Stiffs and Swine (23 page)

“Sounds like you’ve seen the light,” Bennett gently mumbled.

“I have.” Eleanor dumped the pile of dishes she had been stacking back onto the buffet table. “Thank you for talking to her about teaching,” she said to Lindy. “It was my good fortune that R. C. invited all of you to be judges for Hog Fest. You certainly go down in my guest book as some of Fox Hall’s most rewarding visitors. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to invite my daughter to come inside and tear up her pageant entry.”

The supper club members watched expectantly as Eleanor marched to the deep end of the pool. Francesca stood in the middle of the diving board, catching leaves and twigs in her net as she stared dreamily into the water. Though they were too far away to hear Eleanor’s words, they were able to see Francesca’s mouth break into a heartfelt smile. Her entire being seemed to radiate with light. Tossing the leaf-laden net carelessly onto the ground, she ran and flung her arms around her mother and the two held each other for several moments.

“This is going to be a
splendid
day,” Gillian declared and took a noisy slurp of tea.

The blueberry pie-eating competition was scheduled for high noon, so the supper club members took care of business first. They packed their bags, checked out of the inn, and drove to the sheriff’s department in order to issue statements about their encounter with Mitch Walker the night before. According to Deputy Harding, both Mitch and Hailey were missing and Bob Barker was beside himself with worry. Three deputies from the neighboring county had been enlisted to help search for the pair, but had yet to find a sign of either one.

Harding had freely offered these juicy tidbits of information to Gillian as she sat on a bench outside the sheriff’s building awaiting the return of her friends.

“I’d rather
not
go inside that structure again,” she told her friends as they marched up the front steps. “Instead, I shall sit on this bench and try to channel my energy into
seeing
where Hailey might have gone.”

Gillian was preoccupied in visualizing her body being made of thousands of particles of light when Harding sat down next to her with a satisfied grunt. He then proceeded to strike a match using the bottom of his shoe, lit his cigarette, and took a grateful drag.

“I heard you found some hidden treasure last night,” Gillian said, without looking at Harding. In fact, she kept her eyes completely closed.

“Yeah, sure did,” the deputy answered proudly. “A whole mess of tainted pot. Someone planned to make up a bunch of fry sticks and sell them for a big pile of money.”

“Fry sticks?” Gillian opened her eyes. “Is that some kind of unhealthy food?”

Harding gave a good-natured chuckle. “No, ma’am. It’s a joint, but not made from your run-of-the-mill weed. The marijuana we found in Jimmy Lang’s cooker has been dipped in formaldehyde. That kind of pot costs around one hundred bucks an ounce.” He cast a sideways glance at Gillian and, seeing the lack of comprehension on her face, held his thumb and index finger an inch apart. “That’s about this much.”

Gillian frowned. “That’s not much product for that amount of money. Is marijuana
that
expensive these days?”

“It’s the formaldehyde. It gives you visions,” Harding explained. “The kids really like it. And by kids I mean students in high school and college.”

“What a shame that they’re looking for a phony high when they could achieve a genuine one by some employing simple meditation and breathing techniques.” Gillian sighed. “This ‘special’ pot sounds dangerous,” she said with a cough as she waved away the cloud of Harding’s cigarette smoke.

Harding nodded. “It is, ma’am. It’s like smoking five of these things.” He eyed his cigarette with distaste and then took another resigned drag. “The worst part is that the kids who smoke this laced stuff the most seem to overdo it. We’ve had several college kids hospitalized over the past year ’cause of these fry sticks. Still, they see it as the ‘in’ drug and, because they’re given so much pocket money by their oblivious parents, they can afford to buy enough to keep them supplied for a couple of months.”

Gillian was silent for a moment as she stared into the nearly-empty parking lot. “He really was a bad man,” she whispered. “That Jimmy Lang. He was tainted, just like the drugs. I was
truly
prepared to forgive him, but now that you’re telling me he planned to sell drugs to teenagers, I can’t. He spent his whole life messing up the lives of others.”

“We’ve got no hard proof that Mr. Lang was a dealer,” Harding replied testily, though Gillian was aware that his ire wasn’t directed at her. “And when we questioned Mr. Walker earlier yesterday, he claimed to have never known Mr. Lang outside of bumping into him at these kinds of festivals, but now that Mr. Walker has disappeared from the fairgrounds, I’m feeling more and more like he’s our guy.” He sat ramrod-straight on the bench, his shoulders taut with tension. “We’ve got to find him and get the truth out of him. He was lying to us yesterday, I’m sure of it. Just as I was certain that you were telling us the truth.”

“You know, I
strongly
believe in the power of the inner voice.” Gillian turned her palms to the sky. “It’s the world’s way of speaking to us.” She cast a subtle glance at the lawman beside her. “
You
seem to have heightened instincts, Deputy. And how do you know all of these
dreadful details
about these
toxically laced
drugs?”

“Used to live in D.C. It’s why I moved here, to get away from that stuff.” He shrugged. “Guess you can never really run from all the ugly things in life.” He shifted his weight on the bench as though agitated that he had spoken so freely to the woman seated next to him.

Gillian reached out and took Harding’s free hand. “No, you can’t run, but you
can
refresh your spirit and begin a
new
phase of life.”

Though she half-expected tough-guy Harding to scoff at her advice, he seemed to give her words careful consideration. After a few moments of silence, he nodded in agreement and then he gently squeezed her fingers. “I expect you’d know all about that, ma’am. I truly admire how you’ve handled yourself over the last two days. You’re quite a lady.” He threw his cigarette onto the ground and coughed nervously. “And a mighty pretty one, too, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Gillian whispered, blushing as she realized that the kind-faced deputy had yet to release her hand. “I don’t mind at all.”

The R. C. Richter who handed a stack of signed waivers to the judges to review was a different man than the one who had appeared in front of yesterday’s crowd looking haggard and defeated. This R. C. had a spring to his step, and he whistled as he issued directions to a scruffy teenager wheeling a wagon filled with pies to a line of tables covered in white plastic cloths.

Chairs had been arranged in an orderly row behind the tables and in front of each chair was a bottle of water and a white T-shirt with cobalt lettering that read,
I Turned Blue at Hog Fest
.

Once James had inspected his group of waivers, which had all been signed and dated according to R. C.’s requirements, he noticed a group of teenage boys unloading more pies from the back of a white van. Mrs. Phelps, the baker, hovered nervously nearby, clucking at the boys and pleading with them to be careful. As the young men maneuvered carts of pies to a small tent alongside the row of tables, James frowned at their untidy appearance. Their hair was too long, their pants too baggy, and their soiled shirts were riddled with holes.

“What are you frowning at, James?” Lucy asked as she joined him in staring at the growing number of pies. “Don’t you like blueberry pie?”

“Sure. I like all kinds of pie except for rhubarb.” He smiled self-effacingly. “I was just being an old fart—wondering why those boys spend good money to look like they’re homeless.”

“Yeah, I know. That grunge style just won’t go away.” Lucy tugged at his arm. “But cheer up. Mrs. Phelps has brought all the judges a slice of pie, still warm from the oven. We get to eat while R. C. goes over the rules.”

“Again with the rules,” James snorted. “He must enjoy what he does. The man’s positively beaming today.”

“That’s because Eleanor told him that she would marry him. She stopped by the festival while we were busy giving our statements. I overheard R. C. telling Mrs. Phelps all about it.”

“So everything is looking up for him,” James began sarcastically. “Except for the fact that illegal drugs were recovered on festival grounds, the girlfriend of the man murdered here Friday night has gone missing, and a torch-wielding thief is on the loose, things are just peachy for R. C.”

“No, not
peach
!” Mrs. Phelps trilled as she appeared in front of a small card table and thrust napkins into the judges’ hands. “Local-grown blueberries. The best in the state. Eat up, now!”

James drove his fork through the perfectly-browned crust of the pie and watched as indigo blueberries oozed from beneath the tines.

“This contest is going to be messy.” He examined his plate in amusement.

“People love that part of the whole thing. This event’s the best free advertisin’ a baker can get!” Mrs. Phelps chirped gaily.

“Where do you get all of your extra help?” James asked, suddenly spotting a young man who could easily be the brother of the leather-jacket-wearing teen that had been haunting his library on Friday nights.

“The boys? Oh, they just come out of the woodwork right before Hog Fest,” she replied. “It’s the same every year. Now, they’re not the world’s
best
workers, I’ll tell ya, and I’ve gotta pay them right after we’re done sellin’ pies for some reason that I cannot wrap my mind around, and then they scatter like the four winds ’til next year.”

“That boy over there. Is he from Hudsonville?” James pointed at the Martin Trotman look-alike.

“Only one of them lives here, but they all know each other well enough, considerin’.” Her brows creased as she struggled to recall the young man’s name. “He’s got a funny name. What is it? The boys keep teasin’ him about it. Oh, it’s Trotman! Um, Donny Trotman.”

James tried not to allow the surprise to show in his face. Trotman was Martin’s last name—he was certain of it. “No offense, Mrs. Phelps, but why are they so eager to get work during Hog Fest? Why is this particular time so important to them?”

She shrugged, still waiting for James to taste her pie. “They tell me it’s their annual score. Whatever
that
means. I figure they must be sweet on some of the vendor girls who travel back here every year. Who knows?” She swatted at his shoulder with the edge of her apron. “But they’re better eaters than you, honey! Shoot, they’d eat night and day if they had the chance.”

“It’s called the munchies,” James muttered and then took a bite of pie. The sugary blueberries popped in his mouth as he crunched on bits of buttery crust. “Mmmm,” he mumbled through closed lips. “Sublime.”

Smiling, Mrs. Phelps resumed her role of overseer as the motley group of young men unhurriedly went about their tasks.

While James focused on polishing off his pie, wishing that he had a large cold glass of milk to cut the sweetness of his baked treat, the contestants for the pie-eating competition began to seat themselves at the plastic-covered table. Each man and woman pulled the contest’s official T-shirt over his or her own clothes and then made nervous small talk with fellow competitors.