Death Waxed Over (Book 3 in the Candlemaking Mysteries) Read Free Page B

interested in your crafts, a lot of
times the parents followed, so I also laid out some sheets of
lavender beeswax that had been damaged in our storeroom. They
weren’t good enough to sell, since one edge of the delicate sheets
had been crushed in storage, but I’d trimmed the bad parts away
with a pizza crust cutter, and they’d be perfect for kids to play
with.
    Heather watched my progress, then said, “If
you need more space, I can give you a corner of my table.”
    “ Is it too much?”
    “ No, I’m starting to wish
I’d done more myself. It looks like you’ve done your homework on
self-promoting.”
    “ Let’s just see if it
works.”
    I finished displaying the candles and
inexpensive kits I’d brought along to sell, and finally I was
ready. Ten feet away, I noticed Gretel was watching me from her
table, but I wasn’t about to say a word or acknowledge her presence
again if I could help it. My signs were all homemade—and they
looked it—but hers sported a professional appearance that was just
too sleek to be her own work. There were carefully crafted displays
that showed some of the simplest steps to making candles, and even
I had to admit they were very well done. It wasn’t a fair fight
since she had a franchise’s expertise to draw from, but that didn’t
really matter to me anymore. I was ready for her. She’d thrown the
gauntlet down, and if she was having second thoughts about taking
me on, she was going to have to make the first move at brokering
some kind of peace between us.
    Gretel appeared to start my way once or
twice before changing her mind and backtracking to her spot. She
was either going to start Round Two of our fight, or she was coming
over to apologize, but as the gates opened and people started
coming in, she frowned and settled into her seat. Though she was
new to the area, somehow Gretel had finessed a prime spot for her
display, and I wondered if she’d paid off the organizers. Her table
was five feet away from the Civil War cannon that adorned the
grounds, a great attraction for the visitors coming in. I’d heard
that the Founder’s Day committee had wanted to drape the cannon in
bunting too, but the Sons of the South had put their collective
feet down. That cannon was a relic from history, they’d argued, a
captured trophy from a Yankee ship, won with the spilled blood of
their ancestors, not some prop for the show. I was near the granite
steps, and I could see the old courthouse bell on the other side of
the lawn from where I stood. It had been at the county seat since
the mid-1800s, serving the early citizens of New Conover, and then
retired and covered by a stone hutch. The cannon and bell were the
two best-known artifacts in the entire town.
    The flow of visitors picked up considerably,
and I didn’t have time to worry about Gretel Barnett anymore.
Before long I had a great many lookers, a handful of buyers, and a
good start on my mailing list. I was also starving, since I’d
forgotten all about breakfast in my haste to get set up in
time.
    During a lull, I said, “Heather, are you
hungry?”
    “ No, I always eat a big
breakfast before I do these fairs. There’s barely time to turn
around during the day.”
    “ That was smart of you,” I
said.
    She studied me a second, then said,
“Harrison, I’ll watch your table if you want to go grab a quick
bite.”
    “ I hate to ask you to do
that,” I said, determined to suffer through my mistake.
    “ Hey, we’re covering for
each other here, remember? You go now and you can watch my table
when I grab lunch for us later. It will be really busy
then.”
    “ Busier than
now?”
    She scanned the crowds. “Just wait. On a day
like today, folks are itching for a reason to get outside. We’re
going to make some money, my friend, just wait and see.”
    A burst of firecrackers suddenly went off
twenty feet from us, and I could see more streamers dancing in the
air. The noise had started the moment Founder’s Day opened,