“Should I get in touch with the local authorities?” Helen asked after a bit, her voice sounding much more formal. “I assume even though she was impersonating me, they know it’s her.”
“Our local police chief would probably like to hear from you, yes,” I said. I gave her Chief Burke’s number.
“Thank you for notifying me,” she said. “I’m sorry for … Putting her in touch with you seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m sorry for how it worked out.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Look, did she ever mention any names of people in Caerphilly? People she particularly hated or anything like that?”
Helen thought about it for a few moments.
“She liked to make jokes about some guy she went out with,” she said. “Nasty jokes about how she’d like to go back and get even with him. What was his name? Martin? No, that’s not it. Something with an M.”
Not Michael, I thought with a pang. I wanted to believe she’d long ago gotten over Michael and forgotten him.
“Marcus!” Helen said. “That’s it.”
“Marcus,” I said, feeling a flood of relief. “That’s possible. You’re sure that was it?”
“Definitely Marcus. ‘Marvelous Miniscule Marcus.’ That’s what she used to call him. If someone knocked him off, I’d tell you to look at Lindsay as a suspect. Maybe it was mutual.”
“You might want to mention that to the chief, then,” I suggested. “Along with anything else you can think of that might help him.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “I should tell him that this definitely wasn’t like her normal trips to Caerphilly.”
“Her normal trips?” I said. “She came here a lot? How do you know?”
“Every few months, yes,” she said. “A lot more often recently. I know because she usually stayed with me on the way down or back. Sometimes both. It’s a five- or six-hour drive. So she’d call me up and say, ‘Heading down to Toad Bottom—can I still use your couch?’”
“Toad Bottom?”
“It’s what she called Caerphilly when she wanted to be insulting. No idea why. Anyway, she didn’t call me this time. So it definitely wasn’t a normal trip.”
“Unless she planned to call on her way back,” I said. “Did she usually give you much notice?”
“No, she didn’t,” Helen said. “You could be right. Maybe she was killed before she could call. I suppose we’ll never know. I’d better go call your police chief now.”
She hung up.
Interesting. Far from moving on, Lindsay had still been angry at Caerphilly, and this hadn’t been by any means her first trip back since she was fired. Even if Helen Carmichael was overstating how often Lindsay stayed with her—which was possible; some people like to exaggerate their ties to anyone who appears in the news, as doubtless Lindsay would—she must have been back here often. But why?
“There you are, dear,” Mother said, when I reappeared from the basement. “Perhaps you could see what your cousin Horace is doing, and whether he has to do it right now, when we’re trying to have a nice picnic?”
It wasn’t really a question. I went outside to look for Horace. I didn’t have to look far. As soon as I stepped out of the kitchen, I almost fell into the hole he was digging.
He and Sammy were both digging holes. They were about ten feet apart, and at first glance they seemed unaware of each other, as if some instinct to burrow had simultaneously seized both of them and they’d happened, by an astounding coincidence, to choose the same end of our yard. After watching them for a minute or so, I realized that they were very much aware of each other. Given the lethal glances traveling up and down the turf, I decided perhaps I should stay around to make sure neither of them ended up at the bottom of the other’s hole. Or to find out what it was all about.
“So, getting ready to bury the bodies?” I asked.
“What bodies?” Sammy said, glancing up with an anxious expression.
“She’s kidding,” Horace said, sounding slightly condescending. “She forgets that you don’t know our family well enough to understand our sense of humor.”
“Or maybe he appreciates what calamity magnets we are,” I said.
“I appreciate your family’s sense of humor a lot,” Sammy said in his most earnest tones. “I appreciate everything about your family.”
Horace snorted.
“Almost everything,” Sammy muttered, casting a baleful glance at Horace.
They both resumed digging. Obviously, something had kicked their rivalry over Rose Noire into full gear. Yet despite their dislike for each other, they were grudgingly cooperating on … whatever.