Authors: Donna Andrews
Randall looked sheepish.
“I’ll ask Festus,” he said.
“It’s a good question, actually,” the chief said. He was leaning back in his chair with his fingers steepled, looking noticeably more awake than a few minutes ago. “All of you, give it some thought. What’s happened recently, and what’s happening soon.”
We all nodded.
“And if you think of anything, don’t try to act on it,” he said. “Come and tell me.”
“Any objection if Meg tries to use her friendly contact with that PI fellow to pick his brains?” Randall asked.
The chief winced, but he shook his head. Suddenly he looked tired again. And then he set his jaw and stood up.
“I’m so beat I can’t think straight,” he said. “Yes, if you run across information that might help me solve this case, I want to know it. I’d be happier if you’d all stick to running the festival and doing legal battle against FPF and leave me to solve the murder, but I’m not hoping for miracles here. Just try not to do anything illegal or anything that’s going to paint a bull’s-eye on your back if the killer notices you doing it.”
He nodded good-bye and strode out of the room.
A few moments of silence followed his departure.
“So, Meg,” Randall said. “You’ll track down the PI and see what he has to say.”
“Assuming Rose Noire can wrangle the festival in my absence,” I said.
“I’ll do some data mining to see if I can come up with any more answers to that ‘why now?’ question,” Ms. Ellie went on.
“I’ll talk to Festus,” Randall said. “And I’m going to check out this new guard company a little more carefully.”
“Why?” Ms. Ellie asked.
“Those clowns don’t behave like any normal guard service I’ve ever heard of,” he said. “All this saluting and siring.”
“Seems a little over the top,” I agreed.
“Couple of my cousins have worked as guards, unarmed or armed,” Randall said. “Talked to one of them earlier today, and he also thinks they sound pretty bogus. More like some kind of nutcase paramilitary group than a professional security outfit. He recommended I check with the Department of Criminal Justice Services—that’s the state agency that regulates security companies. See if they’re really operating legitimately.”
“I’ll see what I can find out about their management in the public records,” Ms. Ellie said. “It would be interesting to know if there’s any history of suspicious deaths at other properties where they’ve been working.”
“It’s all kind of futile, isn’t it?” Horace said.
We all turned to look at him. Normally the prospect of a day spent microscopically examining a crime scene would have cheered Horace up, but he looked tired and discouraged.
“Futile in what way?” I asked.
“What can we really do?” he asked. “It’s pretty obvious the killer’s either a Flying Monkey or someone else who works for the Evil Lender—and we don’t have any inside knowledge about them. In fact, just the opposite—we’ve been trying to avoid all contact with them, and they with us. It’s like … like … like expecting the Montagues to know what the Capulets are up to.”
“Hey, it’s not that bad,” Rob said. “Montagues and Capulets really isn’t a good metaphor. It’s more like…”
“Like the American colonists against the occupying Redcoats,” I suggested.
“Precisely,” Ms. Ellie said. “We outnumber them. And we may have been trying to avoid them, but let’s not pretend we haven’t been keeping an eye on everything they’ve done since the minute they arrived here.”
“And they’re not from around here,” Randall put in. “That puts them at a disadvantage. We know the lay of the land—they don’t.”
“We know the character of the locals—they don’t,” Ms. Ellie added.
“And most of them are doing this because it’s their job,” I added. “We’re doing this to protect our homes.”
Horace looked surprised.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he said. “It doesn’t sound as discouraging when you put it like that.”
“Way cool,” Rob said. “I’m getting chills. Makes me want to go and throw a truckload of tea into Caerphilly Creek.”
We all chuckled, and wished each other good night. But my own good humor evaporated as I made my way up the dimly lit staircase. In spite of my brave words, I was feeling discouraged. Almost defeated. The tunnel crawling, on top of my blacksmithing, had made every bone in my body ache, and I kept seeing visions of Mr. Throckmorton and the chief led away in handcuffs, the Evil Lender triumphing in court, and the county board sadly telling me and Michael, “We’re sorry. We don’t want to seize your land. But we’re dead broke and we owe the lender so much money and there’s nothing else we can do.”
As I trudged upstairs, I could see the light spilling down from the third floor, where Festus’s staff was apparently still hard at it. Since our enormous old Victorian house was much larger than we needed, Michael and I had been happy to offer Festus the third floor for his support staff. Most of the time I found it comforting to know they were all up there working so hard for our benefit. But lately we hardly saw them. Most of them had taken to sleeping up there on cots and sleeping bags, and subsisted entirely on pizza, Chinese carryout, and care packages from the church food tents. Was it only the long hours that made them look so anxious? Or did they know something about the case that we didn’t?
I was still in my gloomy mood when I peeked in again on the boys, both still sleeping peacefully. Jamie was clutching a stuffed boa constrictor longer than he was—a cherished Christmas present from my grandfather.
The sight filled me with a fierce determination to do anything necessary to make sure that the boys would be spending their next Christmas right here. Next Christmas and every Christmas after it, until Michael and I were little gray-haired senior citizens wrapping up stuffed boa constrictors for our own great-grandchildren.
Michael hardly stirred when I slipped into bed, or even when I slipped out again to remove the sippy cup that had gotten shoved down near the foot of the bed and brush the scattered Cheerios off the sheets.
Chapter 22
As usual, the boys woke us up long before I’d have gotten out of bed on my own. Michael put them in their high chairs with small helpings of whole-grain Cheerios. I gathered a selection of fruits and vegetables from the refrigerator and set them by the cutting board where Michael would be readying them for the boys, in accordance with our longstanding policy on keeping me away from sharp implements before 9
A.M.
As I was rinsing out the coffeemaker and making a resolution, for the hundredth time, to do a better job of cleaning up the kitchen at bedtime, the doorbell rang.
“At this hour?” Michael said, looking up from the cutting board.
I glanced at the clock. 7
A.M.
“Keep cutting,” I said. “I’ll take care of our visitor.”
“Good idea.” He waved the knife in the air. “I could easily be tempted to use this on someone who shows up at this hour.”
I dried my hands and headed for the door. The doorbell rang again before I reached it.
“This had better be important,” I muttered. There was a time when all our friends knew Michael and me better than to ring our doorbell at this hour. The arrival of children had changed things—especially since, to their parents’ great dismay, both boys appeared to be more lark than night owl. But even though we were up—just barely—7
A.M.
was frightfully early for anyone to be ringing and pounding with such insistence.
I opened the door and found Kate Blake, the reporter from the
Star-Tribune
, raising her hand toward the doorbell.
“Finally,” she said. “I need to get into your library.”
“Around back,” I said, pointing to the brick path, clearly marked with a sign, that led to the library entrance. “And it doesn’t open till ten.”
“But I need to get in there now!” she said.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t help you.”
I started to close the door. She stuck her foot in the opening.
“Listen, lady,” she said, putting her hands on her almost nonexistent hips. “I’m on deadline. If you don’t let me into your wretched little library this instant I’ll be forced to mention you by name as one of the benighted denizens of this backwater town who have been misleading and stonewalling the press ever since we got here!”
“If you do that, then your editor will get a call from my attorney,” I said, in my most pleasant tone. “Or perhaps I’ll make the first call myself, and suggest to your editor that if he employed reporters who could ask civil questions, instead of whiny, entitled little brats, he might see more news and fewer defamation of character suits. Now move your foot, or you’ll be sorry when I slam this door.”
“Now see here—” she began.
“Look, kid,” I said. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that anyone capable of calling me a benighted denizen has some rudimentary grasp of the English language. Did you happen to notice that I didn’t say ‘I won’t help you’? I said ‘I can’t help you.’ I don’t have a key to the library.”
“But it’s in your house,” she said.
“And when the library moved in, we had the doors rekeyed. Ms. Ellie Draper has a set of keys, and I assume the other librarians who open do. But I don’t, nor does anyone else living here. So stop taking your impatience out on me.”
Her shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have tried to browbeat you. It’s just that I’m under such stress because of this deadline.”
“Maybe you’re in the wrong business, then,” I said. “Your deadline can’t be all that pressing. Today’s
Star-Trib
is still being delivered. You must have at least a few hours before you have to turn in your story for tomorrow morning’s issue.”
“Yeah,” she said. “The paper’s deadline isn’t until about ten p.m.
My
deadline’s a lot shorter. My editor only sent me down here because he thought it would be a silly human interest story. He’s sending one of his crime reporters down to cover the murder. So unless I can prove I’ve got some kind of inside track or hot lead, I go back to D.C. as soon as the crime reporter gets here. My editor said something about sending me to a cat show. That’ll make the fourth one this year.”
She glanced at her watch again.
“Ten o’clock,” she said in a flat voice.
Hard to tell if her change of mood was sincere. But even if it was only another attempt to wangle information—two could play at that game.
“Ten o’clock,” I repeated. “Would you like to come in and have some coffee? And you can wait inside in the air-conditioning. I can’t promise any hot leads, but at least it will save you going all the way back to town and then coming out here again at ten.”
“Thank you!”
From her tone, I suspected she was hoping to weasel some information out of us. Well, she was welcome to try. She stepped in briskly, waited while I closed the door, and then followed me down the hall to the kitchen. Her heels tapped on the polished oak of the hallway. I glanced down at her shoes. They were more worn than Colleen Brown’s, with a lower heel, and I suspected they would inspire an indulgent smile, not envy, in Mother.
In the kitchen, Michael was sipping coffee and chopping bits of ham and cheese for an omelet. Rob was slumped over his cup of coffee and staring into it as if he could read his fortune in its depths—or more likely, in the hope that it would kick in and magically erase the ill effects of another night of minimal sleep. Both twins were in their high chairs with the breakfast Michael had prepared spread over the trays—bits of fruit, cooked vegetable, chicken, and the ubiquitous Cheerios.
“Mom-my!” Josh exclaimed, as if he hadn’t seen me in days.
Jamie was so busy methodically ferrying Cheerios and bits of fruit into his mouth that he ignored my entrance.
“If Josh is finished eating, let’s put him in the playpen,” I said.
“How do you know he’s finished?” Michael asked. “He could just be taking a break.”
“Both dogs are lurking under Jamie’s chair,” I said. “They have an infallible instinct for these things.”
“Yeah, for the dogs, babies are basically like little food vending machines,” Rob said. “They tend to notice if one stops producing.”
As we watched, Jamie reached for another Cheerio, knocking half a dozen off onto the floor. Spike scrambled to snatch up all of them, growling at Tinkerbell the whole time. But Tinkerbell had positioned her huge, shaggy head more strategically, and was able to snag her half of the windfall without moving her muzzle more than an inch. Spike, after chasing his half of the Cheerios to the far corners of the kitchen, returned to his place beneath Jamie’s chair. He barked sharply at Tinkerbell, as if to say, “You do realize I
let
you have those Cheerios!” Then he sat down again to gaze longingly up at Jamie. Tinkerbell merely shifted her head and lifted her eyebrows to stare upward.
“Damn, that’s cute,” the reporter said.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Rob said. He looked a lot more alert. Clearly he liked the look of Kate from the
Star-Trib
.
“I hate cute,” she said. “I didn’t used to, but ever since I went to work for the
Star-Tribune
, they’ve sent me on every human interest story that comes along. People turning in cash-stuffed wallets and refusing to take rewards. High school seniors spending their prom night passing out sandwiches to the homeless. Wolves adopting orphaned baby rabbits. Sometimes I think if I have to do another cute, heartwarming story, I’ll puke!”
“Yeah, cute’s a menace,” Rob said. He frowned down at Spike and Tinkerbell as if suddenly disgusted by their persistent cuteness. I made a mental note not to tell her the cute, heartwarming story of how Spike, the Small Evil One, had turned into the boys’ best babysitter.
“At first I thought this was another of those cute stories,” Kate went on. “Town mortgages its jail, but all the citizens are bravely carrying on as usual in tents and barns. Aarrgghh! But then, just when I’m about to OD on it all—a murder!”
She was looking around, beaming happily—and then a look of panic suddenly spread over her face.