“While you’re doing that, I’m going to call Michael and check on the boys,” I said. Perhaps I could invent a child-care crisis that would require me to leave.
“The telephone is over there.” Mr. Throckmorton pointed to a desk piled with one- to two-foot stacks of papers, one of which had a phone sitting atop it. “But we operate on the assumption that they’re bugging it.”
“That would be illegal!” Horace said.
“And you think that would bother them?” Rob asked.
“I can make the call, if you can figure out a coded way to say whatever you want to say,” Mr. Throckmorton said. “But it might be easier to e-mail.”
“I have my cell,” I said, holding it up.
“If you get a signal, let me know and I’ll switch to your carrier.” His smile wasn’t exactly smug, but you could tell he enjoyed knowing something I didn’t. “The walls are a foot thick. Ceiling, too. No signal here.”
“We got a signal outside the barricade,” I said.
“Stone’s not as thick up there,” he said. “I can sometimes get a signal up by the barricade, but not down here. You could try going up there.”
“Stay away from the area near the barricade until I’m finished with it,” Horace said. “Okay—now your clothes.”
“My clothes?” Mr. Throckmorton’s voice sounded anxious, and he glanced over at me.
“I’ll just step out for a moment,” I said. “I’ll come back and e-mail Michael when the coast is clear.”
I made my way back to the corridor and sat down on a box to wait. As I sat, I gazed around at the books and papers surrounding me. Normally, clutter drives me crazy, but the more I looked around, the less chaotic the basement looked. Everything was definitely organized. There were very few loose papers—everything was confined to boxes, file folders, or neat string-tied parcels. And everything bore a neat tag or label. I could spot at least a dozen different styles of printing or handwriting on the labels—probably representing at least that many county clerks over the years. All of them, from spidery copperplate to neat modern block printing, were uniformly precise and tiny.
“You can come back in now, Meg,” Horace called.
Mr. Throckmorton was dressed, as he had been before—gray slacks, white shirt, suspenders, and bow tie, though now the suspenders and the tie were royal blue. I suspected his wardrobe was well organized and didn’t contain a lot of variety. Rob was resplendent in black-and-green polka-dotted silk briefs.
“Have either of you been near the barricade lately?” Horace asked.
“Not since just before the incident,” Mr. Throckmorton said. “We heard someone knocking on the plywood door. I thought it might be Randall, but sometimes one or more of the security officers come with him.”
“So he pulled the curtains closed, and I hid just inside the corridor leading to the tunnel,” Rob said.
“Wasn’t that overkill?” I asked. “The curtains look solid enough.”
“The idea was that if they battered down the barrier, Rob could run down to the cell where the tunnel comes out and lock the door from the inside,” Mr. Throckmorton said. “There’s a spare key in the cabinet. And then he could retreat into the tunnel, pulling the cabinet behind him, and we might have a chance of keeping the secret of the tunnel.”
“So you weren’t with Mr. Throckmorton at the exact time of the murder?” Sammy asked.
Rob opened his mouth as if to say something and then shut it grimly and shook his head. Mr. Throckmorton sighed softly.
“I went over to the plywood privacy door,” Mr. Throckmorton said. “And I was about to open it, but I heard raised voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I could tell the tone was angry. I wasn’t sure what was going on. And given how strange everything has been lately, I decided maybe I shouldn’t open it until I knew precisely what was going on. I was backing away from it when I heard the shots.”
“Shots?” Sammy repeated. “Plural?”
“I think so,” Mr. Throckmorton said. “Two shots, very close together. Although I suppose it could have been one shot with some kind of echo. I’m afraid I don’t know much about guns.”
“He ran back here and told me what was happening,” Rob said. “And I was going to run up there and look, but Phinny pointed out that if there was something going on up there, the area just outside the barricade would be swarming with people, and we shouldn’t take the chance of anyone spotting me.”
“Or shooting at him,” Mr. Throckmorton added.