It was tricky fitting all of the evidence bags and me onto the little rolling cart, but we finally managed, and I began the slow, hand-over-hand trek back through the tunnels. Going back ought to have been less nerve-wracking, since I knew that at the other end of the tunnel I’d find fresh air and freedom, but the tunnel sloped slightly upward—enough to make pulling myself more challenging, even without baggage. And lying on top of the evidence raised me so high on the cart that my back occasionally scraped the ceiling of the tunnel, bringing down tiny avalanches of dirt and stones that set my heart beating faster. Around halfway through the second leg of the tunnel, my arms felt so heavy I wasn’t sure I could go on, and all I could think of was how ironic it would be if I stopped to take a rest there in the cart and got caught in a cave-in, a few short feet from freedom. That thought triggered my second wind, and I managed the last few feet and scrambled up to the surface, leaving the evidence bags in the cart. Someone else could haul them up the ladder.
Was my claustrophobia that much better than Horace’s? I thought so. Instead of popping out of the trapdoor like a jack-in-the-box I took a deep breath a few rungs from the top of the ladder and composed my face so I looked cool, calm, and collected when I stepped out into the crawl space under the bandstand.
Michael was waiting for me.
“Welcome back!” he stage whispered, giving me a hug. “How was it?”
“Interesting,” I said. “I suspect Horace was hoping to find some key piece of evidence to prove Mr. Throckmorton’s innocence, but so far, no dice.”
“Oh, dear,” he murmured.
“What’s more—”
Suddenly, gunfire broke out overhead. I started, and hit my head on the low ceiling of the crawl space.
“Relax,” Michael said. “It’s only the First Battle of Manassas. Do you think there’s any chance Horace will be coming out before World War II is over? The program gets a little quiet after that, and we’d like to close and cover up the trapdoor for a while.”
“No idea,” I said. “I think he’ll probably find things to putter around with over there until the chief gives him a direct order to come back. He sent back all the evidence he’s collected so far with me—any chance you could haul it up?”
Since I was probably not supposed to let the bags out of my custody, I peered down from the top while Michael scrambled up and down the ladder with the evidence.
“That it?” he asked.
“Rob should have some spare clothes in one of those bins,” I said. “Can you take some down and send them halfway over on the cart?”
“Can do,” he said.
“I’ll call Rob and tell him it’s coming.”
But first, I called the chief to tell him that I had the evidence.
He wasn’t as delighted as I thought he’d be.
“Horace really should have maintained possession of the evidence,” he said. “Chain of custody.”
“Aida deputized me to take it,” I said.
“Well, that’s better than nothing,” he said. “In fact, I was a bit worried about the possibility someone would see Horace coming out from under the bandstand with a bunch of evidence bags. Any chance you could find a discreet way to bring them over to the forensic tent?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Just one more thing.” His voice grew stern. “You’re not deputized for anything except transporting evidence. Got that?”
“Got it.”
Discreet. Not usually my forte, but I could manage. I emptied out a rolling box I used to haul around heavy blacksmithing tools, put a couple of gallon milk jugs of water in it, and then Michael and I stowed the evidence bags on top of them.
“I’ll just roll these over to the forensic tent,” I said.
“You look beat,” Michael said. “Want me to do it?”
“Chain of custody,” I said.
As I dragged the wheeled box along, I found myself pondering how strange it was that the nephew I could still so easily remember as a cheerful toddler had turned into someone I instinctively trusted to take care of my own toddlers.
I found the chief and Randall talking just outside the tent that served as the mayor’s office.
“Brought you some more water,” I said. “Shall I stow it in here?”
“Maybe in my tent for safekeeping,” Randall suggested.
Randall and the chief helped me unload the evidence bags.
“Now if I can just find someone to take them down to the crime lab in Richmond,” the chief said, frowning at the sizable stack of bags. “Having to put several deputies on guard duty at the courthouse is making me shorthanded.”
Maybe he was hoping I’d volunteer. Maybe if things were a little less crazy, I might have. But the arrival of Josh and Jamie in my life made me realize that I needed to do a lot less volunteering and a lot more asking for help.
Like maybe accepting Rose Noire’s offer to take over talent coordination for Caerphilly Days.
Speaking of which …
“Got to run,” I said. “By the way—”
“Can I help you, Mr. Pruitt?” Randall asked.
Chapter 15
I started and turned. I didn’t like anyone sneaking up behind me, particularly not a Pruitt. At least it was only Hamish, peering into the tent with a surly expression on his face.
“I need to talk to you!” Hamish said to Randall.
“Lord,” Randall muttered under his breath. “Be with you in a minute, then. Chief?”
“I’ll see you later.” The chief rose and made his exit.
“Was there anything else you needed?” Randall asked me. I could tell from the expression on his face that he was hoping there was.
Hamish didn’t wait for me to answer.
“I came to ask when you’re going to take action on my request,” he said.
“And which one was that, Mr. Pruitt?”
“My request that you finally do something about that man!” Hamish snapped. “Does he have to kill off the whole town before you do anything?”
“Look, Mr. Pruitt,” Randall said. “I appreciate your point of view on this. I’ve been going in every day to try to talk some sense into Mr. Throckmorton, without any success so far. And if you ask me, today’s unfortunate events are going to make it harder rather than easier to talk him into coming out.”
“He doesn’t need to come out,” Hamish said. “Well, of course he does, and I don’t mean you should stop trying to talk him into it. What I mean is—haven’t you ever tried to negotiate the surrender of the town archives?”
“Why would I try to do that?” Randall sounded genuinely puzzled.
“You have dozens of file cabinets and hundreds of boxes full of papers down there!” Hamish exclaimed. “Many of them are valuable historical documents, or official documents necessary for the governance of the town. And they’re all down there in the hands of a criminal! Possibly a lunatic!”
“They’re all down there in the safekeeping of our official county clerk,” Randall said. He tipped his chair back on two legs and folded his arms, appearing to study Hamish. “I grant you, it might be more convenient if Mr. Throckmorton had moved them out of the courthouse along with everything else, but we’re making do.”
“But we have to get them out of there,” Hamish said.
I felt a sudden twinge of anxiety. Why was Hamish so stubbornly demanding that Randall do something that was clearly impossible—unless he’d found out about the tunnel and knew it wasn’t impossible after all?
“We’re getting along just fine,” Randall said. “We really need something, we call him up, and he sends us a copy—he’s got his little fax machine down there, you know. Or he scans and e-mails things to us. We’ve gone electronic. Joined the twenty-first century.”
“But—but—that’s preposterous! You can’t run a town like that.”
“So far we seem to be running the town and the county just fine,” Randall said. “Better than it’s been run in years, if you ask m
e. And even if I agreed with you that we ought to get the documents out, just how do you suggest we do it? Fold ’em all up small enough to fit through the chinks in the barricade? That’d take a while, and I don’t think we’d want to do that to all those valuable historical papers.”
“We could send them out by carrier pigeon,” I suggested. “No wait—we could have, before the Evil Lender brought in that falconer to kill all the pigeons. Now I don’t think that will work too well.”
Randall chuckled and leaned farther back in his chair.
“You could negotiate having FPF withdraw from the basement,” Hamish said. “And Mr. Throckmorton could take his barricades down long enough to move all the boxes into the anteroom, and then put them up again.”
“We could,” Randall said. “Except I’m not sure Mr. Throckmorton would trust FPF not to storm the basement while the barricades were down. Not for five minutes, much less as long as it would take to empty the basement. Especially after what happened today. I know I wouldn’t.”
“Maybe we should storm the basement,” Hamish said. “It’s intolerable having that man there. And besides—”
“Mr. Pruitt,” I said. “Just why does this bother you so much? You’re not the town attorney any longer. He’s not making your job harder. I’m sure you’d be devastated if anything happened to the town archives—we all would. But they’ve been just fine for over a year. Why is this suddenly such a big issue?”
“It’s always been a big issue,” he said. “It’s always bothered me. But … but … before, I just thought Throckmorton was a nut case. It’s different now that we know he’s a cold-blooded killer!”
“We don’t know that, Mr. Pruitt,” Randall said softly. “We just know someone is. Innocent until proven guilty.”
Hamish opened his mouth as if to continue the argument, then changed his mind, shut it so abruptly I could swear I heard his teeth click, and stormed back out again.
“What’s gotten into him?” I asked.
“Must be the heat,” Randall said. “Or maybe he ate his own cooking and got Mad Cow disease or something. The archives have been just fine down there for a year, and suddenly Hamish gets a bee in his bonnet that we should get them out.”
“No idea why?”
“Something he left in his office, I reckon,” Randall said. “He was one of the few government employees who didn’t pack up and move out when the lender took over the courthouse, you know. So when we did our inspection, about three a.m. the morning of the takeover, Vern and I ended up packing all his papers. Took forever, sorting out the personal stuff from the county stuff. From the look of it, he did more personal than county business out of that office.”
“Sounds like Hamish.”
“And Phinny came by just as we were finishing, and said he was taking charge of any official government documents that were in danger of being left behind. I thought he meant he’d haul them away—never dawned on me that he was dragging as much paper into his lair as he could before he put up the barricade.”
Randall shook his head, but he was smiling indulgently. I wondered, not for the first time, if Randall really had been completely unaware of Mr. Throckmorton’s plans. Had the diminutive county clerk really dragged those heavy timbers down into the basement and erected the barricade all by himself?
“Anyway,” Randall went on. “Hamish made a big fuss the next day, but no one had much time to bother with him, and within the week, his own cousin fired him, so if you ask me, the archives are no more his business than any other citizen’s, and most of the citizens are just fine with the way things are.”
“Imagine the job we’d have, trying to move them out,” I said. “And where on earth would we put them?”
“And how would we find anything afterward?” Randall said. “We need something, I call Phinny, and I get a copy faxed or e-mailed within the hour.” I heard a faint ding, and Randall reached to pull out his cell phone. “If we move all that stuff,” he went on, “I guarantee you, no one, not even Phinny, will know where all of it is for the next decade. I say we leave well enough alone. Oh, damn. Not again.”
The last words appeared to be addressed to his cell phone.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“My predecessor just sent me another snarky e-mail,” Randall said. “He does that from time to time. Wonder if the news has hit the national media, or if one of his cousins who’s still in town called to tell him.”
“Is he still spending his ill-gotten gains in Cancún?”
“Let’s see. Yes, apparently. He closes by saying he’ll hoist a piña colada in my honor.”
“Jerk.” I was tempted to say harsher things about ex-mayor Pruitt, but the boys were on the verge of learning to talk, and I’d expunged from my active vocabulary any words that could possibly do George Pruitt justice.
“He is that. Which reminds me.” He fumbled through the papers on his desk and then found the one he wanted. “I got a letter of complaint today. Someone threatening to sue Caerphilly Days for discriminating against her in our selection of entertainers.”
“Discrimination?” I exclaimed. “Good grief, we let nearly anyone perform who can walk, crawl, or roll onstage, and if they’re at all noisy, we ask them back. And we go out of our way to be multicultural. I can see the audiences suing us for harassment over some of the acts but the entertainers? Who is it?”
“Lady named Heterodoxia Jones,” Randall said. “Name ring a bell?”
“Oh, God,” I said. “The mime.”
Randall winced.
“Yeah, here it is,” he said. “We’re guilty of holding a disparaging attitude toward the ancient and honorable profession of the mime, and also restricting her right to self-expression. And she wants a hundred thousand dollars in compensation or she’ll sue us for a cool million.”
“Let her sue,” I said. “Last time I heard, mimes were not a protected class under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Or would they fall under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission?”
“Whatever,” Randall said. “Wouldn’t hurt to let her perform. Not that I’m eager to see another mime on our stage, mind you. Just between you and me, I don’t consider shooing mimes away discrimination—more like pest control. But that’s my personal taste. Speaking as mayor of Caerphilly, I’d like to think we’re a mime-friendly town.”
“Save the mime, apple pie, and motherhood speech for the voters,” I said. “We’re as mime-friendly as the next town. What Ms. Jones doesn’t mention is that in addition to being a mime, she’s also an ecdysiast.”
Randall’s brows furrowed.
“A stripper,” I explained. “And while I’m more than a little curious to see what a combination of mime and striptease looks like, I thought we were trying to keep our entertainment at least PG rated.”
“I agree,” Randall said. “Okay, I’ll figure out how to get rid of the naked mime. Keep up the good work.”
Chapter 16
Back at the bandstand, an actor was delivering Winston Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech in a remarkably good imitation of the prime minister’s marvelous voice while the stage crew put on a montage of wartime scenes that included short scraps of film, strobe lights, canned sound effects, bits of martial music, small but real explosions, and occasional small parties of live actors in assorted military uniforms storming or retreating across the stage with famous battle sites rear-projected behind them. As a dramatic piece, it was short on plot and long on noise, but as cover for opening and closing the trapdoor, it was a resounding success. In fact, the whole pageant was. I resolved to speak to Michael about arranging an encore as part of the July Fourth program.
I spent the remaining sixty or seventy years of American history on the phone, making sure our entertainment lineup for the next few days was solid. We were already expecting good crowds for the Fourth of July, and I had a feeling news of the murder would attract more people than it scared away.
The Caerphilly Clo
ggers. The Clay County Marching Band. A chainsaw sculptor who claimed he took audience requests. Bollywood Live. A troupe of performing house cats.
“I could do that,” Rose Noire said, peering over my shoulder while I was busy with the clipboard and my cell phone.
“What, training house cats?” I asked. “Yes, by now I should think we’re both experts.”
“Doing all that calling,” she said.
“Help yourself,” I said, handing her the clipboard. “I’ve marked the ones I’ve confirmed. If you can’t confirm any of the others, I’m sure some of the ones who have confirmed would be thrilled to do two shows.”
“And there’s always the bagpiper,” she said.
“There is that,” I said. “And if you don’t mind, I do plan to leave you in charge tomorrow.”
“Taking a day off to spend with the boys?”
“I wish. Caroline Willner’s bringing up some animals from her wildlife sanctuary.”
“Noisy animals?”
“As noisy as possible,” I said. “And she says not to bother with her, she’ll entertain herself while she’s here, but you know someone’s going to end up chauffeuring her around, and I could use a break from this place. If the weather’s nice, maybe I’ll take the boys with me to the zoo.”
“It’s supposed to be even hotter tomorrow,” she said.
“Not a good zoo day, then,” I said. “Better to keep them here where we at least have fans.”
“And I can keep an eye on them and Eric while you take care of Caroline,” she said.
“Just one question.” I pointed to the next item on the call list. “Precisely what is Molly in Chains?”
She peered at the paper for a second.
“Oh, that. New group from the college. They do Morris dancing in red stiletto heels and skintight black-leather bodysuits decorated with a lot of chains and spikes.”
“Well, that should be unique,” I said. “But do we really want them doing it at two p.m.?”
“No, probably not,” she said, with a sigh. “I suspect they actually requested two a.m., but that’s not happening. Don’t worry. We’ve got that heavy metal band on at nine. I’ll put the Morris dancers on just before them. Anyone who’s staying for heavy metal can probably handle the Mollies.”
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