Six Geese A-Slaying(43)

He took the bag, holding it as far from his body as possible, as if he thought it might explode.

“If the stains turn out to be blood, the chief will want to know where you got this,” he said.

“If the stains turn out to be blood, I’ll gladly tell him,” I said. “Thanks, Sammy.”

I went back to the town square. The snow was still falling, though not as heavily. Most of the kids had gotten through the line by now and the crowds were thinning. I strolled around the perimeter, looking at the Christmas decorations. Here in the heart of town, where the newest buildings dated from the 1920s, the town had gone in for Victorian, heavy on the evergreens with a lot of gold-sprayed pine cones, velvet ribbons, and the occasional cluster of fruit, real or fake. Mother thoroughly approved of the town square. And with the gently falling snow frosting everything, it looked particularly magical. I passed a photographer with a Nikon in his hands and a press ID hanging from his neck—presumably Ainsley Werzel’s much-delayed photographer. I was pleased to see him busily photographing one of the more picturesque stores—the toy store, whose window was filled with a model train set running through a magical landscape of cotton snow, cellophane ice, and battery-lit porcelain buildings.

If I’d found Michael, I’d have suggested inspecting the decorations in other parts of town. The street where at least a dozen homeowners were locked in a fierce annual competition to see who could mount the most impressive light display. The dorms, with their funky, non-traditional Christmas displays. And the upscale glamour of the ritzy neighborhood where all the senior faculty lived.

But I was tired and my feet were getting colder by the second, so I decided to climb the courthouse steps. I could watch Dad at close range and scan the thinning crowds for Michael. Or, better yet, I could wait inside the courthouse. I found a bench just inside the door, worn smooth by the derrieres of countless witnesses waiting outside the nearby courtroom. I could sit there to think.

Come to think of it, it might be even easier to think lying down.

I was just closing my eyes when I heard a door open.

“I can’t keep covering this up indefinitely,” a woman’s voice said. “Either you come clean and go to the police or I will.”

Whoever she was talking to said something that I didn’t catch, though I could tell it was a man’s voice.

I lifted my head and peered down the hallway toward the voices. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard the door to the back parking lot open and close.

“Idiot,” the woman’s voice muttered. I recognized it now. Caroline Willner.

I put my head back down and feigned sleep as she strode past me and out the front door, slamming it behind her.

Interesting. Who and what was Caroline threatening to go to the police about? And did it have anything to do with the murder? And if it did, was threatening a very smart thing to do?

Before I could figure out who Caroline was protecting, pretending to be asleep gave way to the real thing.





Chapter 17

I awoke, as I had for weeks, to the sound of Michael declaiming Dickens. Though normally he did it at the other end of our house, not in my ear when I was fast asleep.

“ ‘It was cold, bleak, biting weather,’ ” he declaimed. “ ‘Foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.’ ”

“That bad, is it?” I sat up and shoved my hair out of my eyes. I had a crick in my neck. However inviting it had seemed when I lay down on it, the courthouse bench wasn’t a particularly comfortable mattress.

“ ‘The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already,’ ” he said, more conversationally, as he sat down beside me.

“Actually, it’s nearly six,” I said, glancing at my watch. “I slept a whole hour.”

“You needed it,” he said, abandoning Dickens for the time being. “What do you say we go home and start broiling those steaks?”

“The power went out just before I left.”

“Okay, grilling the steaks on the back porch.”

“Perfect.”

We headed back for the truck. The snow had stopped, but the temperature had plummeted into the teens after sunset and the only people left on the square were a couple of church groups packing up their kitchens and striking their tents. Luckily all the Christmas lights and the glowing shop windows made it easy to find our way back to where I’d parked the truck.

“So why did Chief Burke round up the whole SPOOR membership and haul them down to the police station?” Michael asked as we were dusting the accumulated snow off the truck.