No Nest for the Wicket Page 21

  “Tell my team I’ll meet them on the course,” Mrs. Pruitt said to no one in particular. She stuck several things into Lacie’s knapsack and strode out.

  “We’ll see you out on the course,” Mrs. Wentworth said to me, as if she hadn’t heard Mrs. Pruitt, and made her exit. Was it really an accident that she flung open the door so violently that it almost struck Mrs. Pruitt?

  Lacie stopped long enough to rummage through the pack and remove half of the items—presumably, the things Mrs. Pruitt had stashed there. Shouldering her pack—now reduced to a much more reasonable load—she smiled apologetically at us and slipped out of the doorway.

  “Oh, dear,” Rose Noire murmured. “There’s such negative energy in here—I’ll have to do a cleansing after the game. I can’t imagine what it will be like out on the course.”

  She shook her head and left.

  “For once, I completely understand what she means,” Mother said. “I think a cleansing is a splendid idea.”

  “Yeah, she can burn as much sage and lavender and whatever as she likes,” I said.

  “As soon as we’re well and truly rid of Mrs. Pruitt and her unfortunate associates. Is ‘Knock them dead’ the appropriate thing to say? Not literally, of course.”

  “Former associates,” I said. “We’ll do our best to knock them dead, figuratively speaking.”

  Mother smiled and waved gaily as I left the kitchen.

  The yard was blissfully quiet. The police were all off tracking Bill. Michael had taken Tony and Graham in to town to see if they could rent a car for the drive back to Pineville or if someone had to transport them to an airport. Most of the Shiffleys’ trucks were still there, but they’d all gone off somewhere. Sunday dinner with their Uncle Fred, perhaps.

  Things were almost back to normal.

  “Hurry up, Meg,” I heard Mrs. Fenniman calling from somewhere down in the bog.

  All I had to do was get through one last eXtreme croquet game. How bad could it be?

  Chapter Forty

  Okay, it could be pretty bad.

  The bickering began at the starting post, when Mrs. Pruitt went over to rummage in Lacie’s pack and realized that all her stuff was gone.

  “What have you done with my stuff, you little ninny!” she shrieked. “I need my golf gloves! I’ll get blisters without them!”

  Lacie’s initial reaction was a knee-jerk one: She took several steps back, hunched her shoulders slightly, and covered her mouth with her hands, as if to muffle an exclamation. But she recovered quickly.

  “I thought she was never going to speak to us again,” she said to Mrs. Wentworth.

  “And you believe a thing she says?” Mrs. Wentworth replied, shrugging.

  They both stood, their hands folded on top of the handles of their mallets, as if to emphasize that both of them were already wearing their golf gloves and in no danger of blistering.

  “When’s the next meeting of the historical society, anyway?” I asked.

  No one answered. Everyone just glared at one another, and at me. No doubt they were thinking the same thing I was. The next meeting wouldn’t be pretty. I’d have enjoyed their discomfort if I hadn’t had the sinking feeling that their internal battles would distract them from the battle against the outlet mall at a critical moment.

  By the time Mrs. Pruitt had fetched her gloves and we got started, the mood was tense, and none of the Dames were playing up to their usual form. Mrs. Fenniman wasn’t playing well, either, mainly because she was having too much fun watching the Dames bicker.

  Rose Noire kept patting the trees as if to apologize for bringing such negative energy into their space, and waving around a small bunch of herbs. Probably something that was supposed to create harmony and dispel quarrels and anger. Didn’t seem to work, but at least the poisonous atmosphere in which we played was sweetly scented.

  Even our referee was off his game. At the third wicket, Rob opened up Spike’s carrier to let him out for a pit stop without noticing that the leash wasn’t attached to his collar. Spike was out of sight in seconds.

  “Damn,” Rob said. “Now what’ll we do if we run into any cows?”

  “Call Mother and Dad back at the house,” I said. “Have them keep an eye out for Spike.”

  “He was heading away from the house,” Mrs. Fenniman said.

  “That was just to fool us,” I said. “He’ll double back in a minute or so.”

  I was the only one playing up to my usual form. Above it, in fact. Every time I approached my ball, I would push all my anxieties and resentments out of mind and focus on the ball, trying to make each swing as clean and solid as I could. Like chopping wood or hammering iron, whacking croquet balls was a great way to take out your frustrations. With each long, powerful drive, I pulled farther ahead. Tiger Woods had nothing on me today.

  By the ninth wicket, I was so far in the lead that I couldn’t even hear their squabbling. In between the occasional radio calls for me to take a shot, I could enjoy the peace and quiet of my solitary ramble through the woods.

  At least I could have enjoyed it if I’d known how to turn off my brain.

  I kept wanting to call back to the house myself, to find out if they’d heard anything about Bill. Worrying if I’d overreacted to the e-mails.

  Don’t be silly, I told myself. The chief reacted the same way. And he had prior knowledge of the hacking problem—more knowledge than I did.

  But what if Bill wasn’t guilty? Not guilty of murder, anyway, only convinced that everyone would assume his guilt once they saw the incriminating e-mails and discovered his involvement in the computer break-ins?

  We’d find out sooner or later. Right now, the sooner I could get through this croquet game, the sooner I could go home, put my feet up, talk to Michael, and revel in the luxury of an empty house. Emptier, anyway; we’d still have various family members underfoot, but not the Dames, the Briggses, the Clones, or the Mountain Morris Mallet Men.

  “Turn, Meg,” my radio advised.

  I lined up my shot and whacked the ball perfectly, lofting it into the air. It not only went in the right direction; it easily cleared a particular nasty patch of thorny bog.

  “Sweet,” I muttered. Then I grabbed the radio, shouted “Done!” into it, and set off after my ball.

  When I emerged from the wood, I found Dad talking to someone standing on the other side of a barbed-wire fence. When I got closer, I recognized our neighbor, Fred Shiffley.

  “There’s your ball!” Dad said, pointing to where it lay, nestled in the middle of smooth stretch of grass. “The wicket’s over by the stream.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Any news about the manhunt?”

  “Not yet,” Dad said. Fred Shiffley shook his head.

  “They really sure that poor boy did it?” he asked.

  “I don’t think they’re too sure of anything yet,” I said.

  “You ask me, they should still keep an eye on that Pruitt woman,” Mr. Shiffley said.

  “Any particular reason?” I asked, leaning my mallet against the fence. “Or just on general principles?”

  Mr. Shiffley smiled slyly.

  “Recognize this place?” he said. I looked around. Yes, I recognized it. On Friday, when I’d played far worse, I’d spent an inordinate amount of time disentangling my ball from the barbed-wire fence.

  “The fence!” I said. “It’s the one in the photo about the so-called Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge.”

  Mr. Shiffley nodded.

  “Anyone who’d pull a stunt like that would do anything,” he said. “Inventing something that never happened and trying to pass it off as history. If someone has no respect for the truth, do you really expect them to respect the value of human life?”

  “But Mrs. Pruitt didn’t invent the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge,” I said. “None of the Pruitts did.”

  “If they didn’t who did? Because it sure as hell never happened.”

  “Ellie Drayer did it,” I said.

  “Ms. Elli
e, the librarian?” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine why she’d do that.”

  “This was over fifty years ago, when she was in college,” I said. “She and a couple of her friends did it to play a prank on the Pruitts.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Mr. Shiffley said, and broke out laughing. “Pruitts sure fell for it, didn’t they?”

  “The Clarion published it, and the whole story came out, and for some strange reason, the Clarion never published the truth about the hoax.”

  Mr. Shiffley snorted.

  “That’s because old Tiberius Pruitt owned the Clarion back in the fifties,” he said. “No way he’d print anything that made the Pruitts look like the fools they were. Wish I’d known the whole story sooner.”

  “I bet Mrs. Pruitt does, too, now that the truth is out,” I said.

  “If I’d known the joke was on the Pruitts, maybe I’d have played along,” he said, still grinning. “Supported the whole campaign to have their phony battlefield declared a historical site when she first started working on it eight or nine years ago.”

  “Even though it would torpedo selling your land for the mall project, having it declared a historical site?”

  “History did happen here, you know,” he said, his smile fading. “Not the showy history the Pruitts are interested in. My family’s farmed this land since 1753. House isn’t that old—Yankees burned what was left of the original in 1864—but there’s stones in the old graveyard from before the Revolution. Stones for Shiffleys who died in six or seven different wars. And the women who bore them or married them, and kept the farm going after they left. That’s history, too, but I guess it’s not good enough to save. Not important to anyone outside the family.”

  “It should be,” Dad said with the mix of envy and melancholy that sometimes crept into his voice when other people talked about their family history.

  “If you feel like that, why are you selling your farm?” I asked.

  “Not like I want to sell,” Mr. Shiffley said.

  “Financial problems?” Dad asked.

  “We’re getting by,” Mr. Shiffley said. “But I’m getting along. Can’t keep farming forever. Getting harder and harder, waking up in the morning to do the milking.”

  “You can’t find find someone besides Evan Briggs who wants to buy it?” I asked.

  “Not to farm it,” he said. “Hell, I’ve tried for years to get one of my nephews to come in with me. Let me start training him to take over the farming, and after a year or two, the missus and I could build us a smaller house—I’m thinking a cottage down by the river. Less housework for her, and I’d be near enough to help out. Leave them the farm when we go.”

  “What a wonderful opportunity!” Dad said. “Aren’t any of them interested?”

  “They want the land all right,” Mr. Shiffley said. “They’re not really interested in farming it. Soon as Bess and I went, they’d sell it, just like that. Farming’s hard work. Young people aren’t interested.”

  Dad shook his head in sympathy. I felt slightly annoyed.

  “They never struck me as lazy,” I said, sticking up for my generation. “They’ve done great work for us.” Apart from the duck pond, which wasn’t their fault.

  “Getting top pay, too,” Mr. Shiffley said. I couldn’t exactly argue with that. “And don’t tell me they’re always there the minute you want them. Like to work hard for a spell, then take it easy for a longer spell, those nephews of mine. Farming’s a seven-day-a-week job, fifty-two weeks a year. They know that. Not stupid, any of ’em. I didn’t say they were lazy anyway. Just not cut out for something as tough as farming.”

  “But why Evan Briggs and the damned outlet mall?” I asked. “Almost anything would be better than that.”

  Mr. Shiffley snorted.

  “Yeah, that’s what my nephews said. They lined up a classy developer. Guy promised he wasn’t going to build cheap little houses on postage-stamp lots. He’d divide it into ranchettes. Nothing smaller than five acres.”

  He snorted again in disgust.

  Maybe not as nice as having a farm next door—it would mean several dozen new neighbors. Still better than the outlet mall. Why did Mr. Shiffley sound so disgusted?

  “Ranchettes,” he repeated. “Hell, I don’t care how large the lots were, it’d still be just a bunch of houses for rich people from the city to play farmer in. I like the outlet-mall idea better—nothing tasteful and classy about that. If it’s not going to be a working farm, the hell with it.”

  An idea began to grow in my mind.

  “Yes, the outlet mall’s spectacularly horrible,” I said. “That’s the whole idea, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” Dad said. Mr. Shiffley looked at me with one eyebrow cocked in curiosity.

  “I imagine it’s causing quite a fuss, now that word’s getting around about your plan to sell out to Mr. Briggs,” I said.

  “Meg!” Dad said. “I think ‘sell out’ is a little harsh.”

  “But I bet Mr. Shiffley doesn’t,” I said. “He’s hoping everyone will be so outraged that something will happen. Some plan to turn it into a park—that’s why you’ve kept your nephews from telling the truth about the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge, isn’t it? Or maybe someone will appear who can afford to buy the land to keep it as a farm—maybe not for as much money as Mr. Briggs would pay, but enough for you to live on. If no one comes forward to help you save the farm, well, then we’re all stuck with the outlet mall, and serves us right.”

  Mr. Shiffley looked at me for a few moments; then his mouth quirked into a brief, wry smile.

  “Smart girl, that,” he said to Dad. Then he turned and stumped away down the slope toward his house.

  “Fascinating,” Dad said.

  I glanced over. He wasn’t looking at Mr. Shiffley. He was standing with his hands on his hips, slowly sweeping the landscape with his gaze and nodding slightly.

  “Dad,” I said. “What are you—”

  “Meg! Turn!” Rob’s voice informed me over the radio.

  “You go on with your game,” Dad said. “I need to ask Mr. Shiffley something.”

  “Dad! Wait!”

  But Dad was off and running. And here came Lacie Butler, stumbling through the underbrush, squeaking with dismay whenever she tripped over a root or branch, eliminating the option of pretending I couldn’t find my ball or hadn’t heard the radio.

  I gritted my teeth at having to play croquet when everything exciting was happening somewhere else and turned to greet Lacie.

  Chapter Forty-one

  “Oh dear,” Lacie said, with the usual anxious quiver in her voice. “High grass. You didn’t see my ball land, did you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you sure it came this way?” I said. “Last time I heard, you were over at the fourth wicket.”

  “I was,” she said. “Only somebody roqueted me over this way.”

  Great. Not only were she and Mrs. Wentworth refusing to speak to Mrs. Pruitt; they were even refusing to say her name.

  “Dad and Mr. Shiffley and I were talking here for quite a few minutes,” I said. “We didn’t see it.”

  “Oh no!” Lacie exclaimed, clapping her hands to her mouth as if the loss of her ball were a real disaster instead of just an annoyance.

  My mouth fell open. I suddenly realized how Lacie could have gotten poison ivy on her face. Not from falling face down in a patch of it—after all, this time of year there weren’t any patches, just vines. She’d handled one of the vines with her golf gloves, then spent the next hour or so transferring the urushiol oil to her face every time she exclaimed in mock horror and put her hands over her mouth.

  “Turn, Meg,” the radio said.

  I started, and pretended I’d just been zoning out, not staring at Lacie.

  “Let me take my shot,” I said. “Then I’ll come help you look for your ball.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said. “I’m sure I can find it. Don’t worry
about me.”

  Exactly what I was hoping—even expecting—her to say. I breathed a sigh of relief and strode toward where I’d left my ball.

  “I’m sorry,” she said from behind me. “I can’t let you do that.”

  I looked over my shoulder and froze. Lacie was pointing a gun at me.

  “Okay,” I said, playing it light. “If you’re that impatient, I’ll help you look for your ball before I take my turn.”

  “Don’t move,” she said. “I don’t know how you figured it out, but obviously I can’t let you go and tell the police.”

  “Tell them what?” I asked.

  She shook her head as if disappointed by my attempts at subterfuge. Not very convincing attempts—I was distracted by the gun. I’d had guns pointed at me before, and every other time, despite all Dad’s mystery-inspired lectures on the subject, the only thing I could remember was the gun’s enormous size. Cousin Horace had told me that most civilians reacted that way. Even the smallest gun looks Really Big when you’re looking at the business end of it.

  But the gun Lacie was holding looked remarkably tiny. You could hardly see it in her hand, and she didn’t have particularly large hands for a woman. I had to work hard to shake off the thought that it was only Lacie and her silly little gun. Thinking that way was just as dangerous as being frozen with fear. As Cousin Horace had also remarked, a .22 will kill you just as dead if the bullet hits the wrong place. Something about Lacie suggested that I shouldn’t take a chance that she was a bad shot. Maybe it was the sudden disappearance of her usual simpering mannerisms. Or perhaps the surprising steadiness of the hand holding the gun. With my luck, they probably had marksmanship contests down at the club in between golf and tennis matches.

  “You don’t really think you can get away with shooting me, do you?” I said.

  “Oh, I rather think I can,” she said with a vacant smile. “I’ll just go bash one of the others over the head with your mallet and leave the gun nearby. It will look as if she shot you in self-defense.”

  “Won’t work unless you lure one of them over here,” I said. “Hard to have us killing each other in a deadly hand-to-hand confrontation if we’re not even within sight of each other. Besides, won’t they trace the gun to you?”