It's Just a Little Crush Page 6

  Blake grunts and turns back around to stare out into the crowd. Well. That was an odd conversation. I’m beginning to think that’s the only type of conversation I’m going to be a part of tonight. And…we’re back to silence.

  Hannah comes back more quickly than I expected, and I can tell that she’s disgusted. “That crazyass Samuel Harper jumped out at me from behind one of his cows, waving his cattle prod around and yelling at me to get out. I didn’t even get to see the rabbits!”

  “Why did you go through the cattle to get to the rabbits?” I ask. “They’re on the far end of the barn.”

  “There was a giant puddle blocking the door by the rabbits, and I couldn’t get in without wading through it, so I went around. That’s when he accosted me.”

  “Did he scare you? Was he seriously going to poke you with his prod or what?” That sounded a little dirtier than I intended.

  “No, but at least I got a chance to tell him where he could shove it. I’ve had enough of him. I’m going to tell Sarah tomorrow that under no circumstances am I going ahead with that assignment. She’s going to have to give it to someone else, which is probably going to be you, Blake. You up for it?”

  “You trying to say I’m not?” he retorts grumpily.

  Oh, boy. Again with the silence. Why couldn’t I have been assigned to work the booth with Julia and Hank? At least they like to talk and have fun. Blake and Hannah both pick up a copy of the Chronicle at the same time and yet again bury their noses. I hope I can amuse myself for another couple of hours. I generally don’t read the Chronicle once it’s printed, since I’ve already read (and corrected) EVERY article before it gets to print. I guess more people-watching is my only option. That way I can also be on the lookout for Lee and his idiot friends in case they try to come back and ambush me again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Shortly after dark, thunder begins to rumble in the distance, and flashes of lightening illuminate the ominous clouds rolling our way. Fairgoers are beginning to head toward the parking lots when suddenly the sky opens up and rain starts pouring down.

  “Oh, you are kidding me!” I groan. “I am so done with this rain! Let’s pack it up. We need to put up the sides of the tent and put all of our stuff in the plastic tubs so it won’t get wet. If anyone asks, we all stayed ‘til ten o’clock, got it?”

  Hannah glances over at the barn. “I can’t leave without seeing my niece’s rabbits. She’ll be so disappointed.”

  “Go on. We can get this cleaned up just fine,” I reply.

  “Thanks. You’re great. I’ll be back in a few, and we’ll get out of here.”

  As Hannah hurries off, Blake puts down his newspaper and turns to me, this time with his blinding smile in full force. “I promised my grandfather I’d bring him some taffy. Can you handle this while I run over?”

  “Sure,” I say, not surprised. Blake has never struck me as the type to want to help with menial tasks.

  Halfway through my packing, my cell phone rings, and it’s Hannah. “Hey, I got through the barn without running into my friend this time. You should see these rabbits. They’re too cute. Leave the booth with Blake and come on over.”

  “Blake went to go get taffy, so I’ll head over as soon as he gets back.”

  I hang up and finish getting all of our stuff into the bins. The tent may not make it through another storm, but at least our materials will be safe and sound. I peer out into the rain. Still no sign of Blake. I wonder if he decided to just leave. It’s a good thing he’s so gorgeous, because something has to make up for his emerging personality quirks.

  As I’m impatiently waiting on Blake, I get another call from Hannah. I say into the phone as my greeting, “He’s still not back from his taffy run yet, and I can’t attach the sides of the tent without him.”

  I expect to hear a biting comment about where Blake can put said taffy, but all I hear is a muffled shuffling sound.

  “Heellloooo,” I shout into the phone. “Hannah? Hannah did you butt-dial me?”

  Still nothing but more shuffling. As I’m about to hang up, I hear Hannah’s voice frantically scream, “No! HELP!”

  Frightened by what I’m hearing, I cry, “Hannah! What’s going on?”

  By the time I can get those words out, I hear a thud and what sounds like a splash, then silence. The screen on my phone says “Call Ended.” I take off at a full run toward the barn, the last place I know where Hannah had been. It’s difficult to see through rain, but I can just make out the roof of the barn in the distance. I’m going to have to go through the big puddle Hannah had warned me about, but ruining my shoes is a small price to pay to see if Hannah is all right. She sounded so hysterical on the phone. As I take a shortcut behind some of the food vendors, I run smack into Blake.

  “What are you doing running around in the rain?” he asks.

  “Come with me!” I pant. “Hannah’s in trouble!”

  Blake takes off like a shot toward the barn. I’ve never seen anybody run so fast, and try as I may, even with my adrenaline pumping, I cannot keep up. He seems to know exactly where he’s going—I had no idea he was even listening when Hannah was talking about going to see her niece’s rabbits. I guess he must not have been so immersed in reading his paper after all. I see him stop before he gets to the entrance. Why is he stopping? I don’t see Hannah anywhere so I start to run past him toward the puddle (which is not so much a puddle as a pond the size of my bedroom). Before I can get there, he suddenly grabs me around the waist with both arms and swings me around in the opposite direction. Normally, this act would have had me all hot and bothered for at least a month, but at the moment it only makes me angry.

  “What are you doing?” I scream, kicking and struggling against him. “We have to get to Hannah!”

  “We found her,” he says, his voice breaking. “Look.”

  Slowly the scene before me comes into focus. The rain has become more of a drizzle, and I can better see everything around me now. I had been straining so hard to get a glimpse inside the barn that I missed what was at my feet. There, in that puddle, is Hannah. She’s lying on her side, lifeless, eyes wide open. I let out a loud sob and reach for her.

  Blake grabs me again and warns sharply, “Don’t touch her.”

  “What? We need to help her!” I wail.

  “You can’t touch that water.”

  “Why?”

  Keeping a tight grip on me, he says, “Look at her. There are burn marks on her skin. See the radio next to her in the water? It’s plugged into that cord leading into the barn. I think she could have been electrocuted, and you could be too unless you settle down and stay away from that water. She’s dead, Hart. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “No, she can’t be! We need to get help!” I scream, tears streaming down my face.

  Using all the energy I have, I break away from him and take off at a run to find someone who will help me with Hannah. It doesn’t take me long to find a fair official, as they are wearing fluorescent green shirts, and there are only a handful of people still here.

  “We need an ambulance—over by the barn—my friend is hurt—she may even be—” not being able to finish my sentence, I completely break down.

  The fair official starts calmly but quickly speaking into his radio and takes me by the arm back to the barn. Blake is kneeling down near Hannah, visibly upset, but well out of the water.

  “We need to get power to this barn turned off immediately,” the official continues into his radio.

  I feel horrible just standing here doing nothing. None of us can touch Hannah or try to help her for fear we might end up in the same situation. As I stare down at her, tears stinging my eyes, I wonder why and how this could have happened. She knew about the puddle, because she had told me about it and had been avoiding it all night. Why would she have gone this way knowing it was such a mess? And how did the radio even get into the puddle with her? Poor Hannah. What a painful way to die. I choke back a sob at the thought of Hannah, ta
king her last breath alone. She must have been so scared.

  I snap out of my mourning as something clicks inside my mind. Hannah is a smart lady. She’s not going to just stumble into this kind of situation. I wonder if someone did this to her, and it wasn’t an accident at all. I wonder whose radio that is. I know that the fair contestants bring lawn chairs, coolers, radios, books, and everything they need so they can sit at the fair all day and keep tabs on their animals, which explains why there’s a radio here in the first place. But who would want to kill Hannah? She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. This doesn’t make any sense.

  Two policemen arrive and begin taping off “the scene,” as they call it. They have been on duty all evening, patrolling the fair. I recognize one of them, William Johnson, whom I’ve known since pre-school. The other one I don’t know. They’re busy surveying the area around the puddle and murmuring to each other. After the power to the barn is turned off and they have unplugged and removed the radio, the policemen are able to touch Hannah. William feels for her pulse, then looks up at the other officer and shakes his head. I finally realize with horror that Hannah is really dead, and I start crying all over again. Blake walks away. He doesn’t seem to want to watch. The policemen then turn their attention to the radio.

  “It seems that she may have tripped over this power cord, and the radio splashed into the water. I can’t figure why the radio was so close to the puddle. Not a good idea,” says the cop I don’t know.

  William replies, “Who knows? Probably some kid left it there. Check this out.” On the handle there is a piece of masking tape with “Harper” scrawled on it in black marker.

  The radio says “Harper”? As in Samuel Harper? The same Samuel Harper who had threatened Hannah with his cattle prod just a few hours ago? That’s an awfully big coincidence. Hank assured us last week, which seems like years ago, that Samuel is harmless, and I have to agree—I’ve never known him to be anything but friendly, if a little odd. Are we wrong, and is Samuel just hot-headed enough to go through with one of his threats? My mind starts running through all the interactions Hannah told us she had with Samuel last week. Surely he wouldn’t resort to murder because of her accusations of him cheating to win the 4-H cattle competition. Still, I should mention it to the police.

  Vehicle after vehicle pulls up near the barn— an ambulance, two sheriff’s cruisers, a fire truck, and finally the coroner’s van. The sheriff’s deputies confer with the policemen while the coroner examines Hannah’s body and takes pictures.

  William approaches me, wraps a blanket around my shoulders, and says gently, “Hey, Lizzie. I hear you were first on the scene. You okay?”

  Only now realizing that I’m shaking like a leaf, drenched and freezing after the rainstorm, I sniffle and reply, “No, I’m not. This is horrible. I feel so helpless!”

  “Well, you’re going to be a great help to me. I need to get your statement.”

  “Can we do this where I don’t have to watch that?” I point to all the milling around being done over poor Hannah’s body.

  “No problem.” William steers me over to a picnic table around the corner. After we’re seated, he studies me intently and says, “Tell me what happened. Start with how you found Mrs. Stewart.”

  I revisit the horrifying events of tonight, beginning with the strange phone call, stopping every few minutes to cry. Besides standing there watching the crime scene investigation, the last thing I want to do is talk about tonight’s events in detail. How tonight went from the most boring evening I’ve ever had to the worst evening I’ve ever had, I don’t know. I finally finish my nightmarish account with, “I think she was murdered.”

  “Murdered?” he asks. I raise my head up in time to see William staring at me like I’ve sprouted a second head or something. “Why do you think she was murdered? There’s no evidence of foul play.”

  “What?” I cry. “What about the phone call I got from her? Does ‘No! Help!’ mean nothing to you?”

  “Well, did you ever think she might be screaming ‘No!’ when she tripped over the cord and ‘Help!’ as she was falling?”

  “No. I took is as, ‘No—don’t throw that radio in the puddle with me!’ and ‘Help—someone’s trying to kill me!’”

  “Now, you’ve had a hard day, Lizzie. You need to go home and get some rest.”

  Ignoring him, I continue, “And did you know she got threatened this evening? By the same person who owns that radio?”

  “Just hold on there. Who threatened her?”

  “Samuel Harper. Last week he threatened to maim her with his cattle prod. He did it again tonight, and this time he was actually waving it around at her.”

  “Do you know why he threatened Mrs. Stewart?” he asks.

  “She was writing an article about how he’s been breaking a lot of rules for raising his kids’ cattle entries for the fair. I don’t know any specifics, just basically cheating to win.”

  “So Mr. Harper decided to kill Mrs. Stewart because she accused him of cheating so his kids could win a 4-H ribbon.”

  “Well it sounds stupid when you say it, but yeah. She was going to do a big exposé in the Chronicle about it.”

  “Look, Lizzie. I think the coroner is going to rule this as an accident. There is no evidence—” I open my mouth to disagree, and he holds his hand up to stop me. “Yours is circumstantial at best. There is no hard evidence that suggests this is anything but an unfortunate accident.”

  I stare at him with a surly expression on my face.

  “Would it make you feel better if I went and talked to Mr. Harper?” he asks.

  “A little. It would make me feel a lot better if you’d catch the son of a bitch responsible,” I snap.

  “Would you just—” he sighs, shaking his head. “Never mind. Let me check and see if anyone needs any more information from you. Come on,” William helps me up from the table, and we make our way back to the scene. “Can you get home by yourself? Where are you parked?”

  “Oh, no. I forgot. Hannah brought me,” I sob as I break down yet again.

  Blake looks over when he hears my outburst and says quietly, “I’ll take her home.”

  “Is that okay with you, Lizzie?” William asks gently.

  “Yeah. Thanks, Blake,” I sniffle.

  As Blake and I make our way toward the parking lot, I glance over one last time to where we found Hannah. All I can see is a lot of yellow tape and people in various uniforms standing around talking. The coroner must have taken Hannah’s body away already. At this thought, I let out a sob. Blake glances over at me but says nothing.

  “Oh, I wonder who’s going to break the news to poor Jed,” I wail.

  Blake startles me by snarling, “That bastard? He probably did it!”

  “What? What are you talking about? He was nowhere around here tonight. Hannah said he was working late.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m sure he’s ‘working late.’ I hear he ‘works late’ a lot,” Blake sneers, scowling.

  Obviously I’m not following. “Oooo-kaaay…He’s an accountant. I think they all work late a lot. What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. It’s…nothing. Forget I ever said anything,” Blake says impatiently as he hurries ahead of me to his car.

  Somehow Blake has managed to get a parking spot in the tiny gravel lot next to the 4-H offices. (Probably all he had to do to get this choice spot was to smile at one of the female parking attendants, and she gave him his pick of the spaces.) It’s a good thing, too, because his little black Porsche Boxster would never have made it out of the grass lots on this rainy night. Blake asks me where I live, and I tell him, but other than that, neither of us speaks the few minutes it takes to get to my house.

  Blake pulls up in my driveway and doesn’t say a word or even glance in my direction. He’s staring intently at his steering wheel.

  “Thanks for bringing me home.”

  All he does is grunt.

  I swallow and say tentatively, “B
lake?”

  “What?” he snaps as he turns to me. Blake’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing is really beginning to creep me out.

  “I…well, I was thinking about what happened to Hannah…” I begin, but he just turns away. I continue on—I have to know if Blake thinks her death is as fishy as I do. After all, he did make a biting comment earlier about Hannah’s husband having been responsible. “I don’t think it was an accident.”

  He whips his head back around, his eyes blazing. “What are you saying?”

  “Oh…well…I…think someone may have…maybe…murdered her,” I say in a small voice.

  “Why?” He asks sharply, “What did you see?”

  Frightened a bit by his tone, I reply, “I—I…didn’t see anything. It’s just odd that Hannah would choose to go through that puddle when she’d been avoiding it all night. That’s why she ran into Samuel Harper earlier—she had to go through the cattle section to get to the rabbits instead of just going straight in through the nearest door. He had threatened her again tonight, and it was his radio that was in the water with her. It all makes me suspicious. Then of course there’s the phone call I got from her right before she…died.”

  He narrows his eyes at me. “What did she say?”

  “Well, she didn’t call me to chat—she must have bumped her phone by accident, and it redialed me. I guess she maybe had the phone in her pocket, because everything I heard was muffled. First I heard some shuffling, and then she said, ‘No! Help!’ There was a thud and a splash, and the call disconnected.”

  Blake is watching me intently while he’s taking everything in. His face keeps getting paler and paler as I recount my story. After I finish, he’s silent for a moment and then barks abruptly, “Ride’s over, Hart. I need to get out of here.”

  Dazed, I get out of Blake’s car, and he zooms away before I even get to my doorstep. I guess death affects different people differently. Death has apparently turned Blake Morgan into an asshole. When I finally make it into my house, I crawl into bed without even changing my wet clothes, relieved that this day is finally over. I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that there have been two violent, suspicious deaths in Liberty within a week. It’s just too much. I don’t know how I’m going to sleep, but somehow I’m going to have to. Besides my grief over Hannah, the one thing that is foremost in my mind is how in the world I’m going to be able to walk into my office tomorrow and tell Hannah’s friends that she’s dead.