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A couple of hours later, as Friday morning at the fête started out with a typical Blue Ridge Mountains coolness but began to warm as the morning fog burnt away, Di was still entirely uncertain that he was the right one to do this.
It had already been a rough start to the day. He’d spent all morning being abandoned by the other officers with a crying three-year-old who’d gotten separated from his parents about two minutes after the fête opened for the day. Sitting around weeping in his overalls with Grover from the Muppets smiling happily on them, the small white boy had been completely unmoved by anything either Di or Mac could do, although he did cling to her leg a bit.
Granted, this was something many a man in town was dreaming of, but not usually while weeping.
Di knew the overalls, as well. They were from a line of thoroughly trademark-infringing but very popular children’s clothes from The Kids’ Boutique, which specialized in handmade children’s clothing. Although Di could have made ones which probably would have sold pretty well, the idea of all they would go through with a child wearing them made him pause. While he knew much of what he created was going to be facing the actual world, there were limits to how much damage he wanted to invite.
Still, he’d asked Alex Martinez to take a picture of the child and go talk to Stefanie, the owner of The Kids’ Boutique, to see if she had any insights. All the other officers had run off at the first sign of the “Crying Kid Alert.”
It was Sgt. Peewee who rescued them all, however, jumping up to put his front paws on the boy and licking away his tears. By the time his parents had finally shown up, he was more laughing than crying.
Still, by mid-morning, all the men of the force were looking for their next coffee hit, so Di and Mac had used the excuse to head to Prospector’s Diner to see if they could find a way to chat with Aunt Mary.
As they wandered off, Peewee trotting along beside and watching them, still in uniform, Di wondered, “Where do some parents get the idea that abandoning their kids with the police for a few hours is the same as unpaid babysitting?”
The Grover child’s parents were still irking him, as they’d seemed less than pleased that their boy was okay and more upset that they were expected to look after him themselves.
Mac shrugged.
“Parents, y’know? There are no guarantees in life.”
Di supposed so. While never much of a kid person, as much as the little ones usually seemed to warm to him, he’d had wonderful parents himself. It was a little embarrassing to realize that he’d probably have still been living with them, had his father not finally gotten the university job he’d deserved all his life and moved away to Chapel Hill.
While Di’s mother had worked for years as the town bail bondsman’s secretary to help keep the family afloat, his father was a geologist. Still, being African-American, he wasn’t the norm and had ended up working for the small gold and gem mine in town—Prospector’s Fortune. It was an amusing tourist trap where parents could bring their kids to a very played-out 19th-century mine, and they could pan for gold and gems. Very occasionally, someone found something big, but mostly they took home a baggie of small bits of crystal and maybe a little fool’s gold as their only souvenir.
Still, his father had been on hand to identify their finds and, for the willing, try to convince them to have them made into jewelry which would then be mailed to their homes. As a way to support a wife and son, it wasn’t exactly lucrative, but at least he’d been in his hometown where everyone knew him and his mother still was, and where no one would let him fall too far.
It had been a real surprise to everyone, then, when he’d ended up as a professor.
It’d happened only a few years ago, after he’d struck up a friendly argument with a customer over the identification of one of the stones, finally convincing the man he was right. Apparently, the customer had been the head of the Geology Department at the University of North Carolina, and, after many more long chats which had bored his visiting family no end, had encouraged Everard Goode to apply for a visiting professorship, which he’d then made sure turned into a tenure position.
While this had left Di with only his grandmother nearby, since he couldn’t imagine leaving Prospector’s Rest—or, rather, couldn’t imagine leaving Mac—he was still happy for his parents, who were now more settled into the life they had always wanted.
A little lost in these thoughts as he and Mac made it to the diner, he was brought back to reality by the ridiculous crowd there, even larger than the general flood of humanity through the streets.
Aunt Mary had even had to send her granddaughter out to establish a waiting list for a table. Although a lot of the customers decided to head off to the many street vendors of foods of all kinds, several still waited around, mostly slightly peevishly.
“No, I don’t know how long it will be,” Jeanine explained to one of those milling around, for what seemed to not be the first time. “I’ll call you, when . . .”
Looking over to the new arrivals, she seemed relieved.
“Mac! Di!”
She was a light-skinned African-American girl a couple of years younger than both of them, Aunt Mary’s white daughter having married the high school quarterback from her day. She was pretty, with her hair in big curls which were currently pulled back in a snood she usually used when she was waiting tables, although she was now in jeans and a t-shirt which read, “Aunt Mary’s Apple Pie—Better Than Mining for Gold!” rather than her usual uniform.
Di knew the back read, “Prospector’s Diner—Sit and Rest a Spell!” Aunt Mary had run the wording by all her customers to see if they could improve on it, before she bought a bunch to sell at the fête.
Seeming pleased to see them, Jeanine asked—rather hopefully, he thought, “Getting something to go for the boys in blue?”
Her dark red lipstick brought out her natural smile, which had rather been lacking before, given how beleaguered she seemed with the grumbling crowd.
Of course, the local boys were actually in khaki, but Di knew she’d said it for the crowds, so they wouldn’t rebel when she let them inside. Mac helped, too, by allowing Peewee to make friends with those waiting, a part he played admirably.
“Mid-morning coffee run,” Di nodded.
“Makes sense,” Jeanine agreed, cocking her head. “Go on in. Aunt Mary’s been wondering when y’all would need supplies.”
That Aunt Mary was a town fixture was only made truer by the fact that her own granddaughter referred to her by that name. And it was true, too, that, often, the diner sent over something partway through the day to the sheriff’s booth, but it would have been impossible to ask Aunt Mary anything there, so coming to make the order seemed the perfect excuse.
As Peewee said goodbye to his new, adoring fans, they headed inside.
Fortunately, there, things were a bit more orderly, as only the booths were occupied, and Mary had left the counter clear for to-go orders. Right now, there was only an Indian couple and their two kids at the other end waiting for their food. While the father looked worn out already, the mother was clearly entirely taken up by amusing her kids.
When Mary saw Di and Mac, she gave a huge grin and came to take their order personally. She was a white woman whose blonde hair was in big ringlets and a snood like her granddaughter’s, although the strands were starting to go gray. She too had on jeans and the t-shirt, which she was evidently seriously pushing.
“Local faces!” she whispered, clearly pleased. “Thank heaven.”
For a second, Di got a bit of an ache.
But I don’t WANT it to be Aunt Mary!
Still, the mayor had been hanging out at the diner right before his speech, and, if anyone were going to poison him, it would be someone with access to his food.
“Been quite an event, hasn’t it?” Mac started them off, clearly seeing as much as Di did that Mary was willing to stop and chat a bit.
“Crowded,” Mary agreed. “But the t-shirts are selling fairly well.”
As this wasn’t getting them toward where they needed to go, Di tried again.
“Not the usual fête, though, with the mayor collapsing and all.”
Mary rolled her eyes.
“Good riddance. May he rest in peace and all,” she addressed the ceiling. “. . . but that man never had my vote. Womanizer, cheat, embezzler . . .”
Probably seeing their looks at that last one, she amended.
“Well, might as well have been, anyway. He’d take money from anyone and everyone with zero interest in helping anyone but himself.”
She leaned in closer.
“Do you know that man was trying to get me to sell up and move out? Can you imagine this town without the diner? With some sort of McDonalds or somethin’ in its place?”
She rolled her eyes, and Di was pleased that he wasn’t having to figure out what and how to ask her anything, although part of him wished she’d stop incriminating herself.
“We’ll be way better off with Velveteen,” she nodded emphatically. “At least she understands how important local business is to this town and isn’t trying to turn it all over to the billionaires.”
When she paused for half a second, Di wondered what he could say. She’d pretty much backed up all his theories, and she’d had access to the mayor and his food, as well.
“Still, it’s bad to see someone go like that,” Di tried to redirect her. “He could have been voted out next year.”
“Mm, not good for the fête, it’s true,” Aunt Mary seemed to think she was agreeing. “But as to voting out . . .”
She rolled her eyes again.
“That man was stuck in here for good. He’d probably have tampered with the results, if he didn’t simply pay everyone off or find some excuse to purge the voter rolls of all the people who didn’t like him. Trust me.”
She held up her hand.
“It’s better this way. Now, whatcha need?”
As they only seemed to be allowing Aunt Mary to dig a deeper grave for herself, Di gave the group’s coffee and snack order.
Nodding, she murmured, “The usual, then,” and pulled away from the counter. “You kids go on and see a little of the fête. I’ll have Rufus and Enoch bring it over as soon as it’s ready,” she assured them of her two main, twin delivery men, who were actually both exceptionally intelligent and on scholarship at UNC. It wasn’t their fault they’d been named after their rather backwoods grandfathers and were working for spending money on their summer vacation.
With that, Di headed out with Mac and Peewee. Only once they were out, had waved a goodbye to Jeanine, and were well away did he whisper to her, “I kinda wish we hadn’t done that.”
“Yeah, she does seem pretty proud of it, if she’s the one.” Glancing up at him out of the corner of her eye, Mac added, “But it would be pretty bold talk for a possible suspect.”
Of course, no one in town knew that Doc MacDougal had decided the mayor had been poisoned. The rumor mill had firmly established that he’d died as a result of his various vices. A few still even seemed to think he’d be back, like a vampire.
“Yeah, I know,” Mac continued, clearly sharing his thoughts. “But still.”
Di sort of agreed but didn’t think that most of the people in town exactly knew how to act like a good murder suspect. In a town where the last official murder had been in 1965—and was still a feature in the local, one-room history museum—it wasn’t exactly what they’d expect halfway through the fête.