Free Liz Marvin - Betty Crawford 03 - Too Long at the Fair by Liz Marvin Page B

sobbing uncontrollably all the while. 
     
    Clarise pulled Betty away.  “Leave them their privacy.”  Betty snorted in disgust but allowed herself to be pulled to the back of the tent. “They’ll sort things out and comfort each other better without our help and besides you need a break.”
     
    Betty and Clarise sat down together at the back of the tent.  “This is not how I pictured being a judge at the fair when I was a little girl.”
     
    Clarise grinned. “You really dreamed of becoming a judge?”
     
    Betty grinned back. “You’re the center of attention, people take your opinion seriously and all the great food you can eat.”
     
    “And then the fair is attacked by a gang of thieves, the contest is vandalized and one of the contestants is murdered.”
     
    “Do you think they’re all related?”
     
    “Do you think it’s just coincidence?”
     
    Betty rubbed her temples. “I don’t have to think.  I just have to smile and taste things.  Little tiny bites.”  Clarise gave her a hug and Betty just naturally hugged her back.  “We’ll get through this, Bill and Wes will catch the crooks and the murderer.”
     
    “And you and Achmed and Gladys will get me through this cooking competition in one piece.”
     
    Betty watched as Ira carried her purse to the stove.  She opened the bag and removed three tea bags.  Betty had always wondered what the gossiping grannies carried in their voluminous purses and now she knew.  Mrs. Livingston found three cups and dipped each into the water on the stove, adding a tea bag and setting it aside.  Glaring at Betty and Clarise she humphed and turned her back on them, returning to her friends still seated on the dirt floor.
     
    Betty and Clarise waited until they had finished their tea and moved stiffly onto chairs before approaching them.  “I’m sorry -”
     
    “You should be!  Keeping us in the dark while you terrorize poor Thelma!”  Ira Livingston was winding herself up.  Betty had to stop her.
     
    “I’m sorry but we have to ask you some questions.  What kind of purse did Marlee May have with her today?”
     
    “Well I never!  Of all the rude insensitive -”
     
    “Because there was no purse with her.”
     
    “Those teen agers probably took it.  Has your boyfriend arrested them yet?”
     
    Betty felt her face flush not with embarrassment but anger.  “If you don’t know then perhaps one of the other gossiping grannies might.”
     
    There.  She had said it. She had called them the name that must not be spoken. Everyone knew the little clique of older women who made everyone else’s business their business but nobody called them the name to their faces.  A sign of deference and respect for their age and the fact that they were basically good hearted and harmless.  But not today.  If they wanted to hurt Betty she would hurt them right back.
     
    Thelma regained her composure first.  “She had her Tony Salieri Italian leather pink paisley petite hobo.  Twelve and one half inch drop leather hoop handles and a zipper top.  She used to joke that the drop was a thousand dollars an inch only she wasn’t joking.”
     
    “Do you know what she carried in it?”
     
    The three women looked at Betty like she’d grown another head.
     
    “No” they answered as one.
     
    Clarise took Betty’s arm.  “Please don’t talk about this with anyone.” she said over her shoulder as she pulled Betty outside.  The three women, heads together, whispering, ignored her.
     
    ~
     
    Bill and Wes were approaching just as the two women escaped the cook tent.  “I can’t believe you called them the gossiping grannies to their face!”  Clarise giggled.  “Well if the whole town knows about it by tomorrow morning I’ll know who to blame!” Betty laughed. 
     
    “Someone want to let us in on the joke?”  Wes asked.  The two women turned to him and deadpanned “no” and the dissolved in infectious laughter but Wes and Bill