"So the murderer, who has a highly organized but pedestrian mind, knows Dad reasonably well but doesn't really understand him."
"Precisely," Michael said.
"Unfortunately, it seems to me that the people who best fit that description are the very suspects we've already been looking at."
"True," Michael said. "We need more."
"He or she has some basic knowledge of poisons."
"Thanks to your dad, that doesn't eliminate anyone in the county." We both thought in silence for several miles.
"Mechanical ability," Michael said at last. "Whoever did it knew how to tamper with cars and lawn mowers and fuse boxes. That should eliminate a few people."
"Mother, certainly, if we hadn't already counted her out. And Dad, for that matter."
"Samantha, too, I should think," Michael said.
"Now, don't you be a chauvinist like A.j. I know she gives the impression that she'd die before she'd lift a finger to do anything mechanical, but that only applies when there's someone else around who'll do it for her if she bats her eyes. Remember how she bailed us out when we were trying to reinstall my distributor cap?"
"I stand rebuked. Return her to the top of the suspect list. What about the bomb?
Surely most of our suspects have little or no experience with bombs."
"No, but I hear you can build one with fertilizer, which everyone in town has by the ton, and these days I'm sure any eight-year-old could find step-by-step instructions on the Internet."
We both glanced at the back of the car, where the troop of eight-year-olds appeared to be sound asleep, oblivious to the new level of destructiveness they could be achieving with a little initiative.
We continued to dissect the case all the way home, without coming up with anything else useful. Was the murderer really that brilliant, or were we all being particularly dense?
Wednesday, July 20
I was helping Dad with some gopher stomping the next morning when Aunt Phoebe showed up to introduce a visiting cousin.
"Cousin Walter?" Dad said. "I don't remember a Cousin Walter."
"I'll explain the genealogy to you later, Dad," I said, poking him with my elbow.
Cousin Walter was about six two, very physically fit, with a crew cut and a bulge under one arm of his bulky, unseasonably heavy navy sports coat. I'd never heard of Cousin Walter either, but if the FBI or the SBI or the DEA or whatever law enforcement agency sent him wanted us to pretend he was a cousin, that was fine with me.
No one in town would be fooled--we were all chuckling already about the half-dozen locals who'd introduced relatives nobody had ever met before or even heard of. Everybody was going along with the joke--we were glad to have them. I apologized for not inviting our newfound cousin to the wedding, he graciously accepted an oral invitation, and Dad and I returned to our gopher stomping. We were still at it when Michael showed up.
In my book, gopher stomping is useless but fun. Dad is convinced that if you systematically destroy a gopher's tunnels by treading on them to cave them in and then stomping to pack the dirt, the gopher will eventually get discouraged and go elsewhere. I think that far from discouraging them it probably pleases them immensely; they get to have the fun of digging all over again. But Dad likes to do it, and I help him out. Besides, with an outdoor wedding coming up, to which at least half a dozen middle-aged or elderly relatives would insist on wearing spike heels, reducing the pitfalls in the yard seemed like a good idea.
"I've come to a fork," Dad announced. "Are you at a dead end, Meg?"
"No, I'm still going strong," I replied. "Michael, would you like to take one?"
"One what?" Michael asked.
"One fork of the gopher trail," Dad explained, stopping for a moment and mopping his face with a bandanna. "Come over here and I'll show you." After Dad demonstrated the basics of gopher stomping, we all three stomped a while in silence. Michael looked as if he wasn't sure whether or not we were putting him on.
"By the way," Michael said, pausing to stretch, "I was actually looking for Spike. Have you seen him?"
"No, not for several days," Dad said. "How did he get loose?"
"Took off after the peacocks and hasn't been seen since."
"Do I detect a note of concern?" I asked. "Don't tell me you're actually getting fond of the beast."
"I wouldn't say fond," Michael replied. "But after two months of feeding him and walking him and giving him so many doggie treats Mom will probably have to put him on a diet when she gets back, we've reached a sort of truce."
"That's great," I said.