For the second time since Robbi’s arrival, deputies are gathering the Troupe into the King’s Moot. When I arrive, Robbi and Mal are already seated at one of the long tables. On Mal’s other side, Elinore sits stiffly, her hands in her lap. Still sore, no doubt, from the arrow wound.
Guy sits across from them, his broken leg stuck out at the end of the bench, his crutches propped against the table. Our dashing young swashbuckler looks worse for wear, with a new bruise on one cheek and a cut on his forehead. One of his eyes is beginning to blacken.
Despite their obvious concern, there’s a new energy between Robbi and Mal. For the first time since Mal proposed his wager, they seem to be enjoying each other’s company. No need to wonder what they’ve got up to since I left on my little adventure with Tuck.
Speaking of Tuck, I glance around to see if he’s up and about. Sure enough, he’s under the table between Elinore and Mal. He looks every bit as knackered as I feel, and I’m glad I didn’t vent my frustration on him on our journey back from town.
Dale and Joanne enter with one deputy, followed a few minutes later by Miller and Cara. She squeezes in between Dale and Guy, while Miller takes a seat away from the rest of the group. No one looks happy.
When the gang’s all here, Acting Sheriff Debba Holt assigns a burly man with a crew cut to keep order among the group while she interviews them one at a time in Guy’s office. From her announcement to the Troupe, I glean that there’s been an accident. While Debba explains the failure of Guy’s brakes, Guy traces the wood grain of the table with a finger.
He looks the picture of misery, perhaps because of the damage to himself and his car, perhaps because Sheriff Hammond, who was driving, is in critical condition.
Foul play is suspected.
Not an accident at all, then. Does this mean Hammond is not the killer? I can’t imagine he would have gotten into a vehicle he himself had sabotaged.
While Debba decides who to interview first, I stroll into her office, find a shaft of sunlight to bask in, and settle down to groom myself. I look like a vagrant, and it will take some time to restore my coat to its usual elegance.
It was starting to feel like Groundhog Day. Not in the madcap, entertaining way of the Bill Murray movie, but in the slogging through molasses way of a bad dream you can’t wake up from. Poor Guy looked like he’d been mugged by a kangaroo.
“What’s happened now?” Dale asked, with a sidelong glance toward Deputy Crew Cut, who was slowly scrolling down the screen of his mobile phone. “It looks like everybody’s here, at least.”
Robbi heard his unspoken conclusion: at least no more of them had been murdered.
“Guy’s hurt,” Cara said, stroking the arm of the man she seemed to have decided was the love of her life, whether he wanted to be or not. “This is getting out of hand.”
“What are you talking about?” Dale snapped. “It got out of hand the minute Laura died.” He clamped his mouth shut as if afraid of what else he might say.
Robbi glanced at Mal. She was pretty sure he’d back her play, but she wasn’t sure she was right to play it. If she was wrong, she was revealing a secret that wasn’t hers. But if she was right, didn’t they all have a right to know? She turned back to Cara. “Guy’s been awfully lucky lately, for a man someone keeps trying to kill.”
Cara’s eyes went flat, but Guy gave a stifled laugh and gestured to his cast. “Right now, I’m not feeling very lucky.”
In a brittle voice, Cara said, “Are you implying something?”
“The Great Fallini,” Robbi said. “Didn’t he have a series of unfortunate accidents just before the one that killed him?”
“Great Fallini?” Guy looked from Robbi to Cara. “Who’s he?”
Ignoring Guy’s question, Cara jabbed a finger in the air. “One accident. And I didn’t even pour that juice. You want to know what happened to the Great Fallini?”
“Yes, please.” Robbi was glad to know her voice sounded stronger than she felt. “His daughter said you were—”
“I know what she said. She was wrong then, and she’s wrong now.” A pair of pink blotches bloomed on her cheeks. “And you’re wrong too. I would never hurt Guy.”
Quietly, Guy said, “It’s all right, Cara. Just tell us what happened.”
“He was a bully, that’s what happened,” she said, in a voice choked with indignation. “He taught me how to do the act, and the better I got at it, the more he hated it. I’d have left, but I needed the job. The day he—” She took a hitching breath and wiped her eyes. Shot a glance toward the deputy, who seemed to be paying them no mind. She lowered her voice anyway. “The day he died, he’d been berating me all morning. Vicious things. Said I was worthless. That teaching me was the biggest mistake of his life. When I was on the wheel, he nicked me three times with the knives, and every time, he said it was my fault. He said I’d moved.”
“Throwing knives,” Robbi clarified for the group. “The Wheel of Death.”
Cara nodded. “By the time it was my turn to throw, I was a wreck. I was shaking so hard I could hardly hold the knives. I told him I couldn’t do it, that I was bound to miss. He said I’d better throw, and throw well, or I was fired.” Her expression hardened. “So I threw.”
Guy folded his hand over hers. Considering it hadn’t been established she wasn’t the one who was trying to kill him, Robbi found it a remarkably sweet gesture. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “You tried to warn him.”
Elinore gave Cara an appraising look. “If she’s telling the truth.”
Acting Sheriff Debba has no better luck than her predecessor at ferreting out the culprit. Miller is no less timid, Dale no less affable, Elinore no less prickly, and Joanne no less adversarial. Cara seems more flustered than before, which I attribute to her concern for Guy and her emotions regarding the Great Fallini. Robbi, of course, is more composed than she was for her first interview, but then, that day, she’d just had an awful shock.
By the time Mal comes in, I’ve nearly returned my coat to its usual splendor.
“So,” Debba says, “I’m told you’re good with cars.”
Mal shrugs. “I’m good at lots of things.”
“Don’t mess with me,” she says. “I hear you have a grudge against Guy.”
Mal’s having none of that. “He risked our futures on a hand of poker. Don’t tell me I’m the only one with a grudge against Guy.”
She leans back in Guy’s chair and clasps her hands behind her head. “I heard he defiled your sister, once upon a time.”
Mal laughs. “Defiled? Elinore’s a big girl. Who she has a romp with is no concern of mine.”
“Maybe not,” Debba says, leaning forward as if to give the words more gravitas, “but since attempts were made on both their lives, it seems to concern someone.”
“Let’s face it,” Joanne said. She brushed an invisible crumb from her blacksmith’s apron. “It could be any of us.”
“No, it couldn’t,” Dale said.
“But it could. We all have things that make us seem suspicious. I’ve got a temper, Cara’s—obviously—got a past. Even you, Dale. The boyfriend is always a suspect. We all had motive. We all had opportunity. Like today’s accident. Guy, you said your brakes failed?” At his nod, she went on. “When was the last time you drove your car?”
“I don’t know. Last week sometime.”
“Right. So it could have been sabotaged any time between then and now. Any of us could have done it.” She pointed at Cara. “You, me, even Miller.”
“Miller?” Mal laughed. “He wouldn’t know a brake line from an oil pan.”
Elinore rolled her eyes. “He isn’t stupid. He could have learned it on YouTube. Any of us could.”
Dale splayed his hands flat on the table. Musician’s hands, long and slim, callused at the fingertips. “We could have, but we didn’t. Only one of us did. Maybe one of us did. But now we look at each other, and we’re all thinking, ‘Is it you? Or maybe you?’ Even if—or whe
n—we catch this guy, how can we go back to how things were? I’m always going to know some of you wonder if I killed the only woman I ever loved, and you’re always going to know I’m wondering the same thing about you.”
“Trust is a fragile thing,” Joanne said. “It’s easy to break, hard to repair. A thing like this, it shows us where the fractures are. If what we have here is worth saving, we have to use that knowledge to make it better than it was. Repair the fractures. Deeper friendships, stronger ties.”
“I don’t know if I can.” Dale looked down at his hands and added quietly. “I don’t know if any of us can.”
Robbi looked over at Miller. He sat at a table as far from the group as he could get. Shoulders slumped, he stared down at his steepled fingers, ignoring—or pretending to ignore—the conversation at the other table. What must his life have been like, Robbi wondered, if this was the closest thing he had to a home? A misfit among misfits. If he was the guilty party, he deserved it, but if he wasn’t…
“Miller?” Robbi called. When he looked up, she patted the bench beside her. “Why don’t you come over here and join us?”
He looked up, hope and suspicion warring on his face. Then he slowly came over and plopped down at the table, looking like he’d just been invited to hang out with the cool kids.
When the interviews are finally finished, I make my way over to Tuck. It doesn’t take a famous detective to see he’s had enough investigating for one day. Poor bloke. It’s not his fault he hasn’t got the stamina for real detective work; my paws are as sore as his hooves, but when duty calls, I serve at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
I spend the rest of the afternoon eavesdropping on the suspects and searching for Laura’s journal and a murder weapon. The challenge is not so much in finding plausible weapons, but rather in eliminating all the rest. So many things can cause a head wound, from marble bookends to common rocks. Not to mention the plethora of axes, swords, and cudgels lying about.
In the wake of the bookshelf incident, Cara is vigilant against intrusion. I shall have to be more resourceful if I mean to get inside again. At the McClaren cottage, Elinore tries to distract me from my mission with a bit of string, as if I were a common cat.
I stop by Miller’s for a spot of tea. He gives me cream and kidneys, and while I eat, I notice a wrinkled, tear-stained paper on a shelf behind the counter. This must be the one he was reading the first time I came here, the one he’d so hurriedly shoved into his pocket.
I pull it toward me and realize it’s a poem. A love poem, to be exact.
“I see you, my love,
In my heart, in my dreams,
But you do not see me.”
He wads it up and tosses it into the bin before I can read the rest, but I’ve seen enough. This confirms his unrequited feelings for Laura.
When Miller sends me on my way with a final bite of kidney, I visit Joanne at the barn, where she’s patching a matching pair of nicks, one in the feed room door, the other in its frame. She bends to give me a scratch on the chin and sighs. “It must have happened when we were getting the lances ready for the joust. I wish people would be more careful.”
I leave her to her work and continue my search.
I am thorough. I am vigilant. But no matter where I go, I see no sign of Laura’s journal.
Chapter Seventeen
The sky was awash with purple and gold when Robbi made it to the meadow the next morning, her kestrel on her hand. She launched the bird twice, using the leather bat lure to draw him back in. Then she gave him the signal for free hunting and walked the edge of the meadow, kicking at bushes to flush out the insects and small rodents. Falcor circled, then plunged. He snapped up a grasshopper, then lit on a nearby branch to enjoy his well-earned snack.
When Robbi looked up again, Guy was standing at the edge of the field. When he realized she’d seen him, he picked his way carefully toward her, his crutches making little pockmarks in the earth.
“What happened with Cara?” she asked. “I can’t decide if telling you all about the Great Fallini was a good idea.”
“Hard to say.” He gave her a winsome smile. “My take is, better to get it over with than keep it in and let it fester ‘til it grows all out of proportion. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, to use a metaphor.”
“That’s not a metaphor. That’s a simile.”
“Whatever.” He dismissed the error with a wave, then looked down, shuffling his feet like a schoolboy. “Look, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
“Oh?”
“I–”
Miss Scarlett’s cheerful bark cut through the trees, heralding the arrival of Mal and his four-legged entourage. Robbi couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across her face, while Guy flashed a smile that couldn’t quite hide his disappointment at the moment lost.
Robbi sent Falcor on one final loop, then called him back to her hand. This was what she loved about falconry, that the kestrel could at any time be free by simply not returning when she called.
Mal nodded toward Guy, not quite friendly, not quite not. “That’s some shiner you’re working on there.”
Gingerly, Guy touched a finger to his eye, as if he’d forgotten about the bruises. “I’ve been thinking. You were right yesterday. I have been lucky. But I don’t think I can be lucky forever.”
“No,” Robbi said. “No one can.”
“They aren’t going to stop, whoever they are. I found this dropped inside my mail slot this morning.” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket and held it out.
Mal took it and read aloud, “‘If you want this to be over, meet me at midnight inside the old mill.’” He handed it back to Guy. “You aren’t thinking of going?”
Guy folded the paper and put it back in his pocket. “It’s either that or wait for them to try again. Sooner or later, they’re going to succeed.”
“Maybe not,” Robbi said. “The poisoning was a near thing, but if they’d used more, you might not have made it long enough for Trouble and Tuck to find you. There was no guarantee you’d be hurt badly, or at all, in the fall from your horse, and you could have either died in that car wreck or walked away without a scratch. Maybe they don’t want to succeed. Maybe they just want you to need them.”
“You mean Cara?” Guy said. “I can’t say you’re wrong, but it seems risky. I mean, if I die, that pretty much tanks any chance of a relationship.”
“Maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe, given the choice, she’d rather make you need her, but she’d rather lose you completely than see you with someone else.”
He cocked his head as if evaluating her words. “You didn’t believe her explanation about Fallini?”
“I don’t know if I believe it. It sounded plausible, but even if it’s true, one doesn’t preclude the other. She could still be setting up all these accidents to make herself indispensable to you.”
“Or it could be somebody different altogether.” He held out his hands like a scale and made a weighing motion. “The good thing is, if it’s her and I meet her at the mill, I can probably handle her.”
“Unless she shoots you.”
“I have to do something,” Guy said. “It’s starting to feel like I really have something to be afraid of.”
“Being poisoned should probably have told you that.” Robbi reached for the note. If you want this to be over. It sounded ominous. “Have you showed this to Deputy—I mean, Acting Sheriff Debba?”
“She was Ham’s right-hand man. Person. I don’t trust her.” Which was probably wise, given what they knew of Hammond.
“Well, you can’t go to this meeting,” Mal said. “That leg puts you at a huge disadvantage.”
They all considered the options. After a while, Mal said, “Look, what if you could go and not go at the same time?”
Guy laughed. “What, you have a Tardis somewhere? Or a time machine?”
“More like a clone. I put on a cloak and a fake cast, and I go as you. I’ll get a confession on my cell p
hone if I can, and if I have to fight, they’ll be expecting you to be crippled by that leg. I can take them by surprise.”
“Wait a minute,” Robbi said. “I don’t like this plan at all.”
There were a million ways it could go wrong, and all of them ended up with Mal wounded or dead. She liked Guy, but sacrificing Mal for him was something she wasn’t prepared to do.
“It will be fine,” Mal said, with a reassuring smile. “It’s time for us to get proactive.”
Mal woke up fifteen minutes before the alarm. Quarter to eleven. Truth to tell, he hadn’t slept much at all, thinking of all the things that could go wrong, planning for contingencies. What if there was more than one assailant? What if they brought guns? What if they were wearing vests full of dynamite? It wasn’t likely, but it was possible. Almost anything was. He tried to make a rough plan for each contingency, knowing that whatever happened, it would likely be something he’d never imagined.
He thought of the old saw: No plan survives first contact with the enemy. He knew it was true.
The house was dark, silent save for the ticking of the clock and Miss Scarlett’s breathing. Elinore had taken a pain pill and should sleep soundly until morning, but he wrote her a note anyway and left it on the kitchen table, just in case the worst thing happened and he didn’t make it home.
He changed into dark clothes and a maroon cloak Guy had given him. Then he wrapped his right leg in cotton batting until it looked as thick as Guy’s cast. He practiced limping until he thought he had it right, but then he realized he’d need Guy’s crutches and grabbed a walking stick for Guy to use in their stead. The last thing he did before leaving the house was check the charge on his phone. One hundred percent. Good to go.
He slipped out of the house with Scarlett at his heels. Tuck met him at the front stoop.
He followed the Loop until he reached the access road to the mill. Then he skirted the Danger! Condemned! Do Not Enter! sign and picked his way through the woods with his cell phone’s flashlight. He was early, but Robbi and Guy were earlier. Trouble perched on a fallen log where he could get a good view.
Trouble Most Faire Page 17
