“Are you suggesting the killer went out into the woods, whittled himself a stake, and then came back to kill Mr. Doleson?” he asked.
“No, no,” Dad said. “The holly stake’s not fresh. It’s had some time to season. A few months at least.”
“So we’re back to premeditation,” the chief said. “Someone knew Ralph Doleson would be here, prepared a stake several months ago, and smuggled it in here today to kill him with.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble when you’d have so many promising weapons already here,” Dad said. “Here in the barn alone you have shovels, pitchforks, hoes, crowbars, axes—”
“And a whole bunch of other weapons that the killer turned up his nose at,” the chief said. “But I don’t think Meg was keeping a bunch of sharpened stakes in her barn, so unless you can show me someone who was—”
“The Boy Scouts!” Horace exclaimed. “They did it!”
We all stared at him.
“You think the Boy Scouts killed Santa Claus?” the chief asked, finally.
“No, but they made the stake! Meg and Michael let the troop camp out here last night, you know. And some of them are doing this whole project where they make their own tents from deerskin, and tent ropes from deer sinew, and so on. They’ve been whittling tent pegs just like this!”
We all looked down at the two-foot-long stake.
“Well, almost like this,” Horace said. “Except a little shorter. But if one of them was sharpening one end of a holly stick to make another tent peg and just hadn’t cut it down to the right length yet, it would look a lot like this.”
The chief considered this for a few moments, with his head cocked to one side. Then he turned to me.
“You still have these Boy Scouts on the premises?”
“As far as I know,” I said. “They were going to spend another night in our field and help with the post-parade cleanup.”
“Show me.”
I led the way to the campground. It was fairly neat and tidy. Probably a lot tidier than the same boys’ rooms were at home. Some of the tents were ordinary modern tents made of faded canvas in various shades of green and khaki. But there were also three teepees made of leather—presumably deerskin. They were painted in reds, blues, and greens in what I gather were supposed to be authentic Native American designs of eagles, deer, buffalo, and other animals. I couldn’t help noticing that several of the buffalo looked remarkably like Homer Simpson. The Christmas wreaths over the tent flaps were a nice touch, but I wondered if I should tell their scoutmaster about the accompanying mistletoe.
“I find it hard to believe that the Boy Scouts had anything to do with this,” the chief muttered.
“Me, too,” I said. “I mean, I know the Boy Scouts have it in for the Easter Bunny, but as far as I know they’ve always been on good terms with Santa.”
The chief just ignored me.
We followed Horace around as he methodically inspected all the tents. The modern ones mostly had mass-produced tent pegs, but the deerskin tents did have hand-made pegs.
“See, they’re larger than the commercial tent pegs,” Horace said.
“But still a good deal shorter than our murder weapon,” the chief said, leaning over to inspect the peg.
“I’ll get it,” Horace said. He put on his gloves and pulled one up, causing the tent with the Simpson buffalo on it to sag alarmingly.
“Hey, watch it!” came a voice from inside the tent. We all started, and turned to see the round deerskin tent-flap flip open. A scruffy shepherd began to crawl out.
“If I catch one more person messing with my stakes—” the shepherd began. Then he caught sight of us and stopped not only in mid-sentence but in mid-crawl, with one leg still inside the tent.
“See!” Dr. Smoot exclaimed. “They even call them stakes!”
“Who are you?” the chief said, training his frown on the shepherd.
“Rufus Shiffley, sir,” the shepherd said.
“Wilfred’s youngest?” the chief asked.
Rufus nodded, and the chief’s frown faded.
“Come on out, son,” he said.
Caerphilly was still the sort of small town where you carried your family tree around with you, for good or bad. All I knew from their exchange was that Rufus was part of the vast Shiffley clan who lived in the more rural parts of Caerphilly County and neighboring Clay County. Clearly the chief had pegged Rufus, and not unfavorably.
Rufus crawled out, and we could see that he had a cast on one foot. That answered my next question—why Rufus was here sulking in his tent instead of cleaning up after the elephants like the rest of the troop.