He raised one eyebrow in what I recognized as grudging permission.
“Do we know for sure that Stanley Denton wasn’t in the car when it blew up?”
“No sign of human remains in the wreckage,” he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“We don’t know he’s all right,” the chief said.
“But at least we know he’s not blown to bits.”
“Not here, anyway,” he said. “If you hear from him before my officers find him, encourage him to drop by the police barn for a chat.”
“Will do.”
“And try a little harder to stay out of trouble.”
He looked down at his notebook and I realized I was being dismissed.
I thought of half a dozen other questions I wanted to ask, and I was opening my mouth to start asking them, and then thought better of it. I seem to have survived the interview without ticking him off. Maybe I should keep it that way.
I tripped over my own feet in my haste to leave while I was ahead.
Chapter 30
Of course, once I had made my own escape, I had to wait while the chief interviewed Caroline. But within half an hour, we were ready to depart. The wreckage was still blocking the driveway, but one of the bellmen directed us to a service road—after apologizing profusely for the inconvenience, giving the impression that he considered the explosion an unforgivable departure from the hotel’s normally impeccable customer service.
I dropped Caroline as close as possible to the tent, and then as soon as she was out of earshot, called Rose Noire to warn her that Caroline had had a tough day and could use some cosseting.
“I’ll fix her some herbal tea,” Rose Noire said.
“Good luck getting her to drink it,” I said, as I pulled my van into Michael’s space. “Unless you chill it and serve it to her in a martini glass.”
I hadn’t meant it literally, but when I got back to the tent, I found Caroline sitting in my recliner with two fans blowing over her, a compress on her forehead, and another on her feet. She was staring dubiously at a highball glass containing a liquid that probably bore little resemblance to any concoction in the bartender’s manual.
The fact that she hadn’t already poured it out and demanded something better made me realize that Caroline was far from her usual energetic self. So when I had a chance I slipped back outside again, pulled out my cell phone, and called Dad.
“Could you drop by the tent when you get a chance and check on Caroline?” I asked him.
“Caroline? What’s wrong?”
I hesitated. If I told him about our morning’s adventures, would he be disappointed that I hadn’t included him in on the burglary? Even if his morning had been filled with an unusually large number of interesting cases, I felt sure Dad would much rather have witnessed the car bomb.
Then again, he’d hear about it soon enough on the news anyway. In fact, I was surprised he hadn’t already.
“Nothing in particular,” I said. “Except being chased by a sinister black van, clinging to the side of a building to avoid being caught as a burglar, and seeing a car get blown up. A day like that might be a little hard on a senior citizen.”
“Oh, my!” he exclaimed. “You have had a morning! I wish I could have been there.”
I braced myself for recriminations.
“Is she complaining of anything?”
“Only that Rose Noire won’t bring her a martini,” I said. “But she looks a little wan. Can you stop by?”
“I would if I were in town, but I’m down in Richmond. For the autopsy on Colleen Brown. I’ve got Dr. Smoot filling in for me at the first aid tent. I could have him stop by.”
I had a momentary vision of Dr. Smoot slipping furtively into the tent wearing his black cape, looking like a refugee from a cheesy fifties vampire flick.
“Dr. Smoot doesn’t even have a good bedside manner with dead people,” I said. “He’ll either scare her to death or tick her off.”
“Good point,” Dad said. “I’ll send Clarence.”
“I’m sure Caroline will love having a vet examine her.”
“He doesn’t have to tell her he’s examining her. He can pretend to be just fussing over her. And he’s got enough medical knowledge to tell if she should be packed off to the ER, and she likes him well enough to go if he tells her to. And I’ll check on her when I’m back this evening.”
Back in the tent, Caroline appeared to be napping, her untouched herbal cocktail at her side. Rose Noire was poring over the clipboard.
“Clarence will be dropping by to make sure Caroline is all right,” I said.
“Why not your dad?” Rose Noire asked.
“Dad’s in Richmond,” I said. “Ostensibly for the autopsy, although he might also be doing a little campaigning to get himself appointed as a local medical examiner.”
“Oh, that would be so nice,” she said. “He’d love that.”
But would the chief love it? Maybe he would, if he knew Dr. Smoot was the alternative.
“Here comes another rug rat,” Caroline called out. Not really asleep, then, but playing possum.
“Oh, dear.” Rose Noire rushed toward the tent door. Lad, Seth Early’s border collie, was herding in a toddler in a pink sundress. While Lad guarded the door in case his charge made a break for it, Rose Noire squatted down beside the girl—who, I was relieved to see, looked more cross than scared.
“What’s your name, honey?” she asked.
“Bad doggie,” the girl said. I suspected this wasn’t an accurate answer to the question.
“He’s not a bad doggie,” Rose Noire said. “When little girls and boys get lost, he brings them here to wait until their parents can come to pick them up. Now what’s your name, so we can tell your parents to come get you?”
“Emma,” the girl said.
“Would you like to play with the other children until your parents come?”
“Other children?” I echoed. I glanced over at the pens. Three other children of assorted sizes and genders were playing in the front pen with the twins’ toys or cuddling with Tinkerbell. Spike, I was relieved to see, had been exiled to the back pen.
“Here you go.” Rose Noire lifted Emma into the pen, where after a moment, she toddled over to whack Tinkerbell affectionately on the head. “Juice, anyone?”
As soon as Emma was safely inside the pen, Lad gave a brisk, businesslike bark, then turned and trotted off.
“He’s been herding in lost children all day,” she said. “We’ve had fifteen come and go already.”
“Seems like an unusually high number,” I said. “Are you sure they were all lost?”
“Well, they are now,” she said. “As soon as we find Seth, we’re going to see if he can train Lad to herd them over to the police tent instead.”
“Better yet, get him to take Lad home,” I suggested.
Just then Rose Noire glanced at her watch. I checked mine. Almost one.
“Light-years ago, before the murder, we had scheduled me to do a demonstration at one p.m. today,” I said. “Please tell me you found a substitute.”
“The bagpiper was available,” she said.
“The good one?” I asked. “Or—”
Just then the bagpiper struck up his first few droning notes and answered my question.
“Don’t worry!” Rose Noire shouted over the din. “Most people can’t tell a well-played bagpipe from a badly played one!”
Just my luck to be in the unhappy minority. We’d had this particular bagpiper any number of times over the summer—though usually only as a last-minute substitute. I could already feel another bagpipe headache starting.
So while the bagpiper murdered his first number—probably, though not definitely, “Scotland the Brave”—I racked my brains for something that needed doing elsewhere. As far from the bandstand as possible.
Lunch.
I was ravenous, and in no mood to forage far afield. So I trotted over to the food tent area to t
est a theory.
And I was right. The salad wars had begun. The Episcopalians were doing such a booming business with the chicken Caesar salads that the Baptists had added a Cobb salad to their menu. Normally I waited in line with the tourists, but not today. I slipped behind the counter and caught Minerva’s eye.
“Could I have a Cobb salad to go?” I said.
“Coming up,” she said. “You see Henry out at the Inn?”
I nodded.
“How’d he look?”
I thought about it.
“Not too frazzled, under the circumstances.”
She shook her head grimly, handed me two Cobb salads and a pair of iced teas, and pushed my hand away when I tried to pay.
“Thanks,” I said. “But I only need the one.”
“You keep the other one there in the tent, and if Henry shows up, make him eat it.”
“Roger.”
I was planning to go straight back to the tent, but I spotted my grandfather striding down the sidewalk, so I gave chase.
It took me till the far end of the town square to catch him. He was mopping his face with his handkerchief.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Grandfather. I realized a few seconds too late that the words sounded a bit rude. “Shouldn’t you be inside out of this horrible heat?” I added.
“I won’t be out here for long,” he said. “Just going to sit here in the shade. I could even cool off by sipping some iced tea if I could find anyone thoughtful enough to bring me some.”
“If I gave you one of these, do you suppose I could persuade you to sip it inside where it’s cooler?” I asked. I held one out without waiting for his answer.
“Inside won’t work,” he said. “I’m going to inspect that vulture trainer’s work. Ah, there he is now.”
Mr. Doane was approaching us. Instead of carrying a bird on his arm, he was pulling a small wheeled cage. Grandfather rose and stood with crossed arms, frowning slightly.
“Here she is!” Doane’s voice reminded me strangely of the proud tones with which Michael introduced the twins. I’d also seen the cool analytical gaze with which Grandfather was inspecting the occupant of the cage. I’d seen him turn it on the boys often enough, and I could never tell if he was feeling family pride or comparing their behavior to the young of other primates. He sipped his iced tea several times during his leisurely inspection.
“Cathartes aura,” he said eventually. “Turkey vulture,” he translated for those of us not up on our scientific Latin. “One of the few vultures that finds carcasses by smell.”
“Exactly!” Doane exclaimed. “Most New World vultures and all of the Old World ones are sight hunters, and that would be useless for my project. I call her Nekhbet,” he added. “After the Egyptian vulture goddess.”
“Good name,” Grandfather said. “And she’s a fine specimen.”
I wasn’t sure what was so fine about her. Nekhbet was about two and a half feet tall, with brownish black feathers. Her legs and feet were chalky white and her head was bright red, featherless, and oddly small compared with the rest of her. I could easily imagine that head perched atop a rather large lizard.
“You do realize it’s illegal to keep them in captivity?” Grandfather asked.
“I am a certified wildlife rehabilitator!” Doane drew himself up to his full height. And then his face fell. “That’s part of the problem, really. Up until recently, the only birds I’ve had to work with are the ones I’m rehabilitating. And around the time I began to see some real progress with them, I’d have to release them back into the wild. But now that I’ve finally got permission for my work, I hope to make more progress.”
“You going to show me now?” Grandfather asked.
“If you want to, sure,” Doane said. “Beats hanging around waiting in case your police chief releases the courthouse and we can all go back on duty.”
“Although as long as you’re getting paid for it, waiting around’s not such bad work,” I said.
“Wouldn’t be if we were getting paid, but they put us all on furlough,” Doane said. “The jerks.”
“Well, I’ll put you on my payroll,” Grandfather said. “And your first assignment is to hang around with the other furloughed guards and keep your ears open for any information that would help solve this murder case.”
“Yes, sir!” Doane said.
“No, wait,” Grandfather said. “That’s your second assignment. Your first is to show me what your vulture can do.”
“Awesome,” Doane said. “I’ll have to run back to my car to get my baiting material. I use small airtight capsules that can be broken open to release cadaverine and putrescine.”
“Too bad we don’t have a real corpse to work with,” Grandfather said. “I don’t suppose there was anyone in that car you blew up out at the Inn, was there?” he asked, turning to me.
“I didn’t blow it up, and the chief said there were no signs of human remains,” I said.
“But is he sure?” Doane asked. “The Inn’s only a few miles from here. Let’s turn her loose and see if she heads there.”
“And if there wasn’t a body in the car, maybe she can find that private eye fellow,” Grandfather said. “He’s missing, right?”
“Missing, yes,” I said. “But we have no reason to presume him dead.”
“And no proof he’s alive, either,” Grandfather said. “Let’s send Nekhbet out and see what she can find.”
Doane began fumbling at the door of Nekhbet’s cage.
“Why don’t you two find a more private place to set her loose?” I suggested. “We’ve already had a murder here—if people see a vulture flapping around, they’ll think the worst.”
“Let’s do it from the parking lot,” Doane said, “since I need to go back to the truck anyway, for the bait. And the GPS anklet.”
I watched as the two of them strode off, dragging the caged vulture behind them.
“Please don’t find anything,” I murmured.
Chapter 31
After watching my grandfather and Mr. Doane disappear with the vulture in tow, I shook my head and headed for the tent to eat my salad.
I had only strolled a few paces when my cell phone rang. I set down the salads and my tea on the edge of a nearby planter and answered it.
“Meg? Randall. Can you drop by my tent for a couple of minutes? Quick meeting of the Steering Committee.”
“If it’s about the bagpipes—”
“No, it’s about the car bomb.”
I picked up the salads and the tea and headed for the other side of the town square.
I found Deputy Sammy standing outside the tent, glaring at anyone who came within ten paces. Inside, Randall, Caroline, Ms. Ellie, and the chief were sitting on the green plastic stacking lawn chairs that served as the mayor’s guest seating.
“Here.” I handed one Cobb salad to the chief. “With Minerva’s compliments, and I’m under orders to see that you eat every bite.”
He blinked, then took the salad.
“Thank you,” he said. “It has been a busy day.”
While the chief and I poured little packages of dressing over our salads, Randall cut to the chase.
“Caroline tells me you overheard something that might explain why the Evil Lender is suddenly so fired up to get Phinny out of the courthouse basement,” he said.
“Not exactly,” I said, through a mouthful of lettuce. “They’re not really trying to get Mr. Throckmorton out.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I mean they are, but it’s only incidental,” I said. “They want to get him out of the basement because they think that’s the only way they can get in.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Randall said. “Why do they want to get into the basement?”
“To find something,” I said. “A document, I assume, since that’s about all there is in the basement. And also because they were talking about whether it was the only copy.”
“And Leonard Fisher sai
d it was,” Caroline added.
“No, actually what he said was, ‘it is now,’” I said. “Which sounded to me as if they’d snagged or destroyed the other copies.”
“Whatever it is, we have to keep them from getting it,” Caroline said.
“That’s easy to say,” Randall replied. “But how are we supposed to do that if we don’t know what it is? Unless you’re about to suggest we haul all of the documents out of the courthouse—and trust me, that’s not an option. It’d take weeks—maybe months.”
“I told you we should have started moving the files out last year,” Ms. Ellie said. “If we’d started moving the files out as soon as the siege began—”
“Then maybe we would have moved whatever they want to someplace where they could already have found it,” Randall said. “Never mind what we maybe should have done a year ago. What should we do now? And dammit, emptying the courthouse basement is not an option!”
“Sorry,” Ms. Ellie said, drawing back from Randall’s frown.
“No, I’m sorry,” Randall said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that I had this same damned discussion with someone else already today.”
“With Hamish Pruitt,” I said. “I remember.”
“Actually, Hamish was yesterday, but he makes two someone elses within the last twenty-four hours,” Randall said. “He’s been after me for weeks about it, but now your cousin Festus is taking an interest in the archives.”
“He was disappointed to find we didn’t have them in the library,” Ms. Ellie said. “I suppose he’s looking for documents that might help him in that big court date that’s coming up.”
“Or bite him in the rear if the other side has them and he doesn’t know about them,” Randall said. “That’s the impression I got, and when I asked him what kind of documents, he said he’d know them when he saw them.”
“The lender should have provided him with a copy of any documents they plan to use at trial,” the chief said. “That’s what the lawyers mean by discovery.”
“Maybe he thinks they cheated,” Randall said. “Or maybe it’s a document we have and they don’t.”
“That would make more sense,” the chief said. “Because if it’s a document he planned to use in the trial, he’d need to get them a copy ASAP, or he couldn’t use it.”
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