Murder With Peacocks(28)

The only good thing about the gathering was that I met Mrs. Thornhill, the inexpensive calligrapher Mrs. Fenniman had recommended, and turned over Samantha's invitations and guest list to her. What a nice, motherly woman I thought, as I watched her drive off, her backseat piled high with stationery boxes. Of course Samantha was paying her, but it still felt as if she were doing me a favor by lifting that enormous weight off my shoulders.

The forces of law and order knocked off at sunset, leaving a lone deputy standing guard. The festivities went on long after dark. About ten o'clock I snuck off to my sister, Pam's, to sleep.





Saturday, June 4



The show resumed at dawn, and since it wasn't a work day, the crowds were even larger. I pointed out to the sheriff that anyone he might possibly need to interrogate about Mrs. Grover's death was probably milling about in our yard or the neighbors', rapidly replacing whatever genuine information they might have with the grapevine's current theory--which seemed to be that Mrs. Grover, arriving early for her appointment with Dad, either fell over the bluff or was coshed on the head and heaved over the edge by a prowling tramp.

So the sheriff was using our dining room as an interrogation chamber and enthusiastically grilling a random assortment of witnesses, suspects, and fellow travelers. He was concentrating on our whereabouts on May 31, and what we had seen then. Mother and Jake were of no use, of course, since they'd spent the entire day together running errands. I thought it was a very lucky break for Jake that they had. Dad is fond of remarking that in small towns, people tend to kill people they know. The sheriff had heard this often enough to have absorbed it, and Jake was the only one who really knew Mrs. Grover. And might have had reason to do her in, considering the quarrel I'd overheard. But if her death did turn out to be a homicide, not only Mother but half a dozen sales clerks and waitresses would be able to prove that he hadn't been within fifteen miles of our neighborhood between 7:00 A.m. and 9:00 P.m.

The sheriff was particularly interested in the fact that between ten and two-thirty or so I'd been sitting on our back porch making phone calls. Evidently that was a critical time period, and the stretch of the bluff I could see from the porch was the most likely spot for Mrs. Grover to have gone over the cliff, if that was indeed what happened to her.

"And at no time did you see Mrs. Grover or anyone else enter the backyard," he said.

"No," I replied. "I didn't see anyone except for the birthday party going on in the yard next door and Dad on the riding lawn mower."

He didn't look as if he believed me.

Dad, on the other hand, believed me implicitly, but that was because my evidence supported his theory that Mrs. Grover had not fallen or been pushed but had been deposited on the beach.

With the exception of Mother and Jake, nobody else in the neighborhood had anything that even vaguely resembled an airtight alibi for the time of the murder. Of course, the sheriff had yet to uncover anything vaguely resembling a motive, either, so the dearth of alibis was not yet a problem for anyone in particular. I began to wonder if there was a homicidal maniac hidden among the horde of locals, who, from their sworn statements, appeared to have spent the day after Memorial Day wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood, borrowing and lending cups of sugar and garden tools and feeding each other light summer refreshments.

Before Mother could organize another neighborhood soiree, I hid in our old treehouse with a stack of envelopes and a couple of good books. I couldn't concentrate on either, though, and found myself gazing down on the crowd, wondering if Dad was right and one of them was a murderer.

I didn't buy the idea of a wandering tramp. I doubted any stranger could pass through our neighborhood without getting noticed by at least half a dozen nosy neighbors and being reported to the sheriff long before he'd had the chance to knock anyone off.

Even residents would cause talk if they did anything out of the ordinary. Long before we noticed Mrs. Grover's disappearance and had reason to be suspicious, someone like Mrs. Fenniman would be sure to ask, "What on earth were you doing standing around in the Langslows' backyard waving that blunt instrument?"

But a neighbor doing something perfectly normal would be ignored. People wouldn't be suspicious--in fact, they wouldn't even remember seeing an everyday sight like--what? I pondered, wondering if I'd done the same thing myself: omitted mentioning a possible suspect.

A bird-watcher. No one would notice a habitual bird-watcher like Dad strolling along the bluffs with binoculars, I thought. Or a gardener. Gardeners also tended to wander rather casually from yard to yard, borrowing tools and admiring each other's vegetation. A dog owner could pretty much wander at will, I realized, seeing Michael stroll into our yard leading Spike.