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  It took the better part of an hour to get the staging areas sorted out. Finally as the excess equestrian units, drill teams, bands and floats returned to their proper positions, Staging Area One began to look more the way I’d envisioned it. I peered around, clipboard in hand, checking off the units that remained. Everyone present and accounted for, I noted with relief.

  Except the Grand Marshal.

  Where the hell was Brian Quantrell?

  I knew he’d been coerced into agreeing and had been looking for an excuse to get out of doing this but would he just not show up? He wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave us in the lurch like this.

  But what if something had happened to him?

  I called his cell phone. It went straight to voice mail which probably meant it wasn’t switched on. Damn Quantrell.

  Janowski checked his watch. “Where is the Grand Marshal?” he yelled at me.

  I closed my eyes for a moment. “I’m sure he’ll be here any minute,” I lied.

  What if he couldn’t come? The image of Pete Norton lying in a pool of his own blood, his head partially bashed in, rose in my mind. Was Quantrell all right?

  “It will be fine, Mr. Janowski.” Theresa all but stroked his arm in an attempt to soothe the man’s shattered nerves. “He’ll be here any minute now, you’ll see.”

  Sarkisian, an even more welcome sight than usual, strode through the crowd, drawing more than his fair share of interested looks. Everyone who listened to any news at all had to know about both murders by now but no one dared assault the sheriff with questions. He made it to my side unmolested and I kept my greeting restrained because of the watchful eyes. His smile warmed me as it always did.

  “Where’s Lizzie Mobley?” he asked me.

  I checked my chart. “Staging Area Four.” I cringed as Janowski demanded once again, this time of anyone within hearing distance, where the hell the Grand Marshal was. “I’ll come with you,” I announced. Grabbing hold of his arm, I dragged him away.

  “Janowski getting on your nerves?” His amusement was mingled with sympathy.

  “I can’t blame him, I suppose. It would be awfully embarrassing if our Grand Marshal didn’t show up.” I cast Sarkisian an uncertain glance and asked the question that haunted me. “Do you think anything could have happened to him?”

  He stopped and frowned. “You think—”

  “Why aren’t you here?” Janowski’s outraged voice carried across to us, cutting across Sarkisian’s words. “We’re supposed to start in about twenty minutes. We can’t start without the Grand Marshal.”

  I made my way through the milling people as quickly as I could with Sarkisian just behind me. “Is that Quantrell?” I asked.

  Janowski glared at me. “Says he’s running late. Damn the man. Here’s his chance to be in the spotlight and he goes and oversleeps.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Parades never get off exactly on time. We’ll be fine.”

  Theresa reiterated my statement over and over and Janowski began to look a little less red in the face. Sure I was leaving him in good hands, I set forth once again for Staging Area Four with Sarkisian.

  “What do you want Lizzie for?” I asked.

  Sarkisian shot me a smiling glance. “Do you really want to waste our few minutes together talking about her and her dogs?”

  I didn’t. “When are we getting married?”

  “When the time is right.”

  “You’re just sorry you ever asked me,” I told him.

  “If we were alone I’d leave you in no doubt how glad I am that I did.”

  “You’re dragging your feet.”

  He stopped. “I want you to be happy. I want us to have a life together. That’s just not in the cards right now.”

  I could see the worry lines on his face. Never worry a man with unimportant details, I reminded myself. Particularly when he’s got problems with his work. “I’ll behave,” I promised.

  I didn’t say in what manner and surprisingly he didn’t pick up on the ambiguity of my comment. Either that or he didn’t want to continue the argument. I didn’t blame him. Arguing with him can be fun but right now we both needed to reduce the stress level and get our respective jobs done. There’s a time and a place for everything. And the time and the place for our wedding was beginning to take shape in the back of my devious mind.

  Lizzie as usual was easy to find. We only had to follow the excited yipping of her dogs. She was standing at the far end of the area talking to a man—the same one I’d seen her with the day before, I realized. Before we could draw close enough for me to get a really good look at him he strode away.

  I did get a good look at Lizzie though and had to admit she looked great. She wore a cheerleader outfit—probably hers in high school and the damn thing still fitted beautifully—in blue and white and decorated with red stars. She carried two hoops in one hand. Several of the poodles—some of them now dyed red and blue while others were left white—recognized Sarkisian and me and ran to greet us.

  “Where are Mazda and Roomba?” I asked as we joined her.

  “Mazda wouldn’t be able to make the march, the poor darling and Roomba would be too busy living up to her name and scouring the ground for anything edible. Or not edible,” she added after a moment’s consideration. “Doing your rounds?”

  “Actually I had a question for you, Ms. Mobley.” Sarkisian stooped to remove a bright red poodle from his shoe.

  “Shoot,” she invited though a wary expression had crept into her eyes.

  “Your fingerprints are on the inside of the briefcase Lee Wessex had with him.”

  She stared at first him, then me, then Sarkisian again. “You found it?” Her shoulders slumped. “Empty, I suppose.”

  “Not in the least.”

  She opened her mouth. “You mean—no, you couldn’t mean that.” She sighed. “For one wonderful moment I thought you were going to tell me all the money was there and we could distribute it to the charities.”

  “I was and you can,” Sarkisian said then had to break off as Lizzie squealed and threw her arms around him. The dogs took that as their cue to leap at all of us and yip their little heads off.

  At last Lizzie settled down. There were actually tears in her eyes and she wiped them carefully on a tissue so as not to wreak havoc on her red, white and blue eye makeup. She seemed genuinely thrilled. Of course if she’d been the one to kill Wessex and hide the money she must have been waiting with bated breath for the sheriff to announce it had been found. There was always the fear she might have hidden it too well—or that someone else might have found and kept it in the intervening year.

  But why would she have hidden it at all? The question barely formed in my mind when the obvious answer hit me. If she’d taken it she could never have allowed it to be seen. It would have linked her with Wessex’s disappearance—and his murder when his body was found this year. Hiding it and waiting for it to be found would have been her only option.

  “Any idea how your prints got on the inside?” he asked.

  She blinked. “I handled it,” she said slowly as if searching her memory.

  “It was his briefcase,” he pointed out. “What were you doing with it?”

  “I put some money into it that I’d collected at the parade last year. We were collecting all the funds from the event in one spot. In fact I was just bringing him another check to add to it when he ran over poor Mazda.” Her face clouded. “He deserved what he got,” she added savagely.

  “Which isn’t the sort of thing his murderer would say, is it?” I asked as we strode back to the starting line where the Grand Marshal’s car still awaited the arrival of the Grand Marshal.

  “Too many people know how furious she was with him. To pretend otherwise would look suspicious,” he told me with his usual logic.

  And to that, of course, I had no answer.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The parade got underway only ten minutes late. The crowd didn’t seem to have minded
the wait. Everyone was talking, laughing and eating the popcorn, pretzels and ice cream being hawked by a great many vendors. Even Janowski seemed to have survived without having a complete nervous breakdown.

  Brian Quantrell, in his paramedic uniform, sat on the back of an open convertible with a plastic grin on his face, waving to the crowd. His embarrassment was obvious but to give him credit he had shown up.

  Next came the Sauntering Seniors, Merit County’s very own marching band for which the only entrance requirement was being over fifty-five years old. There didn’t seem to be any requirement for knowing how to play an instrument but that was only the opinion of music lovers. They were followed by a float decorated with more crepe paper and balloons than seemed possible, the Dentists with Drills and a team of Clydesdales pulling a wagon. The driver, Mr. Barnaby from Barnaby’s Berry Bramble, waved at Sarkisian and me. Events Unlimited had hired him and his team for a hayride for Upper River Gulch’s Harvest Festival last year and amazingly he bore me no ill will.

  We’d only strolled a little farther when I spotted Connie Wessex standing along the street in front of most of the crowd. I drew Sarkisian’s attention to her and we diverted our course in her direction. She looked up as we approached and her face took on a wary expression. It was a familiar look. People tended to wear it when they saw Sarkisian—once they’d finally realized he invariably learned more from them than they’d intended.

  “Good morning, Ms. Wessex.” Sarkisian’s smile made up for her lack of friendliness. “I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you.”

  “This isn’t exactly a quiet place,” she pointed out.

  “We could go somewhere else,” he suggested. “Such as my office?”

  She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I really don’t want to leave here. I have an excellent place to watch the parade.”

  “Then I’ll just have to question you here I suppose.” His amusement at least was genuine.

  She glared at him but accompanied us to the back of the crowd then down a side street that was devoid of people. When we were safely out of earshot of any curious listeners she turned to face him. “What do you want?”

  “Did you know your fingerprints are on the inside of the case your husband was carrying when he was killed?”

  “Yes, Ivan told me you’d found it.” Her lip curled.

  That surprised me. I hadn’t realized Janowski had found out. But Sarkisian made no comment so presumably he’d been the one who told him—and probably questioned him about it as well.

  “And of course my prints were in there,” Connie went on. “I’d packed some of the money in it before the fireworks were due to start and I left. Are my prints on the cash and checks too? Or can’t you get prints off money?”

  Sarkisian smiled but didn’t answer her question. “There’s one other thing I’d like you to clear up for me.”

  “Yes?” She eyed him with well-founded suspicion.

  “It concerns five thousand dollars taken from your bank account that apparently showed up in Brian Quantrell’s.”

  “So?” She looked surprised. “There’s nothing illegal about giving someone money is there?”

  “Depends on why,” Sarkisian said mildly.

  She stared at him. “What on earth are you suggesting?”

  “Nothing. I’m just asking.”

  “Do you think it’s a payoff or something? That I hired him to murder my husband? For a paltry five thousand dollars?”

  “It does seem cheap,” he agreed. “But considering he wanted to marry you himself he’d probably have done it for nothing.” Somehow he made it sound as if that exonerated both of them.

  She nodded. “He probably would have. But since I’d made it very clear I wasn’t the least bit interested in marrying him there was no need. The money was…a parting gift. We’d been having a brief fling but I got bored with it.”

  “Do you give all your lovers such a generous send-off?” Sarkisian knew as well as I did that was the only large cash withdrawal she’d made from her account.

  “Usually it’s something from a store.” Her irritation lingered but she managed an almost convincing smile. “An electronic toy, a gold chain, an expensive watch.”

  “Like the one you gave Janowski?” he asked.

  She shot him a surprised look. “Did he tell you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m just observant.”

  “Is Janowski’s watch really worth five thousand dollars?” I asked as we walked away. That might explain why he looked at it so often.

  “Just a hair under but yes,” Sarkisian confirmed.

  The parade passed by us to the cheers and applause of the crowd. It was heavy on drill teams and light on floats and bands but it was our drill teams that were making our county famous. I spotted a camera crew from a San Francisco TV news station. Sarkisian saw them too and ducked around the corner again, leaving me on my own.

  I waited while a karate class paused their march to perform a group kata, then they continued on their way with punches and kicks highlighted by shouts of focused energy. They were having fun and the crowd seemed to enjoy them. I realized I was making mental notes for potential future events and turned away, striding back along the parade route toward the beginning.

  I hadn’t gotten very far before my phone rang with “C is for Cookie” and I groaned. I should have known I wouldn’t be able to stay and watch the performances of all the drill teams. And there was an equestrian unit that was planning some kind of square dance with their horses as they went down the street which I’d really wanted to see.

  I tapped my earpiece. “Annike McKinley,” I said as brightly as I could.

  “The gates are locked and we can’t find anyone to let us in,” came a disgruntled voice.

  Oh damn. I had to get this guy gruntled again as soon as possible. “I’m at the parade but I can get there in about ten minutes. I’ll hurry,” I promised, knowing ten minutes probably wouldn’t be enough time to even get Freya free of the parking jam around here. And since I didn’t have a key to the gates it wouldn’t do any good.

  “We’re waiting,” came the reply, a shade less annoyed.

  I’d barely disconnected and started running for my car when “C is for Cookie” sounded again. Maybe it had been a mistake assigning that song to the Foodies. At this rate I might come to hate it by the end of the day and I had a real soft spot for the Muppets. I answered with my name, once more forcing a smile into my voice.

  “Why isn’t the gate unlocked?” came the irate demand. “We were counting on getting the ice cream freezer plugged into an outlet before now.”

  Ouch. One of the entrants for the ice cream contest. “I’m tracking down the key,” I assured the woman, stretching the truth a little. I was still tracking down Freya. I disconnected.

  “Hey Annike, pick up the damn phone, will you?” came Charlie Fallon’s voice. He’d recorded his own message for me in lieu of a ring. “Hurry up, don’t keep me waiting or I’ll start to sing.” And he made good his threat.

  Laughing—he’s actually a very good singer though he was being intentionally bad for my benefit—I tapped my earpiece. “I know, I know, the gate’s locked.”

  “There’s a whole lineup here waiting to get in, kiddo,” he said in person this time, not by way of a recording.

  “And you need to get your chili on the stove.” He’d entered the contest—in the pro division of course—and he needed to get the last minute ingredients chopped and added during the final simmer. “I’m on my way, honest.”

  His infectious chuckle sounded in my ear. “Inconvenient of the head groundsman to get himself murdered, wasn’t it?”

  “You’d think the Fairgrounds Committee would have appointed someone to take his place for this event at least, wouldn’t you?” I elbowed my way through the crowd and spotted Freya.

  Now if I could just get the poor old girl out of that tight parking space I could be on my way. With everyone either here or converging on
the fairgrounds the intervening couple of miles ought to be free and clear. I climbed in, turned on the engine—which only rattled and complained a little—and backed up the eight possible inches before cranking the wheel as hard as I could to begin easing out.

  Once liberated from the tight quarters and moving at a fair clip, Freya began to purr. I punched the button for the head of the Fairgrounds Committee—his personal phone, not a business one—and to my surprise he answered after only four rings.

  “Dave Henderson,” he said.

  “It’s Annike McKinley.”

  “What is it this time?” He didn’t sound pleased to hear from me but I’ve gotten used to that.

  I told him the problem.

  “Damn it. I gave the keys to Edward Vanderveer for the day. Don’t you people keep in touch?”

  Edward Vanderveer? This was the first I’d heard of it. “Everything’s been in such chaos I think the lines of communication have broken down a bit. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  Edward Vanderveer? I’d swear no one on the Fourth of July Committee had authorized him to take charge of keys though I could see why the Fairgrounds Committee would have agreed to it. He was a member of both after all. I still cringed though at the thought of what Ivan Janowski would have to say about what he’d call officiousness rather than expediency. And speaking of expediency… I pressed the button I’d temporarily assigned to Edward Vanderveer as part of the Fourth of July Committee.