Murder in Miniature by Margaret Grace Page A

I could see that the edges were mangled, probably sticky with glue from her attempts to form a shelf. The room was warm, but still I covered her with the baseball-design afghan I’d knitted for her father many years ago. I kissed her forehead and slipped out.
    I sat in front of my waterdrop fountain for a long time.
     
    The fair was scheduled for only five hours on Sunday, ten to three. I hoped I could make it through without nodding off in front of a buyer. I made a quick plan. Beverly and Maddie wouldn’t get home from the zoo until six or so. If I played it right, I could pack up my goods, help Just Eddie put the hall back to its normal configuration (his generosity in working on Sunday extended just so far), and be home by four thirty for a nap.
    First, however, there were those five hours.
    By the second hour of the fair, about eleven in the morning, everyone—vendors and customers alike—was talking about “The Murder.” So much for Skip’s admonition to keep quiet. Someone had not been so obedient as Beverly and I had. Not surprising that the word had spread. Violent crime was a rarity in Lincoln Point—the only murder I could remember was years ago, that of a seasoned criminal, whom the good citizens of the town seemed happy to be rid of. This new murder was big news.
    The buzz filled the room as each new group entered the hall with more alleged information. The consensus was that the victim was an unidentified white woman, small frame, early thirties. One crafter said she’d heard the victim was shot, another that she’d been strangled. One customer surmised that she was a “working girl” who’d wandered over the line from the next town to the south, another that she was a drifter from the next town to the north.
    Jim Quinlan, husband of Mabel, the Queen of Beads, came in all flustered, waving a copy of our local weekly newspaper, the Lincolnite , a morning paper put out by our editor who was also our minister.
    We heard Jim’s voice all the way in the back of the room. “Can you believe this? Mabel and I drove by that very spot not two days ago,” he said, as if they’d been in imminent danger, and were still.
    I paid only sight attention to the chatter while I surreptitiously started to pack a few of my items in preparation for closing the fair. Surely I wouldn’t sell more than one or two more knickknack shelves made from multiblade razor cartridges in the next few hours.
    The news flowed past.
    “I heard she had several different IDs on her.”
    “No, the paper said she had no ID.”
    “The cops are not telling us everything.”
    “They never do.”
    “Was she naked?”
    “She was wearing a Raiders jacket.”
    “Where was the body found, anyway?”
    Then Jim. The voice of authority, since he was holding the newspaper. “I told you, we just passed by there on our way to visit our grandson. The body was behind a gas station somewhere on 101, near the off-ramp to 87.”
    My heart skipped. I looked up at Jim, now walking away from my corner. Done with parading his story, he was heading back to his wife’s table at the front of the hall.
    I left a customer midsentence, with a quick ’scuse me , and walked into the aisle. I caught up with Jim and kept pace with him toward Table 8. Not too difficult since Jim was older than Mabel, who’d admitted to eighty-one last year, then seventy-nine this year.
    I steadied my breathing. “Are you sure about the location, Jim? How do you know exactly where the woman was found?” I asked him. I had to bend a bit to speak into Jim’s ear. I thought I remembered a time when he was taller than me.
    Jim slapped his hand on the paper, its headlines barking the story of the day. “It says so, right here. Do you know we almost stopped for gas at that station?”
    “No, we didn’t, dear. That station isn’t even in business,” Mabel said. We’d arrived at the bead table and I was momentarily distracted by yet another new item, a pair of tiny red pumps