No Nest for the Wicket

by Donna Andrews

  “Can we get on with it?” Mrs. Pruitt snapped.

  “Not until I find my ball,” I said. “And no sneaking extra shots while I’m looking. Everyone stays right where they are—understood?”

  “Roger. Everyone, report your whereabouts!” Mrs. Fenniman said in her best field marshal’s voice. “Claire and I will stay here by the turning post.”

  Claire, presumably, was the woman I still couldn’t bring myself to call anything but Mrs. Wentworth—wife of the history department chairman.

  “We’ll concentrate on beaming positive energy for your search,” Rose Noire said. “Won’t we?”

  “Or if you want some real help, give us a call,” Mrs. Pruitt said. I heard her in the background, rather than directly, so evidently she was with Rose Noire.

  “Could someone please come and chase this cow away?” Lacie Butler whined. “I think it’s planning to attack me.”

  “Good grief; it’ll be killer rabbits next,” I muttered, though not into the radio. I’d never met anyone as timid and anxious as Lacie. I hadn’t quite decided whether I felt sorry for her or just found her terminally annoying. Maybe if I ever ran into her when she wasn’t gophering for Mrs. Pruitt and Mrs. Wentworth, I’d find out.

  “I’ll bring Spike,” Rob said.

  “Oh, would you?” Lacie asked. Lucky for us, Lacie was a good fifteen years older than Rob, and married to boot. That breathless damsel in distress routine was exactly what my overly susceptible brother fell for—if the damsel was beautiful and on the fair side of thirty.

  “I’ll be right over as soon as I chase Duck away from wicket three,” Rob said.

  “Oh, did she lay another egg?” Rose Noire asked.

  “Just sitting on some smooth rocks,” Rob said. “But we don’t want her getting used to nesting on the field.”

  No, especially now that the field had become a crime scene. I put the radio down and tuned out the continuing chitchat from the other players. I opened my cell phone again and called Dad.

  “I’m up at the house,” he said before I could speak. “I’m keeping a close eye on them—you don’t have to worry about a thing.”

  Except perhaps Dad looking too closely over someone’s shoulder and getting accidentally whacked by a sledgehammer. Or the very real possibility that the Shiffleys would mutiny against their unwanted overseer and go home to sulk. That was the downside of working with the Shiffleys—they were quite clannish. Offend one and you offended them all, and fat chance of getting anyone to do your carpentry, plumbing, wiring, tree cutting … .

  “That’s nice,” I said. “We have another problem.”

  “What?”

  I took a deep breath. Dad, an avid mystery buff, wouldn’t see a problem, but a golden opportunity to kibbitz on Chief Burke’s investigation.

  “We have a suspicious death,” I said. “Chief Burke is on the way, and he needs our help.”

  “He needs me to examine the body,” Dad said, jumping to a predictable conclusion. “My medical bag’s in the car.”

  “Examining the body comes later,” I said. “First we secure the crime scene and prevent suspects from leaving.”

  “Okay,” he said. “What suspects?”

  “The croquet players in the other field, for starters,” I said. “And anyone else who looks suspicious.”

  I remembered the half dozen Shiffleys swarming over the house, each armed with a sledgehammer that looked remarkably like a croquet mallet.

  “Including the Shiffleys,” I said with a sigh. “And anyone else who’s been hanging around today.”

  “Will do,” Dad said. “Cousin Horace just drove up. I’ll get him to help me.”

  “Good idea,” I said. Cousin Horace was a crime-scene technician with the sheriff’s department in my hometown of Yorktown. Like many of my relatives, he’d been spending more and more time here in Caerphilly lately—though in Horace’s case, I suspect the attraction wasn’t me but Rose Noire, the distant cousin with whom he was smitten.

  “If you get a chance, could you call the teams that are supposed to show up tonight and head them off?” I added. “Odds are, we won’t be playing tomorrow, with one field being a crime scene and all. But don’t tell them why we’re rescheduling. In fact, don’t tell anyone.”

  “Of course not,” Dad said. “So where is the body?”

  “On the croquet field,” I said, which was sufficiently vague to keep him from trotting up here to inspect it. “Oops! Gotta go; talk to you later.”

  As soon as I hung up, I wished I hadn’t. What an hour ago I would have called peace and quiet settled over the gulley, only now it felt like oppressive silence.

  I glanced over at the dead woman and realized that I resented her for getting murdered practically in my backyard. Illogical, and I didn’t like myself for feeling that way. After all, she hadn’t asked to be murdered here. Mrs. Fenniman was a much more logical target for resentment, wasn’t she? It was her fault I was out here playing eXtreme croquet instead of back at the house minding my own business. She’d organized the tournament and then browbeaten me into playing hostess.

  Of course, I hadn’t had to go along with her plans. I’d gotten better at saying no to my relatives’ crazier projects, but I still wasn’t very good at continuing to say no until they heard it.

  How long did it take to get here from town, anyway? And was it early enough to head off the other teams, or were they already en route—perhaps already here to complicate things even more? I glanced at my watch. Almost three o’clock.

  “We keeping you from something?”

  Chapter Three

  I started, and suppressed an undignified shriek. Chief Burke stood at the top of the bank, almost directly over my head, staring down with an expression of mournful disapproval on his round brown face. Sammy, one of his young deputies, stood beside him.

  “Is there an easier way down?” the chief asked, peering over the edge of the bank. “I’m not as agile as usual, thanks to this fool thing.”

  He indicated his right arm, which was encased in a cast and a neat black sling.

  “Depends on your definition of easy,” I said. “You could follow my example—just stand there till the bank caves in under you. Not fun, but it’s pretty quick.”

  “I’d prefer something longer and less abrupt,” he said, backing away slightly.

  “Can’t help you there,” I said. “I surfed down. If I were you, I’d stay up there. In fact, if you’re going to interrogate me now, can I come up?”

  “Interview, not interrogate,” he said. “If you’re squeamish, come on up. And you a doctor’s daughter.”

  “Dad’s patients tend to be alive, as a general rule,” I said as I stood and grabbed my knapsack. “They may not be healthy, but most of them are breathing.”

  I found a less crumbly part of the bank and Sammy gave me a hand up before scrambling down to take my place. He bent over the dead woman and frowned.

  “I don’t know her, Chief,” he said, sounding surprised. “She must not be from around here.”

  The chief nodded.

  “Soon as the rest of the officers get here, we’ll do a preliminary search,” he said.

  The bank crumbled a little more, raining clods of dirt into the gully. The chief and I stepped farther back.

  “Could be how it happened,” the chief said, craning his neck. “She fell, hit her head on a rock.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “The wound’s not that ragged, and besides, I don’t see any bloody rocks, do you?”

  “Oh, you’ve already done a preliminary medical examination and searched the area, have you?” he said, taking out his notebook.

  “I nearly fell over her, and I’m not blind,” I said. “Looks as if she was hit with a croquet mallet.”

  “Do tell,” the chief said, frowning at the croquet mallet in my hand.

  “Not my mallet, of course,” I said. “But we’ve got five other people running around nearby with mallets, and another six up in
Farmer Early’s sheep pasture—there’s another game up there. Plus the Shiffleys.”

  “They’ve taken up croquet, the Shiffleys?” the chief said, sounding dubious.

  “No, sledgehammers,” I said. “We’ve got them doing demolition up at the house. Sledgehammers look remarkably like croquet mallets, you know. Not that I know why they’d want to kill the poor woman, whoever she is.”

  “When we find out who she is, no doubt we’ll find out why someone killed her,” he said. “Contrary to what your father thinks, most murders aren’t very mysterious.”

  Just then my radio came to life again.

  “Meg?” Rob said. “Haven’t you found your ball yet? ’Cause we’re really getting behind on the game schedule.”

  “Do those fool people really think I’ll let them keep playing croquet at a crime scene?” the chief said, incredulous.

  “They don’t know it’s a crime scene,” I said. “I just told them I was still looking for my ball. If I’d told them what really happened, they’d have all come over to mess up any evidence I haven’t already messed up. I didn’t think you wanted that.”

  “Of course not,” the chief said.

  “For heaven’s sakes, just take the damned penalty and let’s get on with it!” Mrs. Pruitt snapped over the radio.

  “Who’s that?” the chief growled.

  “Mrs. Pruitt,” I said. “Henrietta Pruitt,” I added, forestalling his question. Pruitts were almost as common around Caerphilly as Shiffleys, though I suspected either family would react with profound indignation at being lumped with the other. “You know, the one who runs the Caerphilly Historical Society.”

  “I see,” the chief said. He didn’t sound thrilled. He had opened his notebook and was scribbling in it.

  Just then, Horace and two uniformed officers showed up. The chief sent the officers out to round up the other players and Horace scrambled down to the body, taking large chunks of the bank with him. The chief and I backed farther away. After a few moments, we heard Horace’s voice.

  “We’ll need the medical examiner for an exact time of death,” he said. “But I doubt if she’s been dead more than an hour or two. If that. Meg’s probably right about the murder weapon. A croquet mallet would work fine.”

  I held my mallet out to the chief.

  “No use handing it to me when I obviously don’t have an evidence bag to put it in,” he said. “Just hang on to it till we get back to your house. Come on.”

  He set off through the underbrush, muttering “Damn!” and “Blast!” at intervals—presumably when he hit a particularly thorny shrub. I followed a few feet behind, letting him break trail until we escaped the brier patch.

  “So who else is out here playing full-contact croquet?” he asked, pausing to let me catch up.

  “It’s eXtreme croquet,” I said, correcting him. “And don’t you mean who are your other suspects?”

  He looked over his glasses at me.

  “All right,” he said. “Who are my other suspects?”

  “Here in the cow pasture, Henrietta Pruitt, Claire Wentworth, and Lacie Butler on one side,” I said. “The Dames of Caerphilly, they call themselves. Mrs. Fenniman, my cousin Rose Noire, and me on the other, with my brother, Rob, as referee.”

  “I see,” he said with a slight wince. At the prospect of interviewing more of my relatives, or the pain of dealing with Mrs. Pruitt and her socially prominent cronies? Possibly both. He’d slowed down and was scribbling in his notebook. “And at the other field?”

  “Mrs. Briggs,” I said. “I don’t know her first name. Wife of the man who wants to build that outlet mall.”

  “I know him,” the chief said. From the sound of it, he didn’t like Mr. Briggs very much.

  “She has those two Realtors on her team,” I said. “The two Suzies. I don’t remember their last names.”

  “The clones,” the chief said, nodding. I was relieved I wasn’t the only one who called the two Realtors that. They weren’t clones, of course, but in addition to both being named Suzie, they were both petite, blond, and perky. I not only couldn’t remember their last names; I couldn’t reliably tell them apart.

  “The other team in the sheep pasture I don’t know at all,” I said. “Three students from some college.”

  “You don’t know which one?”

  “We had teams sign up from five different colleges,” I said. “I forget which one this is, but you can ask them.”

  “So this eXtreme croquet isn’t just a bunch of lunatics fooling around?” he said, sounding baffled. “It’s an organized sport?”

  “Not well organized,” I said. “Some guys in Connecticut invented it—or at least popularized it. But the tournament was Mrs. Fenniman’s idea. She couldn’t even get many of the family to play with her, so she announced a tournament, and suddenly we had seven other teams.”

  We fell silent as we climbed the steep slope that marked the approximate boundary between the three acres Michael and I owned and Mr. Shiffley’s pasture, which surrounded us on three sides. Now that we’d stopped talking, I heard fiddle music coming from our backyard.

  “Not the best time for a party,” the chief said, puffing slightly.

  “They don’t know about the murder yet,” I said. Just then, we heard a cheer from the lawn above.

  “Hmph,” the chief snorted, as if to say that he’d change that pretty darn soon.

  The last few feet of the path were so steep that the previous owners had put in a set of rustic stone steps, though they were in such disrepair that they weren’t much of an improvement over the muddy path. The chief sped up slightly; many people did, in fact, to get the last stage of the hill over as quickly as possible and reach the level ground of our backyard. As he put his foot on the bottom step, a figure leaped into our view at the top of the hill.

  “Yee-haw!” the figure shouted, springing into the air and waving a cudgel.

  Chapter Four

  Chief Burke’s hand darted inside his jacket, a reflex left over from his days as an urban police officer. Fortunately for the man at the top of the stairs, the chief no longer carried a gun. Not that he’d have had much luck drawing it with the cast on his arm.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know him.” Which probably didn’t reassure Chief Burke that much. Fortunately, something must have convinced the chief that the figure was harmless, because he relaxed slightly. Perhaps, like me, he recognized the cudgel as a croquet mallet, though considering the crime scene we’d just left, it might have been shortsighted to consider a croquet mallet reassuring. There was nothing reassuring about his unearthly cry, a cross between a rebel yell and a yodel, that stopped us in our tracks with our mouths open, but following up this bloodcurdling sound with a smirk and a guffaw definitely reduced its effectiveness. Most likely, the chief figured a truly dangerous madman would charge down the steps instead of leaping up into the air and clicking his heels together to make all the bells strapped to his shins ring as loudly as possible. Then, as soon as his feet hit the ground, he bounded off like a kangaroo on fast forward.

  “What the dickens is going on up there?” the chief asked as he raced up the steps.

  “It’s a player from the students’ croquet team,” I said, following him.

  “Craziest damn fool kind of croquet I’ve ever seen,” the chief said. He had paused at the top of the steps and was frowning down at our lawn.

  “It’s not croquet,” I said. “It’s Morris dancing.”

  “Morris dancing,” the chief repeated.

  “It’s a form of English folk dancing,” I said. “They put on traditional costumes, including about a million bells on their shins.”

  “I know what Morris dancing is,” the chief said. “Not that I’d call that much of an example. Why are they doing it here, practically in the middle of my crime scene?”

  He wasn’t hurrying to stop the spectacle, though, and I had to admit that I felt a certain morbid fascination with the Mountain Morris Mallet Men�
��s performance.

  I’d already seen the costumes—white shirts, black knee breeches, and brightly colored X-shaped suspenders decorated with ribbons and rosettes—since they’d insisted on wearing them to play croquet in. Along with their bells—dozens of brass bells sewn in rows to pads that looked like truncated hockey shin guards.

  All three students were prancing in a circle, lifting their knees as high as possible, then bringing their feet down sharply to get the maximum amount of noise out of the bells. They started out holding their croquet mallets in both hands, but as they worked up speed, they began waving the mallets overhead and whacking them together in time with the music.

  “Now there’s a concussion waiting to happen,” the chief said, shaking his head.

  “True,” I said. “But your victim wasn’t Morris dancing when she met her end. I’d have noticed the bells.”

  It was the bells that got to you. I’d thought the weeks of construction had made me immune to noise pollution, but I’d been ready to strangle all three students long before we hit the croquet field. I’d have tried to persuade them to doff their bells if not for Mrs. Pruitt.

  “You simply cannot permit them to wear those ghastly bells,” she had informed me halfway through this morning’s prematch breakfast.

  “There’s nothing in the rules to prevent them,” I said. I knew because Mrs. Fenniman and I had spent an hour studying her dog-eared copy of the rules, looking for a precedent to ban the bells. “You could refuse to take the field until they remove them.”

  Mrs. Pruitt smiled and inclined her head toward me in gracious thanks for my support.

  “Although that would count as a forfeit,” I added.

  Her usual glare returned.

  “Do you have any idea how annoying those bells are?” she snapped.

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re sleeping in our barn, you know; which wouldn’t be as bad if Michael and I weren’t camping out there ourselves during the construction.”