Free Murder at the Book Fair by Steve Demaree

taking the elevator to the main floor
lobby and walked up the steps. I'm always fascinated by fountains, so I took a
few seconds to watch the water flow. I decided against taking eight flights of
stairs to my room, and stepped into the middle elevator when its door  opened.
Lou and I said goodnight after we agreed to eat breakfast at Rick's White Light
Diner on the way out of town the next morning, and I bypassed the bed and the
TV and walked over to open the drapes and enjoy my river view. It was a little
tougher to enjoy it after dark. A few minutes later, I kicked off my shoes and
plopped down on my bed and tried to make sense about what we knew so far about
Portwood's murder.
    Connie Crowe, Jenny Luscher, Amy
Smith, and Diana Munson, the four people I talked to who worked with the KBF,
all seemed too nice to have murdered Portwood, so I figured I should
concentrate on them. Actually I had talked to three people who could be deemed
suspects, but I felt the lawyer was too smart to have done it, and the brother
and sister were too dumb to have pulled it off in such crowded quarters. So, my
guess at the time was that Lou and I had yet to meet the murderer. Of course
both of us had been wrong early in some of our cases over the years, so I would
wait until we had talked to more people before I cast my vote.
    The bed was roomy and comfortable,
but it wasn't getting me any closer to discovering Portwood's murderer, so I
pulled out my laptop that I'd had only a few months. But first I had to call
downstairs to find out how to connect to Wi-Fi. God was with me that night and
I was able to connect to the Internet.
    I started with my friend Google
before I shifted over to Facebook to see if anyone had confessed. If so, he or
she wouldn't have been the first idiot to confess to something on Facebook. Not
only do dumb criminals not know that cops are sometimes disguised as teenage
girls on the Internet, but some people who get on the Internet have an IQ high
enough to report a crime to the police, provided someone wants to boast about
one. So far no one had boasted to me, in person or incognito. I checked out
Portwood's author page, but didn't find anything that would incriminate anyone.
I checked his personal page, too. He didn't post a lot, and he had more
followers on his author page than friends on his personal page. When I turned
in for the night, forty-five minutes after Wi-Fi and I had become friends, I
was no closer to discovering the murderer's identity than I was when Portwood
signed my books.
     
    +++
     
    One thing about being retired and
working for free is that you get to choose what time you get up. At least I
chose what time I got up. On Wednesday morning it was just after the maid
knocked on my door because I forgot to hang the stupid Do Not Disturb sign on
the outside of my door the night before. That's okay. Lou and I had a lot of
ground to cover and miles to go before we slept again. And maybe if I was
lucky, Lou would have another clue from God.
    He must have been standing just
inside the door of his room waiting on me because he answered my knock in 1.2
seconds.
    "Did the maid wake you,
too?"
    "No, I was the one who sent
her to your door. I want to get away before noon ."
    "And during the many hours
that you've been awake did God happen to give you today's clue?"
    "Well, no one wrote on my
wall. I'm glad. The hotel might have charged me for that."
    "Not if it was spelled
correctly. I would vouch for you, that you never learned how to spell. But
enough about that. What's today's clue?"
    "Somebody's lying."
    "Somebody's lying?"
    "Did you turn into a parrot
all of a sudden?"
    "Why? Do you have a
cracker?"
    "Maybe I can find a cracker
for you in that diner we're going to for breakfast."
    "I'll pass on the cracker, I
guess we have to watch the people we question today to see if their lips move.
Then we'll know if they're lying or not."
    "I thought we needed to watch
their eyes and their hands."
    "Let's go