Six Geese A-Slaying

by Donna Andrews

  “You scared me to death,” I said. “I’m definitely going to get Michael to rearrange his office furniture before one of his students sneaks up and gives him a heart attack.”

  “I bet he doesn’t spend much time on the computer with his back to the door like that,” he said. “I wouldn’t, if I were him. You’re the one who gets so wrapped up in the computer that you don’t notice what goes on around you.”

  “Did you at least bring the key?” I asked.

  “Key?”

  Okay, so Michael hadn’t sent him.

  “Never mind,” I said looking back at the camera.

  “What’s so interesting?”

  “It’s a picture of Ralph Doleson,” I said, handing him the little camera.

  Rob peered at the screen and frowned.

  “He’s sitting in the sleigh where he was killed,” he said. “With one boot on and one off. I only got a quick glimpse through the door, but doesn’t this look a lot like . . . ?”

  “Like a picture of Santa taken just before the killer staked him,” I said. “I got a lot more than a quick glimpse, and that’s exactly what it looks like to me, too.”

  “What’s it doing in your camera?” Rob asked.

  “This is Werzel’s camera,” I said. “It only looks like my camera.”

  “You switched cameras by mistake?”

  “That’s what it looks like,” I said. Which wasn’t precisely a lie, but it kept Eric’s secret. “Let me see that again.”

  “No wonder he was so frantic to find this,” Rob said.

  He handed the camera back. I studied the picture of Ralph Doleson for a few more seconds, and then clicked the button to see what was next.

  Yet another of Werzel’s badly shot mistakes. A blurry brown shape on the right, a blurry red blob on the left. I squinted, to see if I could figure it out. Rob leaned over my shoulder.

  “Closeup of Rudolph’s nose?” he suggested.

  “No,” I said, as my stomach turned over with a wrenching twist. “Blood spatter on the lens.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I turned the camera over and peered at the lens.

  “Maybe it’s my imagination,” I said. “But there is something crusted around the edge of the lens. See?”

  I held it out for his inspection. He stared for a few seconds, then turned pale and sat down in one of Michael’s guest chairs.

  “That’s really blood?” he asked, in a slightly choked voice.

  “Put your head between your legs and breathe slowly,” I said, mentally kicking myself for having forgotten Rob’s notorious squeamishness at the very thought of blood.

  “Maybe we both just have overactive imaginations,” he said.

  “I doubt it. No wonder Werzel was so frantic to get it back. He’s the killer—and this camera proves it!”

  “Wait a minute,” Rob said, sounding stronger. “That can’t be blood. How could there be blood spatter on the camera, when there wasn’t any on his clothes? I think someone would have noticed if he was running around looking like Sweeney Todd.”

  “I bet there was blood on his clothes,” I said. “That’s why he suddenly showed up in one of the county-issue shepherd’s robes.”

  “I just thought he was trying to blend in and get into the spirit of things,” Rob said. He shook his head which looked rather odd, since he was still hanging upside down in fainting prevention mode.

  “Maybe you thought that,” I said. “I knew he had a sneaky reason for doing it, but I just assumed he was trying to make us forget he was a reporter so he could catch people doing embarrassing things.”

  “We have to tell—”

  “I know, I know.” I automatically reached into my pocket and took out my cell phone.

  And got absolutely no signal, of course.

  “You’ll never get a signal in this weather,” Rob said, peering up at me. “I’m even having trouble on the iPhone. This whole county might as well be back in the twentieth century. Use the land line.”

  I nodded, and used Michael’s phone to dial the police station’s non-emergency number.

  Debbie Anne, the dispatcher, answered. She’d have answered 911, too, but she’d be less apt to gossip about my calling if I used the non-emergency line.

  “Meg!” she exclaimed. “You made it into town! Does this mean Michael’s show is on?”

  “With or without an audience,” I said. “Look, could I talk to the chief for a moment?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s not here. He’s out at—out of the station.”

  I had to smile. The chief had probably told her off again for talking too much and telling too much police business to civilians.

  “I don’t suppose you know where he is,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can take a message.”

  “Could you tell him to call me as soon as he can?”

  “Can I tell him what it’s about?”

  Debbie Anne and I fenced back and forth for a few more rounds, with me trying to find out where the chief was and her trying to find out why I was calling, before we settled for a draw. I gave her Michael’s office number, told her I’d be there for the time being, and signed off.

  “He’ll call back,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you just tell her why you called?” Rob said.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe because Werzel showed up at the burglary scene almost as soon as we did. What if he has a police radio? A lot of reporters do. Or what if Debbie Anne says something to the wrong person? I hear a lot of stuff leaks out of the police station, and I suspect Debbie Anne’s part of the problem.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I looked at the phone as I thought it over.

  “A watched phone never rings, you know,” Rob said. “We should think of something else.”

  “Such as?”

  “If Werzel’s the killer why did he do it?”

  “How should I know?” I said. “Unless—hang on.”

  I turned back to the computer and Googled Emerson Drood.

  “What’s that?” Rob asked. He came and perched on the desk so he could look over my shoulder. I felt less stupid about not recognizing Drood’s name when Heather first mentioned it.

  “A state politician,” I said. “From somewhere near Charlottesville. He killed himself about ten years ago. If I’m right . . .”

  But nothing on the first couple of pages looked promising.

  Most were pages that mentioned both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood. A couple of the articles mentioned Emerson Drood’s death, but nothing about the circumstances.

  “So far this is not keeping me awake,” Rob said. “Are you sure what you’re looking for is even available online? Not a lot of newspapers were ten years ago, you know.”

  “Yeah, and the one I’d really like to see is defunct anyway,” I said. “Let me try something else.”

  This time I typed in “Emerson Drood” and “Whispering Pines” and clicked on the most promising of the resulting links.

  “What does the Pines have to do with this Drood guy?” Rob asked.

  “Maybe everything,” I said, as I scanned down the article. “Aha!”

  “Aha what?”

  “Fifth paragraph. ‘Drood’s body was found at 1:14 A.M. on the morning of August 5 by the night desk clerk of the Whispering Pines Motel in nearby Caerphilly County.’ ”

  “Someone was murdered at the Pines?” Rob said, looking pale again. “What room number?”

  “It doesn’t say,” I said. “And the death was ruled a suicide, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “Not appreciably, but thanks.”

  “I wonder what the clerk was doing, snooping in the rooms in the middle of the night?”

  “Looking for small portable valuables, I imagine,” Rob said. “That was one of Doleson’s hobbies. So what does Werzel have to do with this?”

  “I’m
not sure,” I said. “But whatever it was, I think Doleson was blackmailing Werzel about it. You heard about the way Doleson was always photographing people who came to the Pines. I bet he had some kind of dirt on Werzel.”

  “Like maybe that Werzel killed Drood?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “No idea why he would, though. Werzel supposedly got a dramatic last interview with Drood just before the suicide. Seems more plausible that Doleson knew there was something fishy about that interview.”

  “What do you mean, fishy?” Rob asked.

  “What if Doleson knew that Werzel wasn’t there with Drood long enough to get such a long interview? Maybe Doleson eavesdropped and knew Werzel had faked some of the interview.”

  Rob shook his head as if it all sounded rather weak. I agreed with him. Then I had another idea.

  “Doleson was always snooping, right?”

  Rob nodded.

  “What if Doleson found the body and didn’t report it?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Maybe he wanted to loot the dead guy’s luggage before calling the police. Or dump the hassle of dealing with the cops on his poor night clerk. Or maybe he was on the way back to his office to report it. Whatever it was, before he could do it, Werzel drives up. What does Doleson do?”

  “Grabs his digital camera and starts snapping shots.”

  “Bingo!” I said, so loudly that Spike woke up and growled at me. “Doleson gets some lovely shots of Werzel entering the room. Then Werzel fleeing the room. And then the dead body Werzel apparently left behind. Werzel’s the prime suspect if the police are thinking murder. And Doleson could have made it look even worse—like claiming he’d heard what sounded like a struggle. He’s got the perfect ammo for blackmailing Werzel.”

  Rob whistled.

  “Sounds plausible to me,” he said. “Why doesn’t the chief call back?”

  “It’s Christmas Eve, he’s got a big murder case, and he doesn’t know I’ve got a key piece of evidence.”

  We both looked at the phone again. It stubbornly refused to ring.

  “So are we just going to stay here till it rings?” Rob asked. “No offense to Michael, but it’s kind of creepy up here with no one else around.”

  “Very creepy,” I said. “And no, we’re leaving. Minerva and the chief are coming to the show—she said so this morning. Let’s go downstairs and wait for them, and I can tell the chief in person.”

  “What if he skips the show to keep working on the case?”

  “Then we’ll tell Minerva, and she’ll help us reach him. Debbie Anne might not put me through to the chief, but she wouldn’t stonewall Minerva.”

  “Great idea,” he said.

  I shut down the browser and began turning Michael’s computer off. Rob went over, opened the door, and stood fidgeting in the doorway.

  “The small evil one should go back in the crate,” I said, over my shoulder.

  “Okay, I’ll—damn!”

  I glanced up to see Rob clutching his hand, as the tip of Spike’s tail disappeared out the door.

  “I think we’re going to have to start spelling in front of him,” I said, as I picked up my coat and purse.

  “Won’t work,” Rob said, over his shoulder. “He’s psychic. I’ll get him.”

  He took off down the corridor. I stuck the camera in my pocket and went over to prop the carrier door open. I heard a clatter outside in the corridor.

  “Rob?” I called. I stepped out into the corridor and looked in both directions. Only a few scattered bulbs on the night system lit the corridor, but I could easily see that it was empty. No Rob. No Spike. Nothing at all, except for a cleaner’s mop and an overturned bucket at the far end of the corridor on the right, where it turned a corner. The noise had probably been Rob tripping over them.

  I started down the corridor in that direction. Strange that I didn’t hear them, but maybe Spike was traveling even faster than usual. If he’d taken to a stairwell, they could be on another floor by now.

  I rounded the corner and almost ran into a cleaner’s cart. Then I realized there was a shape lying on the floor beyond it.

  “Rob! Are you all right?”

  He didn’t answer. I knelt down beside him. He was breathing, but his eyes were closed. I reached to check his pulse.

  “He’s not dead,” said a familiar voice.

  I looked up to see Ainsley Werzel standing a few feet away. He was pointing a gun at me.

  “Now give me the camera,” he said.

  Chapter 30

  “Mr. Werzel? Is that you?” I said. I pretended to be peering through the gloom as I said it, and I talked as loudly as I could, hoping that someone would hear and come to rescue me. Then I realized that no one but Rob and I knew that Werzel was the killer. If anyone else was close enough to hear Werzel’s name, they’d make tracks in the opposite direction.

  “Shut up,” Werzel growled.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Don’t pretend to be stupid,” he said. “I know you’re not stupid. Nosy, but not stupid. Give me the camera.”

  “You don’t have to act as if I was stealing it.” I pulled the camera out of my pocket and held it out. “I was going to bring it back to you. My nephew thought it was mine and brought it to me—I have one just like it.”

  I tried to sound matter-of-fact and calm, as if I hadn’t quite noticed he was pointing a gun at me. He didn’t seem to be buying it. He leaned forward carefully, snatched the camera out of my hand, and then retreated to a safe distance.

  He turned the camera on and began pressing buttons. His eyes kept flicking down to the camera’s display screen and then back to me. I deduced that he was scanning the photos.

  Then he stopped.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Pretty incriminating shot, this one. But the great thing about digital cameras is that you can delete anything you like, and no one the wiser.”

  He pressed more buttons. Deleting his way through the rest of the shots, no doubt. Then he nodded, turned the camera off, and stuck it into his pocket.

  “Now pick him up,” he said.

  “Rob?” I said. “He shouldn’t be moved. He could have a concussion.”

  “Yeah,” he said, hefting a long Maglite in his left hand. “I was aiming for a concussion. If you don’t want to pick him up, I could whack him on the head another couple of times and we’ll just leave him there.”

  I decided picking Rob up was the better option. I bent down and found Spike there, licking Rob’s head.

  “Damn,” Werzel said. “If the circumstances were different, I could do one of those great tearjerker stories. Faithful hound licking the blood off his fallen master’s wound.”

  Blood? Yes, I could see it now. Just a trickle, that Spike was licking up eagerly. I decided not to explain that it wasn’t either devotion or savagery on Spike’s part—he just liked the salty taste. He’d have licked the wounds of a mortal enemy—or Rob’s face after a sweaty tennis match—with equal fervor. Werzel would find that all too hilarious.

  Spike growled a little when I picked Rob up.

  “Chill, Spike,” I said.

  “Put him on the cart,” Werzel said.

  I draped Rob carefully over the cleaner’s cart. He groaned slightly.

  “Okay, roll him that way,” Werzel said.

  I thought of saying something melodramatic like “You’ll never get away with this,” but I didn’t like the twitchy sound of his voice. I concentrated on going as slowly as I could without ticking him off. Slowly was better for Rob’s head, and also maximized our chances of running into someone who might help.

  But the corridors we rolled through remained disappointingly empty. I realized that we were heading for the service elevator. Spike was trailing behind us.

  “Why are you kidnapping us?” I asked. I didn’t shout, but I tried to project from the diaphragm, the way Michael was always trying to teach his theater students.

  “Shut up and keep pushing,” Werzel
said. “There’s room for two on that damned cart.”

  I shut up. Not talking to Werzel made it easier for me to concentrate on coming up with an escape plan. Unfortunately, while I could come up with several different ways I could escape, I hadn’t yet thought of any way for us to escape. And much as I tried to convince myself that if I escaped and ran for help, Werzel wouldn’t dare hurt Rob, I didn’t believe it. Werzel had already killed at least once—what did he have to lose?

  Dunsany Hall was utterly and depressingly empty. The students had long since gone home for the holidays, of course, but you’d think at least one of Michael’s colleagues would be dropping by to check on his e-mail or something. We rolled through empty corridors until we reached the freight elevator. No one stumbled on us during the long wait for the ancient machinery to crank its way up to our floor.

  “Roll him in,” Werzel said, gesturing with the gun. “And kick the mutt out,” he added, as Spike tried to follow me.

  “And here I thought you were shocked when Ralph Doleson kicked Spike,” I said, as I reached down to pick Spike up. “You weren’t shocked by what he did—you were shocked to see him. And—ouch!”

  Predictably, Spike bit me, and then scampered off the way we’d come.

  “Good riddance,” Werzel said.

  “You’re not afraid he’ll run downstairs and warn people that there’s something wrong?” I said.

  Werzel seemed to find that funny. He’d seen Spike in action enough to know that a Lassie-style rescue wasn’t too probable. Ah, well. Surely we’d see someone once we got outside.

  But when the elevator doors opened and we rolled out onto the loading dock, I realized that between the gathering darkness and the steady snowfall, I could hardly see ten feet. And that no sane person would be lurking in the alley behind the Drama Department on a night like this. And more immediately, that my coat was still lying beside my purse on the floor of the corridor upstairs, where I’d dropped them when I’d found Rob.

  “Over there,” Werzel said. He gestured with the Maglite. “The blue Subaru.” Yeah, I could have guessed that—it was the only vehicle in sight.

  I looked from the cleaners’ cart to the Subaru. No way I could roll Rob there through a foot of snow, so I carefully picked him up and staggered over to the car.