Free Murder in a Minor Key by Jessica Fletcher

secrecy.
    He sat back with an enigmatic smile, but said nothing.
    Was someone leading him on? I felt guilty for having held back the information I’d learned from Stanley. But I didn’t want to approach the subject in front of Doris. There would be time later when I could pass along Stanley’s comments to Wayne without an audience.
    Leaving Wayne with my morning newspaper, Doris and I returned to our respective rooms to make a few phone calls and ready ourselves for a day at the festival. I called Charlie Gable to confirm our upcoming dinner interview, and checked with the bookstore to verify that my books were in stock before we finalized plans for the book signing. At a quarter to eleven, new hat in hand, I met Wayne and Doris in the hotel lobby.

Chapter Six
    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in one place at one time,” I said.
    Wayne and Doris and I, along with thousands of like-minded people, were crossing the dirt track of the Fair Grounds Race Track to where a sea of tents, flags, and booths filled the huge grassy oval. Atop a giant scaffolding, a sponsor’s sign welcomed us to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
    “They do get quite a crowd,” Wayne remarked. “Over four hundred thousand last year, plus the four thousand or so putting on the show.”
    Wayne guided us to the first green-and-white-striped tent on our left, in which a gospel group was warming up. In the shade of the tent, he gave us a fatherly lecture. “You see all those flags?” He nodded toward the kaleidoscope of pennants, flags, and banners dotting the scene before us. Many were homemade with suspended ribbons, bows, and fringe fluttering as their bearers carried them aloft. “People use those to identify themselves, so their friends and family can find them in the crowd. If they didn’t do that, they might wander around here for days and never meet up.”
    “Isn’t that clever,” Doris said. “Look at that one.” Bobbing by us was a feather-bedecked pole with bouquets of ribbon arrayed across three crossbars. It was held high by a tall man who wore one of the ribbon bouquets on his head, and who walked backward, keeping an eye on his flock of teenaged followers.
    “We don’t have a flag,” Wayne reminded us. “And it’s easy to get separated in this crush. I’ll try to hold on to you, but let’s agree to meet in specific places at specific hours. That way if we lose sight of each other, we’ll know we’ve got a regular rendezvous point to reassemble.”
    Doris and I agreed that making appointments to meet at certain hours was prudent, and we all synchronized our watches as if we were on a military mission.
    “What do you suggest we see right now?” I asked, hanging on to my hat when a stiff breeze threatened to carry it away.
    “I need to check in at the press tent, but we can use this time just to look around and get our bearings. There’s music everywhere. We can just stop in to hear whatever appeals to us.” A family carrying folding chairs squeezed by, and Wayne took our arms. “There’s no way you can whip through this fair. Get used to strolling. That’s the only effective pace.”
    The air at the festival fairly hummed with the strains of gospel, zydeco, bebop, Cajun, Dixieland, and virtually every other musical variation of jazz and pop and country, the sounds drifting out of the tents and rising on the breeze in a delightful cacophony. A gust of wind blew up, flapping the colorful pennants strung from tent top to tent top, and wafting the smells of spicy cooking in our direction from the food stalls on the other side of the oval. The intermittent breeze was a blissful counter to the blazing sun.
    The press tent was abuzz with activity when Wayne flashed his pass and ushered us inside. Large oscillating fans on stands whined in each comer but had little effect on the stultifying air. I blotted my forehead with a handkerchief, and followed Wayne as he dipped into bins that had been set