Read Murder in a Basket (An India Hayes Mystery) for Free Online Page B

have to talk to make a sale, and most of us do it so often we repeat the same pitch over and over until we could say it in our sleep. Ask any of the crafters here, they’ll tell you the same thing.”
    Knute didn’t look convinced. He’d love to find an excuse to toss me into the pokey.
    Carmen snapped her fingers, an annoying habit she picked up in the classroom to grab teenagers’ attention. It worked like a charm on Mains. “Ricky, you are ignoring me. What about the festival?” She hugged her clipboard to her chest and ground her foot on the grass, turning the fallen leaves into mulch.
    Mains winced as my sister called him Ricky for a third time. It was times like this that I was uncomfortably reminded that Mains was once Carmen’s Ricky, her high school sweetheart. A fact she apparently planned to hold over him for the rest of his life.
    “ Carmen,” Mains said in a pacifying voice.
    Uh-oh! He’d spoken condescendingly to her. I’d think , after dating her, he’d remember that was not the best approach. “This is a crime scene. The festival will have to be closed for the time being. No one can come near this booth.”
    “ Closed? Closed?” Carmen’s voice was shrill. “The Stripling Founders’ Festival has never been closed. In nineteen hundred, there was a tornado and the festival went on. In nineteen fifty-six, the mayor fell and broke his leg the morning of the festival but was still there in the afternoon for his obligatory appearance. In nineteen eighty-seven, there was an outbreak of chicken pox in the elementary school, but there was a fair.”
    Mains ran his hand through his lush dark hair, and a vein on the side of his neck began to throb.
    “Let me tell you something, Detective Richmond Mains. You are going to do whatever it takes to get this festival up and running by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, so that we can open on time.” She consulted her watch. “That gives you exactly twelve hours and fifteen minutes to do whatever it is that you do.” Carmen’s eyes blazed. I knew Carmen was nervous about the festival going off without a hitch. It was all she’d talked about for the last few months. A dead body was not a good start, but I thought she was being a little harsh on Mains. It wasn’t like he killed Tess. He was just doing his job.
    Mains clenched his jaw, holding back whatever remark he’d like to fire back at my sister.
    The officers and EMTs stopped working to watch the show. Knute gaped back and forth between Carmen and Mains, his mouth hanging open like a bass.
    Slowly, Mains ’s jaw relaxed. “We’ll do our best to clear the scene before the festival opens, but you’re yammering at us and prolonging the process.”
    Carmen’s mouth fell open , and she started to speak. Mains was faster. “Now, please give us the space to work.” His head snapped around at Knute. “Officer Knute, don’t you have some ground to comb?”
    Wordlessly, Knute turned on his heels and bent his head as if his life depended on staring at the grass.
    Carmen got in one parting shot. “Jem and Adel Stripling survived countless hardships to settle here, and we have an obligation to honor them. They battled heat, disease, snowstorms, torrential downpours, and the death of their infant son, Matthew, all in that first year. If they hadn’t survived, where would we be?”
    We’d probably be here anyway, I thought to myself. I mean, if the Striplings hadn’t settled here, someone else would have. Manifest Destiny and all that, and as far as I knew, none of the parties standing around Tess’s body were direct descendents of the Striplings. I thought better of mentioning any of these musings to my sister.
    Carmen ground her sneakers deeper into the earth as if setting permanent fence posts. She wasn’t going anywhere. Mains and Carmen squared off. This could get ugly, I thought.
    “Could we move the festival?” I asked.
    Carmen stared at me. “Move it? Move it where? Do you know how hard it