No Nest for the Wicket(56)

“Or if whoever came last was a lot slower than the rest,” Michael said. “I can see someone hanging behind the rest and taking a detour to the other field.”

“Good point,” I said. “Then there are breaks. If they had to halt the game for a bathroom break, or to replace a broken mallet, or if anyone spent a long time hunting for a ball—”

“So they’re still on the list,” Michael said. “Good.”

“Not that good. Too many suspects.”

We trudged around the rest of the wickets in companionable silence, enjoying the peace and quiet. At least Michael was enjoying it. He kept pausing at each new vantage point to gaze down with pride at our house and land. Our new home.

For me, when I looked down at them from up in the sheep pasture, they looked strangely small and fragile. I kept seeing them dwarfed by the hulking shapes of a giant mall with a divided highway where the narrow country road now ran, hearing car horns and engines at close range instead of the baaing of sheep and the lowing of cows in the distance, smelling exhaust fumes and fast food instead of the wholesome country odors of grass and manure.

I was working up a mild case of anticipatory nostalgia over the manure when I saw a familiar sight: Dad leading a pair of sheep across the road toward the pasture. He was wearing a bandage over his forehead. Either the cut was larger than I’d remembered or Dad’s sense of melodrama had gotten the better of his common sense. It looked less like a working bandage and more like the oversized headband Ralph Macchio wore in The Karate Kid.

“I see your father’s found a few more of Mr. Early’s lost lambs,” Michael said.

“How that man makes a living at this, I’ll never know.”

“Be quite a shock to the sheep, I imagine, if we can’t stop this mall project,” Michael mused.

“They’d cope,” I said. “Better than we would, I imagine. Foraging in the food court. Riding up and down the escalators. Standing outside the better clothing stores like living advertisements for natural fiber. Lambing time in the linen department. They’d love it.”

Mr. Early had showed up and helped Dad propel the sheep through the gate and now the two were leaning on the fence, talking.

“Mr. Early has some information!” Dad announced as soon as we were within earshot.





Chapter Twenty-seven

“‘Information’?” I echoed. “About the murder?”

“He was watching the game Friday afternoon,” Dad informed us.

“Keeping an eye on those juvenile delinquents, mostly,” Mr. Early said.

“The college students,” Dad said, nodding.

“Was there some particular reason you were watching them?” Michael asked.

“Been missing some sheep,” Mr. Early said. “Since Friday. Really missing, not just kidnapped and barbered.”

“I doubt if the students took them,” I said. “For one thing, they’re staying in our barn, and I think I’d have noticed if they’d smuggled in any sheep.”

Though if Mr. Early chose to assume the denuding of his sheep had been a prank perpetrated by the college students, I wouldn’t try to change his mind.

“You never know,” Mr. Early said. “Besides, they could have been up to some mischief. Ran into Fred Shiffley at the feed store and he said they were chasing his cows that morning. So I kept an eye on them to make sure they didn’t get up to anything with my sheep.”

“Very prudent,” Dad said.

I winced. I suspected it wasn’t the students chasing the cows, but my brother and Spike. Just as well to let Mr. Shiffley blame the students for that, too.

And if Mr. Early had been watching the students suspiciously …

“Were you here the whole time?” I asked.

Mr. Early nodded.

“Were they up to anything?”

“No,” Mr. Early said, frowning, as if reluctant to admit the students’ innocence. “Not that I could see. Can’t speak to what they did after they finished playing, though.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t wear a watch,” Mr. Early said, holding up a sinewy, watchless wrist to emphasize his point.

“Approximately,” I said.

“No place for clock-watchers out here. I get off work when the work’s done.”

“Could you get a rough idea from the position of the sun?” Dad asked.

“About three o’clock, or half past,” Mr. Early said. “Definitely before the postman showed up, which is usually around four.”

Was it how Dad asked, or the fact that he was asking? I wondered if I should let him question Mr. Early.

“So you didn’t notice anything suspicious,” I said.