Murder at the Art & Craft Fair (22 page)

+++

“So, Cy, what if Clements identifies Joan Arrington’s
picture as the woman he gave the statue to?”

“I’ve been thinking about just that, Lou. I think I’ll
be able to tell whether or not he’s telling the truth. Of course, it’s quite
possible that he remembers Joan from earlier Saturday. After all, he purchased
something from her. I’m hoping that won’t influence him when he looks at her
photo.”

Time would tell if my idea would help us grow closer
to identifying and arresting the murderer.

Chapter
Forty

Lou and I enjoyed a good lunch away from home, which
means we ate more calories than we should have. We headed downtown to see if
Larry had finished printing pictures for me.

“Look at these, Cy. All of them look good to you?”

“No, some of them look a little on the ugly side, but
these should do the trick. I recognized all but one of them. That’s all I
wanted.”

I went to the parking lot and separated the pictures
into two groups, men and women. Then, I drove to Clements’ house, and God was
with us. We found him at home.

“You’re back again. What do you want this time?”

“And it’s good to see you again, too, Mr. Clements. I
just want to follow up on something. You said you gave the statue to the woman
in the next tent. I talked to her, and she told me you didn’t give it to her. I
just want to make sure we’re talking about the same person, so I brought you a
photo. Is this the woman you gave the statue to?”

He took the picture, looked at it quickly, and handed
it back.

“I think you’re trying to trick me, Lieutenant. This
woman doesn’t look a thing like the woman I gave the statue to. I know it was
getting dark, but this isn’t the woman.”

I took back the picture of Jennifer I had showed him.
I was hoping that he would comment on how good looking she was, but he didn’t
say anything. Maybe he knew that the woman in the picture was my main squeeze.

“Hold on a minute, Mr. Clements. I have pictures of
other women who were there at the fair. Let me get them out of the car and you
can look at them and tell me if it was any of these women you gave the statue
to.”

I could tell I wasn’t the best thing that had happened
to him all day, but he had no recourse but to wait while I returned to the car
and gathered up more photos. I picked up the stack of women’s pictures,
straightened them, and hurried back to Clements.

“Take your time, Mr. Clements. I want you to look at
each of these pictures carefully, and tell me if it was any of these women to
whom you gave the statue.”

“You might as well come in. We might as well be
comfortable.”

I really didn’t think he cared whether or not Lou and
I were comfortable, but he wanted to sit down if he had to look at that many
photos.

As I instructed, he took his time, looked at each
picture carefully, and then returned them.

“Sorry, but it wasn’t any of these women. But I did
give it to a woman. It just wasn’t any of these. Come to think of it, I think
I’ve seen her before somewhere, which means it’s probably someone local. It
might even be someone you know.”

“Why don’t you describe her to me?”

Clements gave me a description of the woman. I
listened intently. Lou did the same. At first nothing registered, but when I
looked down to the top photo on the stack Clements had handed back to me, it
hit me.

“Mr. Clements, I have an idea who it might have been.
Can I use your phone?”

He handed me his cell phone, saw I was confused, so he
showed me how to use it. I stepped out on the front porch and made a call. In a
few seconds I had the name and address I sought. I stepped back inside the
house and asked Clements if I could use his computer.

In a couple of minutes I had arrived at Facebook. Luck
was with me. Cara “Rusty” Parsons, the redhead who was seated behind Maureen
Eidorn in the information booth when I was there, had a Facebook page. I called
Clements over, and he identified her as the woman to whom he had given the
Empire State Building puzzle. I thanked Clements for his help, and Lou and I
left.

I couldn’t figure out what motive the woman could have
for murdering Kincaid, but, because I had few leads, and Clements had
identified her as the woman to whom he had handed the possible murder weapon,
we were off to question her. It was a ten minute drive. I pulled up in front
the address Maureen Eidorn had given me, and the two of us got out of the car,
walked up to the house. I knocked. A few seconds later, a woman I now knew as
Cara Parsons, nicknamed Rusty, I assume because of her red hair, answered my
knock. I could tell she recognized us, but couldn’t figure out where she had
met us.

“Mrs. Parsons, I’m Lt. Dekker with the Hilldale Police
Department, you were with Mrs. Eidorn the other day when I talked with her.”

“Sure. I was trying to figure out who you were. I’m
kind of busy now. Is this important?”

“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve just received
information that someone handed you a puzzle the other night that might have
been the implement that was used to murder Tom Kincaid.”

I could tell that my declaration startled her.

“I was afraid that might be the case.”

“So, someone did hand the Empire State Building puzzle
to you?”

“That’s right.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Well, it was Saturday night. Maureen asked me if I
would go look and see how many of the vendors were still there. I walked up one
row and down the next. Tom Kincaid was one of the few vendors still there.
Might have been the only one. I’m not sure. Anyway, I heard someone walk up
behind me. It startled me, so I fiddled with the zipper on the tent next to Tom
Kincaid’s tent. It was a stupid thing to do, but Tom had someone in his tent
with him, and I was trying to listen for a few minutes to see if I could tell
how much longer he would be there. Anyway, this man startled me. I think he
mistook me for the woman set up next to Tom Kincaid. Anyway, he told me he
wanted to return the puzzle, that he was going to stop payment on his check,
and he wanted me to give it back to Kincaid. I tried to refuse, but he was
insistent. He thrust it into my arms, and I took it to keep it from falling to
the ground. He rushed off as soon as I relieved him of the puzzle. I stood
there a moment, pondering what to do. I heard a sound, someone moving about,
and it wasn’t someone in Tom Kincaid’s tent. It was getting darker by the
minute, and I was uncomfortable and scared, so I set the puzzle down on the
ground between the two tents and ran off. That’s all I can tell you. I didn’t
see the person, but I know there was someone there other than Tom Kincaid and
the man who was in the tent with him.”

“Could you tell if the third person was a man or a
woman?”

“I have no idea. I didn’t see them. And I didn’t want
to hang around to find out.”

“What about the man with Kincaid? You said you
overheard their conversation. Were they arguing?”

“No, nothing like that. And I couldn’t make out what
they were saying. It just seemed like a normal conversation.”

“Did you see anyone on your way back to the
information booth?”

“No, but I was running, and not paying a lot of
attention. I just wanted to get there quickly.”

“And what did Mrs. Eidorn say when you got back?”

“She wasn’t there. She got back around ten minutes
later. When she got back, she said she must have just missed me. She wasn’t
sure how long I was going to be gone and she needed to use the facilities
before it got too dark.”

“Did you tell her about what happened to you?”

“No. I kept it to myself.”

“You didn’t tell her about the statue or the second
person who scared you?”

“No, I just wanted to forget all about it.”

“Is it possible that the man who gave you the puzzle
could have doubled back?”

“I guess it’s possible, but why would he have done
that?”

I didn’t have an answer other than the obvious one, so
I didn’t give her one. Instead, I asked her another question.

“I see you’re wearing perfume today. Think back to the
night of the murder. The hidden person. Did you smell anything like a woman’s
perfume or a man’s after shave?”

“Nothing. Like I said, Lieutenant, I don’t know if it
was a man or a woman. I just assumed it was a man, but I guess it could have
been a woman, and I can’t say that whoever it was picked up that puzzle and
murdered Mr. Kincaid. Of course I didn’t know that he’d been murdered until you
told us, and it was Monday before I began to wonder if someone had used that
puzzle to murder him.”

I didn’t see where further questions were going to
help me find the murderer, so I thanked Mrs. Parsons and Lou and I turned to
leave. Once we were back inside Lightning, I turned to Lou.

“Well, Lou, what do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think, Cy. I guess we have to
add her to our suspect list, Maureen Eidorn, too, but I’m leaning toward one of
the men as the murderer.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Not really. What if we throw a dart at a dartboard
and pick our murderer that way?”

I cringed. From the numbers I’d heard about today’s
divorce rate I assumed that some men and women pick their spouses that way, but
I’ve never seen a cop so frustrated that he or she had used that method to zero
in on a murderer. That meant that Lou and I had more work ahead of us. I
wondered why it’s always so easy in a novel, and then I remembered that’s it’s
not always that easy there, either.

+++

Lou and I sat in my living room, in a less comfortable
manner than before. The only new thing either of us could think of to try was
to contact the people on the list that Joan Arrington had given us, the people
who had given her a check. It was a longshot, but it was too late to check with
any other vendors, to see who had given them checks. They would have deposited
those checks on Monday. If not, they certainly would have deposited them before
Friday. We had eight chances to hit paydirt.

While I constantly refer to Hilldale as a small town,
there are only ten or twelve cities in Kentucky that are larger, and Hilldale
is in no way a backward community. In some small towns in Kentucky, most people
pay for most of their purchases by cash. There are a lot of people in Hilldale
who put many of their purchases on a credit card, or pay for them by check, so
it didn’t surprise me when I saw that eight people who purchased something from
Joan Arrington paid by check. What I hadn’t allowed for is that some of those
who purchased from her lived out of town. If Lou and I were to run down each of
these people it meant that we would have to make another road trip, but since
all three of those other people who paid by check live less than an hour from
Hilldale, this road trip wouldn’t last as long as the previous one. Lou and I
talked over our strategy and decided to visit those who live in Hilldale that
day, and save the others for the next day. We could have been looking for a
needle in a haystack, hoping that the same people who purchased from Joan
Arrington and paid by check did the same with Kincaid. I quickly realized that
we needed to visit only four of the five Hilldale residents, since Earl
Clements was on Arrington’s list. I hoped that each of these seven people,
particularly those who lived out of town, were staying home and welcoming us
with open arms. For a brief second, I thought about calling those people, but
then I remembered how that went with Delbert Cross. This time our questions
dealt with someone’s bank account. I was sure that most of these people wanted
to see an ID before answering any of our questions, particularly those who
didn’t live in Hilldale, and didn’t know Lou or me from a hill of beans.

Chapter
Forty-
One

Lou and I hurried to Lightning, hoping to put an end
to our case. I looked at our list and was thankful that each of the Hilldale
residents lived in town. I wasn’t anxious to make another trip out into the
country, even if the person I needed to see had no children, or no hammer.

I headed over to Cropper Street to see a Mrs.
Birdwhistle. She lived at 219 Cropper, apartment three. I found the place with
no problem, and Lou and I got out and mounted the steps. The building had only
four apartments and each of them had a porch and a banister. I suggested to Lou
that he might relocate. He suggested to me that I might mind my own business.
None of those apartments were accessible from the outside, so we opened the
front door and climbed the stairs. I managed to pull myself up using the
handrail, without pulling my arm out of the socket, and after we made the turn
and reached the zenith, I found the apartment I wanted and knocked on the door.

A woman fifteen to twenty years my senior answered my
knock.

“You want something?”

“I do.”

I took out my credentials and showed them to her. She
didn’t seem to be impressed.

“I’m sorry. We haven’t had any crime around here.”

I could tell I had a winner.

“I’m sorry you haven’t had any crime around here,
either, but that’s not the reason we came. You were at the Hilldale Art &
Craft Fair last Saturday.”

“I was. And that wasn’t a crime.”

“No, it was a pretty good fair. You bought something
from a woman named Joan Arrington, paid her by check. I was wondering if you
also bought from the man in the tent next to her, a Tom Kincaid. He made 3-D
wooden puzzles.”

“I’ll have you know that my check was good, young man,
and I detest puzzles. They frustrate me, you know.”

“I had a feeling that they might. Thank you for your
time, Mrs. Birdwhistle.”

“How did you know my name? How did you know I bought
something from a vendor there? I’m telling you this place has turned into a
police state.”

I could still hear her as we regained the first floor
and opened the front door to leave.

“Yeah, Lou, I think this would be a good place for
you.”

“Cy, I think she was smitten with you.”

The two of us laughed all the way back to Lightning. I
wondered if things would improve from there.  I noticed that my next-door
neighbor’s name wasn’t on the list, so I figured things would soon get better.
I doubted if they would go downhill. I made a mental note to send an anonymous
note to Vernon Pitts telling him that Mrs. Birdwhistle does free babysitting.

The second place we visited was a slight improvement.
There was no one at home. The woman who lived there didn’t leave us a note
telling us whether or not she had bought anything from Kincaid on Saturday. We
would have to return after she did. I read off the next name, Charlie Borders.
He lived a few streets over. It took ten minutes for us to get to his house,
and I gave a sigh of relief when I spotted a car in the driveway. Again, we got
out. Borders lived in a house. He must have been expecting us. He was sitting
on a porch swing. He smiled as we approached.

“Afternoon, Gentlemen. Since I don’t know you, I’d say
you’re here on some kind of business.”

“And I’d say you’d make a good detective, which is
what I am, by the way.”

I took out my ID and showed it to him. He seemed more
impressed than Mrs. Birdwhistle.

“What would the Hilldale Police Department want to see
me about?”

“Nothing bad, I can assure you, Mr. Borders. I just
have a question about the Hilldale Art & Craft Fair.”

“Well, I’m your man. The wife and I were there last
weekend. Go every year. She enjoys it more than I do, but I can always find a
seat and someone to talk to if I get tired of looking before she does. So, how
can I help you?”

“I was wondering if you happened to buy a puzzle from
a man named Tom Kincaid. He had wooden puzzles, 3-D puzzles.”

“I did. I’ve bought from him before. I’m a typical
husband. I buy one of them things from time to time, work it for a while until
I get frustrated, and then turn it over to the wife to do. She’s in there
working on it now. Almost finished with it.”

“How did you pay for the puzzle, Mr. Borders?”

“Check. The wife insists we pay for things like that
by check, in case we get home and something’s wrong with it. Of course, we’d
bought from him before, so I didn’t expect anything to be wrong with it, but I
gave him a check anyway, to keep peace in the family, you know.”

“Do you have any idea if your check has been cashed?”

“Yep. I checked our account online today. The check
came through yesterday.”

“Are you sure about this, Mr. Borders?”

“Quite sure. When you give someone a check, most of
the time they put it in the bank, Lieutenant. At least the people I know do.”

“But, Mr. Borders, I bet most of the people you give
checks to are still living the next day.”

“Are you telling me that he was the guy who got
murdered?”

“So, you knew someone was murdered?”

“Yep, heard about it at the barber shop the other day.
Nobody there knew who it was, said it was some guy from out of town, but I
didn’t figure it was somebody I’d met. So, how’d he cash my check?”

“He didn’t, Mr. Borders. See, what you didn’t find out
at the barber shop is that whoever killed him robbed him too.”

“And the sorry so-and-so was dumb enough to deposit
the checks he stole?”

“Evidently, Mr. Borders. We’re hoping this will help
us find out who did it. Now, we have something to work with. If you don’t mind,
tell us where you bank, and we’ll go there and find out who signed the back of
the check, and where they cashed it or deposited it.”

“Sure, Lieutenant. We bank at People’s. Have for
years. Tell Art Gobleman that I said it was okay to give you any information
you want about my account.”

“I think they’ll be cooperative, Mr. Borders. After
all, this is a murder case. If that isn’t enough for the bank, the fact that
someone illegally cashed or deposited someone else’s check should be, because
the FBI can get involved with that.”

“Oh, by the way, Lieutenant. I left the name blank on
the front of the check too, so someone would have had to have filled that part
in, too.”

We thanked Borders for his time, and headed off to
decide whether or not we wanted to follow up any other leads.

+++

It was getting close to supper time. Lou and I decided
to shut it down for the day and planned to get up Saturday morning and see
what, if anything, we planned to do.

+++

Lou and I felt that our case was coming to a close. We
would either be able to identify the murderer when we found out who cashed one
of Kincaid’s checks or when a certain cop returned from vacation and we could
find out if he remembered the name of the person he stopped on Saturday night,
near the scene of the murder. I wouldn’t be able to talk to the cop until
sometime Sunday, and we wouldn’t find out anything at the bank until Monday. My
guess was that both of these ventures would lead us to the same conclusion. It
would be circumstantial evidence, but most people are convicted from
circumstantial evidence. Not a lot of crimes are witnessed.

+++

I hoped it wasn’t premature, but Lou and I were ready to
celebrate. We were headed to Burkman’s to celebrate with a big steak. Actually,
we were going to celebrate with a smaller steak, and depending on what else we
ate, there was a good chance some of that steak was going home and would be
enjoyed the next night. I did order steak with a baked potato swimming in
butter, but both Lou and I refrained from ordering our customary appetizer and
dessert, and we didn’t eat any of the bread they brought us. As it turned out,
we filled up on salad, which gave us the opportunity to take half of our steak
home with us. I planned to cut up the rest of my steak and enjoy it in a salad
on Saturday night.

+++

Both Lou and I got up when we felt like it on Saturday
morning and checked our usual items off our lists before I gave him a call.
Neither of us could see any reason to work on Saturday. We would be patient and
see what Sunday and Monday would bring us. I had been running around for the
last several days. Maybe I would go out back and play in my sandbox, work the
3-D puzzle I bought from a dead man, or lie back in my recliner and solve a
simpler mystery. I might even work in a nap somewhere along the line.

Saturday turned out to be a pleasant day. The
temperature was a little on the warm side for October, but pleasant enough that
I plucked a mystery novel from the stack next to my recliner, and headed for a
cushiony chair in the back yard, under a shade tree. As long as my next-door
neighbor didn’t step out in her backyard, I was content to enjoy the breeze.
Several leaves had turned, expired, and floated to the ground, but there were
enough still in the tree that I would prolong calling my yard boy a few more
days.