if he was pushed
off a balcony?"

"Where was Cereal near a
balcony? Did he go somewhere after I left him, before he headed home?"

"I don't know. I didn't check
his gas gauge."

"Well, I'm sticking to my
guns. S0, if there was a large hole in him, more than likely a man did it, but
if he was poisoned, my guess is cherchez la femme."

"You've mentioned poison
twice now. Why poison? Most people who are murdered aren't poisoned."

"Oh, I guess it's the author
in me. I read a lot of Agatha Christie growing up and a lot of her victims were
poisoned."

"So you think maybe I should
include her on my list of suspects?"

"From what I understand, I
think she had a great alibi for last Saturday."

"But let's compare the
likelihood of poison or shooting someone. If he died at the book fair, there's
much more chance of him being poisoned, because of all the witnesses. Some
people will turn if they hear a gunshot. Poisoning someone doesn't make a lot
of noise."

"Well, I can tell you he
wasn't killed at the book fair. Remember, he and I went to eat together
afterward."

"So you didn't poison him
until afterward."

"Ordinarily I would admit to
the crime, but you seem to be serious, so I'm not admitting to poisoning him
just in case he was poisoned."

"I'm just saying that either
a man or a woman might have chosen poison if there was a crowd around. And some
women can be violent and shoot guns as well as men can sometimes."

"You sound like a man with
three ex-wives."

"More like a cop who has
worked a lot of murder cases. But I'll go ahead and tell you, this time the guy
was poisoned. Whether a man or a woman did it, we still don't know. That's why
we're out and about talking to everyone who knew him."

"Are you really a cop?"

"Over thirty years
worth."

"And someone poisoned
him?"

"So the autopsy said."     

"And there were a lot of
people around when he was poisoned?"

"I don't know about that. We
just know that he was poisoned sometime between late afternoon on Friday and
Saturday night when he got home."

"I see. And you know that I
was around him part of that time, and so you came to see me."