“We could send them out by carrier pigeon,” I suggested. “No wait—we could have, before the Evil Lender brought in that falconer to kill all the pigeons. Now I don’t think that will work too well.”
Randall chuckled and leaned farther back in his chair.
“You could negotiate having FPF withdraw from the basement,” Hamish said. “And Mr. Throckmorton could take his barricades down long enough to move all the boxes into the anteroom, and then put them up again.”
“We could,” Randall said. “Except I’m not sure Mr. Throckmorton would trust FPF not to storm the basement while the barricades were down. Not for five minutes, much less as long as it would take to empty the basement. Especially after what happened today. I know I wouldn’t.”
“Maybe we should storm the basement,” Hamish said. “It’s intolerable having that man there. And besides—”
“Mr. Pruitt,” I said. “Just why does this bother you so much? You’re not the town attorney any longer. He’s not making your job harder. I’m sure you’d be devastated if anything happened to the town archives—we all would. But they’ve been just fine for over a year. Why is this suddenly such a big issue?”
“It’s always been a big issue,” he said. “It’s always bothered me. But … but … before, I just thought Throckmorton was a nut case. It’s different now that we know he’s a cold-blooded killer!”
“We don’t know that, Mr. Pruitt,” Randall said softly. “We just know someone is. Innocent until proven guilty.”
Hamish opened his mouth as if to continue the argument, then changed his mind, shut it so abruptly I could swear I heard his teeth click, and stormed back out again.
“What’s gotten into him?” I asked.
“Must be the heat,” Randall said. “Or maybe he ate his own cooking and got Mad Cow disease or something. The archives have been just fine down there for a year, and suddenly Hamish gets a bee in his bonnet that we should get them out.”
“No idea why?”
“Something he left in his office, I reckon,” Randall said. “He was one of the few government employees who didn’t pack up and move out when the lender took over the courthouse, you know. So when we did our inspection, about three a.m. the morning of the takeover, Vern and I ended up packing all his papers. Took forever, sorting out the personal stuff from the county stuff. From the look of it, he did more personal than county business out of that office.”
“Sounds like Hamish.”
“And Phinny came by just as we were finishing, and said he was taking charge of any official government documents that were in danger of being left behind. I thought he meant he’d haul them away—never dawned on me that he was dragging as much paper into his lair as he could before he put up the barricade.”
Randall shook his head, but he was smiling indulgently. I wondered, not for the first time, if Randall really had been completely unaware of Mr. Throckmorton’s plans. Had the diminutive county clerk really dragged those heavy timbers down into the basement and erected the barricade all by himself?
“Anyway,” Randall went on. “Hamish made a big fuss the next day, but no one had much time to bother with him, and within the week, his own cousin fired him, so if you ask me, the archives are no more his business than any other citizen’s, and most of the citizens are just fine with the way things are.”
“Imagine the job we’d have, trying to move them out,” I said. “And where on earth would we put them?”
“And how would we find anything afterward?” Randall said. “We need something, I call Phinny, and I get a copy faxed or e-mailed within the hour.” I heard a faint ding, and Randall reached to pull out his cell phone. “If we move all that stuff,” he went on, “I guarantee you, no one, not even Phinny, will know where all of it is for the next decade. I say we leave well enough alone. Oh, damn. Not again.”
The last words appeared to be addressed to his cell phone.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“My predecessor just sent me another snarky e-mail,” Randall said. “He does that from time to time. Wonder if the news has hit the national media, or if one of his cousins who’s still in town called to tell him.”
“Is he still spending his ill-gotten gains in Cancún?”
“Let’s see. Yes, apparently. He closes by saying he’ll hoist a piña colada in my honor.”
“Jerk.” I was tempted to say harsher things about ex-mayor Pruitt, but the boys were on the verge of learning to talk, and I’d expunged from my active vocabulary any words that could possibly do George Pruitt justice.