Die Like an Eagle

by Donna Andrews

Chief Burke was standing near the home dugout, observing. I strolled over to see him.

  “Are you okay with what they’re doing to your crime scene?” I asked.

  “Apparently this isn’t my crime scene,” he said. “The state police brought in some dogs this afternoon—dogs who can detect blood in amounts invisible to the human eye.”

  “And they didn’t find anything.”

  “Dead squirrel just outside the right-field fence,” he said. “And a little mild interest in the area at the edge of the parking lot where the porta-potty was. Which would be consistent with someone bringing the body here in a vehicle and stuffing it into the porta-potty, shedding a little blood along the way.”

  “But not from very far away, according to what Dad said, right?” I asked.

  “Correct,” the chief said. “Apart from that one spot, nothing. You’ve never seen two more bored and discouraged cadaver dogs in your life.”

  “So if this isn’t the crime scene, where is?”

  “We’re sending the dogs out into the woods in the morning,” the chief said. “They’re resting now—they can only work for so long at a stretch. And while we’re at it, we’re going to turn them loose on our various suspects’ cars.”

  “Hope none of the suspects are prone to nosebleeds,” I said.

  He chuckled at that.

  Just then Randall spotted us and headed our way, with Mr. Witherington trailing behind him.

  “Looks like progress,” the chief said, nodding at the field.

  “I just wish we’d been able to start this a week ago,” Mr. Witherington fretted.

  “We’ll do what we can,” Randall said. “I’m going to get my tool kit and pitch in.”

  “I can help if you like,” I said. “I’ve got my own tool kit in the car.”

  “The metal parts of the bleachers and dugouts could use a lot of work,” Randall said. “I’ve got a soldering iron and gear over in my truck, but everyone else I could ask to use it is already doing something slightly more important.”

  “Randall, you do realize that a soldering iron isn’t a tool many people know how to use,” Mr. Witherington said. “I, for example, wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do with one.”

  “Meg’s a blacksmith,” Randall said. “She’s probably better with a soldering iron than I am.”

  “I stand rebuked for doubting,” Mr. Witherington said.

  “I’m nowhere near as skilled as either of you,” the chief said. “But I can use a shovel.”

  “So can I,” Mr. Witherington said. “I’d be happy to help out with the field leveling.”

  “How about a paintbrush, chief?” Randall said. “And you, too, Jim, if you’ve got some old clothes you can change into. The Snack Shack and the concrete parts of the dugouts could really use a coat of paint. By the time my guys are finished with what we’re already doing, it’ll be too late for it to dry by morning, but if you can tackle it now—”

  Both the chief and Mr. Witherington were already taking off their jackets and rolling up their sleeves.

  “Start with the Snack Shack, so Meg can work on the dugouts,” Randall said. “We may not be able to get everything done with the bodies we’ve got, but we can make a darned good start.”

  “How many bodies can you use?” I stopped halfway to Randall’s truck to ask.

  “If you can find them, we can find something for them to do,” Randall said. “You thinking of calling Her Highness?”

  “Calling who?” Mr. Witherington asked.

  “Mother,” I was already saying into the phone. “We could use volunteers to get the ball field ready. Can you see if anyone there’s willing.”

  “Of course, dear.”

  “Excellent,” Mr. Witherington said. “I do wish Mr. Brown would return my calls tonight. We could use the keys to the Snack Shack and the supply shed.”

  “Meg can probably pick the lock,” Randall said.

  “Useful skill for parents of small mischievous boys,” I said, seeing Mr. Witherington’s startled look. Though actually I owed my burglary skills to the long-ago summer when Dad—after reading too many of Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr books and watching Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief one too many times—had decided he wanted to become a white hat burglar and tried to learn picking locks. After hours of painstaking effort, Dad still had trouble opening doors with a key, but I had become reasonably proficient at picking ordinary, uncomplicated locks.

  And fortunately, ordinary, uncomplicated locks were all Biff had bothered to install on the Snack Shack and the supply shed. I got them open just in time for the arrival of a posse of volunteers carrying brooms, brushes, buckets, and bottles of bleach.

  I collected my tools and Randall’s soldering gear and tackled the dugouts. The Eagles were scheduled to be in the visitor’s dugout for tomorrow morning’s game, so just in case I only had the time to make one structurally sound, I started with that one. The dugout was really just a low concrete wall surrounding a bare wooden bench and topped by a ramshackle chain-link cage. It might protect the players from fly balls and help the coaches keep them more or less where they were supposed to be while the team was batting, but it offered no shade on a sunny day or shelter from a rainstorm. We could do better for our kids. And if I had anything to do with it, we would.

  But for now, I set to work. Neither cage nor bench was well-built to begin with, and I could see no signs that anyone had ever bothered with any repairs or maintenance. I unbolted the bench and tossed it outside, trusting that Randall’s crew could repair or replace it, and began hammering and soldering to repair first the frame that was supposed to support the bench, and then the chain-link cage.

  As I was finishing up, Randall and one of his cousins arrived with a new, nicely sanded two-by-four for the bench.

  “It’s still not pretty,” I said as we bolted the seat in place. “But it’s a lot safer.”

  “I feel much better about putting the kids in this,” Randall said, nodding with approval.

  “I’d feel even better if we could get some kind of a roof on this thing,” I said.

  “Lipstick on a pig,” Randall said. “I’m already drawing up plans for new dugouts.”

  “But for tomorrow, why not rig up some tarps to make a roof,” I suggested. “And then the kids and coaches won’t have to broil in the sun, so we’ll see less sunburn and heat prostration—”

  Randall was already pulling out his measuring tape to see what size tarp was needed.

  As I was packing up my gear to start working on the other dugout, Mr. Witherington arrived carrying a paintbrush and a bucket of paint.

  “I’ll be out of your way in a minute,” I said.

  “No rush,” he said. “I welcome the excuse to take a breather. Randall’s a pretty stern taskmaster.”

  It didn’t really sound like a complaint, and while he was paint-smeared and disheveled, he looked a lot more relaxed and happy than he had when I’d first seen him this morning.

  “Nice to do something physical for a change,” he went on. “And it’s taking my mind off things. It’s been an unsettling day.”

  “Murder tends to have that effect,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I’ve never had any previous experience with murder. Tell me—was Shep Henson well liked here?”

  A good question.

  “I wouldn’t say well liked,” I said. “But not really disliked, either—just not that well known. He lived over in Clay County and did most of his socializing there. People here in Caerphilly mainly saw him at baseball games.”

  “So people here only knew him as an umpire,” he said. “Which means they probably disliked him.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “But only mildly. And in an impersonal kind of way. I mean, people say they hate the tax man, but that doesn’t mean they’d take it out on a neighbor who happens to work for the IRS.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Anyway, seeing that he wasn’t exactly a po
pular man here, I thought it would be nice to notify some of his colleagues.”

  “Other umpires?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I thought I’d make a few calls, find out which of the regional umpire associations he belonged to. I thought perhaps they might want to do a wreath. Or perhaps even send a delegation to the funeral when that’s held.”

  I has a sudden vision of a graveside delegation of umpires, clad in blue uniforms with black face masks and chest protectors, simultaneously raising their fists in the well-known “you’re out” gesture. Probably not what Mr. Witherington had in mind.

  “Sounds like a nice idea,” I said aloud. “Did you have any luck?”

  “None at all,” he said. “Mr. Henson didn’t belong to any umpire association that I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Well, that’s—odd.” I actually started out to say something like “that’s about what I’d expect with Biff running things,” but thought better of it. Biff bashing might make Mr. Witherington want to defend the man his organization had chosen to head our league. Much more effective to let Biff make our case for us.

  “Very odd,” Mr. Witherington said. “And disquieting. Mr. Henson appears to have had no association whatsoever with any of the organizations that provide umpire training and credentialing, which casts serious doubt on his qualifications.”

  “Maybe his brother could shed some light on that,” I suggested. “I mean, wouldn’t he have checked out Shep’s qualifications before hiring him?”

  “One would assume so,” Mr. Witherington said. From his tone I deduced that he and Biff had already had a conversation on the subject, and that he wasn’t pleased with the results.

  I kept a grave, worried look on my face, because I didn’t think it would make a very good impression if I did a fist pump while yelling “Yes! He’s getting it!”

  “So, there’s unlikely to be a delegation of umpires at Mr. Henson’s funeral,” Mr. Witherington went on.

  “We’ll spread the word and he’ll have a good turnout,” I said. “We owe him that much. Meanwhile, on a practical note, do we have an umpire for tomorrow’s games?”

  He looked at me and blinked in surprise.

  “Do you know you’re the first person who’s asked that question?” he said.

  “You mean we don’t?” I exclaimed. “Is there someone we can call now? The college athletic department might have someone locally who’s qualified. Or—”

  “Relax,” he said. “I took care of it this afternoon. I found a volunteer for tomorrow’s games—he’s coming up from Richmond, so there should be no question of partisanship. We can make do with one tomorrow, and I have almost certainly lined up two very seasoned and qualified professional umpires for the Sunday and Monday games. I know the league isn’t accustomed to paying for two umpires, but it does make for a much better game experience, and if the treasury can’t handle it I can talk to the home office and see if we can provide some financial assistance. We do that sometimes for leagues that are just getting started.”

  “You’ll have to ask Biff about the treasury,” I said. “Though if you ask me, if the treasury can’t handle a few umpires, there’s no reason we can’t all pitch in and do some fundraising to cover it. People around here are pretty good at volunteering for things.” I nodded at the field.

  “Then why wasn’t all of this done before the start of the season?” Mr. Witherington made a sweeping gesture that took in the field, the bleachers, the Snack Shack, and the parking lot, all hotbeds of repair activity.

  “Nobody asked us to,” I said. “And I think a lot of people were afraid that volunteering to fix up things would be seen as a criticism of the job Biff has been doing. Thank goodness you were here to help make this possible.”

  We both stood for a few moments watching the hive of activity around us. In the outfield, a team of volunteers was disassembling the outfield fence, which we’d discovered was not according to Summerball regulations, being too deep in center field and too shallow along the sides. Someone had used the baseline chalker to mark the proper location, and a second team with fencepost-hole-digging tools was reinstalling the fence.

  “No, we can’t put down turf tonight,” we overheard Randall saying as he strolled by with a couple of volunteers. “It takes time for the grass roots to grow into the ground—if we played on it tomorrow morning, it could slip out from under the kids’ feet like a throw rug. But if you’re still willing to donate some at the end of the season, I’ll donate the labor to install it.”

  Chief Burke was supervising the installation of a tarp over the home dugout—I recognized one of the red, white, and blue tarps we used to shade the viewing stands on which the dignitaries sat to watch the parade every Fourth of July. A similar tarp was already draped over the fence beside the visitors’ dugout, waiting until I finished making it structurally sound. I jotted a line in my notebook to remind me that we might need to arrange replacements for the viewing stand—unless Randall got busy and built those new dugouts in the next two months.

  Plenty of time to worry about that.

  One of Randall’s workmen was hanging a new SNACK SHACK sign over the serving counter that ran the width of the front wall of the freshly painted little shack. Behind the counter half a dozen women in aprons and kitchen gloves were vigorously scrubbing every inch of the shack’s interior, all the while muttering such things as “Who in the world leaves a food service area this filthy?” and “Lucky we haven’t all been poisoned by now!” On the far side of the shack, more women were doing the same to the grill, the condiment table, and the picnic tables. I recognized a mix of women from the Baptist Ladies Auxiliary and the Episcopal Guild of St. Clotilda’s, and deduced that both Mother and Minerva Burke had been recruiting volunteers.

  The workers in the parking lot had finished leveling it, and were now using rakes and shovels to help level the loads of gravel now arriving in Shiffley Construction trucks.

  “Well, that other dugout isn’t going to repair itself,” I said.

  I repaired the other dugout. And then the bleachers. And some hinges and shelves in the Snack Shack. The fence needed a lot of work—in fact, it might have been less trouble to replace it altogether—but with the help of some of Randall’s workmen, who had finished with the lights and the parking lot, I made sure it wasn’t going to fall down and that there were no dangerous sharp edges and protruding wires that could shred small shins or poke out young eyes.

  In the middle of our efforts on the outfield fence, I went back to my car to get another tool and spotted something in the parking lot that brought me to a halt. A pickup truck whose right rear taillight had been broken and then patched with strips of silver duct tape in a neat pattern like a giant asterisk. I’d seen that mended taillight before.

  And then I remembered where I’d seen it, and forced myself to keep moving. That was the pickup I’d told Aida about, the one that had been parked at one end of a line of trucks in the parking lot of Biff’s scrapyard, and then disappeared by the time Aida and I had returned from our hike to the other gate.

  I fetched the tool I’d been looking for, and on my way back to the field I committed the truck’s license plate to memory. Then as soon as I got the chance, I took the chief aside and told him about it. I was afraid he’d think I was being overly imaginative, but he took me seriously enough to call Debbie Ann to ask her to run the license number.

  “You’re sure you saw it out there?” he said, as we stood waiting for Debbie Ann’s computer to produce results.

  “Reasonably sure,” I said. “One truck looks pretty much like another to me, but the taillight repair was pretty distinctive.”

  He was opening his mouth to say something, then paused and listened. He frowned.

  “Thank you,” he said. “No, nothing else for now.”

  He put his phone back into his pocket and turned the frown on me.

  “Keep this to yourself for now,” he said.

  I nodded and watched for a few moments a
s he thought. He looked up, saw me, and smiled slightly.

  “This may have nothing to do with the murder,” he said.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “But I will be asking Mr. Samuel Yoder the reason for his visit to Mr. Brown’s place of business this afternoon.”

  He picked up the can of paint he’d been using and headed back to the field. I followed more slowly and peered around as I walked to see if I could spot Mr. Yoder. Yes, there he was out in left field, using a posthole digger. Hard work, I knew, so maybe that accounted for the grim look on his face. Although everyone around him seemed cheerful enough. Mr. Yoder was the only one with an expression on his face like an Old Testament prophet. And in spite of his gray hair and thin frame, he was wielding the posthole digger with impressive ease. Yes, he’d have had the strength to hoist Shep’s body and stow it in the porta-potty.

  I wondered if the chief would be including Mr. Yoder’s truck on tomorrow’s to-do list for the blood sniffing dogs.

  Not my problem. I shoved Mr. Yoder out of mind and focused back on my work.

  By 1:00 A.M. we’d finished nearly everything we could think of to do, and except for Randall and a few of his workmen, everyone had straggled home. As I fell into bed, I couldn’t decide which emotion was strongest—the intense satisfaction of finally getting my hands on the ball field and making it better—or my intense dread of the alarm clock that was going to wake me far too early.

  Chapter 18

  I was back on the baseball field, yelling at Biff. He was carrying a roll of sod out onto the field, and I kept telling him to stop, that it wasn’t safe, that if he installed sod right before the game it wouldn’t be stable. He ignored me. He set the sod down on the infield, on top of all the old grass and weeds, and began unrolling it. I realized it wasn’t good sod—it was just a tangle of crabgrass, stinging nettles, and poison ivy. And then I heard the boys calling “Mommy! Mommy!” and turned to see that they were both sinking into the horrible Biff sod, as if along with the weeds he was unrolling quicksand.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” I opened my eyes and found Josh and Jamie bouncing on the bed. Michael was already up and in the shower. “Mommy! Time to get up! It’s Opening Day again!”