A Fair to Die For Read online

  “There’s nothing funny about this.”

  “Oh yes, there is. We’ll just explain that both your former husband and my former wife were wealthy enough to hire cooks, and neither of us learned Meal Prep 101 until we were out on our own at very ripe ages. Then, for both of us, the basics sufficed. So, Cousin Edie will have to make do with basics.”

  Her unhappy look stopped him.

  “Cara, will you feel better if I e-mail Chef Bohnert and ask what he suggests?”

  “Chef ? You know a real chef?”

  “Yep, Chef John Bohnert. He has a cooking show on television in California.”

  “Henry, not only are you the handsomest man alive, you are the most surprising.”

  “Handsome, huh? Are you saying that just because I’m offering to find recipes to wow a maybe cousin?”

  “Not at all”. She got up to stand behind his chair, and began stroking the grey hair at his temples.

  “Ummm. You don’t do that often enough.”

  “You know I can’t reach you like this when we’re standing. I’d need a step stool. But, enough. How on earth did you meet a chef?”

  “Facebook. I was commenting about growing heirloom tomatoes a few months ago and John picked up on it. We’ve stayed in touch. I didn’t realize I hadn’t told you.”

  “Never mind. By all means, ask him for ideas. Maybe you should phone. We only have a few hours.”

  “Don’t know his phone number.”

  “Well then, get on the computer in a hurry and let’s pray he answers right away.”

  He stood, saluted, and headed for his computer.

  An hour later he had an answer. “John gives several choices. Here, I printed them out. I think the tuna salad recipe sounds best.”

  She took the papers from him. “Oh, Henry, tuna salad is so ordinary. I can make tuna salad, just stir in pickle relish and mayonnaise. What else does he suggest?”

  She read down the list, feeling more discouraged with each turn of the page. “Some of these have long preparation times, and some call for ingredients we don’t have on hand. Most are complicated. Oh,” she wailed, “What am I going to do?”

  “Carrie, calm down and look at that tuna salad recipe again. It has ingredients you’ve never put in tuna salad. Do we have celery seed and onion powder here?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Okay. It’s a little late in the day for sandwiches, but why don’t we mix up a tiny amount of this with just one small can of tuna, and see what we think?”

  Fifteen minutes later, Carrie said, “YUM! Thank you, Chef John Bohnert!”

  “Whew, I’m glad that’s settled. And I promise to create a super-terrific King of a gourmet tomato soup tomorrow. We already have fruit gelatin, ice cream, and brownies. So now we can brush the tuna off our teeth and go to bed.”

  Carrie was up early the next morning, her mind full of “to-do’s.”

  Be sure the house is neat and dusted, I wonder what she looks like, sweep leaves off the porch, set the table with the good dishes, I wonder if she has children or siblings, make tea and lemonade, make Chef John’s tuna salad, decide what to wear, should I use cloth or paper napkins?

  While she was hurrying through her to-do list, Henry began creating his soup. She stopped in the kitchen, duster in hand, to find him with his head in their pantry. He was holding a can in each hand—tomato soup in one and chopped tomatoes in the other. “Where are the cans of tomatoes and green chilies?” he asked.

  She pointed with the duster. “Down there, behind the salsa and spaghetti sauce. Don’t make it too hot.”

  “I won’t. You want crackers or corn bread?”

  “Do we need either? We’ll have sandwiches.”

  “Oh, sure, that’ll be enough. We might put some chips out, though.” He hesitated at the pantry door, studying her. “How are you doing? Eager anticipation?”

  “Well, anticipation at least. Lots of trepidation mixed in. But it would be nice to have a cousin as a friend.”

  “You don’t have any other cousins?”

  “My mom and dad’s generation wasn’t much on producing offspring. Mom had two sisters, but one of them never married. The other had a son, an only child like me, but he was killed in Vietnam. So, unless she has younger brothers and sisters, Edie is it.”

  She looked at the kitchen clock and hurried to put away the duster. She still hadn’t decided what to wear.

  A small, tan Ford bumped down the lane at twelve noon exactly, and Carrie and Henry were already on the porch when it parked and the driver stepped out.

  She’s very tailored, Carrie thought. No frills, straight hair, but she is short like me. Kind of skinny, though. Everything about her is beige, even her hair, though I suppose it’s meant to be ash blond, and maybe you call those slacks taupe. Is there such a thing as beige lipstick? Probably. Goodness, I wonder what she’ll think of my turquoise and green outfit? Too gaudy? Maybe I should have worn the dark blue . . . oh, never mind, I like this outfit, but I am tempted to give her one of my bright-colored scarves before she leaves.

  Everything about the woman matches, Henry thought. All the same color. Even her hair matches, but I’d bet that hair color is fake. Carrie’s grey curls are so much prettier. In Kansas City, Sgt. Creekmore dressed like this when she was keeping a watch on someone. It helped her fade into the background. As far as I can see, there is no family resemblance here, no softness like Carrie. The woman is all angles. I wonder if she’ll turn out to be as dull as she looks. If so, poor Carrie.

  “Welcome to Blackberry Hollow,” his wife was saying.

  A smile of such obvious pleasure spread across the woman’s face that Henry felt a twinge of regret about his earlier assessment. Edie spread her arms, inviting a hug, and, and after a short hesitation, Carrie responded.

  When the women separated, Edie turned to him and, before Carrie could introduce them, said, “Hello, Henry. Carrie, you sure snagged one heck of a big, good-lookin’ man. Looks like he could crush rocks with one hand. I’d best be good.” She winked at Henry, and reached out to shake his hand. “Glad to meet you, cousin-in-law.”

  “Come on in,” Carrie said, and opened the door, asking, “Shall we talk for a while, or eat first?”

  “Eat, if that’s okay,” Edie said. “I’m starved. I was too excited to eat much breakfast this morning. We’ll have all afternoon to talk.”

  During the meal Carrie learned little about Edie other than that she had no children and had been divorced for many years. Most of the talk was about food.

  “Carrie, this tuna salad is magnificent. Did I detect celery seed? What a brilliant idea. And the soup was just right to go with it. You are obviously a marvelous cook.”

  “Thank you, but Henry created the soup, and the tuna salad recipe came from a . . . a friend, though I did change a few things.” Carrie couldn’t manage an admission that the recipe came from a friend of Henry’s. She wanted to hold onto some credit for the meal, though Edie was spreading praise on a bit thick. And, after all, she had added more celery seed than the recipe called for.

  “My goodness, a man that cooks. Carrie, he is a gem. Compliments to the chefs.”

  Carrie said “Thank you” again, and suppressed an urge to giggle. Nerves?

  Henry rose from the table and picked up his plate. “You two begin catching up on all your news. I’ll take care of lunch dishes and join you in a few minutes.”

  Carrie smiled at him gratefully, then waited a couple of heartbeats for Edie to begin raving once more about the wonderful attributes of her husband but, unexpectedly, nothing came. The woman remained silent, put down her napkin, and followed Carrie into the home’s main room. She didn’t speak until they were seated across from each other.

  “So, Carrie, where shall we start? We can’t possibly cover nearly sixty years in one afternoon, but I am eager to hear about your life. Begin at the beginning.”

  Carrie ignored the request. She wanted to learn more about this self-procla
imed cousin before she talked about herself, so she said, “Something besides looking me up must have brought you to this part of the country. Blackberry Hollow is a long way from the East Coast, and we’re certainly off the beaten path. Are you on vacation?”

  “Not really. I’m retired now, and I did come here mainly to see you, but I also hope to accomplish a bit of business in this area, perhaps with your help.”

  “You know, Edie, I haven’t a clue what your profession was.”

  “Oh, here and there. Staff assistant, which is just a fancy name for secretary as I’m sure you know. Some of my working life in DC was spent as a general research assistant for various people in government, and, now and then, I helped write speeches for a couple of them. Sounds dull, but I’ve always enjoyed doing detail work and I like research. There’s such a sense of accomplishment when you find a gem of usable information. With the Internet, the ability to access information has exploded.”

  Thinking of Henry’s quick access to Chef John’s tuna salad recipe, Carrie said, “It sure has, and your job doesn’t sound dull at all. I wonder if, over the years, I’ve heard speeches you wrote.”

  Edie laughed. “They weren’t necessarily memorable. Nothing of the ‘Ask not what your country can do for you,’ or ‘I have a dream’ class.

  “Anyway, Mom was most insistent that I look you up, but I’d have attempted to find you even if she hadn’t asked me to. There are so few family connections left for either of us.” She paused, looked at her hands for a minute, then said, “If you don’t mind, tell me about your life now. I’m wondering if you might be able to help me with a bit of research, but I need to understand you better before I ask.”

  “That’s intriguing.”

  “Don’t make too much of it. Dull stuff. But I really would like to know more about your life, what you enjoy doing, all that. Please tell me about you.”

  So Carrie did, talking briefly about her time at the university, her work at the library, and living at home with her folks until she was nearly thirty. She told Edie about meeting Amos McCrite, a successful and respected criminal lawyer, when she was assigned to help him with research in old microfiche files at the library.

  “He invited me out to dinner a couple of times, which was a huge surprise. Then he asked me to marry him.”

  “Oh my, how romantic.”

  “Not at all. He made it clear it was really a business arrangement. Having a presentable wife with a friendly personality would be a good career move. He didn’t promise romance—simply friendship, a nice home, and security.”

  Edie started to say something, stopped, gave her a pitying look and finally managed another “Oh, my.”

  “It suited me. I wanted a home of my own. I wanted children. I said ‘yes.’”

  “I hate to pry, but how did it work out? Were you happy?”

  “Yes, especially after our son Rob was born.”

  “Son? So you did, uh, connect?”

  Carrie laughed in spite of what she considered the personal nature of the question. “Interesting way to put it, but yes, we connected enough for Rob to appear.”

  “You said on the phone that Amos had been killed. How did that happen, or is it too painful to talk about?”

  “It’s not painful now. We thought it was a hunting accident, but, some time after I moved here, we discovered it was murder. Amos was about to expose a business associate’s criminal activities.

  “Henry and I had already met through a neighborhood organization formed to fight the siting of a stone quarry in the lovely valley below here. Then the woman who’d begun the organization was killed. Henry had known her years earlier when both of them lived in Kansas City, and he and I joined efforts to figure out what had really happened to her, and why. Evidence I understood, and the sheriff’s deputies didn’t, told the two of us her death had been no accident. Things kind of developed from there. We were able to prove that both her death and Amos’s were murder.”

  “What a fascinating story! But couldn’t you have been in danger?”

  Carrie shrugged. “There was some danger involved, but it all worked out okay. Henry and I became good friends after that, and, under rather unusual circumstances, we’ve worked together to figure out background facts surrounding three or four other murders here in Arkansas. The crimes had nothing to do with us, but happened near places we were visiting. Henry is retired from the Kansas City Police Department, so he’s pretty good at that sort of investigation, and as for me, well, I can sometimes help because I understand people.” She laughed. “That’s one advantage of a long life, isn’t it?”

  Edie was studying her thoughtfully. She remained quiet for so long that Carrie was about to ask if she wanted something more to drink simply to break the awkward silence. Then her cousin said, slowly, “This is all very interesting. I’d like to hear more about your experiences since you met Henry. It sounds as if the two of you have very special skills.”

  “Well, maybe so. We do enjoy solving puzzles. But tell me more about yourself now. I admit I haven’t been able to remember anything about the time when you and your parents lived in Tulsa. I guess you’re right, I was too young. Later, my folks never talked about a sister or her family. Lots of missing pages. Since you called, one thing I’ve wondered is if I had additional cousins. Do you have younger brothers or sisters?”

  “No, I ended up being an only. And you and I never saw each other after the move because there was a serious break between our families.”

  “Why? Do you know?”

  “I know more than I admitted when I called you. They never discussed it with me back then, but Mother says now that your folks considered my father a criminal. They didn’t want his activities to contaminate or endanger their family, especially their precious little daughter.”

  Carrie said, “Oh, Edie, surely . . . ”

  Edie uttered a sharp “Shhh” and, startled by this, Carrie stopped talking. She watched her cousin look around the room, then back at her before she continued in a monotone, “My father may have been involved in some kind of illegal drug business. Suspecting that has brought years of grief to my mother.”

  Carrie was unable to stop her quick intake of breath. She put her hand over her mouth and said nothing, mostly because she couldn’t think what to say.

  “I guess you’re aware of the huge problems illegal drugs cause in this country?”

  “Of course. One can’t avoid knowing. The news is full of it almost every evening. Columbia, Mexico, poppy fields in Afghanistan, meth labs in our neighborhoods, all the ruined lives. Henry and I were even involved in a small way in stopping a very large marijuana growing and distributing business a couple of years ago.”

  “Either of you ever use recreational drugs? Maybe in the sixties?”

  When Carrie just stared at her, Edie said hurriedly, “Sorry. That’s an impertinent question. Forget it.”

  “Well, the answer is no, speaking personally. I really don’t know about Henry, but as a man in a job that wouldn’t tolerate drug use—a cop who was tested for drugs periodically—I doubt it, though I have never asked him.”

  “Implying I shouldn’t have asked you. Well, you’re right, I shouldn’t have.”

  Edie wasn’t aware that Henry had finished in the kitchen and was standing in the doorway behind her, but now he came to join them. “Did I hear my name?”

  Neither of them said anything. The only sound was the soft swish of the dishwasher and an occasional bird call from the forest outside.

  Finally, after a brief nod to Henry, Edie continued. “I’ve never really understood which side of the law my father was on. I suspect it might have been both sides, and that could be the reason he disappeared. Somebody found out. Somebody took exception. Somebody killed him.”

  “Do you really want to tell us this? I think . . .”

  Edie held up her hand, silencing Carrie again. “No! I don’t want to hear any pious protests. I came here wondering how much of my father’s story I
would be able to tell you. I feel okay sharing it now. Learning more about what happened to Dad is important to me, especially for my mother’s sake, and I can use your help, if you’re willing. But first you need to hear some history—some perspective.

  “Addictive drugs have been a problem in this country for much longer than you probably suspect. During many of the years when various drugs were openly available, they were thought of as more benefit than problem. That, in itself, caused problems, though I think it justifies—or at least explains—people’s interest in those drugs and their eventual addiction. I’m not excusing criminal activity, but many of the victims shouldn’t be thought of as criminals, then or now.

  “Marijuana was actually grown in Jamestown Colony as early as 1600. It was called hemp, and mostly grown for fiber, but smoking hashish, a version of marijuana, became popular to some degree, and had spread far and wide by the 19th century. It was thought to relieve all kinds of troubles—medical and mental.”

  Carrie, concealing her surprise with difficulty, said, “It sounds like you’ve done a lot of research.”

  Edie snorted. “You might say I have a family interest. My mother . . . well, I would like to find out what my father’s business really was in the hope it will bring her peace. She’s had to bear the sadness and uncertainty for so long.”

  Edie shut her eyes for a moment before she continued. “Opium was originally prescribed for female complaints and much more. Started out good, ended up bad. Coca Cola syrup really did have cocaine in it at the beginning. And, why not? In 1886, the Surgeon-General of the United States Army endorsed the medical use of cocaine.

  “Then there’s morphine. It was used as an injectable pain reliever during the Civil War. As a result, heroin was being marketed as a so-called cure, or at least a substitute, for morphine addiction by 1898.

  “And, what about meth? I’d bet you think of it as a relatively new drug, but amphetamine was first synthesized in 1887, and widely distributed to soldiers during and after World War II to counteract fatigue and fight depression. Addictive drugs, most of them first used medicinally, have been part of our country’s history, beginning in Jamestown a hundred and seventy-five years before we even were a country. I can’t help but wonder what miracle drug today will become a public nightmare tomorrow.”