“Do they sleep in the bells?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “As far as I can tell, they don’t actually sleep. They’re college students, remember?”
“Do you mean you can’t do anything about the bells?”
“They’re only doing it to annoy us. If we ignore it, we’ll annoy them back. Throw them off their game.”
“Hmph,” Mrs. Pruitt said, and strode off. I noticed afterward that she was being unusually gracious to the students. The students, for their part, took pains to shuffle their legs and tap their feet as much as possible in her presence. As soon as breakfast ended, I had sent them all down to the cow pasture to annoy one another while my team played a relatively straightforward match against Mrs. Briggs and the clones up in the sheep pasture.
In a just world, the Mountain Morris Mallet Men would have gone home after the Caerphilly Dames defeated them in the morning game, but the rules Mrs. Fenniman had devised for this tournament called for a complex multiple-elimination system. At least by beating the clones, my team got to play the Dames in the second match, which meant that I hadn’t heard the bells all afternoon.
Although come to think of it, if we’d lost the morning game, I’d have been up in the sheep pasture, and someone else could have found the murdered woman.
I also realized that Mrs. Pruitt and her team had had two chances to learn their way around the playing field that contained the crime scene. My team and the Morris men had had only one—an interrupted game in our case—and Mrs. Briggs and the clones hadn’t been there at all. Not that I knew of anyway. Should I mention this to the chief?
Maybe later. He was frowning at the Morris men.
“You didn’t hear any bells while you were playing?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “But they’re not permanently attached. If one sneaked down to our field to murder someone, he’d have taken off his bells.”
The chief nodded.
“Of course, that would imply premeditation,” I said.
He ignored me. Or maybe he was fascinated by the Morris dancing. All the other males in the backyard were. My nephew Eric was already imitating the dancers, fortunately with a plastic toy baseball bat rather than a croquet mallet. Dad was observing them with the rapt attention our family found alarming, because it usually signaled that he’d found a new hobby. Joan of Arc and Napoléon were slackers compared to Dad in pursuit of a new hobby.
The Shiffleys were variously leaning against the side of the barn or squatting on their ankles, elbows on their knees, a position they seemed to find comfortable and could hold indefinitely, probably due to long years of practice. I wasn’t quite sure why they liked to do this—perhaps to make people like me feel like city slickers.
They were tapping their feet and nodding their heads to the music. It was a lively tune played on a fiddle and an accordion—one of those songs that had migrated over to the Shenandoah Valley with early English and Irish settlers and taken root so thoroughly, you were surprised to find it had been born on the other side of the Atlantic.
“Co-ol,” my brother, Rob, said behind me. “It’s like a mating dance for Santa’s reindeer!”
I glanced back and saw the rest of the croquet players straggling up the hill, escorted by two of the chief’s deputies and Cousin Horace.
“Sammy,” the chief said, gesturing toward the lawn. “Get the rest of these people into the house so we can question them.”
Sammy scurried off. Horace, who was plumper than Sammy, arrived at the top of the hill slightly winded.
“You’ve got the photographs of Jane?” the chief asked.
Horace nodded.
“Oh, splendid!” I said. “You’ve identified her!”
“Jane as in Doe,” the chief said.
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
“How soon can you get copies printed out?” the chief asked Horace. “I want to show them to the witnesses and see if any of them know her. The sooner we get her identified, the better, but I don’t want to drag every single person out here past the body.”
“I could run down to your station and make some copies there,” Horace said, sounding slightly breathless and not at all enthusiastic about the prospect of running anywhere. “But that would take a good forty-five minutes.”
The chief growled again.
“If Meg has a color printer—” Horace added.
“It’s in the barn,” I said. “I’ll show you.”
“Just herd everybody into the living room and have them keep their mouths shut,” I heard the chief say to one of his deputies as I accompanied Horace to the barn. “Don’t want them contaminating one another’s stories any more than they already have.”
Fortunately, the barn’s roof had been in decent shape when we bought the property, needing only new shingles. We’d waited until the worst of the winter cold had passed before starting major work on the house, since we planned to camp in the barn till the house was habitable again. We’d put a futon in a large stall to serve as a bedroom and turned the former tack room into an office, since we could padlock the door and keep the computers safe.
“Nice setup,” Horace commented. “You should just make this your office permanently.”
“Yes, apart from the lack of heat or air conditioning, it’s perfect,” I said.
I hovered while Horace loaded the pictures into my computer and printed them. I offered to do the printing, but he refused, so I suspected the chief had told him not to let any of the photos out of his hands. A precaution probably aimed more at the press than at me, but I found myself wanting to circumvent it anyway. I found my chance when the toner ran out midway through printing.
“New cartridges in here,” I said, opening the supply cabinet’s door. “Which one’s out, color or—yow! Damn it!”
Chapter Five
Horace leaped to my rescue, which wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t in danger, just slightly hurt and seriously annoyed. Duck, Eric’s imaginatively named pet duck, was sitting in the box that held the toner cartridges, and when I’d reached in, she’d bitten me. Luckily, since ducks have no teeth, she hadn’t drawn blood, but her beak was hard and her bite remarkably forceful. I’d have a bruise.
“Stupid duck!” I exclaimed, shaking my hand. “Can you help me get her outside?”
Most of my family knew how to carry Duck safely, though not all of them had the nerve to do it. Luckily, Horace was a veteran duck wrangler and had no difficulty seizing her with one hand while holding her bill with the other. While he carried her out of the barn, I tossed her egg out the window, so she’d have no reason to linger if she did sneak back into our temporary office.
Then I hid one of the completed printouts of Jane Doe underneath the desk mat. Not that I had anything in particular I wanted to do with it, but you never knew.
Horace deleted the files from my hard drive after he’d printed his copies and shredded the several washed-out copies that had printed while the toner was running low.
“Okay,” he said, when he’d emptied the computer’s recycle folder. “Let’s take these to the chief.”
Back at the house, the deputies had herded the croquet players, the Shiffleys, and assorted members of my family into the living room. A few of them sat on folding lawn chairs dragged in from the yard, but most were milling about under the watchful eyes of the deputies, sipping cups of tea and coffee. Apparently Mother, as usual, was determined to turn the occasion into a social gathering.
Periodically, Sammy escorted someone into the living room, consulted a piece of paper, and led someone else out—to be interviewed by the chief, I deduced. Short interviews—apparently most of them knew nothing of interest to the chief.
The third time Sammy reappeared, he spotted Horace and his face lighted up. He abandoned his list and headed our way.
“Chief’s been asking every five minutes where you were with the photos,” he said, motioning to the archway.
Horace nodded and scurried out. I went over to the card
table that held the teapot and the coffee urn, where Mother stood, frowning with disapproval. I assumed she was upset by the decor—not just the lawn chairs and the card table but also the industrial-weight extension cords snaking through the room to power a few battered floor lamps. No doubt she’d rather have had the chief conduct his investigation by candlelight.
“I do hope Mrs. Pruitt and Mrs. Wentworth aren’t too put out,” she said as I poured myself some coffee. “And that other nice lady from the country club—what was her name? Lucy?”
“Lacie,” I said. “Put out by what?”
“At being treated like common suspects,” Mother said.
“You hope they’re not too upset?” I said. “What about me and Rob? And Rose Noire and Mrs. Fenniman—your own family? We’re suspects, too, you know.”
“Well, anyone in the family understands that these little things sometimes happen,” she said, waving dismissively. Yes, especially in our family. “But shouldn’t we be doing something to keep Mrs. Pruitt and her teammates from being badgered and interrogated?”
“Not if they’re guilty,” I said. “If they’re guilty, I want them badgered and interrogated until they confess. If you ask me, they’re at least as likely to be guilty as anyone else here. Especially Mrs. Pruitt.”
“You’re not upset about that?”
“We’re not close,” I said. “I hope she’s not the killer, but if it turns out she is, I think I can cope.”
“What about the country club?”
“I’m sure everyone there would cope, too. They’d have a harder time winning golf and tennis tournaments, though.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Mother said, sounding testy. “I meant, won’t all this make it harder for you and Michael to join the country club?”
“Mother, we don’t want to join the country club,” I said. “It’s expensive and boring. Only the older, stodgier faculty belong. We don’t want to offend them by turning down an invitation—not while Michael’s still working on tenure—so we’re trying not to get invited.”
“Trying not to get invited?” Mother repeated.
“I know it sounds crazy—”
“If Mrs. Pruitt is typical of the membership, it sounds remarkably sensible to me,” she said. “Joining the country club won’t help Michael’s career?”
I shook my head.
“I wish you’d told me that earlier,” she said with a sigh. “The time I wasted being nice to that woman.”
“You can relax,” I said. “You don’t have to be nice to her at all on our account.”
“That doesn’t mean we should be gratuitously rude to her,” Mother said.
“No, but isn’t it a relief to know we don’t have to be gratuitously chummy with her?”
“Dreadful woman,” Mother murmured, and I suddenly felt more cheerful. Mother knew more ways to cause someone trouble without actually being rude than anyone I’d ever met. Mrs. Pruitt didn’t stand a chance.
“I hope Burke knows what he’s doing,” Dad said, shaking his head as he helped himself to the tea. “He hasn’t told us anything.”
“Is that a hint?” I said. Dad’s face brightened, and after Mother left to cajole someone into brewing more coffee, I cheered Dad up by telling him what I knew.
Dad approved of everything I’d done—especially the things I’d glossed over when I told my story to the chief, like scanning the gully for Jane Doe’s purse and matching the croquet mallet to the wound. But I should have known he’d find something I should have done differently. Dad read mysteries by the hundred and fancied himself quite an expert on detection.
“You got some good photos of the body?” he asked.
“Photos? I didn’t have a camera.”
“You had your cell phone,” Dad said. “Doesn’t it take photos?
“I have no idea,” I said.
“You have the same model Rob has,” he said. “His can take pictures.”
“Does Rob actually take pictures with it?” I asked. I was genuinely curious. Only a week before, Rob had sought my help fixing his phone, and it turned out that he’d activated the keyguard during a game of Tetris and couldn’t make calls for three days. Not that I’d tell Dad—Rob still owed me a large, as-yet-unspecified favor in return for not telling anyone else in the family.
“I don’t expect him to,” Dad said. “But I thought you’d have figured it out.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Horace took photos. And they may need help identifying the victim, so I’m sure you’ll get to look at them eventually.”
I could tell this wasn’t a satisfactory answer. He wanted photos he could pore over, looking for clues. Not just a full-face photo but detailed close-ups of the wound, as well. He wandered off after giving me a reproachful look most parents wouldn’t inflict on their kids unless they’d done something illegal or immoral.
Mother and Minerva Burke returned bearing plates of cookies, and we all stood back as the crowd descended on them like a flock of ravenous seagulls.
“What were you planning to do about dinner?” Mother asked, in a stage whisper.
“Nothing special,” I said. “Michael will be tired from the faculty meeting, so I thought we’d stay in.”
“I meant for your guests,” Mother said.
“You mean the croquet players and the construction workers?” I said. “Send the locals home to find their own dinners, and give the students directions to Luigi’s.”
Mother shook her head. She should have realized by now that as a hostess, I’d never live up to her expectations. I usually exceeded her worst fears.
“Some of your guests aren’t getting along,” she murmured. I glanced up hastily. The last time she’d said that, I’d had to break up a fistfight between two cousins. This time, to my relief, no actual combat had begun. Mrs. Pruitt and the other Dames had gathered at one end of the room, pointedly not looking at Mrs. Briggs and the clones, who had clustered at the other end, ostentatiously ignoring Mrs. Pruitt and the Dames.
“Perhaps if you introduced them?” Mother suggested. “Drew them into conversation together?”
“Mother, it’s a police investigation, not a party,” I said. “If anyone’s the host, it’s Chief Burke.”
“And he knows better than to expect those two lots to get along,” Minerva Burke added. “You’re lucky—they’re behaving better than usual.”
“It’s a long-standing thing, then?” I asked. “I just assumed they were carrying the croquet rivalry too far.”
“Where have you been, girl?” Minerva said. “Obviously not clawing your way up in Caerphilly society.”
“Trying to avoid it,” I said. “Why don’t they like each other?”
“Mrs. Pruitt and her crowd make a big fuss about being descendants of the founding families of Caerphilly.”
“And Mrs. Briggs and the clones aren’t from around here,” I said, nodding.
“Worse—they make money bringing in more people who aren’t from around here,” Mrs. Burke said. “May Briggs’s husband built that development of town houses Mrs. Pruitt and her gang tried so hard to block. And Lady Pruitt still hasn’t forgiven the clones for selling a house in Westlake to that professional basketball player. They did manage to stay civil to one another in public until the whole outlet-mall thing broke.”
“Outlet mall?” Mother asked, her keen shopper’s instincts coming to full alert.
“There’s a rumor that Evan Briggs wants to build a big outlet mall in town,” I said.
“More than a rumor,” Mrs. Burke said. “He and the clones have put together a formal proposal. Three million square feet—larger than Potomac Mills, which might make it the largest in the country. Henrietta Pruitt’s leading the battle against it—the only useful thing I’ve seen her do in the four years we’ve been in town.”
“Ah,” I said. “So that’s why they’ve all been so surly. Maybe I accidentally did something right, keeping them on different croquet fields all day. Probably prevented—well, w
ho knows what.”
I started to say bloodshed, then remembered Jane Doe.
“So what if the murdered woman is allied to one side or the other in the battle over the outlet mall?” I said aloud. “That might make anyone on the other side a logical suspect. We just have to look for the connection.”
“If you find one, I’m sure Henry would be much obliged for the information,” Mrs. Burke said, her tone sharper than usual.
“Naturally.”
“How nice,” Mother said. No doubt she’d heard Mrs. Burke’s tone and thought another social rift needed mending. “I know Meg always enjoys assisting the police in their investigations—isn’t that what they call it?”
“Usually, when the police say that, it means they’re about to arrest the person, Mother,” I said. “I’ll just try not to get in the chief’s way.”
“I’m surprised you two aren’t involved in the mall issue,” Mrs. Burke said, dragging the conversation back to safe ground. “Considering how it affects you.”
“Affects us?” I echoed. “What do you mean?” Though I had a sinking feeling I already knew.
“Well, they haven’t named the location,” Mrs. Burke said. “But if you look at the documents and know which local farmers haven’t signed the protest petition—”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Mr. Shiffley’s selling them his farm.”
Chapter Six
I glared over at Mrs. Briggs and the clones. Then, for good measure, at the nearest Shiffleys. They were a close-knit clan; they had to know what their uncle was up to. Yet here they were, helping us beggar ourselves to fix up a house that might soon have the world’s largest outlet mall in its backyard.
I figured I should volunteer to join Mrs. Pruitt’s battle against the mall, even if it meant seeing more of her. If she was so gung ho on fighting the mall, why hadn’t she enlisted Michael and me?
And in case Mrs. Pruitt and company lost the battle, shouldn’t we halt all this expensive construction until we knew if we’d want to keep living here?
I looked up, to see Mrs. Burke studying me.
“Sorry,” I said. “That’s a lot to digest.”
No Nest for the Wicket Page 3