Six Geese A-Slaying(66)

And notoriously good at holding grudges. Was Ralph Dole-son’s murderer chugging along on one of those snowplows? If one of the Shiffleys was the killer, Randall might know, or at least suspect. Was that why he was so convinced of Norris’s innocence?

Randall had said that Norris didn’t have the gumption to kill. I wasn’t sure murder necessarily required gumption. At least not Ralph Doleson’s murder. The killer could just as easily be someone who was scared and angry and cornered and had the strength to kill just by lashing out. If Norris had been carrying the holly stick when he encountered Doleson, and if Doleson had threatened him . . . I could see Norris lashing out. The shock of what he’d done could well account for Norris’s dazed state.

Of course, I couldn’t imagine Norris managing even the most rudimentary escape and cover-up. But had the killer been clever, or just lucky?

Still . . . I had a hard time seeing Norris as the killer. And if it wasn’t Norris, who was it?

Randall Shiffley himself was on the list, unfortunately. I liked Randall, but he could be pretty inexorable when he got an idea into his head. Did he consider slaying a bald eagle a sin punishable by death? I couldn’t quite rule it out. And if Randall decided Doleson needed killing, he’d carry out the project efficiently. He had the gumption and the brains. And the anger. Was he really operating the boom lift during the whole window of opportunity?

And Jorge, who claimed not to be blackmailable, but still seemed very worried about Doleson. And who just might own a bloodstained sweatshirt.

Of course, Doleson had other blackmail victims. I knew of two now—surely there were more? And the chief would find them as he continued investigating. Just because he’d found Norris Pruitt didn’t mean he was going to ignore other suspects. I should leave the case to him, and stop worrying.

Of course, I’ve never been very good at leaving anything to other people.





Chapter 27

Back at Dunsany Hall, things were quiet. I passed by the counter that served as the theater’s box office, where two people were buying tickets. That was encouraging. I went upstairs to Michael’s office. To my relief, he’d left the door unlocked for me.

Spike was there, asleep in his carrier. I let him out and gave him an early supper and a bowl of water. He bolted the food, sniffed dismissively at the water, and began exploring all the exciting new smells that permeated the unfamiliar room.

I sat down at Michael’s desk, turned on his computer, and used my illicit knowledge of his user name and password to log into the college’s computer system. I wanted Internet access so I could see what else the media were saying about Doleson’s murder.

And specifically what line Ainsley Werzel was feeding The Star-Tribune. Call me paranoid, but I had the nagging fear that if he didn’t get a sexy angle or inside scoop, Werzel would slant the facts or even make stuff up if he thought it would help his story.

This time there were two articles about us listed on the Trib’s homepage. Both carried Werzel’s byline, so perhaps his persistence had paid off. They were evidently filed this morning after Werzel had found a working phone or computer. The headline read SANTA MURDER SUSPECTS ARRESTED FOR BURGLARY. It made the failed break-in at the Spare Attic sound like a twenty-first-century Watergate. The accompanying pictures didn’t help. No shots from the scene, of course, since Michael had reclaimed my camera from Werzel before the break-in, but they’d found an old shot of Clarence, in his biker’s leathers, looking like a thug. Caroline’s picture wasn’t brand new either—I’d guess it had been taken a good ten to fifteen years earlier, and showed her with what I first thought was a leopard-fur stole around her shoulders. Then I realized that the stole was actually a pair of half-grown leopard cubs, one of which was licking her face while the other appeared to be teething on her hand.

The accompanying text completely left out Clarence’s professional identity as a well-respected holistic veterinarian and animal behavior therapist, and merely referred to him as a suspect in “the brutal slaying of Caerphilly County businessman Ralph Doleson.” It didn’t really explain Caroline at all, but left the impression that she was a rich dilettante who kept exotic animals as pets, rather than a committed animal welfare activist who’d taken in hundreds of abused or abandoned birds and animals, nursed them back to health, and when necessary had given them a comfortable, permanent home at the Willner Wildlife Sanctuary.

Werzel had also written a sidebar on the history of the Caer-philly County Christmas parade. Some indiscreet soul had spilled the beans about Wilmer Pruitt’s shoplifting conviction and Orville Shiffley’s bacchanalian exploits. In fact, those weren’t the only black marks on the parade’s history. In the seventies, a group of students from rival Clay County had kidnapped Caer-philly’s Santa Claus and paraded him in triumph down the main street of Clayville. They’d returned Santa after a few hours, but not the bag of presents. And one unseasonably warm Christmas in the fifties, Miss Caerphilly County had tried to shed her fur coat and experienced a costume malfunction that was still remembered fondly by the old-timers who’d seen it.