Murder at the Book Fair by Steve Demaree

name of his road they wrote down
directions for me to get there. Sometimes a local's directions are better than
following a GPS. But then I'd had friends who had told me stories about ending
up on a dead-end street or next to a grassy field after following a GPS or a
local's directions.
     
     
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    If there had been somewhere where
we could have stopped for provisions for our trek back to Lawrenceburg I would
have stopped, but most of what we saw were farmhouses, and I didn't know if the
people who lived in them were the shooting kind or the neighborly kind. God was
with us so we didn't come up behind anyone seated on a tractor seat or a
horse-drawn carriage carrying Amish or English. In a couple days time we found
highway 127 and headed north past Lawrenceburg in hopes of finding Cartwright's
house. When I got back to a place where I had a signal I called Amy Smith to
see if any of her volunteers matched the description Susie Hammond had given me
of the fake volunteer. She said no one matching that description had gone
through volunteer training. I wondered if someone matching that description had
gone through poison training.
    When we finally found Jake
Cartwright's house in an area as remote as the one the Hammonds lived in, I could see why they
didn't socialize with each other. I think I could have taken the Martha Layne Collins Bluegrass
Parkway and been in Lexington before I navigated my way from
one rural home to the other. And from what I had heard, I wasn't through seeing
rural Kentucky . Outside of Westport sounded more remote than outside
of Lawrenceburg, provided that was possible. But then I had to cross a river to
get from the Hammonds house to Cartwright's place, and
I was sure that all of my investigation anywhere near Westport would be south of the Ohio River .
    Most of the time a guy's best
friend isn't the one who murders him, but sometimes it is. For that reason I
didn't call Cartwright to tell him we were coming and to put some cookies, or
bologna, cheese, and crackers, or hog jowls on a plate, so I hoped he would be
home when we got there. From what little I know about authors, I assumed that
most of them write during the day, and most of them do their writing at home.
Unless Cartwright does most of his writing in the barn, we didn't disturb his
writing time. The barn door opened when Lightning pulled up into what served as
a driveway. Cartwright  probably thought we were two lost guys who sold
insurance. He approached my side of the car, and informed me that the dog that
had followed him out of the barn wouldn't bite. He didn't say anything about
the bull that was on the other side of a fence.
    "You guys look familiar, but
I can't place where I've seen you. You don't live around here, do you?"
    "We bought the old Purdy
place."
    "I'm afraid I'm not familiar
with the Purdy place."
    "We weren't, either.
Otherwise we wouldn't have bought it. I opened the door and the whole house
fell down. I'm going back to see if I can get my money back."
    Cartwright looked over at Lou.
    "He's kidding, isn't
he?"
    Lou nodded.
    "So, where is it I know you
from? Wait! Now I've got it! You two came to the book fair and bought some of
my books, didn't you?"
    "You'd be good at picking
people out of a lineup."
    "Did you come to get more
books? You could have called. I would have mailed them to you."
    "No, we came about Cyril
Portwood."
    "Oh, Cereal. He doesn't live
with me. Only at the book fair. I bet you tried to read one of his books and
now you want to know where you need to go to return those you bought from him.
I always call him Cereal, but only because it infuriates him. He's probably the
only man outside of England with a first name like
that."
    "Oh, he's a changed man now.
I don't think your calling him that will bother him anymore."
    "Oh, you don't know Cereal
the way I do."
    "How well do you know
him?"
    "Oh, as well as a guy can who
only sees a fellow author two or three times a year. We usually eat together