No Nest for the Wicket

by Donna Andrews

  “More possible for the students than the Realtors,” I said.

  “Are you impugning the Realtors’ fitness?” he asked. “All three look spry enough to scamper over to the other field and back.”

  “Not their fitness, but their knowledge of the terrain,” I said. “Remember, we’d already played a game that morning. My team played the Realtors up here in the sheep pasture, and the Dames played the students down in the bog.”

  “So both the Dames and the students had all morning to study the lay of the land around the crime scene?”

  “Precisely,” I said.

  “The Realtors are local, you know,” Michael pointed out.

  “Yes, but do you really think Mrs. Briggs or either of the clones have ever clocked much time slogging around in Mr. Shiffley’s cow pasture? Then there’s Mr. Briggs, who wasn’t stuck here all day playing croquet. I like him as a suspect. More than I like Mrs. Pruitt, to tell the truth, though I admit I have ulterior motives in wanting to find him guilty. Ah, here it is. The starting stake. Now look around.”

  “Nice,” Michael said.

  He was looking at the house. Even the horrors of remodeling did little to dim Michael’s fondness for the house, and I tried to keep seeing it through his eyes.

  “Nice view of the house, yes,” I said. “And anyone at the house would have a nice view of the game—especially anyone scampering around on the roof, ripping off old shingles and smashing up rotten boards.”

  “I suspect the chief has interrogated the Shiffleys,” Michael said.

  “Fat chance of getting him or them to tell us anything,” I said. “So we’ll puzzle things out for ourselves. Let’s find the next wicket.”

  “Yes, we’re pretty visible up here,” Michael said, waving at someone below. “Not just from the roof but from most of the yard, too.”

  “Not heavily wooded like the bog. That’s why we made Eric referee up here. Not as demanding as refereeing in the other field. Most of the time, we could all see one another. Occasionally, someone would disappear into a gully or over a hill, but most of the time, we could have shouted back and forth to keep the turns moving. The Shiffleys could see most of us pretty much of the time, and I bet they were looking. When we played up here in the morning, every time I glanced down, I’d see one of them gawking and pointing. I doubt if the novelty wore off by afternoon. If they’d seen anyone do anything, Chief Burke would have arrested someone by now.”

  “So the people who were playing on this field are off the suspect list entirely?” Michael asked.

  “Not entirely,” I said. “But they go way down to the bottom of the list. And I’ll check with Eric to see how the game went. If one or two of them finished particularly early and returned to the house alone, we move them back up the list again.”

  “Or if whoever came last was a lot slower than the rest,” Michael said. “I can see someone hanging behind the rest and taking a detour to the other field.”

  “Good point,” I said. “Then there are breaks. If they had to halt the game for a bathroom break, or to replace a broken mallet, or if anyone spent a long time hunting for a ball—”

  “So they’re still on the list,” Michael said. “Good.”

  “Not that good. Too many suspects.”

  We trudged around the rest of the wickets in companionable silence, enjoying the peace and quiet. At least Michael was enjoying it. He kept pausing at each new vantage point to gaze down with pride at our house and land. Our new home.

  For me, when I looked down at them from up in the sheep pasture, they looked strangely small and fragile. I kept seeing them dwarfed by the hulking shapes of a giant mall with a divided highway where the narrow country road now ran, hearing car horns and engines at close range instead of the baaing of sheep and the lowing of cows in the distance, smelling exhaust fumes and fast food instead of the wholesome country odors of grass and manure.

  I was working up a mild case of anticipatory nostalgia over the manure when I saw a familiar sight: Dad leading a pair of sheep across the road toward the pasture. He was wearing a bandage over his forehead. Either the cut was larger than I’d remembered or Dad’s sense of melodrama had gotten the better of his common sense. It looked less like a working bandage and more like the oversized headband Ralph Macchio wore in The Karate Kid.

  “I see your father’s found a few more of Mr. Early’s lost lambs,” Michael said.

  “How that man makes a living at this, I’ll never know.”

  “Be quite a shock to the sheep, I imagine, if we can’t stop this mall project,” Michael mused.

  “They’d cope,” I said. “Better than we would, I imagine. Foraging in the food court. Riding up and down the escalators. Standing outside the better clothing stores like living advertisements for natural fiber. Lambing time in the linen department. They’d love it.”

  Mr. Early had showed up and helped Dad propel the sheep through the gate and now the two were leaning on the fence, talking.

  “Mr. Early has some information!” Dad announced as soon as we were within earshot.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “‘Information’?” I echoed. “About the murder?”

  “He was watching the game Friday afternoon,” Dad informed us.

  “Keeping an eye on those juvenile delinquents, mostly,” Mr. Early said.

  “The college students,” Dad said, nodding.

  “Was there some particular reason you were watching them?” Michael asked.

  “Been missing some sheep,” Mr. Early said. “Since Friday. Really missing, not just kidnapped and barbered.”

  “I doubt if the students took them,” I said. “For one thing, they’re staying in our barn, and I think I’d have noticed if they’d smuggled in any sheep.”

  Though if Mr. Early chose to assume the denuding of his sheep had been a prank perpetrated by the college students, I wouldn’t try to change his mind.

  “You never know,” Mr. Early said. “Besides, they could have been up to some mischief. Ran into Fred Shiffley at the feed store and he said they were chasing his cows that morning. So I kept an eye on them to make sure they didn’t get up to anything with my sheep.”

  “Very prudent,” Dad said.

  I winced. I suspected it wasn’t the students chasing the cows, but my brother and Spike. Just as well to let Mr. Shiffley blame the students for that, too.

  And if Mr. Early had been watching the students suspiciously …

  “Were you here the whole time?” I asked.

  Mr. Early nodded.

  “Were they up to anything?”

  “No,” Mr. Early said, frowning, as if reluctant to admit the students’ innocence. “Not that I could see. Can’t speak to what they did after they finished playing, though.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t wear a watch,” Mr. Early said, holding up a sinewy, watchless wrist to emphasize his point.

  “Approximately,” I said.

  “No place for clock-watchers out here. I get off work when the work’s done.”

  “Could you get a rough idea from the position of the sun?” Dad asked.

  “About three o’clock, or half past,” Mr. Early said. “Definitely before the postman showed up, which is usually around four.”

  Was it how Dad asked, or the fact that he was asking? I wondered if I should let him question Mr. Early.

  “So you didn’t notice anything suspicious,” I said.

  “I didn’t spot those juvenile delinquents doing anything suspicious.”

  “Did someone else do anything suspicious?”

  “Saw Evan Briggs wandering off in the middle of the game,” he said. “He was standing right here, watching his wife’s team; then he just up and wandered off.”

  “Wandered off where?”

  “Back toward your house,” he said. “Then he got in his car and drove away. Left just after the game started, and didn’t get back till it was nearly over.”

  Aha! So
Mr. Briggs had sneaked away from the game.

  “Thank you,” I said. “That’s interesting. Could even be important.”

  “Glad to oblige,” Mr. Early said. “So how’s your cousin this morning?”

  “I haven’t seen her. I don’t think she’s up yet.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I’m sure she’s exhausted. I shouldn’t have kept her up so late. Helping with the sheep and all.”

  Michael was overcome by coughing. I had to suppress my own laughter. Probably not the time to reveal that staying up all night and sleeping till noon was Rose Noire’s normal routine.

  “I’ll tell her you asked about her,” I said. “Or you could drop by later for the picnic.”

  “You’ve planned another picnic?” Dad asked.

  “No, but that won’t stop everyone from having one anyway. You’ll see when things start up,” I added to Mr. Early.

  He nodded—was he blushing?—and strode away.

  “Sammy and Horace will be furious,” Michael said.

  “Furious about what?” Dad asked.

  “Long story,” I said. “I’ll fill you in later.” Maybe by the time later rolled around, Dad would have forgotten and I wouldn’t have to explain. I was getting tired of explaining Rose Noire. I’d already had to reassure Michael that since she and Horace were at best third cousins once removed, there was nothing unsuitable about his infatuation.

  Back at the house, Dad went off to minister to his poison ivy patients and Michael decided to make a run to the county dump to clear out our accumulated trash.

  I found myself staring up at the roof. Where the Shiffleys had been all day Friday. Was there something I could learn up there? Something worth climbing up forty feet in the air?

  No way to know till I tried it. I took the stairs up to the third floor and, after staring up at the bare rafters overhead for many long minutes, finally forced myself to take the ladder up to the roof.

  Strange, how what initially looked like a perfectly ordinary ladder turned out, once I started climbing, to be not only unusually tall but afflicted with dangerously wide gaps between the rungs. Trust the Shiffleys to bring a mutant ladder designed for giants. But as long as I refrained from looking down, I could keep moving steadily up, and when I reached the end of the ladder, I crawled out onto one of the flat horizontal sheets of plywood they’d nailed down to hold supplies. After a mere ten or fifteen minutes of scolding myself to stop being such a baby, that is.

  At last, I stood on the platform. Okay, I was hunched slightly, and clutching a rafter for dear life. But I was up there, on the very top of the roof. The view was spectacular. Almost made up for the way my stomach had stayed somewhere down by the foot of the ladder.

  I was facing the front of the house, and Seth Early’s sheep pasture lay spread before me like a stage set. I could see sheep grazing and lambs suckling, sleeping, or gamboling. Over to my left, Mr. Early was mending yet another break in his fence—presumably the source of the sheep Dad had just returned. To my right, under a grove of trees, Rob was leaning against a tree, holding one end of a leash, seemingly oblivious to the fact that at the other end Spike was straining for escape. I frowned. Walking Spike was what Rob usually did when he was troubled about something and wanted to think it over in solitude—Spike’s function being to guarantee the solitude. What was bothering Rob?

  I could worry about that later. For now, I studied the panorama. As I’d thought from the ground, hard for anyone to have left the sheep pasture croquet field without one or more Shiffleys seeing them.

  For that matter, hard for anyone to have reached the cow pasture without their knowledge. I shuffled slightly so I could turn around and face the other way. The rolling acres of Mr. Shiffley’s farm spread out before me. On my left, I could see all the way to the trees lining Caerphilly Creek. Straight ahead was the Shiffley farmhouse, looking tiny but distinct, even to the miniature thread of smoke rising from its matchstick-size chimney and the fleet of battered tractors and other farm machinery, which looked, at this distance, like props from a flea circus. To my right, the road wound toward town, and above the trees I could even see the top of the faux Gothic college bell tower. From up here, the whole vast, impassable woods we’d stumbled through Friday afternoon looked like a small island of trees in the middle of Mr. Shiffley’s large, rolling expanse of boggy pastureland.

  Very boggy land. I couldn’t imagine Mr. Shiffley’s pasture passing the perc test you’d have to do before installing a septic field. Did you have to do a similar test before you got permission for commercial buildings? I’d have pulled out my notebook that tells me when to breathe and jotted this down as an idea to pursue, but that would have meant letting go of the rafter.

  Anyway, I reminded myself that I’d crawled up here to meddle in the murder investigation. Battling the outlet mall would have to wait—possibly till we saw which of the combatants on either side escaped a murder indictment. Which meant I could scuttle down again now. I’d proven to my own satisfaction that any time the Shiffleys were up here—which meant any time between their ungodly early start at 7:00 A.M. and whatever time the chief had called them all down from the roof to be interviewed—no one could easily enter or leave the woods without one or more Shiffleys seeing them.

  Which made whatever the Shiffleys had seen a fairly important piece of evidence. Unfortunately, the one thing I hadn’t learned from my Shiffley’s-eye view of the countryside was how to get the Shiffleys to talk to me.

  “Looking for something?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I managed not to shriek, but I started and clutched the rafters more tightly with both hands. Randall Shiffley had appeared beside me.

  “Checking out the view,” I said. “Glorious view.”

  Randall flicked a dubious glance down at my white knuckles.

  “Well, it would be glorious if I had a solid floor beneath my feet. And walls or a railing around me. I was wondering if there’s still time to change the renovation plans. Build a cupola up here. Or a widow’s walk.”

  “Plenty of time,” Randall said, leaning back against a rafter and crossing his arms. “Cost money, though.”

  A familiar answer.

  “True,” I said. “Maybe Michael and I should wait to decide on any changes to the plan till we find out what’s happening there.”

  I pried one hand off the rafters to gesture, with as casual an air as I could muster, toward Fred Shiffley’s farm. Then I placed my hand back on the rafter, rather than grabbing it. At least I think I did.

  “What’s happening?” Randall repeated.

  “Well, right now it’s a spectacular view, but who’d want a widow’s walk with a spectacular view of an outlet mall? For that matter, maybe we should put a hold on all the renovations until we see what happens next door.”

  Randall frowned but didn’t say anything.

  “You think the Planning Board will approve it?” I asked after a few moments.

  “No telling, with that Briggs fellow involved,” he said.

  That Briggs fellow. He made no effort to hide the loathing in his voice.

  “You don’t like him?”

  Randall shrugged slightly.

  “I should think he’d be pretty popular in your branch of the family.”

  Randall looked at me as if I’d said something spectacularly stupid.

  “Won’t the outlet mall make your uncle Fred pretty rich?”

  “Damn fool notion,” Randall said. “We all understand that the farm has to go someday—times change. But not like that.”

  Interesting—dissention in the normally uniform ranks of the Shiffleys?

  “I suppose you’ve tried reasoning with him?”

  “Some of us have,” Randall said. “All his brothers have been yelling their damned heads off at him ever since they found out. Couple of ’em took a swing at him once or twice. Hasn’t worked.”

  Yelling and throwing punches. Not exactly what I’d call reasoning, but given my re
latives’ quirks, who was I to question the Shiffley family’s interpersonal dynamics?

  “He’s pretty strong-minded,” I said instead.

  “Stubborn as a mule, you mean. Worse than most of us. I could have told the old goats that. All they’ve accomplished is getting him so riled up, he’s threatening to leave his money outside the family.”

  “To whom?” I asked. Not that Fred Shiffley changing his will had any obvious relevance to Lindsay’s murder, but you never knew.

  “Farm Aid and the ASPCA,” Randall said.

  “Good causes.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like he doesn’t have family could use the money,” Randall said. “Stubborn old goat. If they’ll just leave him alone till he cools down …”

  He shrugged his shoulders, as if he wasn’t making any bets about his father’s and uncles’ ability to let well enough alone.

  “So Evan Briggs isn’t exactly a hero to the Shiffley family right now,” I mused aloud.

  “If he was the one who bought it Friday, I’d worry about what my dad and his brothers were up to,” Randall said. “None of us had anything against that Tyler woman, though.”

  “If Evan Briggs turns out to be the killer, none of you will mind much, I imagine.”

  “Hard to see how it could be him,” Randall said. His tone sounded casual, but I detected a faint note of eager curiosity, as if he’d love to know what dirt I had on Evan Briggs but would rather chew off an arm than ask.

  “He was seen leaving here shortly after the afternoon croquet games began,” I said. “Drove off somewhere. What if he parked somewhere nearby, hoofed it over to your uncle Fred’s pasture, and killed Ms. Tyler?”

  Randall shook his head.

  “Don’t think so,” he said. “I happen to know where he went.”

  “Where?”

  He frowned slightly and studied a knothole in a nearby board with intense interest.

  “Well, if it’s a guilty family secret,” I said.

  He snorted slightly.