“No, I don’t remember exactly what I said,” she was saying. “It was just like a thousand other conversations we’d had since we began the divorce proceedings.”
“Give me the general gist, then,” the chief said.
“I think I started by asking him why he hadn’t returned some papers he was supposed to sign. Of course, the bastard never has done anything on time or right the whole time I’ve been married to him, so I don’t know why I expected him to change after we filed for divorce. But usually, if I nag him enough, he eventually signs things. So we exchanged a few insults, for old time’s sake, but I could see his heart wasn’t in it. He was up to something—some deal, some bargain—so I left him to it.”
Just then, I felt the dumbwaiter jerk up slightly. Damn, the boys were trying to haul it up from above. I reached out and grabbed the ropes to keep myself in place.
“I take it you parted on unfriendly terms?” the chief asked.
“We’re getting a divorce, aren’t we?” she said. “Oh, you mean today? No more than usual.”
The boys were pulling more strongly—it was all I could do to stay in place.
“Did you see anyone else there in the barn?”
“Not that I remember,” Carol said.
The pulling stopped, but the dumbwaiter began jerking oddly. What was going on?
The chief wasn’t saying anything. I peered through the cracks. I could see his glasses, lying on the card table, and one elbow, moving up and down as if he were rubbing his face.
Just as he picked up the glasses, I heard—and felt—something land on the top of the dumbwaiter.
“What was that?” Sammy said.
“This is cool,” came a small voice from above me, as another small thud hit the top of the dumbwaiter.
“What in tarnation?” the chief said.
I heard footsteps. I reached over, grabbed the ropes, and pulled the dumbwaiter down. I’d just gotten myself below the level of the door when I heard it open.
“What the Sam Hill are you boys doing in there?” the chief demanded.
I remained motionless while the chief chewed out the two boys and sent them packing with orders to stop fooling around with the dumbwaiter and stay out of trouble.
Luckily for me, he didn’t inspect the dumbwaiter to see if anyone else was fooling around with it.
I inched the dumbwaiter back up after he’d dismissed the boys, but the rest of his interview with Carol was pretty tame, and I was wondering if I should try to sneak the dumbwaiter back up to the bedroom and leave when, after escorting Carol out, Sammy ushered in Cousin Horace.
“So, have you found anything interesting?” the chief asked.
“Nothing we didn’t expect,” Horace said. “Professor Rathbone’s fingerprints are all over both bookends, but then he admitted that he’d been carrying them around half the morning. He tells us we’ll probably find his fingerprints on that half-burned book, too.”
“How very forthcoming of him,” the chief muttered. “Anything else?”
“Well,” Horace said, sounding sheepish. “Turns out the spatter marks on the book weren’t blood spatter after all.”
“What were they?”
“Barbecue sauce,” Horace said. “Sorry. It was definitely spatter, and I was right about it being organic, but it wasn’t blood.”
So did this help Giles? I couldn’t decide.
“Hmph,” the chief said. “Any sign of the missing items?”
“Not yet,” Horace said. “We’re still looking. It’s a big yard sale.”
Dammit, why couldn’t they name the missing items? And missing from whom?
“What about the trunk?” the chief asked.
“Only prints we found were from Dr. Langslow and that couple who wanted to buy it,” Horace said. “Apart from that it was remarkably clean.”
“Maybe someone polished it up nice for the sale.”
“Yeah, but at least we would have found Gordon’s prints, from when he dragged it into the barn. And there are those marks on the key plate. Someone was definitely trying to pick the lock.”
“That woman who wanted to buy it, like as not.”
“She says not,” Horace said. “Not that I necessarily believe her. But I’m thinking the killer wiped it clean after stuffing the body inside. If Professor Rathbone was the killer, isn’t it odd that he’d be so careful about wiping the trunk clean and not do anything about the bookends?”
“Not really,” the chief said. “Typical of these professors, from what I’ve seen. All brains and not one lick of common sense.”
“Or maybe he’s more devious than you think,” Sammy put in. “Maybe he realized that people had seen him carrying the bookends and thought it would look suspicious if his prints weren’t on them.”