“Yes, I understand that,” the chief said. “I mean what were you doing at the Spare Attic this evening?”
“Loading our truck,” she said.
“Yes, we noticed that,” the chief said. “But according to the records in Mr. Doleson’s office, the storage bin where we found you belongs to Mr. Norris Pruitt. You want to tell me why you were burgling Norris’s bin?”
“We weren’t burgling,” Caroline said. “We were helping Norris empty it.”
“At 10 P.M. in the middle of a snowstorm?” the chief said. “What’s so all-fired important that it couldn’t wait till morning? He got snowshoes and a generator stowed away there?”
“We were rather busy earlier,” she said. “With the parade and all. And I have to go back to the sanctuary tomorrow with the truck, so this was the only time we could do it.”
She sat back, folded her hands in her lap, and smiled innocently at him.
“And Mr. Pruitt will confirm this if I call him?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, but her voice sounded a little anxious.
“And you never considered that maybe this wasn’t the right time to help Norris with his bin? Right after the building’s owner had been murdered?”
Caroline shrugged.
“I’m not from around here,” she said. “How could I even have known Mr. Doleson owned the facility without you telling me? I just knew it was Norris’s bin.”
“And the reason you brought this with you?”
The chief held up a pair of bolt cutters,
“Norris had lost his key,” she said. “So careless of him. That was one of the reasons he needed our help.”
She sat back and smiled calmly at him. The chief asked her the same questions several times over, in slightly different ways. Caroline remained steadfast and showed no further signs of anxiety. She even smothered the occasional yawn, which meant she was either a consummate actress or not too worried.
Or maybe just exhausted. I was yawning myself.
I heard noises on the back porch—stamping noises, as if several people were shaking the snow off their boots. I tiptoed out of the powder room and set another pan of water over the camping stove to heat as Michael and Horace came in, laden with sleeping bags.
A minute or two later, Caroline Willner strolled into the kitchen.
“Would you like some more coffee?” I asked.
“I don’t suppose you have the makings for a martini?” she asked. “I would kill for a martini. That wasn’t a confession, by the way, just a cliché.”
Michael grinned.
“I could throw one together,” he said.
“Make it two,” I said.
“Three,” he corrected.
“Extra dry, with an olive,” Caroline said. “In fact, under the circumstances, I wouldn’t say no to an extra olive. Thank you, dear.”
Michael went into the pantry to rummage for ingredients. Caroline sat down, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes. For a few seconds, she looked every minute of her age, and I wondered if we shouldn’t be urging her to go to bed instead of plying her with alcohol. Then her eyes opened and I felt reassured by the slight twinkle in them.
“Your phones really are out?” she asked.
“Afraid so,” I said.
“Pity,” she said. “I really would like to get word to Norris. He’ll be a nervous wreck.”
I already suspected that it was Norris she’d been berating back at the courthouse. I deduced from her mentioning Norris that she either thought I knew what she and Clarence had been up to or was too tired to remember that I wasn’t supposed to know.
“Just why were you . . . helping Norris Pruitt empty his storage bin in the middle of the night? Why didn’t he come himself?”
“Too terrified,” she said. “Nerves of butter, that’s Norris. Of course, he’s wonderful with wounded animals. I’ve seen him stay up all night nursing an injured falcon or feeding orphaned wolf cubs. But to come out here by himself in the middle of the night? Never happen.”
“Why would it have to happen?” I asked. “It’s his storage bin. Why couldn’t he just come out in broad daylight to clear it out?”
“Your martinis, madams,” Michael said, handing us each an elegant stemmed glass. I took a sip and decided we should have inaugurated this particular wedding present a lot sooner.
“Excellent,” Caroline proclaimed. “This one’s a keeper, dear. To your first Christmas together.”
We all drank to her toast. Technically it wasn’t the first time Michael and I had spent Christmas together, but I’d stopped fighting the world’s tendency to start the clock on our relationship with the day we’d eloped, forgetting all the interesting times that preceded it.
“Getting back to Norris,” I said. “Why couldn’t he just clean out his storage bin himself?”
“Didn’t have the key,” Caroline said.
“He couldn’t have just asked Ralph Doleson for another key?”
“Doleson’s the reason he doesn’t have a key in the first place,” she said. So much for not even knowing Doleson had owned the Spare Attic. “Changed the locks on poor Norris, and wouldn’t give him a new key.”
“Was he behind on the bin rental?” Michael asked.
“No, he was paid up a year in advance, the way Doleson always made people do,” Caroline said. I nodded.
“Then what happened?”
Caroline took a long sip of her martini, savored it for a moment with closed eyes, and then swallowed.
“Norris has a little problem,” she began. And then she left the sentence hanging, as if she’d said enough for us to deduce her meaning.
“When Mother says someone has a little problem, she usually means the person she’s gossiping about is a galloping dipsomaniac,” I said. “Is that Norris’s problem?”
“Good heavens, no!” she exclaimed. “He’s as sober as a judge.”
Clearly she hadn’t met some of Caerphilly County’s justices.
“Then what’s his little problem?” I asked.
“He . . . tends to borrow things.”
“Oh, that little problem,” I said, nodding. “Another kleptomaniac.” We had a few of those in the family, too.
Caroline winced.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not it,” she said. “He’s just curious—always picking things up to look at them. And so easily distracted. He . . . wanders off with things. I suppose the police would call it kleptomania.”
“The police would call it larceny,” Michael said. “Grand or petit, depending on what kind of things catch his eye.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The bin was where Norris stashed the stuff he’d wandered off with while distracted.”
“Exactly, dear,” she said. “Every few months, we help him empty out the bin and return everything.”
“Every few months?” I echoed.
“We have to do it fairly often,” she said. “Before he forgets where he’s found everything. I suggested labeling everything, but he really isn’t very methodical about it. Sometimes, we have a fair number of things we can’t identify well enough to return.”
“So what do you do with that stuff?” I asked.
“Donate it to Purple Heart,” she said. “We used to do the Salvation Army, but Purple Heart picks up—so convenient.”
“I should go see if the rest of our guests have everything they need for the night,” Michael said.
I suspected what he really wanted to do was find a quiet corner to howl with laughter without hurting Caroline’s feelings. I wondered what Purple Heart and the Salvation Army would think when they learned they’d been obliviously receiving stolen goods.
“Ralph Doleson found out about Norris’s little problem,” Caroline went on. “And he changed the lock on Norris’s storage bin and has been forcing the poor man to pay him money not to tell the police.”
“He was blackmailing Norris.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “That’s such a nasty word.”
“It’s a nasty crime,” I said. “So you decided to take advantage of Ralph Doleson’s death to steal back the incriminating evidence.”
“No, we planned to take advantage of Ralph Doleson’s absence during the parade to steal back the evidence,” she said. “Since I would be down here with the truck, and Doleson would be stuck for several hours in town, giving out presents. It seemed like the perfect opportunity.”
“Until Ralph Doleson was murdered.”
“Yes,” she said. “That came as a horrible shock to us, and we almost gave up our plan. But Norris was afraid the police would start combing through all the bins in the Spare Attic and become suspicious, so we went ahead, a little later in the day than we planned. I suppose that wasn’t such a good idea.”
I didn’t argue with her.
“Does Norris have an alibi for the murder?” I asked.
“He was helping me with the elephants.”
“Doing what?”
“Helping put on their trappings,” she said. “And fetching hay and—”
She fell silent.
“Running errands?” I suggested.
She nodded.
“And he was wearing the goose costume?”
Caroline nodded. She probably realized the goose costume was too multicolored to show blood spatter and heavy enough to protect the clothes beneath. She sipped the last bit of her martini and sighed.
“Would you like another?” I asked. “I’m sure Michael would be happy to bartend again.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “One’s my limit after midnight, or should be. Is that offer of a bed still open?”
I showed Caroline to our guest room and made sure she had more than enough blankets. When I came back down, Michael and one of the police officers were unrolling the Boy Scouts’ sleeping bags in the living room, as near the fireplace as possible. They’d doused the oil lanterns, but the fire reflected off all the tinsel and lit the room with a flickering golden glow. Someone’s battery radio was playing Christmas carols.
It would have been such a peaceful heartwarming scene if our uninvited guests had been relatives instead of cops, and if the back yard wasn’t still festooned, under the snow, with crime scene tape. And if we didn’t still have an unsolved murder in town.
At least I assumed it was still unsolved. I decided to risk seeing what I could learn from the chief.
Chapter 21
I knocked on the dining room door.
“Yes?”
The chief sounded tired and cranky. I didn’t blame him. I peeked in.
“They haven’t found a chain saw,” I said. “So we’re making up beds for everyone.”
He nodded.
“I’m putting you in Rob’s room,” I said. “It’s the most comfy, aside from the official guest room, which we thought Caroline should have.”
A faint smile.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.
He nodded again and leaned back, looking more tired than wary. I came in and closed the door.
“I can tell you what you’re going to find when you finish inventorying the contents of Norris Pruitt’s storage bin,” I said.
“Not another body, I hope.” He sat upright again and suddenly looked much more awake.
“No, of course not,” I exclaimed. “Only a whole bunch of bright baubles that don’t belong to Norris, and would have been returned to their rightful owners if Caroline and Clarence had gotten away with their burglary. Norris is a magpie.”
“A chronic shoplifter, you mean?”
“A kleptomaniac, I imagine. And one of Ralph Doleson’s blackmail victims. You did know he was a blackmailer, right?”
“Well, I do now,” he said. “I don’t suppose you know any more of his victims?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I mean, I heard rumors, but—”
I decided to shut up and hope he hadn’t noticed the “not yet.” He sighed, but didn’t give me his usual lecture about not interfering with police business. That alone proved he was exhausted.
I thought of steering him toward Jorge, but decided against it. After all, the chief was investigating all the residents of the Whispering Pines. He’d have talked to Jorge already. And if Jorge turned out to be innocent, he wouldn’t appreciate my singling him out. He seemed paranoid—perhaps justifiably so—about coming to the attention of law enforcement. Maybe I’d have a word with Jorge privately, urging him to tell what he knew about Doleson’s blackmailing operations.
Then again—Jorge was looking more like a suspect all the time. Maybe I didn’t want to have too private a word with him. Not until Horace had had time to test that discarded sweatshirt.
I’d worry about all that later.
“You’ll probably find the photos or documents or whatever he uses to blackmail people with when you finish searching the Pines and the Spare Attic,” I said aloud.
“Pretty broad area to search,” the chief said. “You got any more specific suggestions?”
“They say Doleson has a large and very private bin at the Attic,” I said.
“With a big old padlock on it. We’ll be looking into that. Of course, we have to deal with Mrs. Willner and Mr. Rutledge first. At least now I understand why they both tried to confess to the murder.”
“They didn’t,” I said, with a wince.
“Separately.”
“I thought Clarence wasn’t talking,”
“This was in the heat of the moment, when we apprehended them. Now, he’s keeping his mouth shut, except to say that as soon as his lawyer is available, he’ll confess everything he knows about today’s events, and not to listen to a thing Caroline says, because she’ll just try to cover for him.”
“If you ever arrest me, that won’t be my definition of not talking.”
“And Caroline keeps saying it was all her idea, and we shouldn’t blame poor Clarence. Not that either one of them makes that plausible a suspect. Caroline’s too short, and Clarence too well al-ibied. Thanks to those fool amateur videographers, we can prove he was giving the tourists elephant rides during the whole window of opportunity. But this puts a new light on it.”
“It does?” My stomach tightened. I’d thought I was helping get Caroline and Clarence out of trouble. Was my attempt going to backfire?
“They could both be covering for Norris Pruitt,” the chief said. “Which could make them accessories after the fact.”
“If Norris is guilty,” I said. “You haven’t even talked to him yet—he could have an ironclad alibi.”
“We’ve already talked to him,” the chief said. “He was one of your blasted parade geese. One of the ones who’s tall enough—I suppose your father told you what he and Horace figured out from the stake’s angle of entry.”
Dad hadn’t, but only because I hadn’t talked to him since the parade began.
“Exactly how tall did they decide the killer has to be, anyway?” I asked.
“At least six feet two. That narrows our suspect list down a bit.”
“Still a lot of people who qualify.”
“Yes, but the list of tall folks with a motive is considerably shorter,” the chief said. “And Norris Pruitt has the same blasted lack of an alibi as most of the geese, and what’s more, his costume has a noticeable shortage of tailfeathers.”
“Oh, dear.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have repeated what Caroline told me.
Then again, if she and Clarence were helping Norris. . . .
“Just one thing,” the chief asked. “Were you the ones who reported the burglary?”
“No,” I said. “We didn’t know about it until we saw the police cars going by. And our phones have been out for hours. Didn’t someone out at the Pines report it?”
“No,” the chief said. “Their phones probably went out about the same time yours did. And you know what cell phone reception is like out here at the best of times.”
“Don’t you have some kind of caller ID on your 911 line?” I asked.
“It shows the burglary was reported from Geraldine’s Tea Room.”
“That’s only two blocks from the police station. And Geraldine closes at six.”
“Someone jimmied the lock on her back door and used the phone in her office to call in the report.”
“Debbie Anne didn’t recognize the voice?”
“Debbie Anne said the caller was deliberately disguising his voice,” the chief said. “Or her voice. She couldn’t rule out a female caller.”
“And you thought it was me? No way. Do you really think I’m that shy and self-effacing?”
The chief sighed, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.
“I thought maybe you were snooping around there, saw something suspicious, came into town to report it, and got cold feet at the last minute. Afraid I’d chew you out for interfering. And finagled the lock at Geraldine’s so you could report it without being identified.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But it wasn’t me, and I have no idea who it was. Must have been some other bashful good Samaritan.”
Someone knocked on the dining room door.
“Chief?” Sammy Wendell opened the door far enough to stick his head in.
“What now?” the chief asked. He sounded more tired than grumpy.
“We’ve finished inventorying the contents of Mr. Pruitt’s bin,” Sammy said. He looked as if about to say more, then glanced over at me and fell silent.
“Well?” the chief said. “Read it.”
Sammy glanced over at me again, then shook his head and held up a sheaf of papers.
“It’s a long list,” he said. “Do you want the details or the summary?”
“Start with the summary.”
“Okay,” Sammy said. “Electronics: seventeen assorted cameras, six iPods, nine cell phones, three portable DVD players . . .”
I closed my eyes in dismay as Sammy droned on. The list also included jewelry, silverware, purses and wallets—many with the identification still in place—small bits of decorative china and glassware, items of clothing.
Norris Pruitt had been busy. If he’d accumulated this much stuff in just a few months, Caroline and Clarence must have been rather busy, too, after their previous visits to the bin.
Busy covering up for him. Were they still covering up, this time for murder?
Six Geese A-Slaying Page 14
