Six Geese A-Slaying(23)

“Elephants for me,” Dad added, turning as if to go.

Chief Burke was frowning at something in his notebook.

I studied my clipboard and turned to leave.

“Where’s your barn?” Werzel asked.

I pointed. He made another reflexive grab for his camera, swore under his breath when he came up with empty air, and headed over toward the barn, pulling out his cell phone as he went.

Michael stopped untying the camels. Dad returned to the chief’s side. Sammy popped the door open again.

“Coast clear?” he asked.

“Clear,” the chief said. “Round up the rest of the officers and maybe a few reliable volunteers and secure the damned perimeter of my crime scene.”

“Yes, sir!” Sammy loped off.

The chief turned back to Dr. Smoot.

“So did the stake kill him, or was it done after he died?” Chief Burke asked.

“I can’t tell you till I do the post mortem,” Dr. Smoot said.

“I assume the time of death—”

“Impossible to say anything until after the post mortem!” Dr. Smoot exclaimed.

“Impossible for you maybe,” I said. “But I can pin it down to a half-hour period.”

They both looked at me.

“I was checking people in for the parade, remember?” I said. “I happened to notice that Mr. Doleson arrived almost precisely at nine. I remember thinking he was the very last person to arrive on time. And I looked at my watch immediately after I found him, and it said nine-thirty-five. I wrote it down in my notebook, just in case. So allowing a few minutes for Eric and Cal to find me—”

“Admirable precision,” the chief said, with a faint smile. “Of course, given the number of people with easy access to the crime scene during the window of opportunity, I doubt if this case will hinge entirely on the time of death, but you never know.”

I nodded. No, odds were the time of death wouldn’t crack the case. But it might give alibis to some of the people I didn’t want to see suspected. And I realized that Spike, bless his evil little heart, had accidentally prevented Michael from being the last person to see the victim alive. Maybe I was overreacting, but I recalled that in the mystery books Dad read by the bagful, the last person to see the victim alive was always a key suspect. But between the time Mr. Doleson had kicked Spike out of the shed and slammed the door and the time I’d shown up to find the body, Michael was alibied not only by several dozen parade participants but by the chief himself. I made a mental note to give the small evil one a whole handful of treats next time I saw him.

“The time of death’s not the important thing anyway,” Dr. Smoot was saying. “Clearly someone thought he was a vampire!” He sounded downright happy about it.

“Halloween’s over,” the chief said, with an involuntary glance at Horace’s gorilla suit. “And while I’ve heard half a dozen people just today call Mr. Doleson a bloodsucker, do you really think anyone takes that literally?”

“You see a whole lot of those college students running around wearing black,” Horace said. “Black clothes, black fingernails, black lipstick.”

“That just means that they think they’re cool, and goth,” I said. “Not that they literally think they’re vampires.”

“Perhaps the stake’s intended to be a symbolic gesture,” Michael said. “Suggesting that the killer considers Mr. Dole-son’s business practices no better than commercial vampirism.”

“That sounds more likely to me,” the chief said.

“I still think you should assign someone to infiltrate the local occult community,” Dr. Smoot said. He sounded as if he wanted to be recruited for the job.

“We have a local occult community?” the chief asked.

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Smoot said. “You’d be amazed at some of the things that go on in a seemingly quiet town like this.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” the chief muttered.

An idea struck me.

“Dad,” I said. “What kind of wood is the stake made of?”

“Now that’s an interesting question,” Dad said. He turned to the chief. “May I?”

The chief frowned slightly and tightened his lips. I had the feeling that the only reason he was putting up with what he would normally have called interference from civilians was that we’d all been moderately useful, especially in fending off the press. But this was pushing his limits. Finally he nodded.

“But don’t touch anything,” he snapped. “We haven’t fingerprinted that thing yet.”

“No, no,” Dad said. “Of course not!”