No Nest for the Wicket

by Donna Andrews

  “Not very dignified.”

  “Yeah, but you should have seen it,” he said, grinning at the memory. “There was Claire standing there with the broken chamber pot’s handle in her hand, and Marcus sitting on the floor covered with fizzy green slime, like some extra from The Exorcist—well, it was funny.”

  He laughed, and I joined him. Less at the thought of the Wentworths in such an uncharacteristically embarrassing situation than at the relief I felt. No motive for murder here—not for Michael anyway; once his sense of humor kicked in, he didn’t hold a grudge, I’d found. Which gave me even less reason for jealousy.

  “I take it the thing with Wentworth wasn’t true love?”

  “More like a last-ditch attempt to hang on to her job.”

  “And that was the end of it?” I asked.

  “With Marcus, probably. With me, definitely. She did come over the next day to apologize. To explain that it wasn’t personal; she only wanted to save her career. I think that was supposed to make me feel better.”

  “And did it?”

  “Didn’t matter by that time. I was relieved to have grounds for breaking up. But you can’t expect Mrs. Wentworth to take as philosophical a view.”

  “No,” I said. “If you ask me, Claire Wentworth has motive for murder. Possibly Marcus Wentworth, too, but he wasn’t hanging around here all day like Claire.”

  “She was hanging around here? Why?”

  He didn’t sound thrilled.

  “Playing eXtreme croquet,” I said. “She’s on Henrietta Pruitt’s team.”

  “Here I thought croquet was a nice ladylike sport that would help you find some genteel, respectable associates,” Michael said. “Instead, I find you consorting with the likes of Claire Wentworth and Henrietta Pruitt.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, they were well on their way to ignominious defeat at the hands of my team when Chief Burke interrupted the game.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Michael said. “So maybe I should go talk to Chief Burke.”

  “Talk to me about what?”

  Chapter Ten

  We both started. The chief was standing in the door of the tack room, frowning down at us.

  “I can identify your victim,” Michael said, holding up the photo. “Her name is Lindsay Tyler. She used to be on the Caerphilly College faculty, so they can give you more information.”

  “Sammy!” the chief called over his shoulder, his eyes fixed on Michael. A few seconds later, Sammy appeared at his shoulder. “Get hold of the personnel director at the college.”

  “They’re probably closed now, Chief,” Sammy said.

  “I’m sure they are,” the chief said. “If you can’t get hold of the personnel director, call President Hayes. You can find his number, I’m sure. Tell him we want the file on a former faculty member named Lindsay Tyler. Pronto.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sammy said, and disappeared.

  “While we’re waiting for what the college can tell us, suppose you tell me what you know,” the chief said to Michael.

  Michael nodded.

  “You can close the door on your way out,” the chief said, glancing at me.

  I did so with exaggerated care.

  At least Michael’s beastly all-day faculty meeting had one unexpected benefit: He’d have an alibi.

  I realized that I was trying not to breathe in my efforts to overhear what Michael and the chief were saying in the tack room. Better to remove the temptation to eavesdrop. Also the suspicion.

  I took a shower. We’d installed a working bathroom in the barn to make living there tolerable for the summer. Later on, it would be handy for cleaning up after gardening or a particularly messy workday in my forge. Remembering all the poison ivy I’d seen during the day, I didn’t skimp on the soap or hot water.

  I could still hear voices from the tack room when I finished, so I headed for the house.

  “Hello!” a voice called when I was halfway there. One of the students fell into step beside me. Not Tony, the tall redheaded one who kept trying to pick me up, though from just “Hello” I couldn’t tell which of the other two this was. Graham spoke with an English accent, and Bill, the other, hardly said anything.

  “You’re back,” I said, trying to make it a statement of fact rather than a complaint.

  “I never left, actually,” he said. Aha. Graham, the Englishman. “I wasn’t up for a lot of bother, so I just ate leftovers from lunch and had a bit of nap in the back of the van. I’m not as keen on pub crawling as Tony and Bill.”

  “Sensible of you,” I said. “Especially if the chief does let us resume the tournament tomorrow.”

  “Hope he does,” Graham said. “Long drive from West Virginia just to sit around being suspects.”

  Aha. So they were the West Virginia team.

  “How did you end up at a college in West Virginia, anyway?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “It’s rather a joke on me,” he said. “You see, I’ve always been keen on the American West. Cowboys and Indians. The gold rush. Dodge City. Deadwood. Bonanza. That sort of thing. So when it came time to go to university, I thought it would be a super idea to apply to some schools in the frontier states.”

  “I see,” I said. “You ended up in West Virginia.”

  “I’m afraid I did a rather bad job of research.”

  “Right place, wrong century,” I said with a shrug. “Back in Colonial days, the only period of history that really matters in large parts of the Old Dominion, West Virginia was the frontier.”

  “How kind of you to say so,” he murmured, and his face lighted up with an expression of abject gratitude and devotion that would have made a deep impression on me during my undergraduate days. Now, it just made me nervous—how many times did I need to introduce these kids to Michael, anyway?

  Possibly the time for such subtle measures had passed.

  “Does the soulful, lonely exile act work on the girls back in West Virginia?” I asked.

  He blinked.

  “Not particularly,” he said in a more normal tone of voice. “I’ve been assuming it was because the girls in Pineville think I’m a perfect dolt for coming to West Virginia in the first place.”

  “Maybe it’s more that you make it pretty obvious that you think you’re a perfect dolt for going there,” I suggested. “Could lead them to assume you think they’re dolts for not leaving.”

  “You could be right,” he said. “So I’ve totally blown my chances of ever getting … a date in Pineville?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “Why not just concentrate on being more positive when you meet new people?”

  “What new people?” he said with a sigh. “Total enrollment’s only five hundred—we all rather know one another by now. For that matter, the population of Wyoming County can’t be much over twenty-five thousand. Coming from Bristol, with over half a million people—”

  “The population of where?”

  “Bristol,” he said. “It’s where I grew up; a city on the—”

  “I know where Bristol is,” I said. “Did you say Wyoming County?”

  “Yes. How was I supposed to know it was in the middle of Appalachia instead of the Rockies?”

  “There’s a county in West Virginia called Wyoming?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking puzzled. “That’s where Pineville College is located. Wyoming County. Southwest West Virginia. Any farther southwest and it’d be part of Kentucky, or so I’m told. In a place that small, how am I supposed to meet—”

  “Let’s talk about this later,” I said. “I just realized I have to run and do something.”

  I was about to dash back to the barn to use my desktop computer, when I realized that Michael and the chief were still in the tack room. Was it too late to call Kevin? No, only nine o’clock.

  “You got all the stuff?” he said when he picked up.

  “Yes, and I’m still working through it. I owe you big time. Look, can you do one more quick search for me?
”

  “Sure, what?”

  “Can you see if Pineville College in West Virginia has a Web site?”

  “You could just Google that yourself,” he said.

  “I could, if the police weren’t interrogating Michael in my office.”

  “Oh, cool,” he said. Keys rattled. “Yeah … lot of Pinevilles in the country. Most of them have colleges. Here it is. Pineville College, Pineville, West Virginia.”

  “Do they have a faculty directory, like UVa?”

  “Not as slick as UVa’s. No photos.”

  “Do you see a Lindsay Tyler there? Try the history department.”

  More typing.

  “No Lindsay.”

  Damn.

  “There is a Tyler, though. L. Blake Tyler. Instructor in the history department. Female; says she received her Ph.D. from William and Mary.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s exactly what I was looking for. By the way, while you’re looking, could you tell me what you can find out about a Civil War battle?”

  “Which one?”

  “The Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge. Took place in or around Caerphilly—possibly near our house—sometime during the Civil War. And Colonel Jedidiah Pruitt, the hero thereof.” I spelled the names for him.

  “Roger,” he said. “Any date on the battle?”

  “Sorry, no,” I said. “Not yet anyway, but if I get any more specifics, I’ll call or e-mail you.”

  “That would help, but we can work around it. I’ll check with Joss, too,” he added, referring to his older sister, Jocelyn, whose passion for history matched Dad’s enthusiasm for mysteries, or Kevin’s for computers.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I owe you.”

  I thought of going back and tackling Graham about his failure to identify Lindsay. Then I saw Chief Burke stride by in the direction of the house. I headed for the barn to see how Michael had fared.

  Assuming I could find Michael. He wasn’t in the tack room or the bedroom stall. Which irritated me but wasn’t exactly Michael’s fault, so I focused on my irritation with the students.

  “Damn,” I said aloud.

  Chapter Eleven

  “What’s wrong?”

  I started at Michael’s voice and turned, to see him poking his head out of a stall at the other end of the barn, which he’d been using as a reading carrel. He was holding a book with his finger between the pages as a bookmark.

  “Lindsay got her Ph.D. at William and Mary, right?”

  “Right. Why?”

  “Those miserable liars,” I muttered.

  “Which ones this time?”

  “The students,” I said. “Those bald-faced lying Morris men. What are the odds someone could spend over half a school year on campus with an enrollment of only five hundred students and not know one of the faculty members by sight, even if he didn’t have a class with her?”

  “Long odds, I imagine,” Michael said. “Although gender equity has made enormous strides on the college campus, I suspect your use of a feminine pronoun for the faculty member means we’re talking about Lindsay?”

  “We are,” I said.

  “Makes the odds even longer, then,” Michael said. “I hope you won’t take it the wrong way if I suggest that Lindsay is—was anyway—the sort of woman men tend to notice.”

  “I got that impression from our brief acquaintance,” I said. “And two of these students have demonstrated that they’re perfectly capable of appreciating the charms of an older woman. Older by their definition, at any rate.”

  “Really?” Michael said. He stepped out of the stall, shoving a slip of paper in the book as he did. “Which two?”

  “The smarter two,” I said. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m venting. We’re not talking about just one blatant liar, either. Odds are, all three are lying. She was on the faculty of their college—it’s a tiny college in a tiny, isolated town—impossible that not one of them recognized her.”

  “Wait a minute,” Michael said. “I thought they drove in from West Virginia.”

  “Wyoming County, West Virginia,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that’s where Lindsay landed.”

  “Amazing,” Michael said, sounding thoughtful. “All this time and she was only one state away.”

  “A six-hour drive,” I said. “According to the students. They probably drove like maniacs.”

  “True,” he said. “Still, when I thought about her, which wasn’t all that often, I always found it comforting to think that there was half a continent between us. A six-hour drive isn’t much. After all, those students thought nothing of coming that far just to play eXtreme croquet.”

  “Or did they?” I asked. “Doesn’t that seem too far-fetched a coincidence? They’re playing in an eXtreme croquet match several hundred miles from home and she just happens to get killed less than a mile away?”

  “Probably not a coincidence at all,” he said. “By the way, the chief came out here looking for you, not me. Had something he wanted to ask you.”

  “Roger,” I said. “I should go and see him.”

  Michael nodded and reopened his book—Treasure Island, I noted with dismay. Not that I had anything against the book, but I knew that one of Michael’s stress-coping mechanisms was rereading children’s books.

  I hurried up to the house. Things had calmed down considerably. The living room was empty except for Minerva Burke, who sat on lawn chair in one corner, knitting.

  “How are you holding up, hon?” she asked.

  “I’ve been better,” I said. “Michael said the chief was looking for me.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “If that fool man would stay put so people could find him, instead of running around biting everyone’s head off. It’ll be a miracle if both of us survive till the cast comes off.”

  “Maybe I should stay put and wait for him.”

  She nodded. I sat down on the floor, leaned against the wall, and closed my eyes. Rude of me not to make conversation, but it was late. Mrs. Burke was tired, too. Normally, she knitted at breakneck speed, but tonight she was moving slowly, and stopping every so often to frown and stare at her needles as if she thought she might have made a mistake.

  “There you are.” Chief Burke’s voice jolted me out of a doze. “I was looking for you.” Actually, at the moment, he was looking at his cast and trying to insert something between it and his skin.

  “I haven’t gone anywhere,” I said. “And—What are you doing? If you want to make a break for freedom, I’ll lend you a hacksaw. That’s my best flat bastard file you’re manhandling.

  “The blamed thing itches like the very devil,” the chief said. “Doesn’t work anyway,” he said, handing me the file. “Anything small enough to fit in there breaks off.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” I said. “So now you’ve got random bits of broken-off stuff stuck up inside your cast, compounding the itching problem.”

  I heard a splutter of suppressed laughter from Minerva Burke. The chief glowered at me.

  “Why didn’t you tell Dad about this when he was here?” I went on. “He might prescribe or recommend something.”

  “You think so?”

  “Call him now,” I said.

  “I might do that.” He didn’t reach for his phone, though.

  “Or don’t call, if you want to be stubborn,” I said with a shrug. “Just don’t wait till it gets really unbearable in the middle of the night. He usually goes to bed around midnight. In case you’re curious, I know where Lindsay Tyler is living. Was living, that is.”

  “Do you really?” the chief said, lifting one eyebrow.

  “In or around Pineville, West Virginia.”

  The chief narrowed his eyes.

  “Just how did you figure that out?” he asked. From the sharp tone of his voice, I suspected I was right.

  I explained about Graham and Wyoming County.

  “But he and the other students had already said they didn’t know her,” Chief Burke said, frowning.

&nbs
p; “Yeah, but we already know one person was lying about knowing her. Michael told you she had an affair with Claire Wentworth’s husband, right? I have a hard time believing some of the others never met her in the year she was here. I bet most of them are lying, so why should the students be any different?”

  “In other words, you suspected them because they had no reason to lie,” the chief said with a sigh.

  “I know it sounds crazy—”

  “Right now, it makes as much sense as anything else,” the chief said. “I found out her location through more pedestrian methods. Seth Early reported an SUV with West Virginia plates parked down by the old tobacco barn on his property. When we ran the tag numbers, her name and address came up.”

  “Good for Mr. Early,” I said.

  “Course, he’s still not happy,” the chief said, sighing again. “Seems he’s missing some sheep. Thought the SUV had something to do with it.”

  “Wouldn’t actual sheep thieves bring a slightly larger vehicle?” I asked.

  “You could fit a couple of sheep in a big SUV like that,” the chief said. “Not the half dozen he’s missing, though. Not without leaving traces.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. Farmer Early’s sheep had developed an inexplicable fondness for escaping their pasture and lounging around in our front yard. Small tufts of greasy gray wool were the least obnoxious of the traces they left. “So the missing sheep are still at large.”

  “I’m having a dickens of a time convincing Seth Early that the SUV’s owner didn’t have much time for sheep rustling before she was killed.”

  “She was involved in many things, but I doubt if the black sheep market was one of them,” I said.

  “Hmph,” the chief said. “Anyway, we know about Pineville. If you run across any sheep—”

  “We know the way to Mr. Early’s pasture, thanks.”

  I headed back to the barn. The chief was pulling out his cell phone as I left, and just as I hit the back door, I heard him speak.