Murder With Peacocks(32)

"Why not?" I said, rashly. If I couldn't forget about the murder long enough to address a few envelopes properly, I might as well help Dad out and perhaps get it out of my system. And of course my brother, Rob, who was supposed to be studying for the bar exam, was up for anything that didn't involve sitting indoors with his law books, so Dad succeeded in recruiting him as well.





Tuesday, June 7



I was getting ready to throw an impossibly heavy sandbag off the bluff the next morning when Michael came along walking Spike.

"What are you doing?" Michael said. "Helping Dad help the sheriff with his investigation."

"Ready!" Dad called up from the beach. I took a deep breath and then grappled with the sandbag.

"Here, let me help you with that," Michael said, looking for somewhere to tie Spike's leash.

"No, no!" I said. "That would spoil the test."

"Test? What test? That thing must weigh a ton."

"A hundred and five pounds, actually," I puffed. "Stand clear." I wrestled the bag as close to the edge of the bluff as I dared, gave it a desperate heave over the side, and fell back panting. I heard the bag crashing through the brush on the way down. "One more to go," I said, as I collapsed onto the ground by the last sandbag.

"I assume this has something to do with the murder?" Michael said, sitting down on the grass beside me. "Was that all she weighed, a hundred and five pounds?"

"Was that all? You try lugging one of these," I said. "Actually, a hundred and two, according to the medical examiner, but Dad decided to add three pounds for clothes. We're doing some testing for the sheriff."

"Ready!" Dad called again.

"Testing what?" Michael asked. "And why do you have to throw them?"

"If you want to throw some next, that would be fine with Dad. And great with me, I'm done in, and Rob's beat, too, and we both want to keep Dad from doing too much of the throwing. He's very fit but he's not invulnerable. But seeing how much strength it would have taken to have thrown her over is one of the things we're testing. I'm pretty damned strong for a woman, and it's about as much as I can do to drag them to the edge and shove them over. Here goes."

I slung the bag over the side, but this bag didn't go as far and stuck in the bushes. "Damn," I said, and grabbed up the garden rake. I shoved at the bag until it finally toppled over and went crashing down the side.

"All gone!" I shouted over the side.

"You said how much strength it would take was one of the things you were finding out," Michael said. "What else is this intended to discover?"

"All sorts of grisly things. Could the underbrush or the water break Mrs. Grover's fall enough to result in the relatively minimal injuries she sustained?"

"And could it?"

"Not bloody likely. And how much noise a hundred-and-five-pound object makes when landing, on sand and in the water, and how far away you can hear the noise, and the answers are less than you think, and not with the riding lawn mower running."

"Was it running?"

"Much of the time, yes. And whether there's any possibility she could merely have tripped and fallen over."

"Somehow I doubt that."

"Yes, it's so unlikely that we can pretty much discard it, no matter where you try it. Similarly, it's highly unlikely that anyone could have shoved her over. It very much looks as if the only way she could have gone over under her own steam would be if she took a running broad jump at the edge. And even then she'd have to be pretty athletic for a fifty-five-year-old."

"Aren't you afraid of destroying evidence?" Michael asked.

"They've been all over this stretch of the cliff, and found nothing," I replied. "No sign of one-hundred-five-pound weights having crashed through the brush, no scraps of clothing, no stray objects. At least none that could reasonably be assumed to have fallen off Mrs. Grover. That's another thing Dad wants to prove, how unlikely it would be for Mrs. Grover to have fallen over the cliff without leaving any traces on her or the cliff."





"How do you know this is where she went over?" Michael asked. "I thought she was found a little further downstream than this."

"We're trying it at all the likely places along the bluff. All upstream from where she was found, of course. Next he's planning to do some tide and current tests to see if it would be plausible for a dead body dumped in the river to wash up where hers was found."

"Using what?" Michael asked, dubiously. "I mean, sandbags obviously won't cut it."

"Rob and I are trying to convince him just to use a whole bunch of floats instead of actual dead bodies. Of animals, of course," I added, hastily, seeing the look on Michael's face. "He's been talking to meatpacking houses."