Murder at the Book Fair Page 6

  "Neither of us has done nothing wrong."

  "Then all we'll do is talk and then leave. Can you tell me where the two of you were last Saturday?"

  "Last Saturday?"

  "Yeah the one three days ago."

  "Where was we Hazel?"

  "Let's see."

  "If it helps, I can tell you it was the day of the Kentucky Book Fair."

  "Oh, yeah! That's where we was. We always go to it. Buy a few books."

  "Buy any from Cyril?"

  "Is that what this is about? He saying we stole some of his books. If he had gave us some of Mom's money Hazel wouldn't have to be a maid and I wouldn't have to be a night watchman."

  "I thought your mother left you some money."

  "Oh, she did, but not as much as she did Cyril. Ours didn't last as long. He still has plenty of it, and he didn't work a lick to earn a penny of it."

  "And when you went to see him after you ran through what your mother gave you he didn't give you any more?"

  "That's right. He tell you that? Was he smiling when he told you?"

  "Actually your name didn't come up when we talked."

  "That don't surprise me. He acts like we don't exist."

  "So, I take it that you and your brother aren't close."

  I wasn't prepared for the shriek of laughter that emerged from Hazel Portwood. I held on to the couch arm to keep from sliding the rest of the way to the floor.

  "That tightwad wouldn't give us a dime."

  "The way I heard it he wanted to give you more than that. He wanted to leave you each a dollar in his will."

  "That sounds like him. I hope he croaks soon."

  "I'm afraid he has already croaked."

  "He looked fine on Saturday. Well, I mean as good as he can look. He didn't exactly get the looks in the family."

  To my way of thinking that meant there were other family members I hadn't met, because I figured Portwood looked as good dead as his brother and sister looked alive. But instead of commenting I gave her an update on her brother.

  "He didn't look as good on Sunday."

  "You mean he's dead?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Dead serious."

  "Archie, can you call in sick tonight. I'm thinking about throwing a party."

  "I can see how broken up the two of you are."

  "Did he leave us anything?"

  "Will that determine how big of a party you'll throw?"

  "No, it'll just be me and Hazel, " Archie said, getting excited.

  "I think I'll leave it up to the lawyer to let you know whether or not he left you something. He might call you about the reading of the will."

  "You ain't here expecting us to pony up for the funeral, are you? He had enough money to take care of that, and a whole lot more."

  "I think the funeral is taken care of, and you can check if you are interested in attending the funeral."

  "What do you think, Hazel? Should we go to the funeral and look at him dead?"

  "No. He probably told them to fix him so that he'd be sticking his tongue out."

  I decided to interrupt the two siblings fond memories of their dearly departed brother.

  "Aren't you even curious as to when he died, or how?"

  "Not really, but you can tell us. I guess that's why you came. Besides, you already said it was Sunday."

  "No, he died Saturday. At the Book Fair. He was poisoned. And you already admitted you were there."

  "Hey, now, I didn't put nothing on that sandwich. I wanted to, but I didn't. I thought about spitting on it, but I didn't."

  "And I didn't put nothing in his water. Scout's honor," her brother chimed in.

  "Were you ever a scout?"

  "No, but I've heard people say that."

  "So, why are you here? You don't think we had anything to do with it?"

  "Money can do strange things to people. Especially if they might inherit."

  "Are you saying that scumbag, I mean my brother, remembered us in his will?"

  "Are you saying you don't know?"

  "How would we know?"

  "Exactly. Sometimes people who don't know kill someone anyway. Sort of taking a chance on fortune without playing the lottery."

  "We have witnesses that will say we didn't do it."

  "When didn't you do it?"

  "Saturday. You said he was killed on Saturday. We wasn't even there when he keeled over."

  "The poison took a while to kill him. He wasn't even there when he keeled over."

  "See. That proves it. It couldn't have been either of us."

  "And why not? Somebody had to do it."

  "Yeah, but he got up and left the table when he saw us coming."

  "But he didn't take his food with him."

  "But we didn't touch it. I already told you that."

  "But maybe you followed him, gave him something when you caught up with him."

  "We didn't catch up with him. He saw us. That was all we wanted. We even dumped the books we wanted him to think we was buying on another table. We wanted him to think we was buying everyone's books but his. And like I said, we wasn't there when he died. And when we got home the neighbors invited us over to a cookout. Hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw, potato chips."

  "Thanks for sharing your menu with us. I'm envious. We had to go to Serafini's instead."

  "Bet we had more fun!"

  "Let me share something that I learned from my many years of investigating murders. It doesn't matter when you put the poison in the food or the drink. It won't kill them until they ingest it."

  "And I still say we didn't kill him."

  "Who came to the Book Fair with you? Who walked around with you?"

  "No one."

  "So that means that no one can verify that you didn't poison your brother."

  "We ain't got no poison. Look around. You'll see."

  "Maybe you only had enough to poison your brother. You don't plan to poison anyone else, do you?"

  "We ain't ever had no poison. Well, only what we got to kill those rats."

  "I think that's the kind of poison they said killed him. Rat poison. Should we take them in now, Lou?"

  "No, wait. It wasn't us."

  "Who was it, then?"

  "I don't know. We never saw him. We don't know who else hated him enough to kill him."

  "So, what did you do with the $50,000 he gave you last month?"

  "We ain't got no $50,000. He didn't give us none. And if he said he did, he was lying like a hound dog."

  "Fifty thousand dollars is easy to find. If we find where you hid it, or where you spent a chunk of it, we'll be back."

  "I told you we ain't got no money. Did somebody steal $50,000 from him? If so, and if he left that money to us, you'd better find him. I want my money. Hazel, if he left us enough we can quit our jobs."

  "Who else would he have left it to, Archie? The money has to be ours. We're rich!"

  "Usually they hold off on giving out the money until they find out who the murderer is."

  "Well, get out of here and find whoever did it! I want my money!"

  "If I find out you have anywhere near $50,000 in the bank, I'll be back."

  "If we had anywhere near $50,000 in the bank or otherwise, we wouldn't be living here."

  "We may be back later."

  "Hey, wait a minute! How much did he leave us?"

  "I didn't say he left you anything. If the phone rings, I'd answer it if I were you. It might be that lawyer calling, telling you where to pick up your dollar. He might even invite you to the reading of the will, so you can see who gets most of the money."

  "It should be us. We was kin. He ain't got no other kin."

  "Maybe you should have sent him a birthday card each year. It might have improved your chances of hitting the mother lode."

  With that I grabbed hold of the couch arm and lifted myself up. We walked out and I called Bert McHugh. I asked him to wait until we h
ad finished our investigation before he had the reading of the will, and not to answer any questions if Portwood's brother or sister called. He assured me that he would definitely wait.

  I ended the call and turned to Lou.

  "You were tough on them, Cy."

  "I know. I was trying to see if either of them would crack and admit to murdering the guy, or blame it on the other one. I wish I knew if the poison was administered to the sandwich or shaken into the bottle of water he had at lunch. Let's call it a night. Are you hungry?"

  "Not as much after you talk about poisoned sandwiches."

  "Then, don't order a sandwich."

  15

  Broadway in Frankfort isn't filled with neon lights burning bright, but there is a railroad track that runs down the middle of it. We found a place to park on Broadway, not far from Serafini's, almost in front of Poor Richard's Bookstore. We backtracked until we got to the restaurant. We didn't dawdle because it was a little nippy out, and it was dark.

  The restaurant was crowded, but we were seated shortly after we walked in the door. We looked over the menu while our server brought us our water with lemon, which was our drink of choice. After perusing the menu, I decided on Spicy Shrimp Pomodoro, while Lou opted for Chicken Marsala. We were working on a case again, so we refrained from talking about the murder and instead talked about what a nice town Frankfort was. There certainly were some good places downtown to eat and places of interest to visit. And we hadn't even visited the Capitol building or Daniel Boone's grave. I wondered if anyone named Boone ever visits that grave. I imagine they have.

  A little over an hour after we sat down to eat I pulled into the covered parking area at the Capital Plaza. We refrained from taking the elevator to the main floor lobby and walked up the steps. I'm always fascinated by fountains, so I took a few seconds to watch the water flow. I decided against taking eight flights of stairs to my room, and stepped into the middle elevator when its door opened. Lou and I said goodnight after we agreed to eat breakfast at Rick's White Light Diner on the way out of town the next morning, and I bypassed the bed and the TV and walked over to open the drapes and enjoy my river view. It was a little tougher to enjoy it after dark. A few minutes later, I kicked off my shoes and plopped down on my bed and tried to make sense about what we knew so far about Portwood's murder.

  Connie Crowe, Jenny Luscher, Amy Smith, and Diana Munson, the four people I talked to who worked with the KBF, all seemed too nice to have murdered Portwood, so I figured I should concentrate on them. Actually I had talked to three people who could be deemed suspects, but I felt the lawyer was too smart to have done it, and the brother and sister were too dumb to have pulled it off in such crowded quarters. So, my guess at the time was that Lou and I had yet to meet the murderer. Of course both of us had been wrong early in some of our cases over the years, so I would wait until we had talked to more people before I cast my vote.

  The bed was roomy and comfortable, but it wasn't getting me any closer to discovering Portwood's murderer, so I pulled out my laptop that I'd had only a few months. But first I had to call downstairs to find out how to connect to Wi-Fi. God was with me that night and I was able to connect to the Internet.

  I started with my friend Google before I shifted over to Facebook to see if anyone had confessed. If so, he or she wouldn't have been the first idiot to confess to something on Facebook. Not only do dumb criminals not know that cops are sometimes disguised as teenage girls on the Internet, but some people who get on the Internet have an IQ high enough to report a crime to the police, provided someone wants to boast about one. So far no one had boasted to me, in person or incognito. I checked out Portwood's author page, but didn't find anything that would incriminate anyone. I checked his personal page, too. He didn't post a lot, and he had more followers on his author page than friends on his personal page. When I turned in for the night, forty-five minutes after Wi-Fi and I had become friends, I was no closer to discovering the murderer's identity than I was when Portwood signed my books.

  +++

  One thing about being retired and working for free is that you get to choose what time you get up. At least I chose what time I got up. On Wednesday morning it was just after the maid knocked on my door because I forgot to hang the stupid Do Not Disturb sign on the outside of my door the night before. That's okay. Lou and I had a lot of ground to cover and miles to go before we slept again. And maybe if I was lucky, Lou would have another clue from God.

  He must have been standing just inside the door of his room waiting on me because he answered my knock in 1.2 seconds.

  "Did the maid wake you, too?"

  "No, I was the one who sent her to your door. I want to get away before noon."

  "And during the many hours that you've been awake did God happen to give you today's clue?"

  "Well, no one wrote on my wall. I'm glad. The hotel might have charged me for that."

  "Not if it was spelled correctly. I would vouch for you, that you never learned how to spell. But enough about that. What's today's clue?"

  "Somebody's lying."

  "Somebody's lying?"

  "Did you turn into a parrot all of a sudden?"

  "Why? Do you have a cracker?"

  "Maybe I can find a cracker for you in that diner we're going to for breakfast."

  "I'll pass on the cracker, I guess we have to watch the people we question today to see if their lips move. Then we'll know if they're lying or not."

  "I thought we needed to watch their eyes and their hands."

  "Let's go eat."

  +++

  In a weak moment Lou and I decided to walk to Rick's White Light Diner. It was only sixth-tenths of a mile, or a thirteen minute walk. Besides that, we got to walk over the Kentucky River on the singing bridge to get there. It would be a moment I could share with my great-great-great grandchildren someday. Encouraging us to take our walk was a sunny day and temperatures above normal for November. We had a good walk over, the bridge sang but it didn't fall, and we arrived safely.

  When I first saw the place that was somewhat smaller than a walk-in closet, I had a feeling the diner started out on Folly Island but a strong wind lifted it and deposited it right next to the bridge. When I opened the door and stepped inside I had the idea that the walls were used for storage for someone's upcoming yard sale, and it didn't take me long to zero in on the colorful character who was the owner.

  Being the refined person that he is, Lou selected eggs benedict for his breakfast. I was torn between the buckwheat pancakes and Rick's Famous Crawfish Pie, and figured I could get pancakes at McDonald's, but McDonald's doesn't serve crawfish pie.

  As we sat there my thoughts wandered back and forth between listening to the owner and thinking of the diner where Lou and I used to eat most of our meals back home, the Blue Moon Diner. The Blue Moon was larger and lacked the wall decorations that donned the walls at Rick's, and when I was at the Blue Moon I was the biggest character there.

  I caught Rick's ear long enough to tell him who I was and for him to deny he was wherever it was that the crime that we were investigating happened. He admitted to knowing Bert McHugh, who stopped by from time to time for breakfast or lunch, but he had no idea who Cyril Portwood was. His guess was that it was a house wine in some restaurant much different than the White Light Diner. He said that McHugh usually came in with someone, but that he couldn't say for sure if he was there on the previous Friday. As expected, our trip to the diner resulted only in some good exercise followed by and preceded by a memorable meal.

  Lou and I talked on our walk back, both about the case that had so far baffled us, and the food at and the owner of the diner where we enjoyed breakfast. When we got back to the Capital Plaza we took the elevator to our rooms to brush and floss. I picked up a jacket, just in case the weather cooled down before we returned from our travels of the day. November has a habit of being cooler than August, so we have to be prepared to dress a little warmer. Once we zipped down the elevator it wa
s a straight shot after we popped up out of the garage, turned, and headed up the hill toward Lawrenceburg.

  16

  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.