“Oh, my!” the dispatcher exclaimed. “Can you give me a precise location? And do you have an ID on the deceased?”
“We’re about a quarter of a mile northeast of the main building,” Cordelia said. “Tell the chief to take the old logging road.”
I relayed that to the dispatcher.
“And the deceased is Mr. Terence Cox,” I added. “One of the actors performing at the Renaissance Faire.”
“Goodness,” the dispatcher said. “Was that Ms. Cordelia’s voice I heard in the background? Is she okay?”
“I’m fine, Ashley,” Cordelia called out.
“I’m sending the nearest patrol car up to secure the scene,” Ashley said. “And I’ll call Chief Heedles right away.”
“When you talk to the chief, remind her that one of her deputies is here. We’ll fetch him now.” I glanced at Michael.
“On it,” Michael said. He strode off into the woods, giving every impression of knowing exactly where he was going.
“And my cousin Horace is here,” I said. “So if she decides she needs any forensic work done, I’m sure he can help.”
“Does it look like she’ll need forensics?” Ashley sounded uncertain. “I mean, if it’s just a sad accident.”
Dad trudged uphill and held out his hand for me to give him the phone—which I did.
“This is Dr. James Langslow.” His voice had a confident, almost self-important tone that you only heard from him in medical emergencies or at crime scenes. “I don’t want to disturb the body too much before your local medical examiner gets here, but I’m pretty sure she’ll find the cause of death to be a knife wound. And since the knife’s stuck in his back, I expect we’ll find the manner of death to be homicide.”
“Oh, my.” Ashley seemed taken aback for a moment. “Are you all in a safe place there?”
Dad returned my phone.
“We should be okay,” I said. “We’ll keep a close eye out in case whoever did this comes back.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d stay on the line for the time being,” she said. “In case the chief has questions. Or if you see anything you need to report.”
“Will do,” I said. “I assume you’re contacting the medical examiner?”
“Already done.”
“Might be a good idea for one of us to go back to the center,” Cordelia said. “So we can show the police the way when they get here. Rose Noire, do you think you can find your way there?”
“Of course.” She offered her flashlight to Cordelia, who shook her head and pulled out her own from a pocket.
“Maybe you and Dr. Blake could both go back,” Cordelia said. “You could see to getting his injury patched up and then lead the officers here.”
“Can do.”
Rose Noire and Dad both tried to help Grandfather up, but he brushed off their efforts and scrambled to his feet with encouraging ease. He rummaged through the pockets of his fisherman’s vest and, after examining and discarding a jeweler’s loupe, a tube of Super Glue, and a miniature sewing kit, he produced a pocket flashlight and waved it triumphantly before trudging off with a limp that I hoped was mostly for dramatic effect. Rose Noire nodded to us and hiked off after him. I wasn’t sure they were going in the right direction, but I trusted that Rose Noire’s instincts would get her out of the woods eventually, and in the meantime, at least we’d have peace and quiet here at the crime scene.
Chapter 16
Cordelia also seemed to relax after Grandfather was gone.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait here?” I asked. “I know we’re pretty far from town.”
“Could be five minutes, could be half an hour.” She shrugged. “Depends where the nearest officer was when the call came in.”
Sooner would be better than later. The more time went by, the more people would wake up—both camping tourists and Faire staff. The last thing we needed was a horde of people traipsing through the woods, obliterating clues. In fact—
“Ashley,” I said. “Can you suggest that whoever’s coming to the scene might want to arrive without the sirens? If the officers can manage not to wake up all the campers it’ll reduce the chance of interference with the crime scene.”
“Good idea.”
I glanced over to see what Dad was up to. He was rummaging in the battered black-leather messenger bag that served as a portable medical kit when he went hiking or bird-watching. If Terence had been merely injured, I was sure Dad, armed with the contents of the bag, would have managed to save him.
As I watched he pulled out a tiny portable camping lantern, which he turned on and hung from a nearby tree branch. Despite its small size, the lantern’s LED bulbs gave a surprising amount of light.
“There,” he said. “That should make our medical and forensic exams easier.”
It didn’t make sitting here with Terence’s body easier.
“Should also help Chief Heedles and her officers find us,” Cordelia remarked.
I watched as Dad gently touched Terence’s eyelids and felt various places on his neck and jaw.
“Rigor mortis starting to set in,” he said.
“I assume that means he wasn’t stabbed just before we got here.” I racked my brain for some of the medical lore Dad was always dispensing. “About two to six hours ago, right?”
“Yes.” Dad was peering at Terence’s face. “Given the warm air temperature, probably closer to the two-hour end of that range.”
“So whoever did this isn’t likely to be still lurking in the bushes,” Cordelia said. “A pity. Not much chance of catching him.”
I had to smile. Most people would have been glad to learn the killer was long gone. Cordelia’s first thought was disappointment that we wouldn’t get the chance to lay hands on the culprit.
“And of course it has to be him.” She nodded in Terence’s direction. “I know it’s a horrible thing to say when the poor man’s not even cold, but I’m not surprised. That man could inspire homicidal thoughts in a saint.”
I nodded. I hoped Chief Heedles found the killer quickly. Because otherwise—
I hit the mute button on my phone.
“You think the chief will let us have the Faire today?” I asked.
“I’m busy marshaling my arguments in case she tries to close us down.” Cordelia looked determined.
“Could be it will scare people off,” I suggested. “Having a murder here at the Faire.”
“In the woods near the Faire,” she corrected. “And obviously you have a much rosier view of human nature than I do. I only hope we aren’t overrun with bloodthirsty ghouls looking to gawk at a crime scene.”
“Good point. Let’s bring that up with the chief.”
I unmuted my phone.
“Do you have an ETA on Chief Heedles?” I asked Ashley.
“About ten minutes.”
Dad was still absorbed in examining Terence’s body. Only visually—evidently he’d decided he’d done as much as he should before the M.E.’s arrival. But in addition to the lantern, he had turned on his cell phone’s flashlight and was methodically running it up and down the body. Cordelia was watching with apparent fascination.
I turned to face in the opposite direction—the direction I assumed the chief would be coming from. I struggled to stifle my yawns. I speculated about what Rose Noire and Grandfather were doing back at the house, and whether Michael was heading back from Camp Anachronism with Horace and Lenny in tow. And I tried not to resent the fact that Grandfather had hustled us out into the woods before dawn without benefit of caffeine.
“Maybe we should have exiled him to the maid’s closet after all,” Cordelia said. “Maybe he’d have stayed put in the house and would still be alive.”
“He could have come here from the house almost as easily as from Camp Anachronism,” I said. “And if he was staying up at the house, maybe he’d have been killed there.”
“Good point.” Cordelia gave a faint shudder. “Okay, I’m glad we left him down
at Camp Anachronism. A pity you had to waste your time cleaning out the maids’ closet.”
“I didn’t,” I said.
“Then who did?” Cordelia asked. “Someone did—they even sprayed the place with that organic bug spray—the whole kitchen still reeked of citronella when I got my coffee this morning.”
“Maybe the kitchen staff did it.” Not that I cared who’d done it, but it beat talking about Terence’s dead body. “Maybe the camel crickets were spreading.”
“Could be.”
Having run that topic into the ground we lapsed into silence. I searched my mind for something else to distract myself—and Cordelia—from Terence, with his blank, staring eyes. I peered up the path to see if I could spot any sign of the chief.
Evidently my sense of direction wasn’t as good as I thought it was.
“Good morning.”
I started and turned to see Chief Heedles hiking toward us through the woods—from almost the opposite direction from the one in which I’d been staring. Normally my sense of direction was rather good, but perhaps it, like most of my brain, hadn’t had yet awakened.
“Chief’s here,” I said into the phone. “Signing off now.”
“Thank goodness you’re here,” Cordelia said. “There he is.”
She indicated Terence’s body with the same grand gesture she normally used to present the winners of the jousts and other competitions to the cheering crowds.
I decided to chime in on the practical side.
“Terence Cox, age forty-six,” I said. “Actor. Lives in Northern Virginia as far as I know—at least the address we have on file for him is in Loudoun County, but I think that’s actually the address of the ex-girlfriend who kicked him out a few months ago. He’s been mostly couch surfing lately. Michael might know more—Michael hired him to be one of his performers here at the Faire, and like most of the participants who want to stay here full time he works two or three days a week around the center doing … what has he been doing anyway?”
“As little as possible,” Cordelia said. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but he was a moocher. Theoretically, he was part of the wait staff, but I think the rest of the dining room crew were just as happy when he didn’t show up.”
“Not the most popular member of our happy little family here at Biscuit Mountain,” I said. “In fact, I hope it won’t complicate your investigation too much, but I expect quite a few people have been heard to exclaim variants on ‘I could strangle that man!’ over the past few weeks—me among them.”
“Doesn’t appear that he was strangled, though,” the chief observed. “Dr. Langslow, didn’t Ashley tell me that you said he was stabbed?”
“In the back,” Dad said. “With a knife. Not one of yours, I’m pretty sure,” he added to me in a reassuring tone. “Looks like a cheap reproduction with a few too many fake jewels in the hilt. Rhinestones.” He wrinkled his nose as if the tackiness of the murder weapon offended him.
I was just glad to hear it wasn’t one of mine. And probably not Faulk’s work, either, if Dad was right about the rhinestones. Faulk only just barely approved of the small number of real garnets I’d used on Cordelia’s stiletto.
“I took a picture of it.” Dad held up his phone. “Not a great picture—we can get better once your medical examiner has pronounced and Horace has worked the scene. But—”
“I’d like to see it anyway.” The chief pulled out her own phone. “Do you have my—”
But yes, Dad had her number, and had already texted the photo to her. And, for good measure, to me.
“Does it look familiar?” the chief asked when we’d both studied our phone screens for a minute or so.
“Unfortunately, yes,” I said.
“Unfortunately?” she echoed. “It belongs to someone you know?”
“I don’t mean that I recognize that specific knife,” I said. “But from looking at the handle, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen plenty like it. Cheap import. Available online from any number of websites, plus there’s a booth called the Bonny Blade that sells them here at the Faire. I wouldn’t be surprised if they unload a dozen or so every weekend, many of them to people who drool over the ones Faulk and I sell but blanch at the price. And a few of the more economical-minded performers might be sporting blades like that.”
“So finding it here at—well, near—the Faire is not surprising?”
“The only surprising thing is that its owner succeeded in stabbing someone with it without having the blade snap in two,” I said. “If it’s the kind of knife I think it is, you’ll probably find it’s made of cheap, brittle metal. And the ones the Bonny Blade sells aren’t all that sharp—if that one turns out to have a decent edge on it, I’d suspect premeditation more than sudden impulse.”
“And if it’s still dull,” the chief went on. “I expect using it to stab someone would require greater strength than you’d need with a well-sharpened blade.”
I nodded my agreement.
“So Mr. Cox was generally unpopular with his fellow residents here.” The chief had pulled out her pocket notebook to make notes during our discussion of the dagger. Now she was holding her pen poised over a page. “Anyone in particular who might have it in for him?”
“You’re going to need a bigger notebook,” Cordelia said. “Look—unless you’re going to tell me I need to shut down the Faire over this, I have a few things to do this morning. And for that matter, if you tell me I have to shut the Faire down, I’ll have even more things to do.”
“And shutting down the Faire would be a big mess,” I said. “There are probably hundreds of people already on their way here—”
“Thousands,” Cordelia corrected. “And—”
“We’re a good half mile from the actual fairgrounds,” the chief said. “And I’d rather avoid the publicity that would result if we told all those people to go home because we’ve had a murder here.”
“A lot of them probably wouldn’t go anyway,” I said. “They’d hang around and complicate things. We’d have the dickens of a time keeping them away from the crime scene.”
“True.” The chief grimaced, as if imagining the resulting chaos.
“Then let me go break the news to the staff and put them all on notice that they’re not to say a word about it to anyone,” Cordelia said. “I can also organize a few volunteers to help make sure the tourists don’t stray over here to interfere with your investigation. And Meg can fill you in on how the annoying Terence spent his last day on Earth, which will give you a rundown on all the people who might have had it in for him.”
“Seems reasonable,” the chief said.
Just then Horace arrived, guiding the local medical examiner. She was a tall, angular redheaded woman of forty or so, with a reassuring no-nonsense manner. She and Dad had worked together before. He greeted her arrival with glad cries of welcome, and to my relief she seemed equally pleased to see him again. She made the official death pronouncement, which freed Horace to turn his forensic attentions to Terence’s body—with Dad and the M.E. hovering over his shoulder. The three of them were soon cheerfully debating the various factors that might have hurried or retarded the onset of rigor mortis.
I glanced at Chief Heedles and wondered if my facial expression mirrored hers. Not quite squeamish, but definitely not as thrilled with the discussion as the three of them.
“At moments like these I’m reminded how glad I am that I didn’t let Dad talk me into going to medical school,” I said.
“Takes all kinds, doesn’t it?” She shook her head and chuckled. “Let’s stay within earshot, in case any of them make any fascinating discoveries that they insist on sharing immediately. But I think we can make ourselves a little more comfortable.”
Chapter 17
The chief’s idea of comfort seemed to be putting more distance between us and Terence’s body. I approved. She went to the far edge of the little clearing and, after carefully inspecting a leaf-covered patch of ground that seemed completel
y undisturbed, sat down cross-legged there. I followed suit.
“So I remember some of what Cordelia told me yesterday afternoon,” she said. “But pretend I don’t and tell me who you think my prime suspects should be.”
“You’re going to have to start with me,” I said. “And Michael and Cordelia. Because he’s been a thorn in our sides all summer.”
“I gather that puts you in the majority,” she said. “And—all summer? I thought the Faire had only been running for four weeks.”
“Sometimes feels like four decades,” I said. “With Terence around.”
“I gather.” She smiled. “Just tell me what you know.”
So I filled her in on Terence’s stay at Biscuit Mountain and the countless annoying and disruptive things he’d done. How we’d had to make it clear to him the first weekend that he’d have to rein in his bawdy conception of how a sixteenth-century character would act to avoid a twenty-first-century sexual harassment charge.
“And he’s behaved since then?” she asked. “In the limited sense of avoiding sexual harassment, that is.”
“As far as I know,” I said. “In public, at least, he’s kept it to a lot of leering and double entendres, but I can’t vouch for what he’s done in private. Although I hope anyone he harassed would have let one of us know—me or Michael or Cordelia.”
I continued with the list. A representative selection of the pranks he’d played on nearly everyone, most of them innocent, but a few destructive or humiliating. And then, this weekend. His attempt to maneuver the Game so Dianne was forced to interact with him more than she would have wanted. His attempt to undermine Nigel’s sobriety.
“And I have no idea what you’d call what he did to Tad,” I said. “Obviously it’s not illegal, and as Terence pointed out, Tad was lying to his boss, but it’s not as if Tad wasn’t putting in the hours or getting the work done, and Tad was only deceiving his boss about where he was because his boss was a total control freak and Tad was worried about Faulk.”
“Sounds to me as if Mr. Cox wanted to lash out at someone after your grandmother put him on notice,” the chief observed. “And Mr. Jackson was unlucky enough to be the nearest someone.”
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