Part 1 (2/2)

”Oh, great. I'll just stay here and wash trays and be enormous.”

”And beautiful.”

”Ha. Good one, Sausage Boy.”

I kissed her again. ”I love you.”

”And I want this kid out of me and I swear to G.o.d, I'll have it right in this disgusting kitchen if I need to,” she said, spinning back on the stool. ”Oh, and I love you, too.”

Pregnant women are funny.

I wound my way through the back of the kitchen, my thoughts focused on babies instead of sausages. I was excited that the baby was going to be here any day. Carly was, too. We were all ready to meet the newest member of the Winters family. We had no idea whether it was a boy or a girl. Julianne insisted on not knowing. I'd protested greatly. And it didn't matter even a little, though it was still a bit weird to keep calling the baby ”it.”

”Babies should be a surprise,” she'd said. ”Like presents on Christmas. Plus, it's in my uterus so I get to decide.”

Which was a hard point to argue with.

I liked seeing her pregnant. I didn't like seeing her miserable, though, and with the early heat, I knew she had to be pretty uncomfortable. But I did have this fear that her water was going to break right in the middle of the dinner rush and that would be some sort of health code violation.

And so I was thinking about babies and having to rush to the hospital when I opened the freezer and saw George Spellman's dead face amongst the bratwursts.

And after thinking that I needed to stop opening things, my next thought was that a dead body in the freezer was probably a far worse health code violation than having a baby in the kitchen.

2.

”Well, this isn't good,” Matilda Biggs said, shaking her head.

The technicians were loading the body into the back of the ambulance and the police had formed a barricade around the back of the food stand. Matilda, a member of the fair board, was concerned. More than concerned. Mortified.

”No, it isn't,” I agreed.

She swallowed hard. ”This is awful. Awful.” Tears glistened in her eyes. ”This is really going to reflect poorly on the fair,” she said. ”Could drive down revenue.”

”Uh, yeah,” I said. I was less concerned about revenue than I was for George's family and friends.

She paced back and forth, wringing her hands. ”I mean, Rusty Cow plays tonight,” she said, staring at me. ”We're expecting a big crowd. Huge. It wouldn't be good if we had to cancel that.”

It felt like there was something more that she was worried about, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I wasn't really buying that her main concern was attendance at a concert for a c.r.a.ppy local band. I didn't know Matilda well, but I knew of her. She was hard not to know of because she was hard to miss.

She weighed nearly four hundred pounds.

And that wasn't one of those exaggerated statements about someone carrying a few extra pounds. She was one of the biggest women I'd ever seen. She was just short of six feet and seemingly almost as wide, with rolls of fat billowing from every part of her body. I'd only ever seen her wearing black sweats and some sort of stretched-out T-s.h.i.+rt, as I a.s.sumed she wasn't able to find anything else to fit her enormous body. Her stringy black hair was thinning on top and stuck to the sides of her head with sweat. She was never more than a few feet away from her golf cart, as that was the only way she was able to make it around the fairgrounds.

She wiped at her eyes, pulled a walkie-talkie from her hip, and punched a b.u.t.ton. ”Mama, this is Matilda. You copy? Over.”

Five seconds later, the walkie-talkie crackled.

”This is Mama. Roger that, I copy. Over.”

Mama was not code for some motherly figure in Matilda's life. Mama was Mama. Matilda's mother. Who worked right alongside her on the fair board. I didn't know the specifics, but I was pretty sure the entire fair board was somehow related to each other.

”We're gonna need a new freezer,” Matilda said. ”The police are telling me we can't use this one, on account of Deuce Winters finding George Spellman in it. George is gone.” She paused. ”Over.”

The Rose Petal police had, in fact, cordoned off the large freezer with yellow crime scene tape.

”Roger. I'm already on it,” Mama said through the walkie-talkie. ”I've got another one on the way. Should be there in about fifteen minutes. Over.”

Matilda nodded. ”Ten-four.” She stuck the radio back on her hip. ”I gotta make some calls.” She glanced at the back of the ambulance for a long moment. ”Make sure we got more sausages coming.”

She waddled over to the golf cart, wedged herself in behind the steering wheel, and took off, spraying dirt and weeds behind her.

Carly and Julianne made their way around the food stand building to me. Carly surveyed the scene, trying to take everything in. I resisted the urge to pull down the bandanna from her hair to cover her eyes.

Julianne just raised her eyebrows. ”Well, this is interesting. You already talk to the police?”

”Yeah. Took all of five minutes. I didn't do anything other than open the freezer door.”

”Maybe this time you won't be a suspect.”

I narrowed my eyes. ”Very funny.”

She shrugged. ”You sort of have a way of falling into these things.”

It was hard to deny that, as much as I might've liked to. My part-time private investigating gig only existed because I kept finding myself embroiled in the criminal activity in Rose Petal. Julianne had made several subtle suggestions that, with a new baby on the way, maybe I might want to curtail my activity in that arena. I didn't disagree.

But it seemed that trouble was still finding me, no matter how much I tried to avoid it.

As I contemplated that, Susan Blamunski hustled our way.

”Oh, good Lord,” Julianne whispered. ”Red alert. Crazy woman dead ahead.”

Susan's face was a mask of concern.

And of heavy eye makeup.

Her large mane of dark hair was teased up and hair-sprayed to death, so much so that I was sure it would've taken a missile to penetrate its exterior. Her 4-H T-s.h.i.+rt was expertly tied at the hip, just above her denim capris. Her sparkly silver sandals seemed a poor choice for a day at the fair, but she'd probably chosen them to match the sparkly silver polish on her toes.

”Deuce,” she said, grabbing me by the elbow. ”What is going on?”

I tried to casually shake free from the grasp of our local 4-H leader, but failed. ”I'm not completely sure.”

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