No Nest for the Wicket(57)

“I didn’t spot those juvenile delinquents doing anything suspicious.”

“Did someone else do anything suspicious?”

“Saw Evan Briggs wandering off in the middle of the game,” he said. “He was standing right here, watching his wife’s team; then he just up and wandered off.”

“Wandered off where?”

“Back toward your house,” he said. “Then he got in his car and drove away. Left just after the game started, and didn’t get back till it was nearly over.”

Aha! So Mr. Briggs had sneaked away from the game.

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s interesting. Could even be important.”

“Glad to oblige,” Mr. Early said. “So how’s your cousin this morning?”

“I haven’t seen her. I don’t think she’s up yet.”

“Ah,” he said. “I’m sure she’s exhausted. I shouldn’t have kept her up so late. Helping with the sheep and all.”

Michael was overcome by coughing. I had to suppress my own laughter. Probably not the time to reveal that staying up all night and sleeping till noon was Rose Noire’s normal routine.

“I’ll tell her you asked about her,” I said. “Or you could drop by later for the picnic.”

“You’ve planned another picnic?” Dad asked.

“No, but that won’t stop everyone from having one anyway. You’ll see when things start up,” I added to Mr. Early.

He nodded—was he blushing?—and strode away.

“Sammy and Horace will be furious,” Michael said.

“Furious about what?” Dad asked.

“Long story,” I said. “I’ll fill you in later.” Maybe by the time later rolled around, Dad would have forgotten and I wouldn’t have to explain. I was getting tired of explaining Rose Noire. I’d already had to reassure Michael that since she and Horace were at best third cousins once removed, there was nothing unsuitable about his infatuation.

Back at the house, Dad went off to minister to his poison ivy patients and Michael decided to make a run to the county dump to clear out our accumulated trash.

I found myself staring up at the roof. Where the Shiffleys had been all day Friday. Was there something I could learn up there? Something worth climbing up forty feet in the air?

No way to know till I tried it. I took the stairs up to the third floor and, after staring up at the bare rafters overhead for many long minutes, finally forced myself to take the ladder up to the roof.

Strange, how what initially looked like a perfectly ordinary ladder turned out, once I started climbing, to be not only unusually tall but afflicted with dangerously wide gaps between the rungs. Trust the Shiffleys to bring a mutant ladder designed for giants. But as long as I refrained from looking down, I could keep moving steadily up, and when I reached the end of the ladder, I crawled out onto one of the flat horizontal sheets of plywood they’d nailed down to hold supplies. After a mere ten or fifteen minutes of scolding myself to stop being such a baby, that is.

At last, I stood on the platform. Okay, I was hunched slightly, and clutching a rafter for dear life. But I was up there, on the very top of the roof. The view was spectacular. Almost made up for the way my stomach had stayed somewhere down by the foot of the ladder.

I was facing the front of the house, and Seth Early’s sheep pasture lay spread before me like a stage set. I could see sheep grazing and lambs suckling, sleeping, or gamboling. Over to my left, Mr. Early was mending yet another break in his fence—presumably the source of the sheep Dad had just returned. To my right, under a grove of trees, Rob was leaning against a tree, holding one end of a leash, seemingly oblivious to the fact that at the other end Spike was straining for escape. I frowned. Walking Spike was what Rob usually did when he was troubled about something and wanted to think it over in solitude—Spike’s function being to guarantee the solitude. What was bothering Rob?

I could worry about that later. For now, I studied the panorama. As I’d thought from the ground, hard for anyone to have left the sheep pasture croquet field without one or more Shiffleys seeing them.

For that matter, hard for anyone to have reached the cow pasture without their knowledge. I shuffled slightly so I could turn around and face the other way. The rolling acres of Mr. Shiffley’s farm spread out before me. On my left, I could see all the way to the trees lining Caerphilly Creek. Straight ahead was the Shiffley farmhouse, looking tiny but distinct, even to the miniature thread of smoke rising from its matchstick-size chimney and the fleet of battered tractors and other farm machinery, which looked, at this distance, like props from a flea circus. To my right, the road wound toward town, and above the trees I could even see the top of the faux Gothic college bell tower. From up here, the whole vast, impassable woods we’d stumbled through Friday afternoon looked like a small island of trees in the middle of Mr. Shiffley’s large, rolling expanse of boggy pastureland.