Clayton Hall was standing off to the side a little, talking to a man in blue jeans and a white lab coat. The lab coat was unbuttoned down the front, showing a plain white shirt and a fancy Western vest, leather with carvings and studs. Gregor seemed to remember having been introduced to this man when he’d first arrived. This was the one private doctor in town, the one who worked as a medical examiner in the few cases that required it.
“It’s not that we’ve got a lot of murders in Bellerton,” Clayton had explained at the time. “We don’t. What we have is a lot of drunks splattered across the highways on Saturday nights.”
Gregor thought that that was probably an exaggeration. How many drunk driving deaths could a small town have in a single year? Then he remembered all the tourists who came to Bellerton in the summers and changed his mind.
Clayton Hall was shifting from one foot to the other. Gregor walked up beside him and waited.
“Let me try to get this straight,” Clayton was saying. “She wasn’t killed here. And you’re sure of it.”
The man in the white lab coat looked exasperated himself. “What I’m trying to say,” he said, in the first truly pronounced drawl Gregor had heard since coming to North Carolina, “is that her throat wasn’t cut here. Her throat was cut before she was dead—”
“You’re sure of that.”
“Yes, Clayton, I’m sure of it. It doesn’t take a state police tech lab to figure that out. What it takes a state police tech lab to figure out is whether she died from having her throat cut or whether there was some other reason.”
“Why in hell would there be any other reason?” Clayton demanded. “There looks like there’s a gouge four inches deep in that woman’s neck—”
“More like one and a half—”
“Whatever. Enough. Getting her throat cut like that would have been enough to kill her.”
“Yes, it would have, but that still doesn’t mean that’s what she died from. We can’t know what she died from until we get the lab to check what has to be checked. What I’m trying to get across here, though, is that you’ve got this problem for the second time. The baby wasn’t killed here. This woman wasn’t killed here. You’ve got to figure out what it is about here that makes it so damn popular for—I don’t know what. Misdirection, maybe.”
“But the baby never was here,” Clayton said. “Ginny said she was here.”
“Yeah, well, there’s one more thing you better think about. Far as I know, Ginny’s been locked up in the town jail for weeks now. She wasn’t out here killing this woman. And if this woman died of having her throat cut, Ginny couldn’t have done it under any circumstances. She isn’t big enough.”
“The woman could have been drugged first,” Gregor said.
The man in the white lab coat turned to him and looked him up and down.
“Oh, Gregor,” Clayton said. “I was wondering where you were. This here is John Chester. He serves as—”
“Coroner when you need one,” Gregor said. “I remember.”
John Chester nodded his head. “I know who you are, too. The Great Demarkian. The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot. Do you think you can explain to Clayton here the difference between knowing she didn’t have her throat cut here and knowing she was killed here?”
“I think I’ve got it, John. Really. I think I’ve got it.”
“Maybe.” John Chester didn’t sound convinced.
“Where have you been?” Clayton asked Gregor. “I was looking all over for you a little while ago.”
“I was talking to Zhondra Meyer,” Gregor said. “And trying to stay out of the way, too, of course.”
“You don’t have to stay out of the way.” Clayton looked distracted. “I tried to talk to Zhondra a little while ago. I didn’t feel like I was getting through. If you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. I think Ms. Meyer is on the warpath.”
“Really?” Now Clayton looked pained. “Well, it was coming, wasn’t it? I suppose we got off lucky to keep her calmed down up to now. She threatening to call her lawyers?”
“I think she’s already calling them.”
Clayton threw his head back and looked up into the pines. “Well, that just about tears it, doesn’t it?” he said. “All of this and Zhondra Meyer’s New York lawyers. And in the end, she’ll turn out to be right and here we’ll all be, looking like hicks with egg on our faces.”