Six Geese A-Slaying(64)

“Norris?” I said. “Is that you?”

He took a step or two closer. Norris Pruitt was tall—taller than Michael’s six feet four—and about as pale as a human being could be without actually qualifying as albino. A few tufts of his straw blond hair stuck out from under his tan watch cap. The only spots of color on him were the bright red patches of chapped skin on his cheeks and nose and the red rims around his pale gray eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, taking an involuntary step back.

“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I only came to see to the animals. Normally Clarence would be seeing to them, but . . .”

He shrugged.

“But Clarence is down at the police station, answering questions about the burglary he and Caroline committed to help you,” I said. I decided mentioning the murder would be a tactical mistake.

“They didn’t have to,” he said. “I never asked them to.”

“You didn’t have to. They’ve been helping you out of jams for years, haven’t they? What did you expect them to do when they found out Ralph Doleson was blackmailing you?”

He hunched his shoulders tighter and shook his head. He looked like a wounded bear.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He sat down heavily on a hay bale and buried his face in his hands. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble.” His shoulders heaved as if he were sobbing convulsively.

Was he talking about his thefts or the murder? For some reason I found it hard to think of Norris as a killer. I inched closer, and had to resist the temptation to pat him on the shoulder and say “There, there.”

One of the cows stuck her head over her stall door and snuffled at Norris’s hair briefly, as if considering whether its resemblance to hay went as far as the taste. Norris reached up and stroked her face absently.

I knew I should call Chief Burke and report that I’d found his missing suspect, but I gave in to curiosity.

“How did you get Ralph Doleson’s keys, anyway?” I asked.

Norris stiffened.

“Ralph Doleson’s keys?” he whispered. “Did I have them? I don’t even recall seeing him yesterday. I don’t see how I could possibly have . . . borrowed his keys.”

“Are you sure?” I said. “Just having the keys doesn’t mean you killed him. Since he was blackmailing you, no one would blame you if you went into the shed, found him already dead and—”

“No!” Norris exclaimed. “I could never have done that, even if I had found him. And I didn’t. I didn’t.”

He was rocking back and forth now, and looked so miserable that now I really couldn’t help going over to pat his shoulder. I did refrain from saying “There, there.”

“You have to tell the chief,” I said, as gently as I could. “You can see how bad your hiding from the police looks. Turn yourself in, and tell the chief the truth, and I’m sure Clarence and Caroline will do everything they can to help you.”

He nodded.

“I can call the chief now, if you like,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I’ll call them.”

He reached in his pocket, took out a cell phone, and looked at it as if he’d forgotten how to use it.

“I guess I should dial 911,” he said, frowning at the cell phone.

“If you like,” I said. “Though I’d just use the non-emergency number. Here, let me do it.”

He nodded and put the cell phone in my outstretched hand. I punched in the familiar digits—all the more familiar because Norris’s cell phone was the same make and model as my own.

“Debbie Anne?” I said, when the dispatcher answered. “Can you tell the chief that Norris Pruitt’s over here in the college barn, and he’s ready to turn himself in?”

“My gosh,” she said.

I said good-bye, cut the connection, and held the phone out to Norris.

“No, you keep it,” he said. “It’s yours anyway. Sorry.”

I did a double take. No wonder the phone had felt so familiar. I took a step away from him as I tucked it back into my pocket.

“Here,” he said, handing me something else. “I’m really sorry.”

It was my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe. I stuck it back in my other pocket and put a good ten feet between me and Norris. I could hear sirens in the distance already, so I whiled away the time until the chief and his officers arrived by patting myself down to see if I was missing anything else.

A stray sheep came up and thrust its head at Norris to be scratched. He was still sitting on the hay bale, disconsolately petting the sheep, when Sammy and Horace burst in.