“He’s not hiding out?”
“Why would he hide out? He didn’t kill Oake, you know that.” What an exasperating man Detective Olson was.
“I’m beginning to think you’re right.” He seemed to be watching Ivan and Peter as they readied their cat, Shadow. Chase hadn’t seen Ivan arrive, but there he was. “We got a nine-one-one hang-up call from the doctor’s phone, but when we located it, outside the exhibit building, he wasn’t with it. Where do you think he might be?”
“He dropped his phone? Take a look at this picture.” She showed him the image on her phone.
“It’s a butter sculpture.”
“Look at the doorway.”
He drew the phone close to his face. She reached over and pressed a button to enlarge the photo.
“There are people going past. I didn’t realize these shots were in my pictures. I think I took one with Mike in it. This might be a stretch,” Chase said, ignoring Olson’s disparaging look, “but Mike’s aunt Betsy, his receptionist, said he left with someone who mentioned a collar. If this concerns the missing diamond collar, maybe this person has it. I thought Mike might be going with him to learn more, but what if he left with the killer?”
“Or, more likely, the thief.”
“But what if he’s the same person?”
“There’s a good chance of that, but who is he? Or she?”
She tried a different tack. She pointed to the picture. “That looks like Harper the toymaker to me. See the tattoos? The travel agent—Holly Molden, the redheaded one—told me that her partner, Sally Ritten, heard the toymaker say he saw someone run out of the building at about the time of the murder.” She didn’t mention that she had recognized Sally behind the booths. “Maybe Mike is trying to get that information. The other person here is tall. It looks like Mike to me. Maybe he left with the toymaker. Maybe both murders are tied together.”
“Both murders?”
“I couldn’t help but see . . .”
Olson took another look at the phone picture. “The toymaker.” He scratched his chin. “Harper?”
“That’s what the sign says on this booth, but a guy visiting him called him Hardin.”
“Hardin?” He squinted at her. “I think I’m connecting some dots,” Olson said, nodding slowly. “I bet I know why he wouldn’t want to talk to us. I should have taken him in when I first got a funny feeling about him. I should have known who he was. He’s let his hair grow long in the back and he’s gotten bald on the top. He’s a little more wrinkled, but I should have recognized him.”
“Who is he?”
“Frank Hardin, if I’m right. He’s a wanted felon. He murdered two women in Iowa ten years ago. Threw them in the back of a van and drove them to a wooded park to strangle them and bury the bodies in a shallow grave. He was convicted and sentenced to life, but he escaped from prison three years ago.”
“He’s an escaped murderer? And he has Mike?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Chase’s knees buckled. Detective Olson caught her around the waist with an iron grip and plunked her onto the hard bleacher seat.
“How long ago did you take this picture of Hardin and Ramos?” he asked. “If it is them.”
“I guess about half an hour, forty-five minutes, maybe a little more or less.”
“He might not have left yet. We’ll get a dog here, block off the parking lot and start searching. I’ll get his license number from Daisy. He had to register it for vendor parking.”
Detective Olson was speaking into his cell almost before he quit talking to Chase, requesting an APB on Hardin’s vehicle. Quickly he found Daisy, and they hurried away toward her office.
Chase’s heart hammered. She clenched her fists, almost jumping out of her skin. Hardin was a dangerous man. A murderer! And he had Mike. How long would it take to transport a police dog to the fair? Too long. She couldn’t stand still. She ran out of the building.
She sped down the midway toward the lot where the vendors parked. Two officers were questioning the man at the hot dog stand. Another one scribbled on a notepad while the chicken wing vendor waved her arms toward the parking lot.
Chase put on more speed and was at the vendors’ parking lot in less than two minutes.
She spotted Hardin/Harper right away at a big blue van four rows from where she stood.
Running as fast as she could, she sprinted for the vehicle. The toymaker opened the driver’s door and hitched himself up into the seat. She was still a row away.
“Wait!” she screamed. “Wait!” She windmilled her arms.
He looked in her direction and reached for his handle to close the door.
“You forgot something!” Not true, but she had to stop him. She put on more speed than she’d known she had. Almost there.
That got his attention. He let go of the handle and waited for her to reach him, panting and breathless.
“What did I forget?” he asked.
“Let me catch my breath.” She bent to put her palms on her knees while her lungs burned and heaved. The cold air didn’t help her recover. She was disappointed that Mike wasn’t there.
“I need to . . . ask you . . . something,” she panted and coughed twice. She drew in the lingering odor of sweat and also that of the cigarette dangling from his surly lips.
He squinted at her, suspicious. “I thought you said I forgot something.”
“I’m sorry. I had to . . . stop you.” Her breathing was almost back to normal. “I desperately need to know something.”
“Know what?”
A thumping noise came from the back of his windowless van.
“What’s that? Do you have an animal back there?”
“Huh? Yeah, that’s . . . that’s Wolf, my dog.”
“Please tell me. I want to know. I have to know. I won’t tell anyone you told me. The travel agent said you saw someone run out of the butter building.”
“How do you know that?”
“Her partner, Holly, told me. It was immediately before Dr. Ramos went in.”
“Not exactly. Maybe five or ten minutes before.” He started the engine.
“That person could very well be the killer. Who was it?”
“I’m not talking to any cops.”
“Can you tell me? I’m not a cop.”
“I don’t want to get involved at all, understand?” He still had one hand on the door handle. His fingers twitched impatiently, and his vehicle idled loudly. It needed a new muffler, Chase thought, almost choking on the black cloud of exhaust spewing from the rusty tailpipe. The thumping continued in the back of the vehicle.
“Yes, I understand. I said I won’t say anything to them. I only want to talk to him, to know what that person saw when he was inside.” Well, that and whether or not he’d murdered Larry Oake.
“It was that feller, that crazy one.” He let go of the handle and made a circle beside his head, the universal symbol for cuckoo.
“Do you know his name?”
“Nope. There, I told you all I know.”
“Thanks so much. I appreciate it.”
“If someone comes around asking, I won’t say I saw anything.” He sneered at her. He transferred his cigarette to his left hand and took hold of the door handle with the same hand.
The thumping continued, but now she noticed a pattern. Three short knocks, three slow ones, then three more short raps. SOS! The message Mike had been texting her! He was in the van!
Chase grabbed the handles of the bay door and tugged.
“What the hell you doin’?” Hardin yelled.
“Dr. Ramos is back there! I know he is! Let him out!” She shook the handles, but the doors remained locked.
“Let go of my door. I’m leavin’. This fair has caused me enough problems. That foreigner. And the blonde. And now . . . now you.”
She paused, confused by what Hardin had said. Chase changed tactics and grabbed the driver’s door, still open.
The van started to roll. She hung on, jumped onto the running board beside the driver’s seat. “Stop!” she yelled over the sound of the loud engine.