Page 7 of Promise Keeper

"Who'd do anything for a buck?" Soapy asked, pausing on his way by with a coffee pot. "Need a refill?" he asked Andy, who had regular, black coffee.

Andy nodded. "Yes, please. I was just telling them about the carnival."

"Oh, that. Yeah, the Longo's have a long history of being shysters. He's charging ten bucks a pop to get into that tent."

"Therearefire eaters," I said, and couldn't help but snicker.

"I suppose you're going to be trying to solve this catastrophe?" Soapy asked me, taking a second to make eye contact between darting glances at empty coffee mugs at the tables around us.

"We have a good track record. Did you hear anything last night that might help us figure this out?"

"It's hard to say," he said turning to the table to my right. "Those raccoons make so much racket."

Soapy and Theresa lived above their shop, which was right across the canal from the park. "You heard something though?"

"No. Wish I could tell you more."

"That's okay. Someone had to see or hear something."

"True enough." He gave us a farewell by raising his coffee pot, and went on refilling customers cups. He was usually more talkative, but this crowd had him on his toes.

"I'm actually pretty curious about the carnival," Monica said. "Maybe you should get some footage in case it becomes a local hit," she told Andy.

"Maybe I should," he said. "I was thinking about wandering over there."

"Let's all go," I said. "I've never seen live fire eaters before."

* * *

The tent was huge,and ratty. It looked ancient like all of the novelties on display. "This is quite the set up, Steve," I said gesturing around us at the tent.

He looked frazzled. I could imagine what kind of morning he'd had, opening his side show to the sound of sirens and being upstaged by a mystery skeleton found in the garbage can. "It belonged to my great-grandfather," he said. "He used to set this up every summer. I thought I'd resurrect the tradition."

"There's a lot of buzz about it around town," Monica said.

"Thanks, I hope everybody enjoys it." He gave us half of his attention while his eyes scanned the patrons. "Excuse me," he said, and wandered off.

"No wonder he wanted Ben's help," Monica said. "His mind's all over the place."

Andy checked his watch. "The Whitewater train is about to pull into town, so he's probably thinking about the next rush of people he'll get in here."

"Hopefully, they'll make up for any lost business from this morning," I said. "It looks like he's put a lot of work into putting this together."

"Wonder why he didn't ask for your help," Monica said. "You put things like this together for a living."

Working for Soapy putting together town events was no easy task, but I'd gotten much better at it then when I started. "Maybe he wanted to do it himself, prove that he could do it like his grandfather."

We wandered around, perusing the artifacts and old photos and stopped at a display of shrunken heads. "You don't think those are real?" I asked, leaning in closer to inspect them.

"I wouldn't know a real one from a fake one," Andy said.

Monica agreed and shivered. "They look real enough though."

Moving on, we came across some voodoo dolls, a Mayan death rattle, and an Aztec death whistle. "Lots of death things," I said. "I thought all of this had some relation to Metamora."

"Not all of it," Andy said. "I think just that section over there." He pointed across the tent to the hanging signs that read,Metamora's Past Revealed!

"I didn't realize Metamora's past has been hidden," I said, heading that direction.

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