Six Geese A-Slaying

by Donna Andrews

  “That’s true,” I said. He returned to his cooking and I figured out how to scroll down the article with one hand while eating with the other.

  “Just our luck to have a Trib reporter here for the murder,” I grumbled, through a mouthful of eggs.

  “Is it bad?” he asked.

  “Could be worse,” I said. “And maybe I misjudged Werzel—this is certainly not the slash job I expected from him.”

  “Probably because it’s not his byline.”

  I scrolled up to the top of the article again.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Good eyes; I didn’t even notice that. Who’s this Keating person?”

  Michael shrugged.

  “He must have shown up after Werzel called about the murder. Or maybe wrote it from the facts Werzel phoned in.”

  “Good grief,” I said. “You should see what it says at the bottom of the article: ‘Staff writer Ainsley Werzel contributed to this report.’ I feel sorry for him. He hung around all day, had to rough it in our unheated living room overnight, and all he gets is ‘contributed to this report.’ That’s not fair!”

  “Maybe that’s why he’s still hanging around again today,” Michael said.

  “Werzel? Damn,” I said. “Sorry for him doesn’t mean I want him around. Maybe he just doesn’t know the road is open.”

  “I think four or five people have already made a point of telling him,” Michael said. “He says he’s looking for his camera, but I suspect he’s on the prowl for dirt.”

  “Has he reported the camera?” I asked. “Maybe he didn’t lose it after all—maybe Norris Pruitt lifted it.”

  “Not sure he’s officially reported it, but I’m sure the chief knows it’s missing,” Michael said. “Maybe when they catch Norris Pruitt, they’ll find the camera.”

  “True,” I said. “It wouldn’t be in the stuff they seized from Norris’s bin; Doleson was holding that hostage for several months. But unless Norris has undergone a miraculous transformation, he’s probably filching things and stashing them somewhere.”

  Michael nodded. He slid the last of the bacon into a covered dish and turned the camping stove off.

  “That should do it,” he said. “Werzel just went outside—maybe I should keep an eye on him.”

  “Or maybe just tell him now that the road’s open he should hit it?” I suggested.

  “Never wise to antagonize the press,” he said. He topped off his coffee cup, put on his heavy jacket, and went outside.

  The idea that Norris might have filched Werzel’s camera cheered me no end. Odds were that by the time Werzel got his camera back, the parade, if not the murder, would be old news and whatever embarrassing or unflattering photos the camera contained would never see the light of day, much less the Style section of the Trib. Still—perhaps I should ask Clarence and Caroline, if they found it first, to give me a few minutes alone with its delete button.

  If Clarence was still outside, maybe I could have a private word with him. I threw on my own wraps and went outside myself. I was still standing on the back porch, adjusting to the cold and looking around for Clarence, when I heard Michael’s voice.

  “This is Ernest,” Michael was saying. “Our first llama.”

  First llama? I’d been referring to him as “the” llama. And while I had to admit he wasn’t much trouble—far less than most human visitors—I wasn’t ready for an entire herd of Ernests and Ernesti-nas grazing in our tiny pasture. Though I feared Michael was.

  I started to say so and stopped. Not a discussion I wanted to have in public, and especially not in front of a reporter. But I made a mental note that we needed to have that discussion soon. Meanwhile, I crunched through the snow to the pasture. Michael was leaning against the fence, gazing proudly at Ernest. Werzel looked grumpy, so I assumed he’d seen the “contributed to” credit. And he obviously wasn’t enjoying Michael’s discourse on the joys of llama ownership.

  “Right, right,” he said. “So what can you tell me about this Doleson guy?”

  Michael and I both immediately put on appropriately somber, regretful expressions. Michael, of course, was the better actor, but I’d had plenty of experience behaving properly at funerals of relatives I’d hardly met—and a few I’d met and heartily wished I hadn’t.

  “A terribly sad business,” Michael said, shaking his head. I shook mine too, in solidarity.

  “Sad?” Werzel said. “Who are you kidding? From what I hear, he was the biggest louse in town. If you liked him, you must be the only two who did.”

  “I didn’t know him very well,” I said.

  “But any man’s death diminishes me,” Michael intoned.

  “Dickens?” I asked. “Not A Christmas Carol, I know that.”

  “Donne,” Michael said.

  “Oh, right.”

  “Done what?” Werzel asked.

  “John Donne,” Michael said. “Seventeenth-century poet. ‘No man is an island’?”

  “Oh, I get it,” Werzel said, though from his expression I didn’t think he did. “Getting back to Doleson—”

  “Look, if you’re trying to get us to say something snarky about the dead guy, forget it,” I said. “We didn’t know him very well, but we can still feel sad about someone dying in such a horrible way at a season when people are thinking about holiday celebrations, not funerals.”

  Michael nodded solemnly. Werzel looked back and forth between us for a few seconds.

  “Right,” he said. “I’m going to see what the chief is up to.”

  Chapter 24

  Michael and I both breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’m going to rehearse,” he said. “I can’t do it in the barn with Chief Burke and his men, so I guess I’ll stay out here.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “The cold air’s not good for your voice. Rehearse in the house. I’m used to it, and our house guests will just have to deal.”

  “I’ll probably drive them all out again,” he said.

  “You make that sound like a bad thing.”

  Michael did go to the other end of the house, where he could really cut loose and declaim at full volume. Very soon everyone else found it important to be out in the barn or back in town. I never got the chance to ask Clarence or Caroline about the camera.

  Our land line wasn’t working yet, but I checked in with a few people while my cell phone still had signal. Our Virgin Mary had given birth to a nine-pound baby girl, to be named Noel Grace. Dad got rave reviews on all sides for his performance as Santa. All the parade participants had made it safely home, except for the animals, who were warm and snug at the college barn. But I failed miserably in my subtle attempts to gather information about Doleson. Did people really know that little about him? Or were they just unwilling to share what they knew? I finally abandoned all subtlety and called several of the worst gossips in town, with no luck. Either no one had any dirt on him or they weren’t going to share it within the remaining useful life of my cell phone battery. The signal was getting fuzzy anyway, so I gave up.

  Around ten, the snow began again. At first only a few scattered flakes came down at apparently random intervals, like advance scouts. Then, all of a sudden, as if the scouts had sent back particularly good reports, the flakes began coming down more heavily. And not big, damp flakes that promised a wet, sloppy, but short-lived snow. These were tiny, earnest little flakes that meant real accumulation if they kept it up for a while. Which, according to the weather reports I could get on my battery-operated radio, they would.

  I didn’t tell Michael. He could look out the window for himself, and if he hadn’t, no need for me to upset him.

  As the snow arrived, the remaining police officers departed, although before they left, they wrapped a few more rounds of crime scene tape around the pig shed, the barn, and several unidentifiable snow-covered lumps in other parts of the back yard.

  I wrapped presents, muttering along as Michael rehearsed. Then I packed the borrowed Boy Scout equipment, still
muttering.

  About noon, I heard the noise of heavy machinery outside—probably the Shiffleys’ snow plow going by at close range.

  Michael strolled into the kitchen and put the teakettle on the camp stove.

  “Maybe we’ll make that show after all,” he said. So he had been peeking.

  A few moments later, I heard the strains of “Good King Wenceslas” out in the yard.

  “More carolers?” Michael asked.

  “No,” I said peering out. “It’s the Boy Scouts. Come to fetch their camping gear, I assume. And looks as if they’re starting their cleanup, even though the litter’s buried under the snow. They’re caroling while they work.”

  “Excellent,” Michael said. “I’d go and help them if I didn’t have to rehearse some more.”

  “Will they bother you?” I asked, suddenly anxious. “I can tell them to keep it down if you need to concentrate.”

  “What more perfect background music could I have for rehearsing A Christmas Carol?” he said. He took his coffee cup and his script and headed back toward his office. I put on my coat, hat, boots, and mittens; picked up my coffee; and went outside.

  I had to admire the Boy Scouts’ dedication. It was still well below freezing and as in the carol, the snow was deep and crisp and even—three inches of it and counting. It covered everything, including the trash they’d come to pick up. I’d have been tempted to postpone the cleanup until warmer weather. But the Scouts were rummaging all through the yard and up and down the road, excavating even the smallest lump under the snow to fill the huge black plastic trash bags they were dragging behind them.

  Randall Shiffley, who owned the construction company and served as one of the scoutmasters, had apparently used his tractor not only to plow snow but also to drag over a Dempster Dumpster, which stood at the end of our yard closest to town. Some of the older Scouts were dusting off the temporary trash barrels we’d scattered throughout the yard, gathering them up, emptying them into the Dumpster, and finally loading the trash barrels onto a big Shiffley Construction Company truck. I was relieved to see that the Scouts gave the various objects festooned with yellow crime scene tape as wide a berth as if they were radioactive.

  Randall was sipping coffee from an insulated mug and observing the action with an approving look on his face.

  “I had to come out anyhow, to pick up the camping gear, so I thought we might as well make a start,” he said. “Get the trash cans out of your way; do what we can. We’ll need to come back after the snow melts for the final policing, of course.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “You think they’d like some hot chocolate, or maybe some cider?”

  “I’m sure they’d appreciate either one,” he said. “It’s a cold day, and this is thirsty work.”

  “I’ll go make some if you’ll help me carry it out,” I said. “And I’ve got a lot of their gear inside—we borrowed it for our unexpected houseguests.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. He followed me back to the kitchen and sat at our kitchen table, sipping his coffee, as I heated the milk and cider over the camping stove.

  “By the way,” I said, “I heard you might be one of the people who isn’t entirely broken up by Mr. Doleson’s death.”

  “You heard right,” he said. “You probably also heard about when I tried to punch his lights out.”

  “Over the eagle’s nest thing?”

  Randall nodded.

  “I didn’t realize you were that much of a bird lover,” I said.

  “Well, I guess I like birds as well as the next guy. But this wasn’t just any bird. It was a bald eagle. Our national bird.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said, feigning ignorance. “I just heard it was an eagle. Michael and I were out of town then.”

  “Yes, a bald eagle. Only eagle we usually get in Virginia. And everyone knew Doleson had smashed that eagle’s nest, but he was too sneaky to leave any evidence. Not that Chief Burke didn’t do his best.”

  “No wonder all the SPOOR people were so upset,” I said. “I’m surprised Dad didn’t tell me about it.”

  “I think your father felt that what happened was his fault,”

  Randall said. “Since he was president of SPOOR when Doleson did it. Which is nonsense—no one blames your father at all. Not much you can do when you’ve got a sneaky, mean bas—er, scoundrel like Doleson.”

  Randall still seemed quite worked up about the eagle, even four or five months after the event. Worked up enough to take revenge? I had a hard time believing it. But then, I had a hard time believing Clarence could be involved, either. And I remembered what the chief had said about the killer’s height—at least six foot two. Like Clarence, Randall was tall enough to have staked Doleson.

  “So yes, I was mad at him,” Randall was saying. “And since he was still trying to cause me trouble over punching him, I guess you could say I had a double motive. That what you’re asking—whether I could have killed him?”

  “Or whether you know anyone who might have?”

  “Lot of high words down at the American Legion hall after the bald eagle incident. But not a lot of people mad enough—or stupid enough—to actually do anything.”

  “Of course, if you’re thinking of killing someone, you wouldn’t necessarily run around making threats first,” I said. “Makes it so much easier for the police.”

  “True,” he said, with a slight nod, as if conceding a point. “Still—there was some talk of boycotting Doleson’s businesses, but hardly anyone rents storage units from him anymore, and it’s not as if the poor souls living at the Pines have anywhere else to go, so that died down. Most anyone did was get up a petition to get him kicked out of the Santa job, and you can see how much notice the Town Council paid to that.”

  “It still seems incredible that the Town Council made him Santa,” I said. “Do you think he had something on one of them?”

  “You mean, was he blackmailing them?” Randall tilted his head as he considered the idea. “It’s a thought. If the chief ever finds Doleson’s files, maybe we’ll find out.”

  “Ever finds the files—you mean they weren’t at the Spare Attic?”

  Randall shook his head.

  “One of my cousins is a deputy,” he said. “He’s back out there tonight, searching the Attic and the Pines, top to bottom. And no luck. So either Doleson didn’t have files or he kept them someplace they haven’t found yet, or someone got out to the Attic before the police did.”

  “And before Caroline and Clarence did,” I added.

  He nodded.

  “So who do you think killed Doleson?” I asked.

  Randall tipped his chair back and folded his arms behind his head as he considered the question.

  “Plenty of people mad enough,” he said. “But it’s hard to think of anyone mean enough to do it at Christmas, and risk spoiling the parade like that. Still—the Lord moves in mysterious ways, and if He was moved to call Ralph Doleson home at what might seem to us an odd and inconvenient moment—well, I’m not going to complain.”

  In other words, good riddance to bad rubbish. I wondered what he meant by Doleson still trying to cause him trouble. Legal trouble, perhaps? I was searching for a tactful way to ask when Randall spoke up again.

  “I don’t know who killed him,” he said. “But I’ll tell you who didn’t do it.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Norris Pruitt, that’s who. There’s no love lost between me and any of the Pruitts, you understand. But Norris? He has the height, yes, and the strength, but he sure as hell doesn’t have the gumption. Or the cunning to cover it up even as well as the killer did. And you can tell Chief Burke I said so.”

  “It’s not as if he listens to me,” I said. “And after all, the chief knows Ralph Doleson wasn’t exactly well liked in Caerphilly.”

  “ ‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone!’ ” Randall and I both started as Michael stepped into the kitchen, declaiming from memory, but carrying the scrip
t behind his back.

  “ ‘A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!’ ” Michael went on. “ ‘Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.’ ”

  “Yeah, that was Doleson all right,” Randall said.

  “Actually, that was Scrooge,” I said. “Michael’s rehearsing. Don’t you say his name in there, somewhere?”

  Michael consulted his text.

  “You’re right,” he said. “ ‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge!’ ” he repeated. “For the show tonight,” he added, for Randall’s sake.

  “A one-man show of Dickens’s Christmas Carol,” I said.

  “I heard,” Randall said. “I’ve got tickets. It’s still on, then?”

  “Far as I know,” I said. “Assuming the power’s still on at the theater, and anyone can get there.”

  “Power’s fine in town,” Randall said. “So far, anyway. And plenty of people can walk to the college theater. But if I were you, I’d head in there now, before the second storm gets going.”

  I looked at Michael.

  “We’d probably get snowed in there rather than here,” Michael said. “And that would spoil our plans for a quiet Christmas alone together.”

  “I could try to bring you back afterwards on the plough,” Randall said. “Of course, I can’t do anything about the power in the house—odds are that’s out till after the second storm. But if I can get through, I’ll bring you back.”

  “But you can’t guarantee that even you can get through,” Michael said. “How many inches were they predicting? Six to twelve?”

  “Ten to fifteen, last I heard,” Randall said, looking out the window and nodding. “You don’t see many snows like that around these parts.”

  He sounded as if he approved of the weather’s rare burst of industry.

  Michael looked wistful.

  “You want to do the show,” I said. “And I want to see it. Let’s get packing.”

  “You’re on,” Michael said.