“The roommate followed her one night and spotted her slipping out a side door and meeting someone. Male, relatively tall—she couldn’t get a good look at him before they disappeared into the gardens. So it definitely could be exactly what they think it is—a rendezvous.”
“Or maybe we’ve got a team of vandals—one male and one female.”
“And if they’re perfectly innocent?”
“Then maybe while rendezvousing they saw something that would help the chief solve one or both of our crimes.”
“Been a while since you had an illicit rendezvous, hasn’t it?” she said. “If you think they’d be noticing much going on around them.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t notice anything during the rendezvous, but what about on their way there and back?” I said. “If they’re sneaking, they’d keep a pretty wary eye open to make sure they’re not seen. And why would they be sneaking, anyway? It’s not as if we have a curfew or rules about fraternizing with the opposite sex.”
“I gather the lady in the case is married,” Amanda said.
“Okay, that explains the sneaking,” I said. “But it doesn’t prove she’s not the vandal. Tell the chief.”
“I will.” Amanda paused at the foot of the stairs. “I’m going to change for dinner. My, that sounded impressive, didn’t it? Don’t expect to see me in a ball gown—I’m going to shower and put on something really comfortable so I can go straight from dinner to Rose Noire’s class.”
“Enjoy.” I watched her climb the stairs, trying not to mind that she was heading off to relax after dumping yet another mystery on my plate.
Chapter 14
As I crossed the great room, nodding and waving to people as I passed, I pondered Amanda’s new information. It wouldn’t be all that hard to figure out who the lovelorn Jenni was meeting. Enrollment at Biscuit Mountain, this week and last, was about 85 percent female. Even if you added in the staff and faculty, not that many candidates. And if you eliminated those who hadn’t been here last week, even fewer. I pulled out my notebook and made a note to compile a list and get it to the chief. Of course it was always possible that Jenni and her lover were innocent of all the crimes that had happened here and hadn’t seen a single thing that would be useful to the chief. But maybe—just maybe—this would be the clue that cracked the case. Or cases. At least one of the cases.
“The chief’s problem, not mine,” I reminded myself as I opened the door to the dining room.
When I walked in, Jamie ran over to give me a hug and tell me a few highlights of his day. Then he ran back to the table where the rest of the children’s theater class were all happily eating together. Josh, when he spotted me, contented himself with a smile and a wave.
I waved back to him, and to Michael, who was riding herd on the table. The kids appeared to be having a raucous good time and Michael and the counselors were there to keep it from getting out of hand, so when I had gone through the line I looked around for some grown-ups to eat with.
I considered and abandoned the notion of joining Rose Noire, Peggy, and Gillian. I could see that Marty was delivering some special vegetarian tidbit to them, his burly figure oddly graceful as he offered the platter to each in turn. Marty certainly wasn’t a vegetarian, but he did seem to take a special pleasure in making sure our vegetarians were sumptuously fed. The fact that our three faculty vegetarians were all easy on the eyes probably didn’t hurt. But I was in a carnivorous mood and my tray showed it. I didn’t think I’d be good company for them tonight. I smiled and passed by.
At another nearby table, Dad sat across from Victor the Klutz, and the two of them were talking with great enthusiasm. What could the two possibly have in common? I sidled a little closer so I could eavesdrop.
“No, no,” Dad was saying. “It’s much too early to start thinking about serial killers. I know the mystery books are full of them, but in real life they account for no more than one percent of all homicides.”
“But what if it is?” Victor said. “And we could catch him? Wouldn’t that be cool?”
I sidled away again before they could notice me and invite me to join them. Either Victor shared Dad’s fascination with crime, both real and fictional, or perhaps during their trip to the ER together Dad had infected Victor with his obsession. Either way, not a table I wanted to join.
And I didn’t think I was in the mood to eat with Grandfather, who was morosely shoveling food into his face. Clearly the afternoon’s hike had produced no gulls to gladden his heart. Caroline and Baptiste and several of the students were sitting at his table, watching him anxiously. Baptiste had a stack of battered old books at his elbow. He was eating with one hand and holding a book open in the other.
“But why limit ourselves to searching for mountain lakes?” I overheard him say as I walked by their table. “Not all gulls nest near water. The grey gull, for example—Leucophaeus modestus. It breeds in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. Not merely a desert, but one of the most dry deserts in the world. And science did not discover their breeding grounds until the seventies. None of our sources give any information about the breeding grounds of Ord’s gull.” He gestured to the stack of books. “So why do we assume it must be a lake?”
“You’re just trying to cheer me up,” Grandfather said. “It’s not working.”
“I am not trying to cheer you up,” Baptiste said. “I am pointing out that the few locations we have already explored do not even begin to exhaust the possibilities for discovering the gulls. Courage!”
“Don’t give up!” Caroline thumped him on the back with an enthusiasm that would have proved equally useful if he’d been choking. “If finding Ord’s gull was an easy job, they wouldn’t have given it to you.”
Which didn’t make sense—no one had given Grandfather the job of finding the gulls—he’d taken it on himself, in spite of the probability that the gulls had survived just fine without him for decades. But he perked up a little and scowled in my direction.
“It might be different if some people pitched in a little,” he remarked.
“I’m doing what I can.” I turned to continue my search for a more restful table. I saw that Cordelia was approaching us, so I waited to see what she wanted.
“Meg,” she said. “Can you—”
“Where’s Horace, anyway?” Grandfather snapped. “Shouldn’t he be doing something? Tell him I want to talk to him.”
“Horace is busy.” Cordelia whirled to face him and put her hands on her hips. “The blood spatter expert from the state crime lab in Richmond arrived and Horace is showing her the crime scene. What do you need with Horace anyway?”
“I want to know what’s taking him so long,” Grandfather snapped. “When is he going to get me my photos?”
“Your photos?” Cordelia looked to me for an explanation.
“Prine’s photos,” I explained. “The ones of the gulls.”
“I should go talk to him.” Grandfather started to stand up.
“No, you really shouldn’t.” I gently shoved him back down into his seat.
“What foolishness,” Cordelia said. “You don’t need to badger Horace to get you those photos.”
“We don’t need the actual photos.” Grandfather’s condescending tone made me want to whack him, so I could only imagine how it affected Cordelia. “We just need to know where he took them.”
“Well, I happen to know where he took them,” she said. “I was there at the time. Got a few photos of my own—a lot better than Prine’s. He may have been a decent painter, but he was a rotten photographer.”
“You have pictures of the Ord’s gull?” Grandfather didn’t sound pleased. In fact, he sounded seriously annoyed.
“Is that what it’s called?” Cordelia said. “I knew it wasn’t any of the commoner gulls—been meaning to look it up in my birding book, but things have been a mite busy between starting up our first session of classes and chasing the vandal.”
“You probably won’t find it in your birding
book,” Grandfather said. “Because it’s thought to have been extinct for nearly a century. I need to see your pictures!”
“Or maybe you could just ask her politely to tell you where she took her pictures,” I suggested. “Because maybe if we know where she took the pictures, you and Baptiste could take your class there tomorrow and take some even nicer pictures of your own.”
But Cordelia had already pulled out her phone and was clicking buttons on it.
“Here.” She thrust her phone at Grandfather’s face, so close that he had to pull his head back to see it. “Here’s your gull.”
As Grandfather studied the picture, his scowl grew deeper.
“This Ord’s gull is dead!” he exclaimed finally.
“Dead as a doornail,” Cordelia agreed. “It was just as dead in Prine’s picture—we took them at the same time. It was lying out there on the terrace one morning last week.”
“On the terrace?” Grandfather echoed. “That terrace?”
“That terrace.”
“Damn.” Grandfather shook his head and sighed. “It’s looking more and more as if this was a vagrant. That’s a bird that’s found very far outside its normal breeding, wintering, or migrating range.” He had switched to his lecture hall voice. “Also known as an accidental. And of course—”
“I know what a vagrant is,” Cordelia said. “I’ve watched a bird or two in my time. And this was no vagrant. Vagrants are almost always solo birds, right? Or at most two or three. Well, we had whole flocks of those gulls swarming all over the terrace last week. Messy as all get-out and you couldn’t eat out there for them dive-bombing your table.”
Grandfather scrambled to his feet and was striding toward the doors that led to the terrace.
“You won’t find them there now,” Cordelia called after him.
“Why not?” He whirled and stormed back toward her. “Those gulls are an endangered species! What did you to do them?”
“I didn’t do a thing to them,” Cordelia said. “I just got rid of the garbage that was attracting them.”
“Garbage?”
“The garbage,” I groaned. “Of course.”
“It was Marty’s fault.” Cordelia glanced over to see if Marty was nearby, but apparently he’d gone back to the kitchen to whip up a few more soy and tofu delicacies for Rose Noire’s table. “He’s a great cook, but just a little annoying on the subject of composting and recycling. He—”
“There’s nothing annoying about composting and recycling,” Grandfather bellowed. “We need to do everything we can to conserve our natural resources! If everyone—”
“Stow it,” Cordelia snapped. “I know how important recycling and composting are. You’re talking to the woman who singlehandedly browbeat the town of Riverton into starting a recycling program when most Virginia towns were still dumping tons of reusable resources into landfills! When I say Marty was annoying on the subject of composting and recycling, I mean that he seemed to think it was perfectly fine to throw all the food scraps and waste paper down the ravine behind the main building so they could rot naturally.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Grandfather said. “A health hazard.”
“And annoying,” Cordelia repeated. “Especially since I spent good money to build a very nice recycling and composting area far enough from the main building that any minor odor problems wouldn’t bother us up here.”
“A properly managed compost pile shouldn’t have any odor.” Grandfather had found another of his pet topics.
“Yes,” Cordelia said. “But look who I’ve got to help me manage it. People who think it’s perfectly fine to throw garbage down a ravine. We started noticing the smell on Monday, and by Tuesday it was so bad we thought it was something the vandal had done. Meg was the one who finally figured out what the problem was.”
“I just followed my nose,” I said with a shrug.
“And I had to hire some workmen to clear out all that rotten garbage,” Cordelia went on. “And the smellier things got, the more of those gulls we saw, cruising up and down the ravine, circling over the terrace, pooping on the guests. One stupid gull kept dropping clam shells on the terrace.”
“That’s a very natural behavior for gulls,” Grandfather said. “And a sign of their high intelligence. They do it to crack the shell open so they can eat the clam.”
“I know that, you old fool,” Cordelia said. “But this stupid gull wasn’t dropping clams—just empty shells. We’d already steamed the clams and eaten them. Maybe there’s a Darwinian reason your silly Ord’s gulls are extinct everywhere but here.”
“Well, if they showed up that quickly after you started throwing garbage, they must be living nearby,” Grandfather said. “If we could get them to show up here again, we could catch a few, put some little GPS trackers on them, and follow them back to their main habitat. So let’s throw out some garbage down the ravine again and see what happens.”
“No,” Cordelia said.
“But—”
“Absolutely not.”
“But I need to find my gulls.”
“And you can’t find them here,” she said. “The vandal’s already doing his best to drive people away—he doesn’t need your help. I’m lucky the health department didn’t close us down after last week’s fiasco. Find someplace else to strew your garbage.”
“Where?” He was doing the sulky toddler face again.
“There must be thousands of acres of woods and meadows out there that aren’t within smelling distance of my craft center,” Cordelia indicated the surrounding mountains with a sweeping gesture. “Exert yourself a little. If you bring your own truck, I’d be happy to supply the garbage—just don’t dump any of it on my property.”
Grandfather stormed out. Onto the terrace, as if he didn’t want to take her word for it that the gulls were gone.
Cordelia sighed and closed her eyes. Counting to ten, no doubt. When she opened them again, she saw me looking at her.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I shouldn’t rile him up like that. But he has such an amazing gift for getting my goat.”
I nodded.
“And I know he only does it because he cares so much about wild creatures and the environment. But I just wish he’d develop a little common sense. And I really can’t have him bringing the health department down on me. Talk to Caroline. Maybe the two of you can make sure he doesn’t get up to anything.”
She marched out—in the opposite direction from Grandfather, toward her office.
“That’s a pretty tall order,” I muttered. But I knew what she meant.
Chapter 15
I was still standing there, fretting, when I heard a strangled sound behind me. Either someone was in need of the Heimlich maneuver or someone had overheard my grandparents’ latest sparring match and was trying to suppress a fit of laughter. I turned to see Chief Heedles, sitting nearby, chin resting in her hand in a way that let her partially cover her mouth. She seemed to be fighting a smile.
I went over to her table.
“May I join you?” I asked.
She gestured to the place opposite her. I set down my tray, containing the food I hoped hadn’t gone stone cold while I was trying to referee Grandfather and Cordelia’s latest encounter, and fell into my chair rather than sitting in it.
“If you’re just being polite and would rather be rid of me, there’s an easy way to do it.” I cut a bit of Smithfield ham off the slice on my plate. “Just start talking about gulls.”
“If it’s any consolation, the town attorney sees no problem with sharing the location of Prine’s photos, when Horace has time to do that.” She dipped a spoon into her chocolate mousse and maneuvered it to get just the right proportion of whipped cream to chocolate. “So if Prine did succeed in tracking the you-know-what to its nest, we should be able to tell Dr. Blake where it is very soon.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Although frankly I’d be astonished if Prine went any farther than the terrace in search of the gulls. As
far as I can see, the whole time he was here he barely left his studio except to eat and sleep.”
“I think he would surprise you,” she said. “His phone records have come in. Can you think of any legitimate reason for Mr. Prine to be calling the Jazz Hands Art Academy?”
“Maybe he was teaching there later this summer?”
“No, apparently after his two weeks here he was planning to paint in Tuscany. A village called Monteriggioni.” She rolled out the syllables with relish in an authentic-sounding accent. “So you’d think he’d have no reason to talk to his former employers at Jazz Hands. Certainly not twenty times over the last three weeks.”
“Unless he was the vandal.” I found my hands instinctively closing into fists. “The miserable jerk.”
“Or at least a vandal,” she said. “Cordelia’s theory that there could be more than one isn’t crazy, really. Keep this under your hat—but if you do think of any legitimate reason for Mr. Prine to have made all those calls, I’d like to hear about it.”
Since my mouth was full of green beans, I only nodded, but I made it an enthusiastic nod.
“One more thing while I have you,” she went on. “How well do you know this Deshommes fellow?”
“Well enough that I don’t suspect him,” I said. “Of any of what’s been going on here.”
She nodded and kept looking at me. I realized that of course she didn’t see Baptiste as I did. To her he was just another unfamiliar face. Still, why was she asking about him in particular? I was sure it didn’t matter to her that Baptiste was black. But then, who knew about the swarm of outsiders who might be descending on Riverton to help with the case, report on it, or just gawk at its progress? However enlightened the chief might be, we were in a very rural county in a southern state. Maybe she wanted to know as much as possible about Baptiste so she could keep him safe.
“I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known my grandfather,” I went on. “He can earn top dollar for his photos anywhere he likes—I’ve lost count of the times he’s been in National Geographic. But he seems to like traveling with Grandfather, and thank God for that, because I’ve also lost count of how many times Baptiste has saved Grandfather’s life. He can play the diplomat when needed—which it often is, since Grandfather doesn’t have a tactful bone in his body. And he’s jumped in between Grandfather and any number of dangers—wild animals, angry mobs, armed poachers—you name it.”
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