Busy Bees

Chapter 2 – Is it Murder?

Chapter 2 – Is it Murder?Just after Mel wheeled me through the entrance gate, a Sheriff’s Deputy approached us at a dead run. He pulled up short and, breathing hard said, “Boy Sheriff am I ever glad to see you! The main gate radioed that you had pulled in here.” The officer eyed me, in my hopefully temporary wheelchair, even as he spoke to Mel.

“Pulling security detail today Joe?” Mel asked him.

“Nope, got an emergency response call to come over here.”

“What’s going on?”

“We um, have a little situation.” The Deputy was clearly uncomfortable addressing her in front of me but I was completely out of my element and virtually powerless to go anywhere. I looked up at Mel.”

Mel tipped her head to the right. “Let’s step over here.” She wheeled me right along with them. Once we were away from most of the entrance throng, she turned back to Joe. “It’s okay. You can talk in front of Special Agent Rossi,” she said, trying to put the deputy at ease.

He nodded. “It’s just that, well, one of the cooking contest judges is...dead.”

“What? How?”

“They say he tasted a dish that he was judging and he just keeled over like.”

Oh boy! Just what I want to hear at a food festival!

Mel scowled. “Lead on. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

We followed the deputy as he picked his way through the growing crowd. Mel continued to push me in my chair. We stopped at a large, white tent that was completely sealed off from view. All of the tent flaps were pulled shut. An ambulance was parked beside it, lights flashing. Another Sheriff’s Deputy stood near a closed flap where a sign declared “Closed - Food Judging”. He glanced at me and then nodded to his co-worker and to Mel and then lifted a flap for us to pass through into the tent.

The mood inside the judging tent was somber. A little knot of people wearing Mushroom Festival nametags with ribbons that said “Judge” were standing not far from where we entered, toward the left side of the tent, looking on, not talking, just staring. Three rows of tables laid out with dishes to be judged stretched from left to right in front of us. Behind the right end of the middle row of tables, a man was laying prone on the floor as two EMTs stood helplessly over him. He was too far gone for them to save. Another of Mel’s deputies was standing with a tall balding man and a teenage girl a little to the right of the dead man.

Mel wheeled me toward the deputy, the man and the girl. She stopped just short of their little group and nodded toward the balding man.

“Craig...”

He nodded back. “Mel... er... Sheriff.”

“Either is fine, buddy. So, what’s going on here?”

Craig wore a badge that identified him as “Craig Stroud, Festival Director”. He drew himself up a little taller and then he shook his head no, wordlessly. He added a shrug. “Darned if I know, Mel.” He gestured toward the little knot of judges across the tent, “We just got this group started on today’s food judging category; side dishes.” He tipped his head toward the dead man. “I assigned him to start with this end of the second row. He dropped to the floor as he tasted his third dish. By the time I got to him, he was already dead.”

“He looks familiar. Who is he?”

“Ben Tracy. He’s the owner of...was the owner of... ‘The Hive’, the little organic foods restaurant downtown. This was his third year here as a judge.”

“He’d already tasted two dishes?”

“Yes, numbers 20 and 21. Each judge tastes ten to start. We have six judges today and thirty entries. You don’t think...” Craig trailed off.

“That it was the food he tasted?” Mel finished the thought for him. “I don’t know. I have to think of all possibilities.” She turned toward the deputy that was standing there with Craig and the girl. “Get the Coroner over here. We’re going to need him to do forensic analysis on this one.”

“The Coroner Mel?” Craig’s face clouded. “If he shows up, it will ruin us. I mean, I feel terrible but, well, can’t the squad take him out of here?”

“Craig, I don’t know what we’re dealing with here. I have to shut at least the food judging competition down.” His shoulders sagged in defeat. Mel continued, “I need a list of all of the contestants and the numbers assigned to their judging dishes. I need anything not plated for judging from contestants 20 and 21 and I also need to know if either of the providers of those two dishes is providing any other food on the grounds.”

Craig sent the teenager off to pull the list.

Mel ran her hand through her short black hair and glanced around. She looked back at Craig. “Hell,” she said, “you better just put a hold on everything that isn’t plated and no more tasting of anything else out here. Also, put a hold on the food vendors period, until we know if this is isolated or not. We just don’t know what we’ve got here yet.”

I glanced over at the remaining five judges. They’d heard what she said and they were all nodding in agreement. I turned back in time to see Craig’s neck and ears turn a pretty vivid shade of red.

“You’re shutting the festival down?” His anger was obvious. It just oozed out of him.

Mel reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. She looked him in the eye and said, “No. Not yet anyway...but I do want you to make a general announcement that all food vendors are to stop serving for the next hour. You just opened for the day, so that shouldn’t put anyone too far out of their way and it ought to give us enough time to see if any contestant here is also a vendor.”

Craig looked demoralized. “I can tell you right now, a few of them are but most aren’t. The ones that are have been doing this for years, Mel. I don’t think...” He trailed off as the teenager came back with the contestant list and handed it to him. He glanced through it and then handed it to Mel.

Mel looked at the list. “We need to get contestants 21 and 22, Jenna Mae Rodgers and Lucy Sharp in here immediately, if they’re on the grounds. Announce that too.”

She addressed the two deputies, “I want witness statements from the staff and the judges. I’ll interview the two contestants myself.” Turning back to Stroud she said, “Get those announcements made first and then go over this list with me and tell me who is a contestant that is also a vendor.”

A sudden coughing spell that I couldn’t help drew Mel’s attention back to me.

“I’m so sorry Dana, but duty calls. I’ll have to have a deputy run you back to Genesis.”

“You don’t have to do that Mel. I can wait.”

“I may be a while...A long while...” She shook her head. “It’s best I have some one run you back. I really am sorry.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

###

I hated to see Dana leave. We just couldn’t seem to catch a break, she and I. She’d been in the hospital for the past few weeks and was only just now deemed healthy enough to be able to step out and not risk infection. I was afraid she would be released from the hospital soon and shipped back to the Cleveland Port Office or even to her home base, the Chicago Field Office, by the Customs Service before we really had a chance to establish any sort of relationship together.

“Sheriff?”

A few minutes later, I realized Craig had been trying to get my attention. I smiled, trying to lighten his mood. “Yes?”

“This is Lucy Sharp, contestant 22.”

A white haired, slightly stooped old woman stood before me. I looked her over quickly. She must be at least 80... “Hello Mrs. Sharp. I’m Sheriff Crane.”

“I know who you are young lady. How can I help you?”

Well her name fits her! She’s sharp as a tack! “There’s been a little mishap with one of the judges for the contest you entered today. I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Mushroom Surprise.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My side dish entry. I call it Mushroom Surprise.”

“Is that right? What’s the surprise?”

“Well now Sheriff, I can’t be giving away all of my secrets. There wouldn’t be any point to me entering these contests then year after year, would there?”

“No ma’am. I suppose you’re right. How many years have you been entering dishes?”

“Longer than you’ve been on God’s earth young lady, I can tell you that! I know exactly what I’m doing when it comes to using wild mushrooms. My eyes are just fine and I’m really careful. I’ve won contests here with my food more years than I care to count!”

I bet you know exactly how many contests you’ve won here and every dish you’ve made for every contest! I could see that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with Lucy Sharp. I’d already mentally crossed her off of any sort of suspect list anyway.

###

An hour later, I was driving away from the fairgrounds. My interview with Jenna Mae Rodgers had been no more enlightening than the one with Lucy Sharp. My deputies had taking of the rest of the witness statements well in hand. I needed to go and inform Ben’s next of kin of his untimely death before the unofficial word leaked out.

After a quick stop at home to put on a uniform, I pulled up, still in my sister’s car, in front of the home Ben Tracy had shared with his wife Liberty Tracy. My truck had been wrecked during a counterfeiting case I’d been working on with Dana. I was still fighting with the insurance company over that since it had been destroyed while performing my official duties. The county was probably going to get a bill...one they could ill afford. There just wasn’t time to go back to the department and get an official vehicle. Kris’s car would have to do.

The Tracy home was a neatly kept Victorian in the Putman neighborhood in Zanesville. Putnam Avenue and the homes and businesses along it have become an urban renewal project of sorts for residents and shopkeepers, if you could really call Zanesville urban. The three block area was populated by artistic types whose community revival efforts had given the area a different feel than the rest of a city that otherwise lay at the foothills of Appalachia.

I stepped out of the car and mentally shook myself. I was about to do one of the tasks that I least relished as a law officer.

Liberty Tracy met me at the door.