“I’ll go get the car,” Michael said, running toward where we’d hidden it.
“Give me your car keys,” I said to Carol. I shoved my flashlight into my pocket and held out my right hand while pulling out my cell phone with the left.
“Use your own car,” she said, hugging her purse to her body.
“We’re using our own car,” I said, as I dialed 911. “You’re waiting here for the police, and I’m taking your car keys with me to make sure you do it.”
Carol picked that moment, when I was distracted and the light from Michael’s flashlight was disappearing into the distance, to turn off her own flashlight and make a run for it.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I yelled, launching myself at her.
Apparently the 911 operator answered the call while I was airborne.
“A-a-i-i-e-e!!”
Carol screamed when I knocked her down, and kept screaming at intervals while I relieved her of her keys and hunted through the leaves and gravel of the parking lot for her flashlight and my cell phone. As a screamer, she was right up there with Fay Wray for volume and drama but, luckily for me, she tended to go all out on each scream and then have to rest and catch her breath for long seconds. In between her screams, I convinced Debbie Anne down at the police station that Carol was merely hysterical, and that the real danger was at the old Sprocket farm, which was what most locals still called our house.
“I’ll send someone over as soon as possible,” she said.
“Can’t you get word to any of the officers who are still at the crime scene?” I asked.
“Oh, Meg, I’m sorry,” Debbie Anne said. “When the chief gave the go-ahead for y’all to resume your yard sale, he took away some of the officers, and the rest all came back with Mr. Early when they arrested him. I think he sent everyone home for a good long rest. Even Sammy called in to say he was going home, now that all the sheep were back. But don’t you worry; I’ve sent pages out to every single one.”
Wonderful.
“Just tell them to hurry,” I said. “Before there’s another murder.”
Carol was still screaming, though with increasingly longer rest periods, when Michael pulled up, spraying gravel all the way to the front door of the building. He didn’t stop—just slowed down and threw the door open, and he hit the accelerator about a second after I landed in the passenger’s seat, with my cell phone and both sets of confiscated keys still in hand.
“Are those Carol’s keys?” he asked.
“And Gordon’s, too,” I said. “Damn! Dad’s cell phone isn’t answering. We really need a phone at the house. Damn the Sprockets, anyway.”
“What about Rob? Or your mother?”
“Trying them,” I said. In fact I was cycling through the entire family phone list, with no luck.
Just by way of a change, I dialed a few Sprockets whose numbers I had in my cell phone, and on the third try I reached a Sprocket instead of an answering machine.
“Do you know where Barrymore is?” I said, cutting off his complaints about being awakened.
“Barrymore?” the sleepy Sprocket said. “Still locked up in Deep Meadow where he belongs, I hope. Why?”
I hung up.
“Barrymore’s a jailbird,” I said. I recognized Deep Meadow as one of the Virginia State prisons.
I tried Chief Burke’s direct line, only to find myself forwarded to the dispatch office. Debbie Anne gave me another perky reassurance that she was sure one of the officers on patrol would be there any minute.
“Any minute,” Michael repeated, when I relayed this to him. “We’ll be there any minute ourselves.”
“Damn,” I said. “I should have talked to Sprocket. I’d almost forgotten that he’d even been in the barn.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Michael said, as he rounded a corner on two wheels.
“But I should have remembered it,” I said. “And I know why I forgot. He came over and told me that he couldn’t make Gordon leave the barn, so I should go and do it. And I had no reason to suspect him, because when he did it, I didn’t even know Gordon was dead.”
“And he probably did.”
“He definitely knew, the bastard, because he probably did it. And what’s more, I bet he was trying to set me up to be the one who found the body.”
“Didn’t succeed, though,” Michael said.
“He did succeed in making me think he was harmless.”
The house was in sight now. And completely dark, except for a single light in the kitchen. Apart from my car, there were only two vehicles in the driveway. Both apparently belonged to some relative or other; I’d seen them around for the past several days. Under other circumstances, I’d have been thrilled to find the road outside our house empty except for the deep, muddy ruts along both sides, and the yard littered only with debris, and not with hundreds of people. But now, I swore as I wondered what had happened to the several dozen relatives who’d been underfoot every minute of the last week. Had they all gone out to eat pizza on Dad’s tab? I hoped he was with them.