No Nest for the Wicket(60)

“A weakness I’m trying to overcome,” I said before scurrying toward the stairs. I wanted to feel solid ground again.

Of course, the first person I saw when I got outside was Evan Briggs. If Chief Burke was making an arrest, presumably it wasn’t him, damn it.

Still something fishy going on, I thought, remembering how he’d lost his temper while talking to Mother and me the night before. So I decided to rescue him—he was talking to Rose Noire.





Chapter Twenty-nine

I strolled over and feigned pleasant surprise when I spotted them.

“Oh, there you are,” I said to Rose Noire. “Could you go help Mother with something?”

“Right away,” she said. “We’ll talk again later,” she said to Mr. Briggs as she scurried off.

Mother hadn’t asked for Rose Noire’s help, but she was never short of little tasks for representatives of my generation to perform when they fell into her clutches.

Mr. Briggs’s smile looked strained. He didn’t seem all that happy at being rescued from Rose Noire.

“You wanted to talk to me about something?” he asked a little brusquely. Obviously, our earlier conversation hadn’t endeared me to him.

“I thought perhaps you needed a break,” I said. “Rose Noire can be overwhelming if you’re not used to her.”

“Overwhelming,” he said. “Yes, that’s one word for it. She told me she was a druid in a past life.”

“A druid?” I repeated “Are you sure?”

“Reasonably so.”

“That’s a relief, then,” I said. “When she told me, I thought sure she’d said a dryad.”

“Dryad?” Briggs repeated.

“You know, a tree spirit,” I said. “I have to admit, that’s slightly weird. A druid’s a lot more … normal, don’t you think?”

“I think that would depend on one’s definition of normal.”

“Your definition of normal probably includes a lot more concrete and steel than anything to do with trees anyway,” I said.

He made a noncommittal noise, as if he wasn’t sure he liked the direction our conversation was taking.

“Or historical battle sites, for that matter.”

I could see his jaw clench. Bracing himself for another tirade from another tree-hugger, no doubt.

I decided tackling him head-on was as good as any tactic.

“Look, I’m not trying to blackmail you, but I know Lindsay Tyler was,” I said. “So what was she offering, anyway? Her expertise to discredit the historical significance of the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge?”

His mouth fell open again.

“What makes you think—” he began. Then he changed gears. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Ms. Tyler had nothing to do with this project; we’d never even met.”

“Only talked on the phone, then?” I said. “I saw her cell-phone records, you know.”

I would have had no way of recognizing Evan Briggs’s phone number—I’d barely recognized my own on Chief Burke’s printout—but he didn’t have to know that.

Briggs glared at me. I smiled back as sweetly as I could but said nothing. It worked for Chief Burke. He just sat there staring at people and they started talking. Eventually, it worked on Briggs.

“Do you really want to tarnish Ms. Tyler’s memory with the details of her bizarre—and, need I say, unsuccessful—attempt to extract money from me in return for her help in discrediting Mrs. Pruitt’s account of the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge?” he said. “She’d look like a common blackmailer.”

“I don’t really give a damn about her memory,” I said. “Neither do you. But I assume that even if we have quite different ideas about what to do with that land over there, we both want to see her killer brought to justice, even if only because it will clear those of us who aren’t guilty.”

“I fail to see what her blackmail attempt has to do with the murder,” he said. “I told her I didn’t give a damn what information she thought she had. Didn’t matter to me. I haven’t done anything illegal and I’m not planning to.”

“It never occurred to you that she might have tried blackmail again with someone else? Someone who didn’t take it as lightly?”

“Oh, I see,” he said. Some of the hostility left his face. “Of course, since I don’t know what information she wanted to sell, I have no idea who else might be a potential customer.”

“Not even a guess?”

“She didn’t tell me much, you know,” he said. “That’s the problem with selling information—you let the customer test-drive the merchandise, you blow the sale.”