5 Merry Market Murder (18 page)

But he didn’t cross his arms this time. He didn’t protest. Instead, his eyes actually twinkled. I liked that. “I get the sense that’s never stopped you before. Sure—I won’t promise that I’ll answer, but let’s have a seat.” He guided me away from Billie to the other end of the tree corral. There were no chairs, so I just assumed he wanted to move away from his sister if someone was going to ask him a potentially too-personal question.

“Look, I know you said you don’t know Brenton. What if I just ask if there’s some sort of connection between the two of you, but not what that connection is. It’s just you and me, Denny, and I’d really like to know.”

Denny thought a long, long time before he answered, but I steeled myself silent for as long as it took.

“Gosh, Becca, I don’t know . . . I don’t feel like I should tell you. It’s not my place, if you know what I mean.”

“So there is a connection?”

Denny put his finger next to his nose, a gesture that made me smile. He was almost the spitting image of the Santa from a book my parents read every year to Allison and me when we were little; the all-time classic and favorite,
The Night Before Christmas
.

But Denny didn’t magically disappear back up a chimney to his waiting sleigh and reindeer like the Santa in the book did. His eyes even stopped twinkling. “Yes, Becca, there is a connection.”

Again, I was struck by his choice of words.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
. I wondered if he was doing it on purpose.

“It’s from a long time ago,” he continued, “but I’ll be 100 percent honest with you, my dear; I’m certain that Brenton had nothing to do with Reggie Stuckey’s murder. I think we have an odd and surprising coincidence regarding Brenton’s behavior and Reggie’s death.”

I wasn’t even going to go there, but I thought his journey from point A to point B was interesting.

“Do you know Brenton’s ex-wife?”

“Stephanie Frugit? Yes.”

He hadn’t missed a beat. I hadn’t meant to be tricky. It was just a question, but he’d answered so quickly. Somehow, some way, he and Brenton’s pasts
were
tied together much more tightly than he wanted to indicate. They’d known each other, and very well, if I was reading him right.

“I see,” I said.

Denny smiled and his eyes found their twinkle again. “You know, sometimes we say things on accident, but sometimes they’re on purpose.”

“You wanted me to know that you and Brenton had a close connection in your pasts? You didn’t want to say anything in front of your sister, though?”

Denny shrugged.

“Then why won’t you just tell me what the connection is? She can’t hear us over here.”

“Not my place, Becca, not my place. Excuse me, I have work to do. If people want pretty places to put all those ornaments”—he pointed to the tree I still held—“then I’d better make sure all the branches are in good condition.”

As Denny disappeared into his man-made copse of trees, I turned back toward the market. That was one of the most frustrating conversations I could remember having in a long time—at least since the one with the Archers earlier that morning. I debated going over to talk to Billie, but I looked back to see that Denny was still watching me. I was sure he shook his head ever so slightly. If I wanted to talk to her, I’d have to find a way to catch her alone. I smiled and she and I waved at each other as I hurried away.

How was I going to find the connection? Denny said that he was sure that Brenton wasn’t the killer. Great, so then give up the rest of the information.
Not his place, not his place.
I didn’t think anyone had taken Brenton’s angry parking lot accusation that Denny had killed Reggie seriously, but despite that, it seemed Denny wasn’t retaliating. In fact, he seemed protective of Brenton’s reputation.

He was keeping the secret, whatever it was. Brenton wasn’t telling. His ex-wife wasn’t telling. Maybe I could get someone else to give it up. Who?

My head was swimming from questions and looking for clues, but I still wanted to talk to Barry before he left for the day.

Barry of Barry Good Corn had been growing and selling corn for longer than I’d been alive. He’d been in the corn business for almost forty years, and he often told stories from the “old days.” Those stories frequently mentioned fellow market workers, but at that moment I couldn’t remember one story he’d told that included Brenton. I wished I could.

“Becca, what’s new?” Barry said as I approached his stall. His bulk put a strain on the plastic folding chair he was sitting in. He held a magazine with a picture of a tractor on the cover, but I didn’t catch the name before he placed it on his knee.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“Sure.” Barry stood and moved the chair. “Here, have a seat.”

“No, thanks, I’m okay. I’ll just be a minute.”

Barry had had a successful marriage for almost fifty years, and a good amount of its success was probably due to the fact that he wasn’t home all the time, even when he didn’t have much more to do than sit in his market stall and read a magazine just in case someone wanted to buy a cornhusk.

“All righty.”

“Stephanie Frugit’s your niece?” I jumped in.

“Yes, ma’am. I had an older brother who’s left this world now, but Stephanie is his little girl. She’s amazing.”

“I know. I met her.”

“You know her reputation and her level of fame, right?”

“Sure.”

“Everyone knows who she is. We’re very proud of all she’s accomplished.”

“No wonder you know Brenton so well.”

“Yes, but they haven’t been married for a long, long time.”

“When did they divorce?”

“Oh, shoot, they were still pretty young. Let’s see, they were both about twenty-five, so 1989 or so. I can’t remember exactly.”

Well, it wasn’t 1987. “This is personal, but do you know why they divorced?”

“That
is
personal, Becca, but I think they just decided that neither of them wanted the life the other wanted.”

Stephanie had said something similar.

I squinted and then sighed. “Barry, what’s the connection between Brenton and the Ridgeways?”

“Oh.” Barry shifted his weight to his other foot and then he shifted back again. “I don’t rightly know.”

“His ex-wife is your niece, you’ve known Brenton forever, but you don’t know his connection to the Ridgeways?”

“Becca, I don’t know the Ridgeways. They’ve had that tree farm forever, but they’ve always stayed to themselves. Their farm’s in the hills and this is the first year they’ve been at Bailey’s. I don’t know them.”

He wasn’t lying, at least not about not knowing them. He was keeping something else from me and to himself, though, but I wasn’t sure exactly what.

“How in the world can I find the connection?”

Barry shrugged. “Ask the parties involved.”

“They aren’t telling.”

“Then maybe it’s none of your business, Miss Nosy.” Barry smirked playfully.

He was correct. It probably was none of my business, but I just couldn’t help but think that we were so close to knowing who the killer was because of that connection.

I’d gotten ideas in my head before, though, ideas that were off base and ended up leading to nowhere at all, or leading me straight into more trouble. Maybe that’s what this one was.

But, maybe not.

Downtown Monson was suddenly decked out. Whoever had been in charge of this year’s decorations had gone far above and beyond. I parked my truck at the end of the street and spent a few moments just admiring the currently unlit colorful lights wrapped around the streetlight poles, and the array of trees, some already starting to be decorated, that lined the entire three-block-long drag. Come sundown, Monson would be so bright we might attract passing UFOs.

I was glad to finally get out of bed and have something to do. I’d spent the night tossing and turning and trying to figure out why or how some people might be connected to other people. I’d replayed conversations over and over again, trying to glean something new, something that might help lead the police to a killer.

Sam had had to work late, though oddly not on anything related to Reggie Stuckey’s murder; he’d stayed at his own house so he wouldn’t disturb me. In fact, I hadn’t slept anyway, and I would have welcomed the disturbance even just to have someone to talk to. He hadn’t seen the new ornament. Since he’d been so busy with other police work, I hadn’t even told him about it yet. My decision to keep it to myself seemed wrong as the sun had risen, and I hoped to drop off some cookies at the parade site and then find Sam at the police station to let him know about the tree.

For the moment, though, I enjoyed the line of perfect, or at least almost perfect, real trees. It seemed like the entries only improved every year, and this year’s artists would have some beautiful palettes to work with. I didn’t see the Ridgeways anywhere, but they had outdone themselves. I thought the trees they brought to Bailey’s were wonderful, but these were even better: greener and fuller. From my vantage point, even though they were mostly not decorated yet, I had no doubt this year’s would easily outdo all the ones from previous years.

“Becca! Come help me with this.”

I tried to find the person attached to the voice. It took a second, but I finally saw my dad perched high on a ladder against a wall of the library.

“Dad?” I said as I hurried out of the truck.

“Here, I don’t feel secure enough up here to let go and get this string in place. If you’d just hold the ladder a second, I’d be fine.”

I gripped both sides of the ladder and held it tightly. “What are you doing up there?”

“This is the job of the VP of decoration’s husband. I’m to string lights. I’ve been stringing lights since about three this morning and will probably be stringing them into the night.”

“Mom’s the one in charge of decorations? I didn’t know. What about her allergy?”

“She’s taken pills of some sort. And she didn’t know about her job until this morning.”

“What happened?”

“Got a call from Vivienne Norton last night. Officer Norton said that the decorator dumped the job. Vivienne knew your mom knew her way around a sewing machine and some knitting needles; she figured that those skills somehow put her in the running for the position.”

“Does Allison know? You should have called me earlier.”

“We decided not to tell either of you girls. You’d both dump whatever you were doing to help us out. You have jobs and people to attend to. Polly and I have time for a decorating emergency.”

“Well, I’m here now at least. We can get those lights strung and then do whatever else you’ve been assigned to do.”

“Deal.”

My plans to find Sam were diverted—all day. After the string of blinking white lights was hung across the front of the library and numerous strings in other places were attended to, we helped a couple of early artists with their tree prep. I had never paid attention to the amount of tinsel the town used for the parade, but I wondered if we should call Guinness World Records.

Though Bailey’s wasn’t closed, the first day of the parade was never a shopping day. Almost everyone who lived in and around Monson was somehow involved in the parade festivities: cooking, baking, decorating, or just family time in preparation for attending the first evening’s kickoff. It was Monson’s moment to shine, and everyone wanted to be a part of the elbow grease that created the shine.

After Main Street was decorated to the hilt, I helped with the food. Instead of one area for people to grab a snack or a hot or cold drink, we set up stations. Everyone donated everything, and money donation jars were also put out on each station. People paid what they could or what they wanted to donate to the charity for cookies, candy, soda, and hot chocolate. The stations always reminded me of Charlie Brown’s Lucy and her psychiatry stand. Every station was well stocked by late afternoon, with all remaining food and drink products stored in the library’s basement. Teenagers were recruited to check and restock the stations throughout the evening.

One of the yearly tree artists was Wanda Neil. I saw her unload boxes of decorations and asked if I could help her transport them to her tree. As evening approached, I ended up assisting her with decorating her goldfish tree. It was a theme she began a few years ago and it had given Wanda legend status. Throughout the year, Wanda purchased anything goldfish related she could find. She’d also taken to crafting them. Papier-mâché, woodwork, and origami were only the beginnings of what she used to create goldfish. By the time she was done placing all the ornaments on her tree, it was almost impossible to see any green for all the orange and black.

Wanda was probably about my age and had, like me, somehow acquired an inheritance, though no one understood quite where it had come from or how much it was. There were continual rumors as to the amount. I’d heard it was millions, and I’d also heard that she was almost broke and had been seen stealing food from a Dumpster behind a restaurant—I didn’t think that one was true.

Wanda looked like a delicate beauty but behaved like a strong farm woman. She had long, straight chocolate-brown hair that she always pulled back into a smooth ponytail. I’d never seen her flawless, white skin show one sign that it had seen either sun or exertion, but I knew it had seen plenty of both. Her eyes and long eyelashes matched her hair color perfectly and her small features were precise. She reminded me of an old-fashioned porcelain doll, except that she didn’t wear dresses, and I was certain lace would never cross her mind. She always wore old, faded, ripped jeans and T-shirts that had seen better days.

She had a good-sized parcel of land only a few miles from mine and though she had a plentiful garden, she didn’t sell what she grew. She did lots of canning and preserving though—pickling, too.

She worked her garden and land by herself. She weeded, watered, planted, and picked everything on her own. She also kept her old, large farmhouse immaculate, except for the kitchen. She kept her kitchen clean, but it was always in use. Something was always being chopped, cooked, or baked. It wasn’t possible that she could eat everything she prepared but whenever asked where it all went, she’d just shrug and avoid the answer. There were rumors about that, too. Some said she took all the food to homeless shelters. Others said she would secretly, under cover of night, deliver food to the poorer families in the community. I believed both of those were possible.

Wanda was also strange, weird, and odd. This was not just my opinion, but though she was eccentric, she was wonderful to be around if you didn’t try too hard to figure out what she was really talking about.

“Love this one,” she said as she held out a small, stuffed goldfish for my approval.

“It’s cute.”

“No, Becca, it isn’t cute. It has much more to contribute to the world. It is helping to make our space more pleasant,” she said adamantly.

See, not just my opinion.

“Of course,” I said. When Sam had met her, he’d commented on how it was a good thing she’d inherited money and property because she’d have a difficult time keeping a job.

Wanda sighed as she placed the toy on a branch. “There are some that are more difficult to part with than others.”

“I understand.”

She smiled and looked pointedly at me. It was a look she’d given me a number of times, and I always wondered if it was her way of telling me that she was just one big act, that she knew people thought she was slightly off-kilter and she liked it that way.

Sam had told me that the police would check on her frequently just to make sure she was okay. She always was, and he said that some officers, Vivienne in particular, mentioned that they and Wanda carried on easy and coherent conversations.

“How much do you think my tree will go for this year?” she asked.

“Gosh, I don’t know. If I remember correctly, your trees have always been some of the most popular.”

It was true. The sheer overload of goldfish of every kind was enough for the tree to gain attention. Everyone was also convinced that if they became the proud owner of a goldfish tree, they’d probably be the only ones in the world to be so lucky.

“I know, but look around. Did you see the fairy tree? I might have to buy that one myself.”

I’d also heard that Wanda had purchased a number of trees over the years, though it was a mystery as to where they ended up.

“I missed it,” I said as I craned to look around Wanda and down the row.

“It’s spectacular,” she said as she clapped her hands together. “Spectacular.”

“I’ll have to find it.”

“Hi, Becca, what a wonderful tree!”

I had to look around the other side of the tree to see that Billie had approached and was taking the spirit of the event very seriously. She was dressed as either Santa’s helper or an elf. She wore a short, tight green dress and red leggings. She’d topped off the look with a green floppy hat and had painted on rosy cheeks. The flannel shirts and jeans I’d seen her in had hidden her great figure. I’d already thought she was probably in her early fifties, but she rocked the elf look like a pro. I didn’t see Denny close by, so I hoped for a chance to slip in a few questions for her.

“It’s perfect,” Wanda said. “Oh, are you one of the Ridgeways?”

“I am. Billie Ridgeway.” Billie extended her hand, but Wanda only cocked her head and started tapping a finger on her lips.

“Hey, Billie, this is great. Thanks for donating so many trees,” I said.

Since the Ridgeways weren’t located directly in Monson, they might not know or know of Wanda, but I couldn’t figure out a polite way to explain the unusual behavior.

“Oh, you’re welcome,” she said. She smiled uncomfortably at Wanda and then turned back to me. “Do you need anything else?”

“No, I think we’re good, but thanks. Actually, do you have a few minutes? I’d love to talk to you. I’ll buy you a cookie,” I said.

“Oh. Well, thank you, Becca, but maybe later. Denny wants me to check on this row of trees.”

I tried to think of something to keep her from leaving, but it seemed like she wanted to turn away. Then she became captivated by something on the tree. She zoned in so strongly on an ornament that both Wanda and I were compelled to move around the tree to see what had captured her attention.

“That’s lovely,” Billie said as she pointed at a goldfish that stood out from the others around it. This ornament in particular was made of the same material that my recently acquired tree was made out of—some sort of thin, flat metal. Unlike the stuffed and sewn ornaments that framed it, this one wasn’t orange and black, but just the tarnished brown of the metal.

“It’s quite wonderful, isn’t it?” Wanda said.

“Where did you get that one?” I asked.

“I seldom remember, unless I make and name them myself. I just don’t remember where I get them.”

Billie smiled at Wanda and then at me. “Well, it’s a great tree, very unique. Good luck with the bids.”

“Thank you, Billie Ridgeway,” Wanda said before she skipped back around the tree to continue decorating.

“When you’re available, I’d love to visit a little,” I said.

“Sure. I’ll find you,” she said. I didn’t think she would.

Billie turned and continued down toward the next tree, the bells on her pointy-toed shoes jingling as she walked.

I looked at the metal fish one more time and shook off the unwelcome sense of coincidence that was creeping in on me. Was this something that I needed to pay attention to, or was it just pure chance that this ornament was so similar to the tree, and there was nothing I should sense as strange about it? Hairs rose on the back of my neck. I turned and looked around.

The sun had set, the chill in the air had grown chillier, and the crowd was quickly beginning to grow. Last-minute decorations were still being placed on most trees, but onlookers were already browsing, some drinking hot chocolate, some eating Christmas cookies.

The only person who noticed me looking around was Denny, who was across the street, inspecting a tree as Billie had inspected Wanda’s. He was dressed in a bright-red sweater and black jeans, which made him look even more like Santa. He happened to look up as I looked over. He smiled and waved. I did the same. Maybe that’s why Billie hadn’t wanted to talk; maybe she’d seen Denny. He certainly seemed to rule the Ridgeway family roost.

“All this Christmas stuff and not a mistletoe in sight.” A voice pulled me back to reality.