The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain (7 page)

Look, Andy, I’m backing out of this mess as far as I can get. If you want to take the risk of going ahead with your plan, I can put you in touch with a very capable colleague of mine who happens to be on loan, as you might say, from one of the eastern provinces, on account of a little problem he ran into there. He won’t mind handling your legal matter because he’s planning to immigrate to Tasmania in the near future anyway. You can then explain to anybody who’s interested that you went to all the extra expense and bother of calling in an expert from out of town in order to be sure of getting an opinion that would be totally free of any local bias or possible self-interest.”

Everybody thought that was pretty hilarious. Hearing them in there laughing their heads off made Dittany so furious she could think of nothing but getting in there to see who they were. She tried the knob, found the door locked, but managed to fit in one of the keys Mrs. Poppy had given her. As she turned the latch, she heard somebody yelp, “What the hell?” and make a rush for the door. Before she could get it open more than a crack, it was held fast from inside and one of Andrew McNaster’s beady little eyes glared through the slit.

“What do you want? Haven’t I told you-“

“Want me to clean in there?” Dittany interrupted in that hoarse, toneless voice she’d practiced on the night watchman.

“No,” he roared. “Haven’t I told you never to bother me when I’m in conference? Who the hell are you, anyway?

Where’s the woman who usually comes?”

Dittany had been doing bit parts with the Traveling Thespians since she was five and, since she always forgot her lines, she’d developed a ready talent for improvisation. “You’ll have to speak up, mister. My hearin’ aid’s in for repairs. Do I clean in there or don’t I? See, Mrs. Duckes’s bad leg kicked up on ‘er again so I said I’d help out but she never told me if I was s’posed to-“

“Just go away,” yelled McNaster at the top of his lungs. He opened the door just far enough to thrust a bill into her hand, then slammed it in her face.

Dittany went to put away her mops and dusters. As she did so, she looked at the money McNaster had given her. It was a twenty. How nice. He didn’t know it, but he’d just made the first donation to Sam Wallaby’s rival’s campaign fund. Getting Sam defeated was going to take some doing, though, since they had less than a week to campaign in. And there was the further problem of whom she could get to run.

This was no time to worry about a candidate. She’d better get out of the parking lot before the meeting broke up and one of that skulduggerous crew recognized her car. Sam Wallaby would, for sure. He’d lugged enough imperial quarts of Seagram’s out to it while Gramp was alive, not that Gramp Henbit had been any great drinker, but how else could an old man keep his creaking joints oiled? Dittany herself had retained the habit of keeping a little anti-freeze on hand for emergencies, though she assuredly wouldn’t be buying any more from Sam Wallaby.

She did wish Andy McNasty had opened that office door wide enough for her to see who else was inside. On the other hand she was rather glad he hadn’t. Charlie, that shyster lawyer from Scottsbeck, had made it all too clear, in spite of his legalistic evasions, what he thought about Mr. Architrave’s strange and sudden demise. Dittany admitted to herself that she couldn’t swallow any theory about a phantom hunter. Even Hazel Munson, who bent over backward never to think ill of anyone, had come right out and suggested murder. They’d guessed at a motive; now Dittany knew it was more than a guess. She stomped on Old Faithful’s accelerator and headed straight for the neat red brick house with the green trim at the corner of Hickory and Vine.

The Munsons would have finished supper well before this.

They lived by a schedule programmed to the minute by Roger though not always adhered to by Hazel and the younger Munsons, who ranged from almost grown up to turbulent ten. This was Roger’s Be Pals with Your Kids night, so he and they would be off to the skating rink, leaving Hazel to Enjoyment of Uninterrupted Leisure, which for her was apt to mean catching up on the mending or baking a fancy dessert. Tonight her leisure was going to be interrupted in a way Roger would never have dreamed of programming.

Dittany brought Old Faithful to a screaming halt two inches from the doorstep, rushed up, and pounded like mad on the brass knocker. Hazel appeared promptly, inched the door open on the chain, and said suspiciously, “Yes?”

“Hazel,” snapped Dittany, “quit playing games and let me in.”

“Good heavens, Dittany, is that you?” Hazel released the chain. “What on God’s green earth have you done to yourself?

Here, give me that.” She picked up the raincoat Dittany dropped and hung it in the closet. As Roger always said, Neatness was Efficiency. “Now what’s this all about?”

“Hazel, listen. You know Mrs. Poppy?”

“Of course I know Mrs. Poppy. She’s that woman who’s supposed to come and clean for you but never does.”

“She does sometimes,” said Dittany defensively. “Anyway, Mrs. Poppy has a friend, Mrs. Duckes, who does the office at McNaster’s every evening after work. I mean after he and his staff-oh, you know what I mean. Anyway, this Mrs. Duckes has a bad leg-I don’t know which or why so don’t bother to ask -and Mrs. Poppy was going to fill in for her but she caught a bad cold. She called me up while I was having my supper to tell me she couldn’t come tomorrow because she was too sick and then she went croaking on about how she’d promised to do the offices for Mrs. Duckes and how awful she felt about letting her down.”

“Were you planning to get to the point any time in the foreseeable future?”

“But that is the point, Hazel. I said I’d go to McNaster’s in her place, and I did.”

“Dittany, you didn’t!”

“What’s the sense in saying I didn’t when I just got through telling you I did?”

“The exclamation was purely rhetorical. I only meant, my gosh, how did you ever have the nerve?”

“Frankly, I’m not sure,” Dittany admitted. “You wouldn’t believe how scary it can be opening a strange broom closet.”

Hazel took her guest gently by the arm and led her to Roger’s pet reclining chair. “Here, sit down and put your feet up, eh?

I’m going to make us a pot of hot tea. You must be in shock. It won’t take a second.”

Dittany was glad to obey. All of a sudden, like Mrs. Duckes, she was having trouble with her legs. She lay back and shut her eyes until Hazel came back with a tea tray on which, to Dittany’s unalloyed joy, was a slab of her superb carrot-walnut allspice cake with orange coconut frosting.

“Eat this with your tea. The sweet will be good for you.”

Dittany needed no coaxing. Disregarding the fact that she’d been carefully taught never to talk with her mouth full, she wolfed her cake and told her story at the same time.

“McNaster was having a meeting with some men in his private office. The door was locked, but I listened outside. And I heard him having an argument about the Enchanted Mountain with some crooked lawyer whom he wanted to help him get hold of the land.”

“You didn’t! I’m sorry. You did. Dittany, why?”

“Because he wants to build himself a big house right smackdab on top. Those were his own words, Hazel, right smackdab on top. And he talked about building some more houses around the sides and that must be what he’s got Jim Streph working on the plans for. And that’s why that Frankland man was doing the perk tests, and why Mr. Architrave got murdered just as we thought.”

“Dittany, he-I mean, are you sure?”

“Well, this lawyer as much as accused McNaster of having one of his henchmen bump Mr. Architrave off because he was too honest to fake the results of the tests even if he was dumb enough to do them in the first place, which is true enough.”

“Yes, it is,” said Hazel slowly. “And he was pigheaded enough to stick to his guns no matter what. I don’t see myself how that land could be buildable unless they ran sewer pipes because it’s all ledge under the leaf mold. That must be why McNaster wanted the tests done before the frost was out, so he could pretend they were hitting frozen ground instead of rock. He’s got away with so many other things, I suppose he’d be cocky enough to think even a fool stunt like that would work.”

“Only he didn’t count on having a new man with a few brains in his head join the department just at the wrong time,” Dittany added. “Frankland did say he’d protested to Mr. Architrave about the ground being too hard to give a proper reading.

Maybe that finally penetrated the old man’s skull and he got to wondering about it himself and that’s why he went up there today and that’s why McNaster had him killed. And, Hazel, I think they’re putting out a contract on me.”

“A what?”

“I think that’s what they call it.” Dittany wasn’t sure, having watched only one television crime show in her life and found it dull stuff in comparison to any average day’s doings around Lobelia Falls. “Anyway, the lawyer-McNaster called him Charlie and I got the impression that he’s from Scottsbeck-said Andy had better find out who that woman from the Conservation Committee was if he knew what was good for him, and what was good for him would automatically have to be bad for me, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe you’d better put that wig back on before you leave,”

Hazel replied in a worried tone. “How did they know you were from the Conservation Committee without knowing your name too?”

“I mentioned the committee when I was yelling at that Frankland man to get off the Spotted Pipsissewa, and I didn’t tell him who I was until after that arrow had been fired. So the man who shot Mr. Architrave must have been right there on the other side of the ridge where he could hear me but not see me, and ran away as soon as he’d loosed his second arrow. Or she did,” Dittany added, thinking of her meager gleanings from the receptionist’s wastebasket. “The woman in the front office didn’t seem to have done much of anything today. Maybe she was busy elsewhere. I wonder who she is and how heavy a bow she pulls.”

“That’s a thought, Dittany. She wouldn’t be anybody local.

You know McNaster can’t get anybody from Lobelia Falls to work for him because we all hate his guts. I must say I can’t imagine why Jim Streph does, though he’s so wrapped up in his art that he’d design new hinges for the doors of Hell if the Devil asked him to, and never think twice about where the money was coming from. But surely McNaster didn’t admit he’d put somebody up to killing old John?”

“Naturally not. He blustered around and claimed he didn’t know a thing about it, but what would you expect? Anyway, this Charlie kept insisting McNaster had better drop the idea of stealing the land. Even if he wasn’t guilty he’d get into trouble because Mr. Architrave’s death would focus public attention on the Enchanted Mountain. But McNaster said he wouldn’t because it’s all sewed up.”

“How, for goodness’ sake? Not that goodness has anything to do with it, obviously.”

“You sound like Mae West. That’s the most fantastic part of all, Hazel. You know Sam Wallaby is running for Development Commission, eh?”

“Is he? I’m afraid I hadn’t paid much attention.”

“Then you darn well should because he was right there in that office with the rest of them.”

“Sam Wallaby from the liquor store? That’s impossible. He’s always so nice about donating-“

“The eggnog for the Old Folks’ Christmas Party. I know. He was laughing his head off about how nobody could run against him because everybody thinks he’s such a fine, public-spirited citizen. And when I think of the two bucks I wasted on that fancy stationery so I could write him a nice thank-you note for the sauterne and Seven-Up we had at the flower show, I could spit!”

Hazel sat back and shook her head. “I simply cannot believe it.”

“Then you just sit back and fold your hands and see what’s going to happen as soon as they get him safely planted on the Development Commission. This Charlie’s going to get some gangster lawyer he knows who’s on the lam-I believe it’s the lam-anyway he’s going to do the paper work and escape to Tasmania and bang goes the Heart-leaved Twayblade.”

“Oh, Dittany!” At last Hazel was forced to grasp the hideous reality of the situation. “They could, you know. They did it before when they passed that emergency ordinance to get around the need for holding public hearings and took over that old chicken farm that was supposed to be the high school annex when any idiot could see it was the worst possible place for a school, and when they got it all graded and blacktopped they went through that farce about the bids and now-“

“And now that’s where McNaster’s sitting with his cronies cooking up another dirty deal,” Dittany finished for her. “I’ve got a good notion to march straight over to Sergeant Mac Vicar and tell him what I heard.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Hazel cautioned. “Maybe you don’t remember, but Mrs. MacVicar happens to be Andy McNasty’s mother’s own cousin, though naturally she doesn’t care to have it generally mentioned. And blood’s thicker than water when all’s said and done, and it’s only your word against his and if he’s got Sam Wallaby on his side-Dittany, what are we going to do?”

“Well, I know one thing we can do because Sam Wallaby himself told me. Not on purpose, naturally, but he was gassing on to this Charlie the lawyer about how he’s an absolute certain shoo-in because nobody filed nomination papers against him and it’s too late now. And he said the only way anybody could possibly defeat him would be through a write-in campaign, which isn’t going to happen because he’s such a sterling character and nobody bothers to vote in town elections anyway. So we’re going to put up a write-in candidate and we’re going to get out that vote and we’re going to lick the pants off that smarmy walrus and spike McNaster’s guns. Look!” She pulled out the twenty-dollar bill. “Andy McNasty gave me this.”

“Whatever for?”

“To get rid of me. After I’d heard all this stuff I thought I’d better get a look at who was with him, so I unlocked the door but he came rushing over and held it so I couldn’t see inside. All I could see was his right eye.”

“That would have been more than enough for me,” said Hazel fervently. “Whatever did you do then?”