Gregor turned back to the evergreen bushes. “It has to have been a woman,” he said, “because any man we’ve heard about in this case so far has been too big, at least as far as I know. I’d guess five-six or so would be the limit in height to fit into this stand of bushes without being noticed. Also, we have measurements from the ground to the branches where the gun was fired, and assuming the gun was fired by being placed in the bushes beforehand—”
“You said all that last night,” Franklin Morrison said. “You didn’t say anything about it being a woman.”
“Well,” Gregor said reasonably, “there are always other possibilities. And last night I wasn’t sure of the motive. When you first told me about this case, you spoke of two men I haven’t met yet. Either one of them could be small. There was the lawyer who was going to drive Tisha Verek to the courthouse in Montpelier—”
“Camber Hartnell,” Franklin Morrison said. “He’s six-two and boozed out.”
“That takes care of him then.” Gregor nodded. “Then there was another lawyer, Benjamin something.”
“Benjy Warren,” Franklin said. “Yeah, well, he’s small enough, but he’s not here. He’s in Germany visiting his wife’s brother who’s in the army or something. I mean they all are. The whole family.”
“Is he local?” Gregor asked. “Someone who has been around all his life?”
“About as local as it gets,” Franklin said.
“That takes care of him then. He wouldn’t fit the motive. But forget about the motive for a minute. You must realize that the actual execution was very simple. All she did was pick what was closest to hand and use it.”
“Semiautomatic rifles?” Bennis protested.
“We just heard Stuart Ketchum tell us that there are several all over town. Several of them seem to be left lying around where anybody could pick them up. I like that man he was talking about, Reggie George—”
“I don’t like him,” Franklin said. “First-class son of a bitch and stupid besides.”
“Yes,” Gregor said, “and for losing a gun and not realizing it’s missing, he’s a good candidate. The other good candidate is the man who’d been in the army, the one who goes hunting in Canada—”
“Eddie Folier is very careful about his guns,” Franklin Morrison said, “and they wouldn’t be easy to lose. He’s got them right over his fireplace. And—oh.”
“What is it?” Gregor asked.
Franklin shrugged. “He’s not home. Hasn’t been home for over six weeks. He’s got some kind of condition left over from the service, something to do with his intestines, every two-three years he ends up at Mary Hitchcock over in Hanover. He’s been there since just after Thanksgiving.”
“House locked?” Gregor asked.
“If it is, it won’t make much difference,” Franklin said. “We don’t lock houses out here the way you lock up city apartments. We don’t go in big time for security.”
“Well, we’ll have to check it out,” Gregor told him, “but the particulars here are not the point. And that was the second gun. The first gun was easy. The first gun was part of her original plan. She heard about Tisha Verek’s decision to file the lawsuit. She heard the time the lawyer was supposed to pick Tisha up. Why shouldn’t she have? Everybody else in town did. My guess is that she’d been thinking about killing Tisha Verek for a while. So she drove her car out to the Delaford Road, and she parked it in the trees across from the Verek house. But she couldn’t kill Tisha from there. By the time Tisha reached the Delaford Road, she’d be in a moving car. She’d be a difficult target and at least partially protected by the glass in the car’s windows. That was why the plan for the first gun was so perfect. She had to go walking along those stone walls anyway, just to get to Tisha Verek. She walked a little farther and picked up a gun—”
“That might have been impossible,” Bennis protested. “Stuart Ketchum might have been there.”
“But he wouldn’t have been and she’d have known it,” Gregor said. “Peter Callisher was on his way out to pick up Stuart Ketchum and the two of them were going over to talk some sense into Tisha Verek’s head. Everybody in town knew that, too. If she got to the Ketchum farm too early, all she had to do was wait in the trees.”
“So she got Stuart Ketchum’s gun and went back to a place on the wall where she would be in place to kill Tisha Verek and then she did,” Bennis said, “and then what?”