There was an empty spot against the chain-link that I claimed as my own. From there, I had a good view of the field and a direct line of sight to where Mom and Marcus were sitting in the grandstands set up for VIPs. Sure, they had bench seats, but most of the locals knew to spread out along the fence for a closer look at the action.
“Howdy, Juni,” a nearby voice called.
I looked over to see Miss Edie and her little puggle dog, Buffy, on my right. Edie was an older Black woman who was the honorary aunt of just about every kid who grew up in Cedar River. She’d watched half of the town’s children after school until their parents got off work. Even now that she was well into her seventies, she volunteered to babysit in a pinch, but mostly she spent her leisure time lavishing all that love on her cute, curly tailed dog.
“Miss Edie! Good to see you,” I told her. My parents had worked at the record shop when I was young, and most days I would go straight there after school, but as often as I could manage it, I’d get off the bus at Edie’s instead. Sure, the record shop had great music, but Miss Edie had grape Kool-Aid and sliced apples. “I see you came prepared.”
“Of course I did, dear,” she said with a chuckle. Edie was relaxing in a lawn chair, with an umbrella anchored into the ground next to her, providing welcome shade. Her feet were propped up on a cooler that was no doubt filled with snacks and drinks, and she had a paperback novel in her lap. “I have a feeling in my bones that this is the year.”
I nodded. I secretly hoped that she was wrong, but who was I to begrudge a sweet old lady a little fun? “Maybe so.”
“I still remember that day, you know,” she said.
“What? You were there?” I asked. I knew Edie was born and raised in Cedar River, but I’d never stopped to consider that she might have been around during the festival heist. It seemed so long ago to me that I could barely fathom 1956, but in a generation or two, people would feel that way about Y2K.
“Of course I was, silly. I was almost ten years old. My daddy was working for the oil company back then. The payroll was stolen along with everything else. That was some dark times. We lost all our savings. I even lost my Christmas money.”
“I guess I always assumed that everyone’s money was insured.”
“Not back then, it wasn’t, not the Cedar River Bank at least.” She smiled. “You better believe that when they finally find that money, someone is gonna be paying me back.”
I nodded. I hadn’t thought about it that way. All these years I’d been rooting against the treasure hunters, maybe I should have been rooting for them instead.
There was a loud electronic squeal as someone picked up a bullhorn and began to speak. Numbers associated with individual plots were handed out randomly, and the contestants already had their shovels. A bell sounded and everyone dashed to their assigned spots to begin digging.
My spot along the fence was between plots 17 and 25, according to the markers on the ground. A young Black man, barely out of his teens, claimed plot 17. A broad-shouldered white man twice his age double-checked his number against plot 25 and started to dig. But I wasn’t paying attention to either of them as soon as I recognized Teddy on plot 18.
“Teddy!” I yelled out before I thought twice about whether or not I would be distracting him. He looked up at the sound of his name, grinned and waved at me, and then got to work.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Edie hooted as the man on plot 25 stripped off his shirt.
“Miss Edie!” I said, in my most scandalized voice.
“I’m old, child, not dead. You just wait until that pretty mailman of yours takes his shirt off. See who’ll be hollering then,” she replied.
For the record, I didn’t blush. Not at all. I mean, I had a bit of sun on my cheeks, I’m sure, but that was all. Who wouldn’t after being out in the sun? The worst part was, even over the sounds of digging and grunting and earth being tossed about, Teddy must have heard her, because he tossed his head back and cackled. Then he took his shirt off, revealing a black undershirt. I had to admit it was a nice look on him. Teddy whipped his shirt over his head once before letting it fall.
“You’re welcome,” Edie told me.
Esméralda Martín-Brown, the town’s best—and only—mechanic, joined us at the fence. Esméralda’s thick, curly hair was loose around her shoulders, and she’d traded in her usual grease-stained coveralls for a long white sundress. “Whoo, Miss Edie, you were right. You always pick the best spots.” She sat down in the shade of the umbrella.
“What have you got there?” I asked her as she opened a hard-sided case and pulled out a tablet.
“Thought I’d get a bird’s-eye view this year,” she said as she unpacked a small drone. A few minutes later, the drone was in the air, filming the competition from the sky as Edie and I huddled around her tablet.
Half an hour passed as the contestants—locals and out-of-towners, men and women—dug. The diggers became harder to see as their holes grew deeper and the piles of dirt around them rose. It was a good thing Esméralda brought her drone. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to see anything when someone in the middle of the field yelled, “I found something!”
The other contestants paused for a moment, as if trying to decide if this was a hoax or not, before abandoning their plots and converging on the one in the middle. Judges rushed in from the gates. I alternated from trying to see what was happening on the tablet screen and pressing myself against the chain-link, hoping to catch a glimpse of the action.
A few minutes later, the weary contestants returned to their own holes and resumed digging, but their hearts didn’t seem into it anymore. Then again, I was exhausted just trying to watch the competition. “What happened?” I asked the nearest digger.
“False alarm,” he said between jagged breaths.
Esméralda landed her drone. She’d already replaced the battery pack once. “I’ll give it a rest unless something interesting happens.”
“You’re pretty good with that thing,” I told her. I’d watched her fly it, and it took a steady hand. “Thanks. I won it in a raffle and I’ve been practicing at the garage.”
“Is that safe?” I asked her. Esméralda’s garage, George’s Auto Body—named after her retired father—was right next to the Cedar River Municipal Airport. I wasn’t sure about the legality of operating a drone so close to air traffic.
She shrugged. “I got a permit.”
As the sun beat down on the back of my neck, my mind began to wander. I tried not to think about what I’d seen at Town Hall this morning, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never been too concerned about local politics before. Mayor Bob had been in office since before I was old enough to vote, so he was pretty popular, but obviously not everyone loved him. Someone had disliked him enough to kill him.
Or, maybe not. I thought about what J.T. had said about poisoning not being the only cause of blue lips after death. I had some time to kill while the contestants dug their holes, so I pulled out my phone and launched my internet app.
R.I.P. my browser history.
Wow, there were a lot more possibilities than I had imagined. Blue lips could be a sign of anything from heart failure to a lack of oxygen. And there were a variety of possible reasons, from anemia to high blood pressure. Here I’d been assuming that Mayor Bob had been poisoned, but it was just as likely that he dropped dead of natural causes. All this worry could be for nothing.
I closed my browser and dialed Beau before I could talk myself out of it. The phone rang so many times I thought I was going to end up in his voicemail, but then he picked up. “This is a pleasant surprise,” he said in lieu of a greeting. “Does this mean you’re not mad at me?”
“I was never mad at you,” I admitted. “But I don’t like being manipulated.”
“There are going to be times that I can’t tell you everything. It’s not personal.”
“It feels personal,” I said. “Especially when it involves my family.”
“Junebug…”
I cut him off. “How did he die?”
“This is one of those times that I’m talking about,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I can’t divulge that information.”
“Figured as much,” I said and disconnected without giving him a chance to respond. Of course Beau wasn’t going to tell me what killed Mayor Bob. That would be too easy.
Next, I texted my brother-in-law. “What’s Kitty’s #?” A few minutes later, he replied with his cousin’s number. I could always count on J.T. to come through in a pinch.
I dialed the number. No one picked up. Instead of leaving a message, I called back again and this time Kitty answered. “What?” She sounded annoyed.
“Hey, it’s Juni Jessup. Maggie’s sister? We met this morning?”
“Oh, hey.” She sounded friendlier now, not that I could blame her. I was always suspicious when unknown numbers came across the screen. I knew some scammers have gotten in the habit of calling numbers two or three times in rapid succession if no one picked up on the first try, but for the most part, if someone called multiple times it’s because it’s important. “What’s up?”
“When’s your next day off? I’d like to take you to lunch.”
“I don’t know. They haven’t posted next week’s schedule yet.”
“Okay, cool. Just text me when you’re free. My treat.”
“Yeah, okay,” she agreed. “Sounds good. Anything else?”
“Actually, yes,” I admitted. “Has the autopsy on Bob Bobbert come back yet?” Beside me, Esméralda’s head turned in my direction. I met her gaze and tried to look innocent. Yup, I’m just over here innocently trying to get autopsy results from a paramedic. Nothing to see here, move it along.
“You’ve got to be kidding. Jayden told me to watch out for you.”
“She did?” I asked.
“I think her exact words were, ‘Don’t go giving out any details to anyone, especially Juni Jessup or her nosy sisters.’”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed.
“Except, you see, I only just met Jayden Holt. She seems cool, for a cop. But you’re my favorite cousin’s wife’s sister, so we’re practically family.”
“I was just telling J.T. that this very morning!” I said, excitedly.
“Exactly. Officially, I don’t know anything and of course, if I did, I couldn’t pass it along to you.”
“And unofficially?” I asked.
“The Cedar River Coroner is out on maternity leave, so we transported Mr. Bobbert to Austin General. It will take a few days before we get any results, but as soon as I know something, you’ll know something.”
“You are so my new best friend,” I told her.
“Right? Hey, look, I gotta get back to work but I’ll let you know when I have some free time next week.”
“Good deal,” I told her, disconnecting the call. I wasn’t kidding about wanting to be her new bestie. I was starting to think that J.T.’s failure to introduce Kitty to the family had less to do with her schedule and more to do with knowing that his cousin and I would get along like a house on fire.
A loud horn sounded, announcing that the hour was up. The two men closest to me crawled out of the holes they’d dug, looking like they were ready to collapse. Miss Edie pulled two bottles of water out of her cooler and handed them to Esméralda. “Give these to those boys, will ya?” Esméralda tossed the bottles over the fence to the grateful competitors.
Teddy wound his way around the mounds of dirt on plots 17 and 25 and hooked his fingers through the chain-link fence. “Thanks for coming out to cheer me on.”
“To be honest, I didn’t even know you’d entered the contest,” I admitted.
“I enter every year. This is just the first time my number got drawn.”
“What exactly was all the excitement about?”
“Some tourist thought they’d struck gold, but it was just a rock.”
“Wait a second, gold? I’d always assumed that the robbers had gotten away with paper money. I didn’t know the First Cedar River Bank was filled with gold.”
Teddy shook his head. Sweat was rolling down his face, and I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him with even a single hair out of place. If I was being honest, it was a good look on him. “Miss Edie, have any more water?” I asked.
She passed one to Esméralda, who handed it to me. I couldn’t fit it through the links in the fence, so I followed Esméralda’s example from earlier and tossed it up and over the chain-link.
“Thanks, Miss Edie, you’re a lifesaver.” He downed half the bottle before dumping the rest of it over his head.
“Bless your soul,” Miss Edie said, clasping her hands to her heart. “You lock that one down, Juni, you hear?”
“If you don’t, I will,” Esméralda said, joining in on the fun.
“Oh shush,” I told the other ladies.
Teddy was trying to pretend he’d missed the entire exchange, but was biting his bottom lip so hard to keep from laughing that it was turning white.
“Um, we were talking about gold,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to safer ground.
“It was mostly cash, I think,” Teddy said with a grin. He had dimples that I hadn’t noticed before. “There had just been a large deposit to cover the payroll for the oil workers. There was so much money in the vault, the robbers didn’t even bother with the safety deposit boxes.”
I remembered Edie mentioning that her dad was waiting for his paycheck when the bank got hit. “Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious? How did the robbers know about the payroll?”
“Just lucky?” he guessed. “They used the Bluebonnet Festival as a distraction, so they were going to hit the bank on that weekend no matter what.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” I agreed. But I wasn’t convinced. In 1956, no one had Facebook ads reminding them of upcoming events. Many families in rural Texas didn’t own a television set back then. The Bluebonnet Festival had only been around for ten years at the time of the heist, which meant it wouldn’t have been widely known.
Whoever planned the robbery knew about the festival. It stood to reason that they knew about the payday schedule, too.
“Whatcha thinking?” Teddy asked.
“Huh?” I asked. Juni Jessup, queen of the witty banter, in the flesh.
“You’re thinking about something.” Before I could answer him, he said, “Hey, the judges are coming. Gotta go, but I’ll catch you later.” He blew me an exaggerated kiss through the fence before heading back to his plot.