imagine what it was like to lose a child, though she had come close when Candice had been kidnapped.
“Are you doing all right?” David asked her quietly once he was done telling Meg their story.
“No.” She sighed. “It’s just so horrible, and happened so quickly. I didn’t know him well, but I know the mayor—his dad—and I can’t stop thinking of what he must be going through.”
“He will never be the same,” David agreed. He lowered his voice even further and walked a few steps further away from the others with her. “From what the paramedics were telling me, everything is pointing towards some sort of poison. Which means that somebody killed the mayor’s son. I know it is hard to think about, but before the memories start to fade, I need to know… do you remember seeing anything suspicious?”
“Suspicious?” Moira asked, feeling the back of her neck prickle. Reuben Willis had been murdered? “Like what?”
“Anything. People looking shifty in areas they shouldn’t be, someone hanging around the soup table, maybe someone watching the mayor’s son instead even when someone else was talking.”
“No… I can’t think of anything,” she said slowly, doing her best to think back. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the crowd; she had been more concerned with the judges and how they reacted to each soup. “There were a lot of people near the soup table; this is just a small contest in the county fair, so it’s not like there was a lot of security.”
“That’s true. And that will make it hard for the police to find the culprit. It’s a busy area, no cameras… if it was murder, it will be a tough one to solve.”
“I’m sure Detective Jefferson and Detective Wilson will be able to handle it.” She took a deep breath, trying to shake off the lingering feeling of unease. At least this time the murder wasn’t tied to herself or Candice. No one she loved was in immediate danger… so why did she still feel so uneasy?
“There was something…” she began after a moment. David turned to look at her questioningly. “Darrin told me that the mayor was originally supposed to be head judge, not his son. Which means that whoever killed Reuben might have been trying to kill his father.”
“I’ll pass that on to the police,” David told her, his face grim. “Whatever is going on, Moira, I want you to be careful. Try not to get involved in this.”
“It’s not like I go looking for crimes to solve,” she replied huffily. “I’m perfectly happy to sit back and let the police do their jobs.”
His lips twitched into a grin. Leaning forward, he gave her a quick kiss on the lips then leaned over the edge of the pen to pat Maverick and Diamond.
“You two take care of her,” he told the dogs. “She may act innocent, but she’s a magnet for trouble.”
Laughing, Moira promised to call him once she made it home later that evening. Watching him walk away, Moira still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something important that she was missing.
By the time she got home that evening she was exhausted. The fair had kept on going even after Reuben Willis was carted away. Most of the people who stopped by her booth didn’t even know what had happened. Moira had forced herself to smile and laugh with her customers, but when the gates finally closed and the only people left were fairground workers and vendors, she let the smile drop from her face. She might not have known Reuben Willis well—at all, really—but it still felt wrong to act like nothing had happened when a man had died.
Now, home at last with the dogs, she could finally let the events of the day come crashing through her. She let the dogs into the back yard, turned on the coffee machine—not to make a drink, but because the scent was comforting—sat down at the kitchen table, and cried. She had seen someone die today, and she hadn’t been able to do a thing to help.
An explosion of barking outside made