I waved and smiled at him, then followed Dianne inside. Almost ran into her, actually. She’d stopped just inside the door and was staring fixedly at Chief Heedles.
“Ms. Willowdale,” the chief was saying. “I hope you don’t mind if I interrupt your yoga class. I have a few more questions.”
Dianne glanced back at me with a betrayed expression.
“Just tell the chief where you were last night,” I said. “Then you can go back to the class.” Maybe I should have just left her to the chief, who frowned slightly at my interruption.
Dianne burst into tears.
Chapter 30
The chief and I exchanged a puzzled look, then focused back on Dianne. I snagged a box of tissues from a nearby table and handed it to Dianne, who made generous use of them.
“I was so afraid,” she wailed finally. “And Jacks told me more than once that I could always stay in her tent, but I didn’t want to look like a complete idiot. I know she thinks I’m a total wimp. So I found someplace else to stay.”
“Where?” the chief asked.
“There’s this little room by the kitchen,” she said. “A closet really, though there’s never anything in it but a few boxes of canned goods. There’s no window, and it’s kind of damp, and smells musty, and there was only just barely enough room for my sleeping bag, and I had no idea there would be so many bugs in it. Horrible jumping bugs. Like brown grasshoppers, and they can jump a mile. I had to get rid of them before I could stay there, so I found some bug spray in the kitchen and sprayed them, and then swept out all the dead ones. Then I piled up the boxes of canned goods in front of the doorway, so no one could sneak up on me, and I got the first good night’s sleep I’ve had in days.”
“Why were you so afraid?” The chief’s voice was gentle. “Did Mr. Cox do something…”
“It wasn’t Terence,” she said. “Well, not just Terence. Yes, he creeped me out, always whispering at me and insinuating things. But I could have taken that if it wasn’t for the whole outdoors thing.”
“Outdoors thing?” the chief echoed.
“Being in the woods makes me nervous,” Dianne said. “And sleeping there, even inside the tent, just frayed my nerves to the limit. I’d lie awake every night hearing all these weird noises and terrified that something was creeping up on me. Bears—there are bears around here; don’t try to tell me I’m imagining things. Meg’s grandfather says it’s true. And foxes. And snakes. I wasn’t getting very much sleep to begin with, but then yesterday I complained to Terence about it, and that was a mistake. When he found out how I felt he started teasing me about it, and I was afraid he’d do something. Like throw a snake in my tent. Or find a bear costume and run around the camp in it. That was the last straw. I just couldn’t take it any longer. So I went up to the main house and found a place to hide.”
The chief looked at her with an odd expression. I couldn’t tell if she felt sorry for Dianne or was annoyed by her. Probably a combo, actually. Sorry for her but annoyed that her confession didn’t provide even a partial alibi.
“I don’t suppose anyone saw you there,” she said finally.
Dianne shook her head.
The chief suppressed a sigh.
“I didn’t realize I was going to need an alibi,” Dianne said. “I just wanted to get a good night’s sleep for a change.”
“I understand,” the chief said. “Keep this to yourself for the time being.”
“Okay.” Dianne frowned slightly. “But why?”
“Because if you’re not the actual killer, we don’t want to give him or her any information that would make it easier to cast suspicion on you.”
Dianne nodded, with a rather dubious expression on her face.
“Thank you,” the chief said.
Dianne was turning to go.
“Wait a sec,” I said.
Dianne tensed and turned back.
“Why didn’t you tell us how much you hated sleeping in the tent?” I asked. “Me or Cordelia or Michael?”
“I don’t like people knowing what a scaredy-cat I am,” she said. “And besides—I was getting a free place to stay. Complaining about it would have felt … I don’t know. Rude and ungrateful.”
“We can’t all be sturdy pioneer women,” I said. “Do you see me sleeping in a tent?”
She smiled wanly and shook her head.
“If that closet by the kitchen is really so much of an improvement over a tent, I’ll ask Cordelia if you can have it officially,” I said. “We can probably squeeze a twin bed in there. And install a lock on the door so the rest of the world can’t barge in.”
Her face lit up.
“Do you think she’d let me?”
Instead of answering, I took out my cell phone and called Cordelia.
“Something wrong?” Cordelia answered.
“You know that closet we were going to make Terence sleep in so we could get him out of everyone’s hair? Mind if we let Dianne sleep there? She hates tents to begin with, and the murder’s made her hate them even more.”
“Fine with me. Was that it?”
“Pretty much. I’ll have to get the handyman to install a lock on the door.”
“Needs one anyway,” Cordelia said. “Make it so.”
We hung up. Dianne was beaming.
“Thank you!” She glanced back at the chief. “Do you have any more questions?”
The chief shook her head. Dianne turned and headed for the front door.
“Not rejoining O’Malley’s exercise?” I called out.
“Oh!” She stopped and looked stressed again. “It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying it or anything like that.”
Liar, I thought.
“But I really feel I ought to get back to the job I’m being paid for.” She raised her chin as if boldly taking a stand on a controversial issue.
“For the record, I’m ordering you to do just that,” I said. “Carry on.”
“Thanks.” Her face lightened again.
“Actually,” the chief called out. “I do have one small question. The bugs didn’t bother you?”
Dianne looked blank.
“In the closet?” the chief added.
“Oh, them.” She shrugged.”They’re just bugs. And I managed to get rid of them before I went to sleep.”
The chief nodded. Dianne turned and almost skipped out the front door.
“Takes all kinds,” the chief said. “Me, I’d much rather sleep in a tent, even if I knew there were bears around. The very idea of having camel crickets hopping all over me in the middle of the night gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
I nodded. I was texting the head of our maintenance crew, delegating the job of getting Dianne’s new room ready.
“Have you seen any signs of this before?” the chief asked. “Ms. Willowdale’s phobia, I mean.”
“Aha,” I said. “You’re wondering whether to believe her.” I thought for a few moments. “She hasn’t mentioned it before. And she hasn’t ever freaked out or anything. But now that I think about it, she is always very careful to find someone to walk with her when she goes down to Camp Anachronism in the evening,”
“Making sure Mr. Cox didn’t have an opportunity to make a nuisance of himself?”
“Just being sensible, I’d have said—not that different from avoiding dark alleys if you can help it. I’m more capable of self-defense than most women—probably a lot more than Dianne—but I wouldn’t go wandering around in the woods by myself.”
“Still, curious that her fear happened to overcome her on the very night when Mr. Cox was killed.”
“She’d had a particularly difficult day, thanks to Terence,” I said. “And even if she is exaggerating a healthy wariness of the woods into a phobia, I still have a hard time imagining her creeping out into the woods in the wee small hours to kill him.”
“You could have a point.” She nodded slightly.
Her phone buzzed. She pulled it out and glanced at the screen.
“
Finally.” As she lifted the phone to her ear her face took on an expression of exaggerated patience and cheerfulness—the sort of look mothers cultivate for times when their little darlings have begun working on their last unfrayed nerve. Odd—she just seemed to be answering a regular call, not a video one.
“Chief Heedles speaking … why hello, Your Honor. Thank you so much for getting back to me.”
She sounded surprised. She’d looked at the number—hadn’t she known a judge was calling?
“Yes, Your Honor. What—” Then she stopped and appeared to be listening with growing impatience. She even rolled her eyes once.
“I understand, Your Honor.” Her voice had suddenly taken on a much more noticeable mountain accent. “I’ve already asked Ms. Cordelia, and in theory she’s perfectly fine with the idea of my searching, but she doesn’t want to give permission unless I’ve got those warrants. She’s that worried about one of them trying to sue her—a lot of the suspects aren’t from around here, you know … Yes, Your Honor, but you never know how some court down in Richmond is going to rule on a thing like that.” She said “Richmond” the same derisive tone she’d used before for “Jessop,” but I suspected that was for the judge’s benefit, not her true feelings. “Yes, Your Honor—normally I wouldn’t waste your time, but in this case, I figure better safe than sorry. I’m sure Ms. Cordelia would be happy to give you a call to discuss it if … Yes, Your Honor. I’d appreciate it. I’ll send an officer right over.”
She ended the call and shook her head and shoulders as if trying to clear something that had entangled her.
“Judge Brown,” she said. “Who wouldn’t experience the slightest bit of culture shock if you could banish him back to the fifties. In fact, he’d be more at home then.”
“Would that be the nineteen fifties or the eighteen fifties?” I asked.
“Either one.” She gave a rueful chuckle. “I want to search some of our suspects’ tents out in the camping ground. Ms. Cordelia’s perfectly fine with it, but I don’t want to go in without a warrant—we could have any evidence we find tossed if an appeals court finds that the tents’ occupants had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Town attorney backs me on that. But I’ve been going back and forth all day with Judge Brown.”
“The hint that a big-city appeals court might overturn him finally sunk in?”
“No, I finally escalated to threatening to sic Ms. Cordelia on him. Even he’s got enough sense to be scared of that. Of course, by now anyone who had anything compromising stashed in their tent has probably had plenty of time to hide it somewhere else, but you never know. I’ll send an officer over to pick up the warrant, because it would be just like Judge Brown to decide to do it after his nap and then forget all about it. And maybe sometime before nightfall we can do that search. For the time being I’ll go back to searching Mr. Cox’s belongings.” She didn’t look thrilled at the prospect. “I found an address book, but the number listed in it for ‘Mom’ has been disconnected.”
“It’s probably a decade old, that address book,” I said. “A lot of people don’t even bother with them these days—they just keep the information in their computers or their phones.”
“Very true.” She headed back for the studio wing.
I was puzzled. Did she not have Terence’s phone? Evidently not, or she wouldn’t be worrying about the address book. And I knew he had a phone—Terence was king of the selfie. But of course, it would probably be password protected. So she’d either be waiting for some kind of tech specialist to unlock the phone, or for the phone company to send her the records of his calls and texts.
And with any luck, one or the other would help solve the case. Maybe she would find that Terence had texted someone at three in the morning to say “meet me in the woods between the camp and the old logging road.”
Well, I could hope.
And meanwhile, I had things to do. Probably time I checked in at the forge to see how Faulk and the boys were doing. And at the first aid tent, to see what Dad had learned about Faulk. And I’d feel a lot better if I knew what Grandfather was up to—I should check to see if he was still lurking in Falconer’s Grove, and while I was at it, take him to task for frightening Dianne with the prospect of bears.
Back to the Game!
Chapter 31
The crowds had grown. Saturday was always our biggest day of the weekend, and I suspected when I checked with the box office I’d find that this was our biggest day of the summer so far. And they all seemed to be having a lovely time, despite the slightly diminished ranks of Game players.
Michael, Nigel, and Jacks were spinning out a scene near the Dragon’s Claw. From what I overheard in passing, they were arguing about who Nigel should choose to marry Dianne. Michael and Jacks kept suggesting the names of fictitious noblemen, while Nigel shot down their suggestions and insinuated that he really wanted his daughter to be queen of Albion in due course, so maybe he should marry her off to George. I could see that they were laying the groundwork for the eventual dramatic duel between Michael and George, and meanwhile, the tourists were relishing the Game.
Over at the forge, things appeared less cheerful. Jamie was in the forge, getting everything ready for the next demo. Josh was in the shop, ringing up a big sale—a set of andirons and fireplace tools, and one of my huge overhead kitchen pot racks.
Faulk was nowhere to be seen.
I caught Jamie’s eye and lifted an inquiring eyebrow. He nodded his head in the direction of the back room.
I hurried through the forge and into the back room. Faulk was there. And Tad. With both of them in there, the back room didn’t have a whole lot of room left for me, but I squeezed in anyway. They both looked—scared? Angry? A little of both.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?” Tad asked.
“I’ve got eyes,” I said. “Spill.”
“Looks as if Tad and I are suspects after all.” Faulk tried to sound nonchalant, but failed utterly.
“Why?” I asked. “Have Dad and the medical examiner changed their minds on time of death?”
“No,” Tad said. “But those yokels down at the Jessop ER are lying through their teeth.”
“They’re just trying to cover themselves.” Faulk sounded weary.
“You’re damned right they’re trying to cover themselves,” Tad bellowed. “And they don’t care if they’re framing one or both of us for murder in the process.”
Spike, lurking just outside the chicken-wire barrier, growled menacingly, as he often did when humans raised their voices.
“Stop shouting,” I said. “You’re stressing Faulk out.”
“Not as much as those lying liars in the Jessop ER,” Tad said—but at normal volume.
“We can’t do anything about the stress they’re causing,” I said. “Don’t you add the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Tell me what happened.”
Tad and Faulk exchanged a look.
“Let me tell it,” Faulk said.
“Yeah, you can keep your temper about it,” Tad said, looking a little sheepish. “Sorry.”
“I don’t know what time I started feeling bad,” Faulk said. “At first I just figured it was just fatigue. It was after midnight when I realized it was more than that.”
“It was after midnight when I finally made you realize it,” Tad said.
“We took off for the nearest ER,” Faulk went on. “I don’t know precisely what time we got there. I didn’t really notice the time until I started to get impatient about how long we’d been waiting.”
“It was twelve forty-four when I finished filling out the inch-high stack of admission forms,” Tad said. “There was a space on the form for time of arrival, so I’m sure of that.”
“And we just sat there in the waiting room,” Faulk said. “Every so often a nurse would come out and take my vitals or ask a question about something on my form, and then she’d disappear back into the bowels of the hospital, lea
ving us all alone.”
“Except for the receptionist,” Tad said. “Who couldn’t be bothered to look up from her book. Robin Cook’s Coma, in case you’re curious, and I think she was reading it for inspiration on how she could make our stay in their miserable chamber of torture even worse.”
“A little before four a.m. Tad pitched a major fit about how long we’d been waiting, and they finally took us in and put us in a cubicle,” Faulk went on. “And eventually a doctor ambled in and examined me.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much,” Faulk said. “At least not much that I remember—I was half asleep on top of feeling rotten, and he left before Tad got back.”
“Before Tad got back?” My stomach clenched. “Where had Tad gone?”
“Two blocks down the street to get us some coffee,” Tad said. “The ER had a broken coffee-vending machine and an empty soda machine, no water fountain, and I didn’t like the look of the tap water in the bathroom. So once they took us back and I got Faulk settled in the cubicle, I got directions to an all-night doughnut shop nearby and headed down to get coffee for both of us. Based on their past performance, I figured it would take them at least half an hour to get the doctor in, but he came and went in the fifteen minutes it took me to make the coffee run.”
“I think by this time they were eager to get us out of there,” Faulk said, with a hint of a grin. “Tad had left them in no doubt about what he thought of their performance. I think the words ‘incompetence’ and ‘malpractice’ might have been uttered.”
“Which is probably why they’re claiming we didn’t even get there until nearly four, and were seen almost immediately,” Tad says. “They’re lying. Lying to cover themselves.”
“They’re also a bit vague on when Tad was with me,” Faulk said. “Which was pretty much every minute except for the fifteen or twenty minutes it took him to fetch the coffee.”
“I should have known better,” Tad said. “I should have taken you somewhere else—Fairfax or Richmond or Charlottesville. We’d probably still be there because they’d have insisted on admitting you and sticking a bunch of monitors on you, but at least they wouldn’t lie about what happened.”
The Falcon Always Wings Twice Page 21
