And it was nice, sitting quietly with Michael and the twins in a corner of our tent—now temporarily the chief’s crime scene headquarters. The former forensic tent was serving as a field hospital where Dad and several doctors from Caerphilly Hospital could patch up all the minor injuries people had incurred while being stampeded off the courthouse steps. And a squad of FBI agents had commandeered Randall’s office tent. I was looking forward to hearing how they happened to be so close by that they could show up less than half an hour after the end of the concert. And odds were I would hear—the tent was buzzing with people dashing out to tie up the evening’s loose ends and then dashing back in to report on them.
“Fah-wah!” Jamie was wiggling excitedly on my lap.
“Yes, you saw the fireworks,” I said.
“More!” Josh demanded, from his perch on Michael’s shoulder.
“More fah-wah!” Jamie agreed.
I was afraid we’d have a small rebellion on our hands when we told the boys that no, we were going home without any more fireworks. But just then Rob showed up with frozen juice cones to distract them, and within a few minutes both boys were asleep in the pen, using Tinkerbell as a cushion while Spike ate the remains of the cones and licked their sticky faces.
“More ice, Mr. Denton?” Mother asked. I wasn’t sure if she was offering to freshen his tea or replenish the ice pack he was holding on the bump on his head.
“I’m fine, thanks,” he said.
He still looked a little shaky to me, but he’d assured us he didn’t need to lie down.
“I want to hear everything that happened after that jerk sidelined me,” he said whenever we tried to send him over to the hospital tent.
And he was looking better than when they’d first brought him out of the courthouse. Dad kept popping in to check on him, and was still insisting that Denton stay with him and Mother overnight. “So I can watch for any signs of concussion,” he’d said. But knowing Dad, I assumed he was less worried about Denton’s health than interested in hearing war stories from a real private eye.
The chief strode in and slumped into a plastic lawn chair. Randall followed on his heels.
“Good Lord, what a night,” the chief said. “The bomb squad from Richmond is finally here, and they say it’ll take them all night and maybe into tomorrow. Apparently Wilt snuck in while we were evicting the mimes and wired that building six ways to Sunday.”
“How come Meg and I didn’t see any sign of it when we searched the courthouse?” Denton asked.
“They didn’t do anything on the second or third floors,” the chief said. “They mainly hit the furnace room and the part of the basement they could reach, and apparently they did that at the last minute, while you two were upstairs. They may have put some stuff outside, near the foundations. We’ll find out soon enough. Incidentally, he was going to set it off with his cell phone. Thank God Meg was sharp enough to take it away from him.”
He’d have been thankful in any case, but two of his grandchildren had been in the crowd that Lad, Aida, and I had shooed off the courthouse steps.
“Where is that damned snoop?” Muriel Slatterly strode into the room. She looked around, frowning as if searching for someone who’d stiffed her on his check. Her eyes fell on Denton, and her frown intensified. She stalked over and stood over him, glowering.
“Here,” she said finally, tossing something into his lap.
A small cardboard take-out box. Denton opened it, his fingers fumbling with eagerness. Inside were three slices of pie—apple, blueberry, and pecan.
“On the house, this time,” she said. “On account of your helping save the town. And you can have the space if you want it, but board’s not included.”
With that, she strode out.
“Space?” I asked.
“The vacant office space over the diner,” Denton said. He had picked up the fork Muriel included in the box and was hovering indecisively between the three slices of pie. “I’ve got no family ties in Staunton, and I hate the winters. Been thinking of relocating to someplace closer to D.C. and Richmond. Someplace that gets a lot less snow. I expect Caerphilly will work just fine.”
He finally stabbed his fork decisively into the blueberry pie and leaned back to chew with his eyes closed and a blissful expression on his face. Convenience and climate my foot. Clearly Muriel’s cooking was the real attraction.
I glanced around the tent to see that several other people were concealing grins. And the chief wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding an enormous yawn.
“Why don’t you get some sleep, Chief?” Randall said. “Nothing to do tonight but watch the bomb crew and the FBI work. I can call and wake you if they ask any questions I can’t answer.”