No Nest for the Wicket Page 7

  “Dr. Langslow? Sorry to bother you so late, but Meg suggested I call.”

  I left. Maybe, if the students weren’t back yet, I’d see if I could do a better job than Robert Louis Stevenson of cheering up Michael.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Ghost of Christmas Past was sitting on my chest, forcing me to relive the horrible Christmas when I was twelve and Dad decided to run up and down the roof in the middle of the night, waving a string of sleigh bells and shouting, “Ho, ho, ho!” Which wouldn’t have been so horrible if he hadn’t terrified Rob, who ran shrieking out into the night, startling Dad into falling off the roof and breaking his arm. Mother and I spent the night in the emergency room with Dad; Pam and several dozen neighbors were up till dawn looking for Rob; and while we were out, the three weimaraners we were dog-sitting ate the half-thawed turkey. I’ve disliked sleigh bells ever since.

  My mood didn’t improve when I woke to find that this jingling was actually the Mountain Morris Mallet Men arming themselves for the day. They were trying to be quiet, tiptoeing and shushing one another. I hate it when people do that. They usually take twice as long and make almost as much noise as if they’d just gone ahead and done whatever they had to do in their usual fashion.

  I glanced at the travel alarm. Nine-thirty. I deduced we weren’t playing croquet this morning, or someone would have come to badger me a lot earlier.

  Michael was already up. Getting an early start on the day, or driven out by the tintinabulation of the bells?

  I’d find out later. For now, I closed my eyes again. The general idea was to get a little more sleep, but the worrying part of my brain kicked into gear. Naturally, instead of worrying about the interrupted construction, which really was my problem, or the interrupted croquet match, which Mrs. Fenniman would try to make my problem, or the threat of the outlet mall, which would be a humongous problem if true, I worried about the murder.

  Mrs. Wentworth had lied about knowing Lindsay. The students had almost certainly lied. What if they weren’t the only ones?

  Mrs. Pruitt. The more I thought about it, the odder it seemed that she’d fallen behind me in the croquet game. I could have sworn she’d taken an annoying early lead and spent the first half of the game rubbing it in whenever she talked on the radio. Yet just before I found Lindsay’s body, she’d suddenly turned up behind me. What if she’d taken a detour to kill Lindsay and rejoined the game in progress? She could even have deliberately come up behind me so she could roquet my ball into the brier patch, thus making sure I’d find the body. Didn’t the police always suspect the person who found the body? Or was this another notion I’d gotten from Dad and his mystery books?

  Of course, Mrs. Pruitt as the culprit would be more plausible if I could think of a motive for her to kill Lindsay.

  Lindsay was a history instructor—had spent a year in the history department at Caerphilly College. Mrs. Pruitt ran the Caerphilly Historical Society. Was it realistic to think they’d never met?

  That depended on whether Mrs. Pruitt had been involved in the historical society six years ago, when Lindsay was here. All I had to do was find a tactful way to ask.

  Then again … I ambled into the office and searched my in basket. Yes, there it was—the fund-raising letter we’d recently gotten from the society. Which included a promotional booklet—an expensive-looking little thing, its cover made of thick textured paper and decorated with a discreet gold embossed logo. Inside, a color picture of Henrietta Pruitt, more formidable than usual in a hooped skirt that looked as if it were six feet in diameter.

  There it was, in the second paragraph. “Since assuming the presidency of the society in 1989 …” She’d run the historical society the whole time Lindsay was in Caerphilly. What were the odds they’d never met?

  Even if they had, I didn’t know what she could possibly have against Lindsay. About the only slightly odd thing I’d noticed was how funny the Shiffleys found her description of the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge. Was there something fishy there?

  I checked the time. Past ten. Late enough to call Kevin. More than an even chance I’d wake him, but I wouldn’t have to feel too guilty about it.

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding more cranky than sleepy. I decided flattery was in order before I interrogated him.

  “The information you sent was fantastic! We owe you big time!”

  A pause.

  “Do you mean that literally?” he asked.

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “Do you want the detailed technical explanation, or should I just mention that last night I had an expensive piece of computer equipment crash and I can’t afford to replace it and—”

  “How expensive?”

  Yes, he knew the definition of expensive all right. I did a quick calculation and decided my MasterCard could handle it. After a few minutes of negotiation, he had new hardware—well, would have it in a few days, assuming he’d provide me with sufficiently detailed information so I could order his pricey little toy—and I had the promise of unlimited guru services for the next six months. Even if Chief Burke had solved the murder long before then, there was always the battle against the outlet mall, not to mention setting up our computers once we moved back into the house. Michael envisioned equipping our new digs with a state-of-the-art wireless computer and multimedia system. I’d be satisfied if we just got both our computers working normally again, and even for that we’d need Kevin.

  “I guess this has kept you from working on the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge?” I asked.

  “No, though I haven’t found anything,” he said. “But Joss is working on it now, so we should have something soon.”

  “Great,” I said. “Oh, if you come across any more information about Lindsay Tyler—that’s the Professor L. Blake Tyler you found last night—especially anything that shows she knew any of the people who claimed they didn’t recognize her …”

  “Got it,” he said with a snicker, and hung up.

  I turned my attention to the stack of information Kevin had sent about the outlet-mall project. No sense letting my long-standing dislike of Mrs. Pruitt distract me from my newfound loathing for Evan Briggs. Much as I liked the idea of Mrs. Pruitt as a cunning, ruthless killer, Michael and I had much more to gain if Briggs turned out to be guilty.

  Nothing Kevin had found specifically identified Mr. Shiffley’s farm as the proposed site for the mall, but Minerva Burke was right. If you knew enough about the neighborhood, you could guess where the only place large and flat enough for the outlet mall was.

  I had to get up three times and pace around the room to calm down. I wasn’t sure whom I was maddest at, Evan Briggs for what he was planning to do to our backyard—and, for that matter, the whole peaceful, beautiful little town of Caerphilly—or Mrs. Pruitt, who must have known for several weeks where Briggs was planning to put his mall, and hadn’t enlisted us in her campaign against it, or even told us what was up.

  Normally, in a mood like this, I’d have fired up my forge and worked my temper out. I couldn’t do fine detail work in a temper, but it was great for anything that required heavy hammering. But even if I’d wanted to move the students’ stuff out of the way, the chief had all my big hammers.

  I was still fuming when Chief Burke stuck his head in the tack room’s door.

  “Mind if I talk to you?”

  “Fine,” I said. “By the way, did you know that Mrs. Pruitt has been president of the historical society since 1989?”

  “That’s quite a long time,” he said, frowning slightly.

  “Which means she was president of it when Lindsay Tyler was here. How likely is it that they didn’t know each other? The historical society and the history department are like that,” I said, holding up my hand with the forefinger and middle finger pressed tightly together.

  “We’ll look into her possible relationships with everyone who was here yesterday.”

  “Good,” I said. “Because they’re all liars. Every one of them. All but Mi
chael, of course.”

  And me, the one local resident I knew for sure had never met Lindsay, but pointing that out would sound too much like saying “I told you so.”

  “Yes,” the chief said. “Speaking of which—you say you’d never met the deceased before?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re positive?”

  “I never even heard the name before,” I said. “I didn’t recognize her. Why should I? By the time I met Michael, she was long gone—from his life and from Caerphilly.”

  “You’d have no reason to communicate with her?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “That’s interesting,” the chief said. “Then I suppose it would surprise you to learn that according to the telephone company, you two have been chatting back and forth quite regularly.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The chief sat back with a small, smug smile on his face.

  “Yes, it would surprise me enormously,” I said.

  He paused, doing his usual waiting number. I waited, too, with an expression of eager helpfulness on my face. After a few moments, the chief sighed and handed me a sheet of paper. Something faxed over from Lindsay’s cell-phone carrier, I deduced from the look of it.

  “Her cell-phone records?” I asked. He nodded slightly. “Yeah, this one’s my number.”

  “Well?” he said, one eyebrow raised.

  I flipped over to the next page.

  “You don’t need to study the whole thing,” he said, reaching for the paper. “I just wanted to show you that your number does appear there.”

  “I’m looking at the times of the calls,” I said. “Trying to make sense out of this. Because I think I’d have noticed if some woman called up and said, ‘Hi, I’m your fiancé’s ex-girlfriend. Mind if I come over to get murdered in your backyard?’ So maybe someone I do know was using Lindsay’s phone to call me. Which would mean someone here knows her a lot better than they’re letting on.”

  He frowned, but he let me keep the sheets.

  “Doesn’t have to be someone here,” he said. “Could be anyone who’s been calling you regularly over the last few days.”

  “Yes, but almost everyone I’ve talked to in the last few days is here,” I said. “The Shiffleys and the eXtreme croquet players. Her number does look familiar.”

  “Not surprising, since you’ve called it or gotten calls from it eleven times over the last week and a half,” he said. “Right up to last night, after she was dead—this was you calling her, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. “No cell phones in the afterlife; I hear it’s the ultimate dead zone. Hang on.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the notebook that tells me when to breathe, as I called my giant spiral-bound “To Do” list. I flipped it open at the paper clip that served as a bookmarker for the most recent entries, then turned back one page.

  “Yes, that’s Helen Carmichael,” I said.

  “Beg pardon.”

  “That’s what she was calling herself. Not Lindsay Tyler.”

  “Just why were you talking to her under any name?”

  “She claimed to be a history professor from UVa who wanted some old papers Michael and I were trying to find a home for,” I said. “There is a history professor at UVa called Helen Carmichael—I checked to make sure she was legit. I blew that, didn’t I?”

  The chief frowned.

  “Was there some reason you didn’t want to give them to the history department here at Caerphilly?” he asked. “I assume you know them—some of them anyway.”

  “No reason at all,” I said. “Except that I tried for six months to get them even to come out and look at the stuff and finally got tired of being ignored. So I got mad one day, e-mailed the UVa history department, and a couple of weeks later this Helen Carmichael called to say she was interested in the papers and could we arrange a time for her to come and pick them up.”

  “Had you arranged anything?”

  “We had arranged yesterday, between noon and five,” I said. “She never showed—which makes sense if Helen Carmichael was really Lindsay Tyler; she was off getting killed about the time she’d promised to show up here. I forgot all about it, with the murder and everything. Didn’t remember till sometime in the evening. I called her number to ask what had happened, but I didn’t get an answer. Obviously.”

  “We were trying to identify a dead woman, and a woman you’d never met failed to show up for a meeting, and you never mentioned this?”

  “I figured that before I bothered you with it, I should make sure I wasn’t crying wolf—so I checked the photo of Professor Carmichael on the UVa Web site, and it definitely wasn’t her. Take a look for yourself if you like. How was I supposed to know that the Helen Carmichael I was talking to was a fake all along?”

  The chief scribbled a few notes.

  “So Lindsay Tyler was calling you, pretending to be Helen Carmichael.”

  “Yes. From that number. Wait, I’ll show you.”

  I pulled out my cell phone and fiddled with it until I activated the speaker-phone feature. Then I dialed my voice-message service and played her last message back for the chief. Since I had six more recent messages still on the system, he got to hear bits of those, too, until I found the right message. He looked annoyed, but I figured by the time we reached the mystery woman’s message, I’d made my point about how busy my cell phone had been.

  “This is Helen Carmichael,” a woman’s voice said. “I got your message. Tomorrow works for me. I’ll get there as close to noon as possible and should be out of your way long before five. Thanks.”

  The voice sounded much as I remembered it—crisp, businesslike. She sounded like a professor—which she was, though not at UVa. No clue from her voice that she and Michael had once—

  “To repeat this message, press one,” the phone company’s recorded voice said. “To save it, press two. To delete it, press three. To send a copy—”

  “Save it,” the chief said.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, pressing two.

  “So what’s in these boxes you were giving her?” he asked.

  “Papers,” I said. “Letters. Old newspaper and magazine clippings. Photos. Documents. Most of it from the 1800s and early 1900s. It’s all stuff we found in the house. The previous owners’ heirs didn’t want it, and we had no use for it. We didn’t want to throw it away—not without letting someone more knowledgeable look through it to see if any of it was potentially valuable.”

  “Show me,” he said.

  “No problem,” I said. I meant it—I felt downright cheerful about the possibility that he’d seize the boxes as evidence and finally get them out of the house. I led him to the front hall and pointed to the twenty-three copier-paper boxes stacked neatly in one corner of the foyer.

  “All these?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Good Lord,” he said.

  He lifted the lid of one box and examined the top few papers. A small bundle of letters tied with a faded ribbon lay on top. A program from the town’s 1871 May Day band concert. A sepia-toned photo of a dozen men in stiff collars who scowled into the cameras as if they really didn’t trust such a newfangled contraption not to explode in their faces. The chief glanced up at me.

  “You really think something in one of these boxes was worth killing her over?”

  “I don’t even know if anything in any of those boxes was worth the trouble of picking up the boxes and shoving them in a car,” I said. “Certainly no one from the Caerphilly history department thought so, and I warned the woman before she came all the way from Charlottesville that it might just be a pile of useless junk.”

  “All the way from the other side of West Virginia, actually.”

  “True,” I said. “Not that I knew about West Virginia until last night. I thought it was Charlottesville.”

  The chief nodded absently. He stared at the boxes for a few minutes.

  “My people are pretty tied up with the search,” he said w
ith a sigh. “The state crime lab’s swamped with all those mallets and hammers.”

  “You don’t want to impound the boxes so your people can go through them when they’re finished searching?”

  Obviously I didn’t hide my disappointment well enough.

  “I think we’ll leave them here for now,” he said. “I don’t want anyone touching them.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “They’re off-limits.”

  “Understood.”

  “And I darn well want to see anything you find in them that could have a bearing on this murder!” he barked.

  “Anything we find while not touching the off-limits boxes,” I said. “Got it.”

  He looked at me over his glasses, shook his head, and returned to the kitchen.

  “I’m locking them up!” I said. “So no one will mess with them.”

  “Good,” he called back over his shoulder.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I deduced from the chief’s manner that he didn’t think the twenty-three boxes were of any importance. My first impulse was to sit down and go through every scrap of paper until I could prove him wrong. That impulse lasted about ten seconds.

  I liked my second impulse better—to lock them in the shed. In addition to the house and the barn, we still had seven other structures on the property, of various sizes and in various stages of disrepair, any of which would ordinarily qualify for the name shed, but we’d officially bestowed that title on one of the better-preserved outbuildings. It had once housed some kind of livestock, to judge from the small pen outside its door. We’d fitted the shed with a padlock; I’d made decorative but functional grates to secure the windows; and we used it to keep poisonous house and garden chemicals out of the hands of visiting children and Christmas presents away from the prying eyes of visiting relatives. It could keep the boxes secure for now.

  I went in search of labor, following the sound of the bells until I located the students in the front yard. They were attempting to teach some dance steps to two of the Shiffleys. All the better.

  “Can you guys help me with something?” I asked.