Stay At Home Dad 03-Father Knows Death (8 page)

I thought for a moment. “George worked for the fair, right?”

He nodded. “Yes, sir. Every year. He was in charge of the grounds. Big job. And he did it for nearly free because he loved the fair. It cut into his other jobs, but he didn’t care.”

“What other jobs?” I asked.

“He had a landscaping business and did some handyman work,” Butch said. “He was just one of those guys who could do a bit of everything. But come fair time, he’d clear his schedule. He liked being around the fair and being a part of the setup and upkeep. I mean—he loved it. He planned his entire life around it.”

“He work a lot with Mama?”

He smirked. “What do you think? Of course. She calls the shots, so she was the one giving him his workload.”

“He get along with her?”

“Actually, better than most,” Butch admitted. “He just kind of laughed about her. I think he just liked working here so much, that he was willing to overlook all of her crap. He found a way to coexist with her.”

Cars were now streaming out of the parking lot.

“Was George in a relationship?” I asked. “Was he married? Girlfriend?”

Butch’s face went crimson just like it had during the meeting. “Hey, man. I can’t talk about that kinda stuff.”

“Why not?”

“It’s against club rules to talk about other guys’ girls,” he said with a straight face. “That kind of thing could lead to bad news for me.” He shook his head, as if he was reminding himself. “No, sir. I can’t talk about that. My bros might find out and I’d have to answer to the rest of the PDs.”

“The PDs?”

“The Petal Dawgs,” Butch said. “That’s the name of the club.”

16

“So you think she’s lying?” I asked.

Victor nodded. “Yep.”

We were leaning against my minivan in the parking lot of the library. Most everyone had left and there were only a few cars remaining. Butch had excused himself, driving off in a late model Ford pickup rather than on a motorcycle like I’d expected, and I was left to ponder the validity of the Petal Dawgs when Victor came shuffling out of the library and motioned me to the parking lot.

“I didn’t ask Matilda anything point-blank,” Victor said. “I didn’t want to freak her out. So I asked a couple of questions about how long she’d been on the board, that kind of thing. Then I asked how well she knew Spellman and she got real quiet.”

“So you think Matilda was having an affair with Spellman, then?”

He adjusted the hat on his head. “I don’t know if it was an affair, or what it was, but there was something going on. I started asking her questions and she turned red like a tomato and that bozo in the wig came over to intervene.”

“Bruce. The bozo’s name is Bruce.”

He waved a tiny hand in the warm evening air as if shooing away a pesky mosquito. “Yeah, sure, Bruce. Whatever. The dope in the wig. But he came over and tried to get all tough-guy with me and I told him if he didn’t back off, I’d beat the crap out of him like I do everyone else.”

“I’d like to see that list.”

“Shut up. Anyway, she didn’t give me a single straight answer about Spellman, and I felt like the rest of that group was eavesdropping the entire time. The old bag was definitely trying to listen in. We need to get Matilda alone and talk to her.” He paused. “Actually, I’d rather you get her alone. I’m afraid she might sit on me and kill me. Jesus, is she big.”

Before I could come up with a way to get her alone, the doors to the library opened and Mama emerged, leading her crew. The Nor-volds walked quickly to their old pickup, Bruce and Matilda walked slowly toward an old SUV, and Mama was beelining right for us.

“What exactly am I paying you two to do?” she demanded, her eyes bearing down on me first, then Victor.

“Investigate,” Victor said. “That’s what you gave me the retainer for.”

“Right. So what exactly do you think you’re doing in there upsetting Matilda?”

“I wasn’t upsetting her. I was asking her questions.”

“That upset her,” Mama said, her eyes bulging.

“What exactly were you asking her?”

“That, ma’am, is exactly none of your business.”

Mama’s head looked like one of those cartoon characters whose heads were about to explode and steam started to shoot out their ears.

“Shorty, I am paying you and you work for me,” she said through locked teeth. “Everything you do is my business.”

Victor looked at me, bored. “Do all of you tall people just resort to short jokes when you got nothin’ else?”

I shrugged. “Pretty much.”

He turned his attention back to Mama. “We are investigating. When we have something to share, we will. Until then, who we question and what we ask them is our business. If you’d like to dictate every single question, then maybe you should be the private detective, instead.”

I worried for a moment that she might try to tackle him and I wasn’t sure how I’d intervene if that was the case. I definitely would’ve been on Victor’s side, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to appropriately remove an old woman from a midget. They don’t teach you that in part-time private detective school.

“Maybe I’ll do just that and ask for my retainer back,” she said with a smug smile.

“I’ll write you a check right now if you’d like,” Victor said, fixing her with his own smug smile. It was fun watching them play chicken with each other.

Her smile dwindled.

She didn’t know Victor well enough to understand two things about him: the worst thing you could do was threaten him, and he had more money than he knew what to do with. He wasn’t kidding. He would absolutely have written her a check right there on the spot.

But, of course, she backed away from her threat.

“Well, when am I gonna know something?” she asked, waving a hand in the air. “No one seems to know anything. The police don’t know anything and neither do you two.”

“As soon as we know something, we’ll let you know,” Victor said, satisfied that he had once again swung an argument in his favor and gained the upper hand. “We still have more people to talk to.”

“Who?”

“People who might know things.”

She scowled at both of us and looked like she was about to say something, but instead stormed off to her car.

A brand spanking new BMW.

17

When I got home, Carly was already passed out after the long day at the fair. I checked in on her and gave her a good-night kiss on her forehead before heading to my own room. I remembered Julianne’s orders from earlier and found her stretched out on our bed in cotton shorts and a tank top that barely covered her massive belly, reading a magazine.

As I undressed, I told Julianne about Mama’s car and about the motorcycle club.

“I think I remember hearing something about the motorcycle club,” she said while I brushed my teeth. “Bunch of guys going through their mid-life crisis together. Not sure I’ve ever seen them, though. But I think I remember hearing the tail end of some story where they got kicked out of Sturgis or something.”

“That sounds about right,” I said, lying down next to her. “This guy didn’t exactly give off a biker vibe to me. He wasn’t even riding a bike tonight.”

“Was he wearing a leather jacket? With, like, a skull and crossbones on the back?”

“He’s an accountant.”

“So there were dollar signs and a ten-key machine on the back of it? How terrifying.”

I laid my hand on her stomach. “How’s baby?”

“Still in me.” She sighed. “Carly asked if it was going to come out her size since it was staying in there so long.”

I laughed and so did she, placing her hand over mine.

“You feel okay?” I asked.

“Like Shamu, but, otherwise, yeah, I’m okay. Tell me more about the meeting.”

When I finished sharing the details, she was staring at the ceiling, mulling it over. “So was this Butch guy suggesting that they were sabotaging the fair?”

“I’m not sure what he was suggesting, but I think it could certainly be interpreted that way.”

“That makes no sense, though,” she said, shaking her head. “Why in the world would the board do that?”

I agreed, and it was what I had kept working over in my head on my way home from the meeting. It didn’t make sense. If they were skimming from the coffers of the fair, what exactly did they have to gain from sabotaging it? I didn’t see any way that that would work in their favor.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But the things he was saying? He was sort of right. All of those things are happening this year. Not to mention what happened with the replacement freezer. And it’s hard to look at any of them and not think that they make for a substandard fair.”

“Maybe it’s coincidence.”

“Maybe.”

She rolled her head in my direction. “But what? I can hear the doubt in your voice.”

“You know I don’t really believe in coincidence,” I said. “Lunacy in this town, I absolutely believe in. But coincidence?” I shook my head. “Almost never.”

“But let’s say this,” Julianne said, putting on her trial lawyer hat. “Let’s say the Ferris wheel really is broken. That’s not hard to imagine. Those carnival rides look sketchy to begin with and I’d imagine that depending on the problem, they could be difficult and time-consuming to repair.”

“True.”

“And I could absolutely see the insurer declining to cover a demolition derby or raising their coverage fee so exorbitantly that it was difficult to pay.”

“Okay.”

“The elementary school snow cone thing? Who knows? Maybe some teacher said the wrong thing to her and pissed the old lady off. That could be any number of things.”

“Sure.”

“And no one counted on you finding that guy in the freezer,” she continued. “Except for maybe me, because these days it seems like you get in trouble as soon as you leave the house.”

“Ha.”

“But no one counted on that, so no one could’ve predicted it and what it’s done to the food stand and overall attendance. And who’s to say that new freezer was even working to begin with? Maybe it was an old one that sat around for years and no one ever used.” She nodded to herself, liking her own argument. “So when you separate all of those things out, I think you could very much say that it’s all bad luck and timing.”

This is why she was such a good lawyer. She could divorce herself from the situation and look at it with fresh eyes, with no agenda or loyalty toward anyone else. She didn’t just play devil’s advocate. She brought the devil’s advocate to life.

“So you think I’m being paranoid?” I asked. “You think it could all just be due to circumstance and that Spellman’s murder could be totally unrelated?”

“Yes.” She thought for a moment. “But, maybe not.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think it means you should look at the fair and at Spellman’s death separately,” she said. “Focus on Spellman. If the stuff that’s going on at the fair is related, I’d think it would reveal itself as you look at what happened to him.” She paused. “Since you are now, very clearly, knee-deep in this case, after ignoring my pleas to stay out of it.”

“Wait. I thought you gave me permission before to ignore your earlier pleas.”

“Permission was never granted. You just ignored me. And I have learned to just live with you and your maddening ways.”

I kissed her cheek. “Yes, you have. Thank you.”

“Whatever,” she said, barely suppressing a smile. “Now. You have a job to do. Or are you ignoring that, too?”

Of course, she remembered that. Pregnancy brain wouldn’t get in the way of a mission. “You really are quite the seductress today,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes and pushing herself up. “Now roll over on your back so I can climb on top of you and try and get this enormous infant out of me.”

18

The infant did not leave Julianne’s body that night, but not for my lack of trying.

Twice.

She was up before me and already cooking breakfast by the time I made my way downstairs. The kitchen smelled like scrambled eggs and coffee.

“No luck?” I asked, kissing her cheek.

“None,” she said grimly. “I’m moving to Operation Hot Sauce now.”

“Is that my new nickname?”

She produced a bottle of orangish-red liquid from the fridge and held it up. “This is my new boyfriend.”

“I’m a little jealous, but I think I can take him.”

She unscrewed the cap and covered her eggs with the liquid. “I’m going to chase the baby out with hot sauce. It’s going on everything I eat today.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“I don’t recommend ice cream, then.”

She shoved a forkful of sauce-soaked eggs into her mouth. “Everything.”

“You’re sure that’s okay for the baby?” I asked.

“The hot sauce?” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Deuce. It’s fine.”

“Okay . . .”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I know what I’m doing here. The sex, this . . . all are tried and true methods for natural induction.”

“Sort of like the Drano test was supposed to predict we were having a boy when you were pregnant with Carly?”

The Drano test involved adding a few drops of the chemical cleaner to Julianne’s own urine and, then, based on what color the urine changed to, we’d know what gender our child was going to be.

She ate another forkful of eggs. “That was an old wive’s tale. I just thought it might be fun to try.”

“You were halfway to ordering an entire blue wardrobe and engraving the crib with the name Carlos before the voice of reason stepped in.”

“Yes, your mother did convince me I shouldn’t put too much weight on that particular . . . test.”

I sat down next to her. “I meant me.”

“Hmm.” She changed the subject. “Speaking of the crib, did you finally get it assembled?”

I cringed. The nursery had been a sore spot for the last month. Julianne had insisted we wait to work on the baby’s room, mostly because she knew she’d want to keep busy with it during her nesting phase, but also because she’d been so busy setting up her new practice, she’d barely had time to think about it.

At the beginning of month eight, she’d tackled the guest room with a vengeance, hauling out the old furniture and stripping wallpaper in preparation for converting it into a nursery. She’d ordered a new crib and a whole slew of baby items.