“I’m having a dickens of a time convincing Seth Early that the SUV’s owner didn’t have much time for sheep rustling before she was killed.”
“She was involved in many things, but I doubt if the black sheep market was one of them,” I said.
“Hmph,” the chief said. “Anyway, we know about Pineville. If you run across any sheep—”
“We know the way to Mr. Early’s pasture, thanks.”
I headed back to the barn. The chief was pulling out his cell phone as I left, and just as I hit the back door, I heard him speak.
“Dr. Langslow? Sorry to bother you so late, but Meg suggested I call.”
I left. Maybe, if the students weren’t back yet, I’d see if I could do a better job than Robert Louis Stevenson of cheering up Michael.
Chapter Twelve
The Ghost of Christmas Past was sitting on my chest, forcing me to relive the horrible Christmas when I was twelve and Dad decided to run up and down the roof in the middle of the night, waving a string of sleigh bells and shouting, “Ho, ho, ho!” Which wouldn’t have been so horrible if he hadn’t terrified Rob, who ran shrieking out into the night, startling Dad into falling off the roof and breaking his arm. Mother and I spent the night in the emergency room with Dad; Pam and several dozen neighbors were up till dawn looking for Rob; and while we were out, the three weimaraners we were dog-sitting ate the half-thawed turkey. I’ve disliked sleigh bells ever since.
My mood didn’t improve when I woke to find that this jingling was actually the Mountain Morris Mallet Men arming themselves for the day. They were trying to be quiet, tiptoeing and shushing one another. I hate it when people do that. They usually take twice as long and make almost as much noise as if they’d just gone ahead and done whatever they had to do in their usual fashion.
I glanced at the travel alarm. Nine-thirty. I deduced we weren’t playing croquet this morning, or someone would have come to badger me a lot earlier.
Michael was already up. Getting an early start on the day, or driven out by the tintinabulation of the bells?
I’d find out later. For now, I closed my eyes again. The general idea was to get a little more sleep, but the worrying part of my brain kicked into gear. Naturally, instead of worrying about the interrupted construction, which really was my problem, or the interrupted croquet match, which Mrs. Fenniman would try to make my problem, or the threat of the outlet mall, which would be a humongous problem if true, I worried about the murder.
Mrs. Wentworth had lied about knowing Lindsay. The students had almost certainly lied. What if they weren’t the only ones?
Mrs. Pruitt. The more I thought about it, the odder it seemed that she’d fallen behind me in the croquet game. I could have sworn she’d taken an annoying early lead and spent the first half of the game rubbing it in whenever she talked on the radio. Yet just before I found Lindsay’s body, she’d suddenly turned up behind me. What if she’d taken a detour to kill Lindsay and rejoined the game in progress? She could even have deliberately come up behind me so she could roquet my ball into the brier patch, thus making sure I’d find the body. Didn’t the police always suspect the person who found the body? Or was this another notion I’d gotten from Dad and his mystery books?
Of course, Mrs. Pruitt as the culprit would be more plausible if I could think of a motive for her to kill Lindsay.
Lindsay was a history instructor—had spent a year in the history department at Caerphilly College. Mrs. Pruitt ran the Caerphilly Historical Society. Was it realistic to think they’d never met?
That depended on whether Mrs. Pruitt had been involved in the historical society six years ago, when Lindsay was here. All I had to do was find a tactful way to ask.
Then again … I ambled into the office and searched my in basket. Yes, there it was—the fund-raising letter we’d recently gotten from the society. Which included a promotional booklet—an expensive-looking little thing, its cover made of thick textured paper and decorated with a discreet gold embossed logo. Inside, a color picture of Henrietta Pruitt, more formidable than usual in a hooped skirt that looked as if it were six feet in diameter.
There it was, in the second paragraph. “Since assuming the presidency of the society in 1989 …” She’d run the historical society the whole time Lindsay was in Caerphilly. What were the odds they’d never met?
Even if they had, I didn’t know what she could possibly have against Lindsay. About the only slightly odd thing I’d noticed was how funny the Shiffleys found her description of the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge. Was there something fishy there?