No Nest for the Wicket

by Donna Andrews

  “One of us can drive the stuff over in the morning,” Michael said, though obviously he was dying to do it. Hauling actual farm paraphernalia in the pickup!

  “Fine,” I said, turning to Mrs. Fenniman. “Do you need a place to stay, or will you be heading back to town now?”

  “Hmph,” she said. “Rosie’ll be needing a ride.”

  “She’ll charm Mr. Early into giving her one,” I said. “Or if she doesn’t, we’ll look after her when she turns up.”

  “Hmph,” she said again getting into her car. “That old codger.”

  Evidently, Mr. Early’s impersonation of a grizzled curmudgeon had fooled most people.

  “Hide the rest of the evidence,” I said.

  “‘Rest of the evidence’?”

  “Whatever you used to do that,” I said, gesturing to the fleeces.

  “Already did. Under your hedge.”

  “I’ll get them,” Michael said, heading for the hedge.

  “You didn’t happen to notice anyone else when you were fleeing, did you?” I asked.

  “Like who?”

  “Like whoever set Spike off.”

  She shook her head and started the car.

  “No one else there,” she said. “We just made too much noise and woke him.”

  She drove off.

  She sounded so definite that I found myself checking to make sure the screwdriver was still tucked securely in my back pocket.

  “Found them,” Michael said. When we got back to the barn, I found out that “them” included not only a pair of battery-operated home hair-cutting tools but also two sets of nifty night-vision goggles, which we couldn’t resist testing.

  “Cool,” Michael whispered. “These would be really useful for … doing chores at night. Stuff like that. We should get a set.”

  “We just did,” I said. “Two sets. They were abandoned by the unknown intruders who viciously denuded Mr. Early’s sheep, remember?”

  “Very cool,” Michael said. He was tilting his head and looking at the ceiling, fascinated by some effect he saw.

  I put on my set. Yes, I could see fairly well, though all the colors vanished into a luminous gray-green tone. I crept out of the stall and peered down the barn at sleeping students. They appeared to be sleeping quite soundly. So soundly that they’d missed the entire ruckus with the sheep? I hadn’t thought to check on them when I’d dashed out, and now I’d never know whether they’d slept through the whole thing or used the diversion created by the sheep to steal back into the barn and feign sleep.

  Michael tired of playing with the goggles quickly—after all, it was almost four o’clock in the morning—and we went back to sleep. I made sure my goggles and my shoes were handy, though. Spike was quiet now, and I doubted that whoever had tried to break into the shed would do it again tonight, but just in case.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. Normally, I’d have taken the weatherman’s word for it, but I got to observe it firsthand, thanks to the Shiffleys, who began talking, laughing, and rattling pots and pans outside at 6:00 A.M. Only the fact that they were producing the most heavenly smells—of bacon, sausage, eggs, and, above all, coffee—saved me from demonstrating what an ungracious hostess I was, and even then it was touch-and-go.

  Michael brought me some coffee and wisely left me alone until the caffeine could take effect.

  If only everyone were that considerate.

  “I’ve got the new mallets,” Mrs. Fenniman said, bursting into the stall when I was halfway through my mug. I looked up blearily. Yes, she was flourishing a pair of croquet mallets. How remiss of me, not spotting their usefulness as weapons before.

  “That’s nice,” I said. “Who knows when we’ll get a chance to use them, though.”

  “This afternoon,” she said. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “Message?”

  “The chief said last night that he’d probably allow us to use the course this afternoon,” she said. She leaned one mallet against the side of the stall—mine, I deduced—and began taking practice swings with the other.

  “Afternoon is six hours away,” I pointed out. “And didn’t he say ‘probably’?”

  “Need to start working on our form,” she said, lining up an imaginary shot. Or maybe not so imaginary—was she about to roquet my travel alarm out of the barn?

  “My form will be better if I get more sleep,” I said. “Or didn’t you hear what an exciting night we had? Someone kidnapped and shaved several of poor Mr. Early’s sheep. No telling what he’ll do if he ever finds out who’s responsible.”

  “Hmph,” she said, abandoning her attack on my alarm clock. “You’ll thank me next time we tackle those walking wickets!”

  “I thought we were going to finish the game on the cow pasture first,” I said. “Or replay it, if that’s what the rules require.”

  “Probably replay it,” she said. “Unless the chief gets on the ball and arrests one of the Dames. You think that’s a possibility? I could drag my feet on getting the tournament started if there’s a good chance one of them will land in jail and they’d have to forfeit.”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “No idea how likely. But you said there was no penalty for murder.”

  “Yeah, but there is for not showing up.”

  Of course. I closed my eyes, lay back as if returning to sleep, and hoped she’d take the hint. This was more family togetherness than I wanted before I’d finished my coffee.

  “I’m rooting for Claire Wentworth as the culprit,” she said.

  “Her rather than Mrs. Pruitt?” I asked, opening my eyes again in surprise.

  “You think Mrs. Pruitt is more likely?”

  “They’re both equally likely, as far as I can tell,” I said. “It’s just that most people find Mrs. Pruitt more annoying.”

  “That’s only because most people see more of Mrs. Pruitt,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “Believe me, if you’d spent the whole afternoon hiking around a bog with Claire at your heels, you’d find her just as annoying.”

  “No doubt,” I said. Then what she’d just said hit me.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you mean the whole afternoon? Were you and Mrs. Wentworth together that long?”

  “From the second wicket, when she broke her mallet,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “That’s right, you’d forged ahead, you and Henrietta, and the rest of us were stuck on the second wicket. Now there’s a diabolical wicket, if I do say so myself.”

  She beamed with pride. I didn’t argue with her. She’d placed the wicket on a small island in the middle of what would be, come summer, a babbling brook. This early in the spring, though, the brook was a mean gush of ice water, interrupted not only by hundreds of rocks but also by the exposed roots of a large oak tree that would topple when the running water had eroded another foot or so of the stream bank out from under it. I’d nearly broken my own mallet there.

  “Diabolical,” I agreed. “So Mrs. Wentworth broke her mallet there? Didn’t she have a spare?”

  “No, Lacie was a wicket or two ahead by that time, and it was her job to tote the Dames’ spare equipment around,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “She had that huge pack, remember? Ridiculous, expecting one person to schlep around the gear for a whole team. Next time, I’m going to make it a rule: You carry your own crap or hire a sherpa.”

  “Are you allowed to make your own rules?” I asked. “Don’t you have to consult the board of regents?”

  “I’ll talk ’em into it,” she said. “Anyway, you should have heard the way Claire Wentworth lighted into Lacie when we found out she’d forgotten to pack the spare mallets.”

  “Typical,” I muttered.

  “So Rose Noire said Claire could share her mallet. Only she started falling behind by the next wicket, and I said the hell with it, Claire could share mine.”

  “That was nice of you,” I said.

  “The hell it was,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “I didn’t want to stop the
game long enough to send someone back to the house for another mallet, and I damn well didn’t want to listen to Claire ragging on Lacie anymore.”

  “Okay, it was selfish and cunning of you,” I said. Mrs. Fenniman basked in the praise.

  “See what I got for it,” she said. “An uninterrupted afternoon of Claire Wentworth’s company.”

  “Completely uninterrupted?” I asked. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Means I know what hell will be like,” Mrs. Fenniman grumbled.

  “It means she has an alibi for the murder.”

  “Damnation,” Mrs. Fenniman said after a moment’s thought.

  “If it’s any comfort, you have one, too.”

  “I’d take my chances if it meant she might swing for it.”

  “Unfortunately, if your afternoon in her company was completely uninterrupted—”

  “I’d have remembered an interruption,” Mrs. Fenniman said with a sigh. “It would have stood out like a small island of serenity in a hellish afternoon. Why do you think I kept nagging everyone to keep the game moving briskly?”

  Her fondness for ordering people around, I’d assumed, but I only shrugged.

  “No way she could have done it during the morning game?” she asked. “No one but those feckless students around to keep an eye on her all morning.”

  “I don’t know what the medical examiner said about time of death,” I said. “But Horace thought she couldn’t have been dead more than an hour.”

  “Horace would know,” she said. “Damn. Here I was getting my hopes up about the chief arresting Claire, seeing as how she has such a good reason to dislike the victim. Ah well. You can’t have everything, can you?”

  She shouldered her mallet and strode out of the barn.

  By this time, I was awake enough that I decided I might as well get up and see what was happening.

  The Shiffleys had started a fire in the barbecue pit and set up half a dozen grills nearby.

  “Did you hear the news?” Tony asked. “We’re free to go whenever we want.”

  “That’s great,” I said. Then, in case I had sounded too enthusiastic about their impending absence, I added, “I assume that means you’re no longer suspects.”

  “Oh, it could just mean he knows where to find us if he wants us,” Tony said. “Pineville’s a pretty small town.”

  “Still, it must be a relief,” I said. “Knowing you can go home anytime you want. After breakfast, if you feel like it.” Not that I was hinting.

  “Yeah, as soon as Bill gets back,” he said. “He was feeling restless and decided to take a drive.”

  I could sympathize.

  “Unless we’re still in the tournament,” Tony added. “I understand that’s starting up again this afternoon.”

  “I thought it was a double-elimination system,” I said. “You lost to the Dames Friday morning and the clones Friday afternoon. So you’re eliminated, right? If not for the murder, you could have gone home Friday night. Or Saturday morning. Not that you wouldn’t have been welcome to stay around for the rest of the fun,” I added, in case that sounded inhospitable. “Assuming we’d been having fun instead of sitting around being suspects, which isn’t my definition of fun. But you wouldn’t have had to.”

  “Well, it’s not definite that we’re eliminated,” he said. “Since so many of the murder suspects are on the competing teams. I mean, if they arrest Mrs. Pruitt, or one of the real estate ladies, wouldn’t they have to forfeit the rest of the tournament?”

  “I suppose,” I said. “That would depend on when we have the rest of the tournament.” I was thinking if we have the rest of the tournament, but I knew Mrs. Fenniman too well to believe a mere murder would discourage her from completing a project. “If they’re out on bail when we start up again, I assume they could play; there’s nothing against homicide in the rules. Even if they are eliminated, though, does that necessarily uneliminate you?”

  “I have no idea,” Tony said. “Bill and Mrs. Fenniman were talking about it earlier. Studying the rules.”

  He pointed with his thumb at a nearby picnic bench where Mrs. Fenniman sat. Sure enough, she was hunched over a stained and battered wad of paper that I recognized as her copy of the tournament rules. I still had no idea whether Mrs. Fenniman had acquired the rules from some official source or invented them herself. If it had taken her more than a few minutes to answer this new rules question, she was still deciding what ruling would most benefit our family team.

  “Roger,” I said. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what she comes up with.”

  “Meanwhile, we have all the more time to spend together,” he said, giving me another of those annoyingly flirtatious smiles. He even batted his eyelashes at me, which I thought was against the union rules for guys old enough to shave.

  “Yes,” I said. “My fiancé has been saying how nice it’s been, having a chance to get to know everyone instead of having everyone troop off to the croquet field first thing in the morning.”

  Too subtle? Perhaps not; his smile faltered slightly.

  “Oh, yes, your fiancé,” he said. “Marvin.”

  “Michael.”

  “Michael,” he repeated. “What is it he does again?”

  “Theater.”

  “Much of a living in that?” Tony asked.

  I looked pointedly at the house. Which wasn’t entirely paid for with Michael’s earnings—my blacksmithing contributed, too, to say nothing of our stock in Mutant Wizards. But Tony didn’t have to know that.

  “He’s employed, then,” Tony said. “Excellent. Must make it difficult for you, though.”

  “Difficult?”

  “And lonely,” he added. “A long-distance relationship is so hard to maintain. Where does he work, anyway? Los Angeles or New York?”

  “Here in Caerphilly,” I said. “He’s on the faculty of the drama department.”

  “Ah,” he said, his face brightening again. “That’s nice. Those who can, do, and all that.”

  Implying that if Michael were teaching, rather than acting in New York or L.A., he must not be very good.

  I wanted to say that those who can’t shouldn’t mock those who can do well enough to teach others, but he was technically my guest, so I suppressed the urge to deflate his ego, either with a smart remark or a well-placed kick. My tight smile should have warned any reasonably savvy people watcher that he was treading dangerously close to the edge. Tony rattled on.

  I found myself brooding over the news. The chief was telling everyone they could go home, and releasing the croquet field. Did that mean he’d solved the murder? Surely someone would have told me if he’d made an arrest. Unless he was still in the process of making it.

  Even if he hadn’t made an arrest, perhaps he thought he’d solved the crime. Which was good. That was his job. The world would be a safer place with the murderer locked up.

  So why was I so peeved that I still had no idea who had done it?

  “You’re up,” Michael said, sitting down beside me.

  “Don’t sound so surprised,” I said.

  “That was pleasure, not surprise,” he said. “Did you hear? While we were shuffling through the boxes last night, Chief Burke made enough progress in his case that—”

  “He’s letting everyone go home and releasing the croquet field,” I said. “Don’t rub it in.”

  Michael glanced at my mug, saw that it was still a third full, and sat back to wait for me to ingest more caffeine.

  Mrs. Fenniman sauntered over.

  “Well, I’m heading into town,” she said.

  “I thought you were spending the morning warming up,” I said.

  “Going to take a break. Drop into Trinity Episcopal for the ten-thirty service. See if I can rattle the competition.”

  She sauntered off, the croquet mallet still over one shoulder.

  “The competition?” Tony murmured.

  “Mrs. Pruitt and her team all attend the local Episcopal church,
” Michael explained. “I’m sure that’s all Mrs. Fenniman means by ‘the competition.’ She’s an Episcopalian herself.”

  I drained the mug.

  “Come on,” I said to Michael. “Let’s not just sit around waiting until Chief Burke deigns to tell us what he’s found. Let’s do something.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s go inspect Mr. Early’s sheep pasture,” I said, standing up and stumbling in the right direction.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Will Mr. Early like that?” Michael asked, falling into step beside me.

  “Possibly not, but if he complains, we’ll say we’re inspecting the wickets to make sure they’re in place in case we play here today. Or to make sure we can find them all to take them away tomorrow. If we run into him, we can inquire about the health of his naked sheep.”

  “Or ask how late he and Rose Noire stayed up … talking,” Michael said with a grin.

  “Whatever works. Come on.”

  We strolled across the road and climbed over the fence into Mr. Early’s pasture.

  “What are we looking for, anyway?” Michael asked as we climbed the hillside.

  “At the moment, the starting stake.”

  “I mean in general. What clue do we hope to uncover here?”

  “Well,” I said. “Remember I’m assuming Mrs. Pruitt and the other Dames are more likely suspects than the other two teams.”

  “And your family aren’t suspects at all.”

  “Mrs. Fenniman channels all her homicidal instincts into eXtreme croquet these days,” I said. “I doubt if Rose Noire has any. Rob might, but he can’t stand blood, so if he’d offed Lindsay, we’d have found him lying nearby in a dead faint.”

  “That makes sense,” he said. “And yes, the Morris Mallet Men and the Realtors’ team would have had a harder time getting over to the bog to kill Lindsay. Not impossible.”