Murder Under the Covered Bridge (15 page)

A half hour later the women met their deadline and assembled in the hall. They shrugged on coats because of the cold. “We don't look bad,” Alice said, checking out her sporty new Columbia winter coat in the
gold-framed
hall mirror. “Let's move.”

Toby drove. The sun was up but not high enough to produce a lot of light. The cameraman from Channel Six was there. He was setting up a portable light stand powered through his truck while Joy looked over her notecards. Toby parked in the Rock Run parking lot. They made their way down to where Channel Six was, immediately behind the orange barrels blocking access to the burned out bridge. Yellow police tape was strung across the barrels. A Sheriff's Department officer sat in a squad car, watching the action. Two other stations were there with large broadcast trucks, one from Terre Haute and another from Indianapolis.

Joy inserted and earpiece and took the microphone. Both tested fine and she was ready to go for a
seven-thirty
segment. It turned out to be for the station's local broadcast and involved Joy alone. However, the anchors used it to set up for a longer segment fifteen minutes later. The cameraman strategically placed the women and a Toby in the background of the shot, making it look like there were still gawkers at the scene.

Joy recapped the tragic events of yesterday. Francine couldn't hear what they were saying, but soon Joy singled her out of the crowd and motioned her forward. Francine's eyes went wide. Joy's arm went firmly behind her shoulder to keep her in place in front of the camera. “This is Francine McNamara,” Joy said, introducing her. “Her cousin William is the one who was in a coma but passed away last night. First of all, on behalf of the entire WRTV news team, we are terribly sorry about what happened. We understand that it was unexpected. Can you tell us anything about why he had a turn for the worst?”

A lot of things went through Francine's mind, most of all resentment that she would be asked such a question at this time. The only thing that made it bearable was that she knew Joy was only acting on what was coming out of Indianapolis. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't have any more to add.”

Joy nodded as though she was receiving instructions through the earphone. She spoke into the camera. “I understand we have a crew from our affiliate in Terre Haute who will be updating us from Union Hospital where they will be talking to the doctors.” Then she turned to Francine with the microphone. “Do you think there's a connection between the incident involving him and the fact that someone set fire to the bridge?” she asked.

“I've given it some thought,” Francine said, almost, but not quite, making it up on the spot. “The two things come close together in time but seem very different. Someone shooting at William would appear to be related to him being somewhere he shouldn't, but the act of arson seems deliberately evil.”

“What can you tell us about the other fire yesterday? We understand you witnessed it. Could the two be related?”

“I'll leave that for the police.”

“Why do you think your cousin was here?” Joy continued.

Francine was way out of her comfort zone. “I don't know. William and I weren't that close anymore. I hadn't seen him in several years.”

Joy hesitated. She covered the ear containing the earpiece with her hand, as though she wanted to be sure of the next question. She looked as though she had something distasteful in her mouth. “Can you remind our viewers what were you doing here at the Roseville Bridge so early yesterday?”

Francine knew Joy couldn't avoid the question, coming live from the
GMA
hosts. “As you know, Joy, our bridge club has developed some notoriety for our bucket list items. We were here working on one of them. But I really think the focus in Parke County needs to be on finding the person who set fire to this historic bridge to prevent any further incidents, and then determining how to replace the bridge as they did in Bridgeton so many years ago.”

And with that, Francine stepped back into the group with Toby, Alice, and Charlotte.

Joy wrapped up her segment, made sure her mic was off, and then handed it and the earpiece back to the cameraman before huddling with the rest of the women. “You handled that beautifully,” she told Francine. “I think you have a future in public relations.”

Francine laughed nervously. “I learned how to do it from a pro.”

“There wasn't a whole lot more they could say at that point. I was proud of you.”

“I'm just glad it's over.”

Charlotte pulled at Francine's sleeve. “What makes you think it's over? Mark my words, until the arsonist is caught, this story won't go away, and until William's death is resolved, neither will the questions about why we happened to be here that morning.”

They all stood quietly for a moment, contemplating Charlotte's warning. Toby was the first to speak. “We need to get back to Rockville. There might already be a line of people waiting. I bet it'll be a good morning for cinnamon rolls and coffee.”

Alice chuckled. “And we have to watch out for those crazy corn fritter donut addicts.”

Francine and the others took steps toward the car, but Charlotte remained rooted in place. She had a faraway look in her eyes, like something had suddenly occurred to her.

Francine wanted to ask but knew it would only lead to more standing around. If she remembered, she would ask her about it in the car when they were on their way. “C'mon,” she said, “we need to go.” She took Charlotte by the arm and helped her across the bumpy roadside terrain to the car.

sixteen

By the time the
others returned, Jonathan and Mary Ruth were at the food booth getting it ready to open at nine o'clock. Jonathan was wearing a black flannel shirt and blue jeans, which Francine thought made him look ruggedly handsome. Handsome or not, Mary Ruth had him working and the others joined them soon.

The weatherman had warned that the clear skies would drop the temperature overnight and it would struggle to get warm until the sun got high in the sky. In Indiana, the warmest temperatures were never at noon but rather later in the day, more toward four o'clock when there had been several good hours of sunshine. And so it was that everyone, including Jonathan but excluding Charlotte, was bundled in layers underneath pink Mary Ruth's Catering aprons, answering calls for hot coffee, cocoa, tea, and Mary Ruth's cinnamon rolls, which were selling almost as fast as Toby could get them out of the box. He'd been given the task of carrying supplies from the pickup truck to the food booth and unloading them for Jonathan, who placed them in a warming oven while trying to keep up with the brewing of coffee and tea. Francine was working on the cocoas individually and pouring tea and coffee while Joy, who was the chief saleswoman, called out what was needed from the open sales window. That left Mary Ruth and Alice to the task of preparing the corn fritter donuts, which had become the sensation of the festival. The dough had been refrigerated overnight, but now it needed to be shaped into balls and dropped into the fryer until each had achieved that perfect golden brown color. Then they would be cooled slightly on a rack, dipped in the
honey-cinnamon
glaze, and served warm.

Like the day before, Mary Ruth could not keep up with the demand, even with the addition of Jonathan, whose presence allowed Alice to help with the donuts. The process was a tedious one.

Joy bustled back and picked up a tray of the donuts Mary Ruth had just set out. “Every one of these is already sold,” she said. “Can you speed it up?”

“Not without more hands.” She looked around. “Toby, get those cinnamon rolls unloaded as fast as you can. Joy needs your help up front.”

“There's no room for all of the rolls,” Toby complained. “I can't stack the boxes more than three high without the rolls on the bottom being flattened, and I know you won't allow that. I have to bring them in as needed. Where's Charlotte?”

“Off doing detective work,” answered Francine. Also, she needed Charlotte to get the clothes Zed had requested, since she and Jonathan were tied up.

“Detective work?” Mary Ruth sputtered. “I thought that's what Detective Stockton was in charge of. Don't tell me he needs her help. He looks experienced enough to me.”

“You didn't give her any tasks to do. As usual, I might add. So she decided to follow up on a few loose ends.”

“You sound like you approved of this.”

“There are a few unanswered questions the two of us have about why William may have been out on Zed's property.”

“How is that connected with the fire?”

“We don't know that it is. But Charlotte said she had a theory. And since the events occurred one after the other with the fire at the bridge in between, we have to consider the possibility that all three are related.” This was in spite of what she'd said on the morning news show.

The minute timer beeped and Mary Ruth yanked two baskets of corn fritter donuts out of the fryer, sliding the front of the baskets onto a wire notch that held them above the fryer so the grease could drain off back into it. She shook them impatiently. “Well, how long will it be until she gets back? I've changed my mind about her. I can find plenty of tasks now for her to do.”

Francine looked at her watch. It was only nine thirty. The Fabulous Sweet Shoppe had opened a half hour ago, the same time as the library, which had been Charlotte's first stop. She had no idea how easily obtainable information would be on Doc Wheat. She'd hoped since he was a local legend, there'd be a book on him Charlotte could check out, enabling her to move onto the Dollar General store, where she could buy clothes for Zed and maybe some food, too, to take to him at Bridgeton. With the way sales were moving here, Francine guessed they'd be sold out by early afternoon and could get over to Bridgeton while it was still daylight.

“I can call her and see where she is,” Francine said.

“Don't make it long,” Joy said, heading back toward a box of cinnamon rolls. “I need you to pour a half dozen coffees, one large, and two large cocoas.”

Francine rushed to get those done, set them up for Joy, and then call Charlotte. From the whispery voice Charlotte used when she answered the phone, she knew Charlotte had to be in the library.

“There's just hardly anything on Doc Wheat,” she said. “The Local History section has some books that go back into the late forties and early fifties, but they don't have more than a couple of pages on him, and it's all the same stuff Zed told you. I asked and the librarian said there were no books written about Wheat. Oh, and she said to say how sorry she is about William. He was a regular at the library.”

The thought grabbed Francine. “He was a regular?”

“I'm already ahead of you there. I asked all sorts of questions about any research he'd done or what kind of books he read. It seems he was a history buff. Loved biographies, especially anything local. And get this. Supposedly he was
writing
a book about the history of area, starting back when settlers first moved into Parke County.”

“Had anyone seen this book?”

“Not in print. Here's the kicker. He had a laptop computer he'd bring in and work on. Don't you wish you'd taken that laptop out of his car now?”

Francine had to admit if she'd known that, she might have been more tempted.

Charlotte continued, “The librarian said he had interviewed a lot of local people about what stories had been passed down to them. And genealogy. He was always taking pictures in graveyards.”

“Sounds macabre.”

Mary Ruth tapped Francine on the shoulder, making her jump. “Is that Charlotte?” Francine nodded. “How fast can she get over here?”

“I'll check,” Francine told her, then watched Mary Ruth hustle back to the donut station.

Now Francine whispered like Charlotte. “We need you over here. The line's getting longer and longer and we can't keep up. Mary Ruth even asked for you.”

“Humph,” Charlotte sniffed. “It's about time she recognized I'm as good as the rest of you at helping.”

“Don't get a big head. She only said she could find a lot of tasks for you to do.”

“I could come back now. I've gotten just about all I can get here. But what about that other project, the one at Dollar General?”

Francine turned her back to Mary Ruth and the others and her voice got even softer. “Don't worry about that one. We're going crazy. I can send Jonathan out to run that errand as soon as things calm down here.”

She closed out the phone call and turned around to find Mary Ruth talking to a customer. “No, we're not going to have any of the flourless chocolate cake available until lunchtime. That kind of chocolate is for lunch, not breakfast. But if you want, I can ice your cinnamon roll with the same chocolate frosting we use on the cake.”

That seemed to be enough to satisfy the customer. Mary Ruth slapped some frosting on his cinnamon roll, and he walked away with it and one of the warm, rich cocoas Francine had crafted and handed to Joy. Making the cocoa she likened to preparing one of her
oft-requested
hard lemonades during the summer. Hand mixing was required and the beverage went down smoothly. She wondered if that was a food truck idea waiting to happen. After all, lemon shakeups, elephant ears, and funnel cakes were a staple of the food trucks you could find at county fairs across Indiana. What if you kicked up the lemonade a notch?

She pushed the thought from her mind as she began work on another cocoa. She was five behind. Jonathan looked like he was having a little better luck keeping up with the coffee urns. He had tipped one up to drain it and had a filter with fresh coffee grounds waiting to go in. “This is nuts!” he said.

“Charlotte will be here soon,” Francine announced. “Perhaps you should have let Charlotte help from the start. At some point you've got to forgive her.”

“I'm
not
still holding a grudge against her because of the health department incident, despite what everyone thinks,” Mary Ruth confided. She checked a dozen donuts on a cooling rack, determined they were okay, and passed them off to Alice for drizzling with the
honey-cinnamon
glaze. “It's become a way of defining our relationship. I do care about her, but she's always putting herself first, and this is my way of reminding her that doing so can have negative consequences for other people.”

“She doesn't always put herself first, though sometimes it seems that way. What about last night? She helped Alice check the séance off her Sixty List.”

“Mark my words, it will turn out she had an ulterior motive for doing that.”

“That's uncharitable of you.”

Mary Ruth put another batch of the corn fritter donuts into the fryer and hit the timer. Toby came forward from the back. He was carrying two bulk vegetable oil containers. “I need you to look at this,” he said.

“Cover my station,” she ordered Francine and Alice. “I'll just be gone for a moment.”

“We can stay right here.” He handed her the white container. “Hold this.”

She took it from him. “Okay.”

“Get a feel for its weight.”

She moved it up and down with her arms. “Feels normal.”

“Now try this one.” He handed her one that had a yellowish tint to it. Francine recognized it as one they'd seen last night when Mary Ruth had declared it an inferior brand.

Mary Ruth's expression changed the moment he handed it to her. “It's so much lighter.”

“Makes me wonder what's in it.”

Francine overfilled a coffee while watching the two of them. She mopped up the mess with a bar towel. “Have you opened any of the containers yet today?”

“I haven't,” Mary Ruth answered. “Alice always changes out the grease. Alice?”

“I did that last night, so we should be good today. Why?”

Francine popped lids on the remaining coffees she'd poured and handed them up to Joy. “Jonathan, would you be a dear and help Toby take those containers back out and check them to make sure they have grease in them?”

Jonathan looked puzzled. “Why?”

“Because I've been around Charlotte too long. Earlier this morning she said we wouldn't be safe until the arsonist was caught. If she were here, her suspicious mind would link the different densities of those two containers and conclude one of them may be an accelerant.”

The look on Toby's face told Francine he didn't understand. “An accelerant?”

“Like gasoline. Like an arsonist would use.”

Jonathan and Toby hurried to the back to check.

“It's probably nothing,” Francine said. She began another hot cocoa, trying to keep up with the number of orders she had in front of her. Mary Ruth went back to frying donuts.

Toby was back in fifteen seconds. He held up two fingers. “Two of them. Both the
off-brand
. They smelled like gasoline. What does it mean?”

Francine considered what to do. “It means we need to be on guard. And I think we should advise Detective Stockton right away.”

“That won't be difficult,” Alice said. “He's in line.”

Everyone glanced toward the long line. Stockton was wearing a black Stetson this morning instead of the white one he'd been wearing yesterday. He had on his brown Parke County sheriff's uniform, and people were telling him to cut in line ahead of them. He was advancing quickly, doffing his hat at each person letting him advance.

Francine got a kick out of the expression on Joy's face when she heard him order a corn fritter donut, coffee, and the latest news report on the
Skinny-Dipping
Grandmas. She seemed ready to give him the withering glance she'd been using on the people who'd recognized her from the newscasts and made sarcastic remarks. But when she saw who it was, she broke out in a wide grin. “Coming right up,” she said. “Do you need any clues to go with that?”

“I was going to ask for a bit of your time, but I see that you're pretty busy.”

Suddenly Charlotte was standing next to Stockton. Francine had been so absorbed in the interaction between he and Joy she hadn't seen her come up. “Lucky for both of you, it's time for her break,” Charlotte said. “I'm here to take her place. Just let me get back there.”

For a change, Mary Ruth didn't object. And when she asked Charlotte to use wax paper sheets instead of her fingers when transferring the food to the plates, neither did Charlotte.

Detective Stockton came in from the back to confer with Mary Ruth. He removed his hat as he entered. “It does smell like gasoline,” he told her. “We've searched the rest of your supplies and your grandson assures us everything else looks normal to him. I'm taking the two containers with me when I leave. But that won't be until I finish my donut and coffee.”

“Do you really think someone is trying to blow us up?”

“It's either that or they're trying to frame you.” He bit into the donut.

“It's the former,” Charlotte said. “Think about it. Alice would have opened the container. She has bad allergies. She wouldn't have noticed the smell.”

Francine tensed when she realized how true it was.
Had they come that close to being blown up?
Maybe Alice would have noticed the weight of the gasoline versus the weight of the oil. But maybe not. At any rate, it implied that someone knew a lot about their little group.
We're on TV regularly
, she thought.
How much about our lives have we revealed to anyone who wants to know?