The Missing Dough(36)
“Then enlighten me, Eleanor.”
“Well, there’s nothing all that special about it, as far as I can remember it. According to Mrs. Ingersoll, the surveyor got lost in the middle of laying out the town limits and ended up making a mess of it. It looked sort of like a Holstein’s spots, without a straight line anywhere in it. I heard later that he wasn’t lost at all. He was just falling-down drunk. The place was named Cowton at the time, but the surveyor looked at the mess he’d made and registered it as Cow Spots to explain the lousy job he’d done, and somehow it stuck. From what I’ve heard, a few folks tried to change it officially back to Cowton when it first happened, but they never made much headway, so Cow Spots it has been ever since.”
“It’s not really a great story, is it?” Maddy asked.
“Hey, it is what it is. Do you think we’ll be able to track Bernie Maine down once we get to town?”
“It’s hard to say. I don’t know much about the place. I wonder if Kevin Hurley has managed to speak with him yet.”
“I’m not even sure he knows that Bernie should be on his suspect list yet,” I admitted. “Sometimes I wish we both shared what we discovered with each other, instead of playing cat and mouse with the facts, you know?”
“Sis, you and I both know that it’s never going to happen,” Maddy said.
“Hey, we’ve compared notes a few times in the past,” I protested.
“Okay, not never. How about rarely? The police chief ordinarily doesn’t like us butting into his active investigations. You know what? If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t want us digging around, either. When I think about it, I’m amazed that he’s been as understanding with us as he has in the past.”
“Kevin knows deep down that we’re just trying to help,” I said.
Maddy laughed. “Maybe a little too much at times, right?”
“Hey, we are what we are. No excuses, no explanations.”
We pulled alongside the Cow Spots town limit sign and were greeted by a twelve-foot fiberglass Holstein cow. It had become the official mascot of the place, and you could even buy hats and Tshirts with the cow’s picture on them.
Initially, I decided not to stop in at the visitors’ center to make any purchases, but at the last second, I pulled off in front of the trailer that acted as a welcome to outsiders visiting the place for the first time.
“This is an odd time to stop and get a magnet in the shape of a cow for your refrigerator,” Maddy said. “Why are we pulling over here?”
“As far as I can figure, I believe that it’s as good a place as any to start tracking down Bernie Maine. If anybody knows where we can find him, it might just be in there,” I said as I put the car in park and shut off the engine. “Are you coming?” I asked her.
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss seeing it for the world. I’m right behind you.”
We walked into the small building and were instantly assaulted by all things cow related. As I suspected, there were Tshirts, sweatshirts, bandannas, hats of all kinds, and other merchandise emblazoned with black spots on white backgrounds. That was just the start of it, though. There were also magnets, key chains, shot glasses, and every other kind of knickknack imaginable, all with the same bovine theme.
“Excuse me, but do you happen to have anything with a cow on it?” Maddy asked the older woman sitting behind the counter, who was reading a magazine, one on dairy farming, of all things.
She grinned. “To tell you the truth, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with something that didn’t bear the markings of our mascot,” she said. “What can I do for you ladies?”
“We’re looking for a man named Bernie Maine,” I said.
Her smile suddenly disappeared as her gaze went back to the magazine. “Sorry. I can’t help you.”
“We’re not here to give him a bouquet of flowers,” Maddy said. “He might have had something to do with my ex-husband’s recent murder, and we want to talk to him before he tucks his tail between his legs and runs.”
“You were married to Grant Whitmore?” she asked, studying my sister with a critical glance as she put her magazine down.
“I’m not proud of the fact, but I was indeed. I finally have a good man in my life now, but he’s under suspicion for Grant’s murder, and if I can help him, I will.”
She smiled and nodded when she heard my sister’s answer. “Then you’d better hurry. I heard through the grapevine that he was packing up his office and getting ready to head out of town for good.”
“Where can we find him?” I asked.