No Nest for the Wicket Read online

  “Did anyone ever come around asking questions, sounding as if they were onto the story?”

  “Couple of people from the college, but they gave up when they found out all we had was the microfiche of the old newspapers.”

  “Was one of them an instructor named Lindsay Tyler? A tall blond woman with—”

  “I remember Lindsay,” Ms. Ellie said. Not fondly, I gathered. “She spent more time with the microfilm than most. Ruder than most, too.”

  “Do you think she figured out the prank?”

  “No idea,” Ellie said. “Never said anything to me if she did.”

  “Of course she wouldn’t,” I said. “If she guessed that the documents were faked—possibly from the same details I finally noticed—”

  “What details?” Ms. Ellie asked.

  I reached for the folder—the one with my photocopies, not the originals. For whatever reason, I wasn’t ready for anyone—not even Ms. Ellie, their creator—to know we’d found the originals. I pulled out a couple of sheets.

  “I noticed a tree with an odd-shaped branch,” I said. “Here it is. The one taken in 1953 by the Clarion ’s photographer. Looks as if the tree’s crooking its finger to tell someone to come closer.”

  “Yes, it does,” she said.

  “And a hundred years earlier, it was crooking its finger the same way,” I said, picking up the supposed battle site photo. “I don’t know what species of tree it is, but you’d think it would have grown slightly in a hundred years, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not that anyone noticed that at the time,” she said with a chuckle.

  “I should have realized immediately what was wrong with this one,” I said, holding up the photo of the tattered uniform sleeve on the barbed-wire fence.

  Ms. Ellie studied it for long seconds, then shook her head.

  “You’ve got me,” she said. “Still looks fine to me. Maybe a bit melodramatic, but so were many photographs from that era.”

  “The mood was right,” I said. “Not the details. Took me till just now to realize what bothered me about it—the rusted barbed-wire fence.”

  Ms. Ellie shook her head slightly.

  “Barbed wire wasn’t invented until after the Civil War,” I explained.

  “Are you sure?” Ms. Ellie asked.

  “I have an uncle who collects the stuff,” I said. “The first patent on barbed wire was filed just after the Civil War—1868, I think. Even if a few people were experimenting with early varieties six years earlier, you wouldn’t find standard commercially produced barbed wire then, especially not in a badly rusted condition.”

  “I had no idea,” she said. “A couple of people spotted the tree before, but in fifty years, you’re the first to notice the barbed wire. Impressive!”

  I made a mental note to thank Uncle Chauncy.

  “So I guessed something fishy was going on,” I said aloud. “Of course, I jumped to the same conclusion anyone would.”

  Ms. Ellie frowned.

  “What conclusion?”

  “About who did it,” I said. “If you didn’t know the whole story and suspected that Mrs. Pruitt’s famous battle was all a lie, and the documents were faked, who would be the logical suspects?”

  Ms. Ellie blinked.

  “The Pruitts,” she said, nodding. “That never occurred to me.”

  “Blinded by guilt,” I said, shaking my head.

  Ms. Ellie smiled.

  “The other people who were involved—who were they?” I asked.

  “All dead,” she said.

  “I know, but what were their full names?”

  “Paul was Paul Drayer, my brother,” she said. “Grant Boyd—a historian, as I said; specialized in medieval studies. Guess he wanted to stay pretty far from the Civil War. And Edwina Ballantine.”

  “Who married the stodgy professor,” I said. “Was that her married name?”

  “No, her maiden name. Her married name—”

  “Was Sprocket, right?”

  She nodded.

  Edwina Sprocket, the queen of packrats, from whom we’d bought our house. Former owner of the twenty-three boxes of old papers. Perhaps she hadn’t completely turned her back on their youthful prank. Or, more likely, she’d had no idea the original documents from the hoax were still lurking in her attic.

  I glanced down at my copies and flipped through them until I found one of the photos.

  “That’s why Colonel Pruitt’s wife looked so familiar,” I said. “It’s you.”

  She chuckled.

  “And the baby?”

  “My little sister’s Betsy Wetsy doll,” she said. “Look, why the sudden interest in the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge?”

  “Mrs. Pruitt was bragging about it to my father this weekend,” I said. “I suspect she’s planning to use it to fight the outlet mall Evan Briggs wants to build next door.”

  “Oh dear,” Ms. Ellie said. “That would be a tactical mistake—it would discredit the whole effort against the mall. And now you can guess which side I’ll take if it comes to a fight over the mall.”

  “Me, too, for obvious reasons,” I said. “I’m also not sure whether it has anything to do with Lindsay’s murder, but if there’s any—”

  “She was murdered?” Ms. Ellie said with a gasp. “Was that the woman they found in Mr. Shiffley’s pasture? Oh dear.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m wondering if maybe I’m not the first person to have spotted the distinctive tree branch and the barbed wire after all.”

  “You think Lindsay might have?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she didn’t, and it’s only a coincidence that she was found at the site of the phony battle, with the leaders of the pro- and antimall forces playing croquet all around her … .”

  I fell silent. Ms. Ellie was staring down at my desk.

  “I hope you’re wrong,” she said. “About Lindsay figuring out the hoax, I mean. Because if you’re right, I’m going to feel responsible.”

  “If I’m right, maybe you and I are the only people still alive who know something that got Lindsay killed,” I said.

  “True. I should tell Chief Burke the whole story.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” I said.

  “Mind if I use your phone?”

  I shook my head. She squared her shoulders, picked up the phone, and dialed a number. I made a motion to leave, but she waved me back into my seat.

  “Debbie Anne? Ellie Drayer. Could you tell Chief Burke that I have some information that might be related to his murder case? … No, it’s pretty complicated, and might just be ancient history, but I figure better safe than sorry … . No, just have him call me when he gets a chance. Thanks … . Fine, thanks. Give my love to your parents.”

  She stared into space for a few moments.

  “Wonder if we did break any laws back then? I imagine the chief will let me know if we did.”

  “I’m sure there’s a statute of limitations,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, pulling herself together. “On everything but murder. You need any more information, you call me.”

  “The chief’s the one with the investigation.”

  “Him too,” she said as she stood up to go. “You know, if you really want to get rid of the socialites, you should tell them about croquet’s unsavory reputation.”

  “Unsavory? According to whom?”

  “It was banned in Boston in the 1890s,” she said. “Several prominent clergymen denounced it for encouraging drinking, gambling, and philandering. Men and women playing on the same field. The occasional bare ankle exposed to the leering eyes of the spectators. Young couples disappearing into the shrubbery in search of lost balls. Shocking. I haven’t heard of a game that led to a murder before.”

  “Nice to know we’re original here.”

  She smiled slightly.

  “Yes,” she said. “Well, nice seeing you.”

  I watched as she strode out, spine as erect as ever.

  Her story would d
oubtless inspire Chief Burke to take a closer look at any connection between Lindsay and the Caerphilly Historical Society. Which wasn’t necessarily good. For one thing, much as I disliked Mrs. Pruitt, I wanted her on the loose, leading the charge against the outlet mall, not locked up on trial for murder. Besides, if Mrs. Pruitt dumped all the actual work of preparing her book on Lacie and her other underlings at the society, odds were that she’d shift the suspicion, as well.

  Just then, I heard a commotion outside. Now what?

  Chapter Thirty-six

  I strode to the barn door and saw that Mrs. Fenniman had returned from church and was standing in the middle of the lawn, waving her croquet mallet around as she talked to the dozen or so people around her. Surely she hadn’t taken the mallet to church?

  “You should have seen it!” she crowed. Something dramatic, I gathered from the expressions on the faces around her.

  “Seen what?” I asked.

  “Chief Burke showed up at Trinity Episcopal,” she said. “There was Reverend Riggs on the top step, shaking hands with the departing parishioners, and Burke on the bottom step, lying in wait for Henrietta Pruitt.”

  “He was there to arrest her?” Dad asked.

  “No, he had a warrant to search the historical society’s office. Came to pick her up to let him and his men in.”

  “Wonder what happened that made him go through all the trouble of getting a warrant on a Sunday,” I mused. Was he already planning the raid on the historical society when we’d called to tell him about the pond?

  “Maybe he had it already and was waiting for the right moment to serve it,” Michael suggested.

  “No, he got it late this morning,” Randall Shiffley put in. “Saw Aunt Jane.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding. Judge Jane Shiffley would be the logical source for a warrant against the historical society. Every other judge in town was either a Pruitt or married to a member of the historical society.

  “He may not have been here that long,” Randall said, “but the chief knows what he’s doing.”

  “How did Mrs. Pruitt react?” I asked Mrs. Fenniman.

  “That’s the rich part,” she said. “She skipped church! She’s on the lam!”

  “No she’s not,” Horace put in. “She’s here in the kitchen.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “Well, that’s as good as being on the lam, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t think she knows about the search warrant yet,” Horace said. “If you want to tell her …”

  He shrugged his shoulders, as if disavowing any responsibility for the consequences.

  “Shouldn’t we tell the chief she’s here?” Michael asked.

  “He got one of the other members to let him into the historical society,” Mrs. Fenniman added. “A whole troop of them went along to keep an eye on things.”

  The chief must have loved that.

  “That accounts for it,” Horace said. “Mrs. Pruitt’s hopping made because the other ladies haven’t arrived to help with lunch.”

  “That’s right, they volunteered to do today’s lunch,” I said. “Not that anyone’s that interested in lunch yet, after all that breakfast.”

  “Mrs. P. had a few things to say about that, too,” Horace said.

  “So we have an irate Mrs. Pruitt in our kitchen,” I said. “Should I go try to calm her down?”

  “Your mother’s taking care of it,” Horace said.

  Given how Mother felt, I was willing to bet that instead of calming Mrs. Pruitt, she was graciously, tactfully, politely pouring pounds of salt in her wounds. Might as well leave them to it.

  “Wonder how long Claire and Lacie will be tied up down at the historical society,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “Because I was thinking of getting the game started again.”

  “Does the chief know that?” I asked.

  “Yes, I asked him over at the church.”

  “Give Claire and Lacie enough notice, then,” I said. “No fair saying the game starts in ten minutes and anyone not ready to play is disqualified.”

  “Says who,” she grumbled.

  “Says me. I’ll complain to the board of regents if you try it.”

  “It was just a thought,” she said, shrugging. “If you don’t trust me, you notify them.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said. “I think I’ll check with the chief, too.”

  “Hmph. Don’t even trust your own family.”

  Less than anyone, I wanted to say, but I held my tongue and dialed.

  “I’m busy,” the chief said when he answered his cell phone. Maybe I was behind the times and answering phones with “hello” had become an anachronism.

  “I know,” I said. “But Mrs. Fenniman said you’d given permission for us to restart the tournament, and I want to make sure we’re not going to get arrested for tampering with a crime scene. Is she telling the truth this time?”

  “Just stay away from the brier patch,” he said. “And the pond.”

  “We’ll make sure there’s crime-scene tape around the brier patch and the pond,” I said, looking pointedly at Mrs. Fenniman.

  “That’s easy enough,” she said. “Come on, Horace, you can help me.”

  “I’ll gather up the competitors,” I said, strolling toward the kitchen door. “By the way, have you by any chance seen Lacie Butler and Claire Wentworth today? I know how to find my team and Mrs. Pruitt, but—”

  “Mrs. Pruitt?” he said. “You’ve seen her today?”

  “At the moment, she’s sitting in our kitchen drinking lemonade,” I said, peering through the kitchen window. Mother smiled and waved at me. I waved back. From the look on Mrs. Pruitt’s face, I could almost imagine she’d poured her glass of lemonade before Mother added the sugar.

  “Keep her there,” the chief said.

  “Are you going to arrest her?” I asked. “No sense getting ready to play if one of the teams will be short a player.”

  “At the moment, I just want to talk to her,” he said. “Do you think you can keep her there without mentioning that fact?”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’ll even knock her down and sit on her if you like.”

  He hung up without replying. Did silence really imply consent?

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  As I expected, Chief Burke kicked Mother and me out of the kitchen the minute he arrived. I’d have minded more if Mrs. Wentworth and Lacie Butler hadn’t arrived in the chief’s wake. If I couldn’t overhear what he said to Mrs. Pruitt, at least I had a chance of finding out what had happened down at the historical society. An even better chance, since Mother’s curiosity was roused. The police officer never lived who could extract more information than Mother when she put her mind to it.

  Lacie was obviously excited; even through the poison ivy I could see that her face was flushed and her eyes glittered. She looked like one of my nieces or nephews on the sugar high they always got when their Uncle Rob was in charge of them for more than five minutes. I suspected Lacie’s exhilaration had a less innocent origin—had Mother convinced Lacie to do something to trigger the chief’s raid on the historical society?

  “But what were they looking for?” Mother asked with an air of wide-eyed innocence that suggested she had a very clear idea what the police were after.

  Lacie shrugged helplessly, as if abandoning any pretense at understanding the strange and mysterious whims of the law.

  “Someone told Chief Burke that Henrietta had been exchanging letters and e-mails with Lindsay Tyler,” Mrs. Wentworth said.

  “Goodness!” Mother exclaimed. “Why ever would they think that?”

  “She was a nutcase,” Mrs. Wentworth said. Presumably, she meant Lindsay, not Mrs. Pruitt. I noticed she didn’t deny the correspondence. “It was a mistake ever inviting that woman to join the society. A mistake hiring her at the college in the first place. I should have told Henrietta that at the time.”

  “Mistakes you rectified five years ago,” I said. “Only I gather she didn’t go quietly.”r />
  “No, but she didn’t have much of a choice, did she?” Mrs. Wentworth said. “Then she reappeared a few months ago, making the most preposterous demands and accusations. Even threats.”

  “Reappeared?” Mother said. “You mean at your meetings?”

  “No, no,” Mrs. Wentworth said quickly. “Or we would have recognized her when we saw the picture. But making phone calls, writing letters, sending e-mails.”

  “To Henrietta, of course,” Lacie put in. “Since she was president. We mostly heard about it from her.”

  “Yes, of course,” Mrs. Wentworth said. “It all fit in with what we’d seen of Lindsay when she was here.”

  “So we’d have no reason to doubt that Henrietta was telling the truth,” Lacie said.

  “As far as we knew, she was handling the situation appropriately,” Mrs. Wentworth said. “By completely ignoring Lindsay.”

  “That’s what we assumed she was doing,” Lacie said. “I know I had no idea …”

  She let her words trail of and shrugged.

  “So what did they find?” Mother asked.

  “Who knows?” Mrs. Wentworth said.

  “I heard—” Lacie began, then stopped, as if she’d gone too far.

  “Heard what, dear?” Mother said. “We won’t tell a soul.”

  “I heard they found some e-mails in the office computer that proved Henrietta had arranged to meet Lindsay the day of the croquet match.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Mrs. Wentworth demanded.

  “The police officers were talking to each other,” Lacie said, shrinking back. “I don’t really think they noticed I was there.”

  She shrugged and smiled ruefully, as if to suggest that she was used to people not noticing her existence.

  “Oh dear,” Mother said. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “If that’s true …” Mrs. Wentworth murmured. “I wonder who told them. To search the historical society’s offices, I mean.”

  “We may never know,” Mother said, shaking her head sadly. “The police can be so secretive.”

  “Isn’t it more important to focus on the future?” Lacie said. “On what we can do to help Henrietta?”

  “Or how to limit the damage her arrest will do to the historical society,” Mrs. Wentworth said.