“Awesome,” Doane said. “I’ll have to run back to my car to get my baiting material. I use small airtight capsules that can be broken open to release cadaverine and putrescine.”
“Too bad we don’t have a real corpse to work with,” Grandfather said. “I don’t suppose there was anyone in that car you blew up out at the Inn, was there?” he asked, turning to me.
“I didn’t blow it up, and the chief said there were no signs of human remains,” I said.
“But is he sure?” Doane asked. “The Inn’s only a few miles from here. Let’s turn her loose and see if she heads there.”
“And if there wasn’t a body in the car, maybe she can find that private eye fellow,” Grandfather said. “He’s missing, right?”
“Missing, yes,” I said. “But we have no reason to presume him dead.”
“And no proof he’s alive, either,” Grandfather said. “Let’s send Nekhbet out and see what she can find.”
Doane began fumbling at the door of Nekhbet’s cage.
“Why don’t you two find a more private place to set her loose?” I suggested. “We’ve already had a murder here—if people see a vulture flapping around, they’ll think the worst.”
“Let’s do it from the parking lot,” Doane said, “since I need to go back to the truck anyway, for the bait. And the GPS anklet.”
I watched as the two of them strode off, dragging the caged vulture behind them.
“Please don’t find anything,” I murmured.
Chapter 31
After watching my grandfather and Mr. Doane disappear with the vulture in tow, I shook my head and headed for the tent to eat my salad.
I had only strolled a few paces when my cell phone rang. I set down the salads and my tea on the edge of a nearby planter and answered it.
“Meg? Randall. Can you drop by my tent for a couple of minutes? Quick meeting of the Steering Committee.”
“If it’s about the bagpipes—”
“No, it’s about the car bomb.”
I picked up the salads and the tea and headed for the other side of the town square.
I found Deputy Sammy standing outside the tent, glaring at anyone who came within ten paces. Inside, Randall, Caroline, Ms. Ellie, and the chief were sitting on the green plastic stacking lawn chairs that served as the mayor’s guest seating.
“Here.” I handed one Cobb salad to the chief. “With Minerva’s compliments, and I’m under orders to see that you eat every bite.”
He blinked, then took the salad.
“Thank you,” he said. “It has been a busy day.”
While the chief and I poured little packages of dressing over our salads, Randall cut to the chase.
“Caroline tells me you overheard something that might explain why the Evil Lender is suddenly so fired up to get Phinny out of the courthouse basement,” he said.
“Not exactly,” I said, through a mouthful of lettuce. “They’re not really trying to get Mr. Throckmorton out.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I mean they are, but it’s only incidental,” I said. “They want to get him out of the basement because they think that’s the only way they can get in.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Randall said. “Why do they want to get into the basement?”
“To find something,” I said. “A document, I assume, since that’s about all there is in the basement. And also because they were talking about whether it was the only copy.”
“And Leonard Fisher said it was,” Caroline added.
“No, actually what he said was, ‘it is now,’” I said. “Which sounded to me as if they’d snagged or destroyed the other copies.”
“Whatever it is, we have to keep them from getting it,” Caroline said.
“That’s easy to say,” Randall replied. “But how are we supposed to do that if we don’t know what it is? Unless you’re about to suggest we haul all of the documents out of the courthouse—and trust me, that’s not an option. It’d take weeks—maybe months.”
“I told you we should have started moving the files out last year,” Ms. Ellie said. “If we’d started moving the files out as soon as the siege began—”
“Then maybe we would have moved whatever they want to someplace where they could already have found it,” Randall said. “Never mind what we maybe should have done a year ago. What should we do now? And dammit, emptying the courthouse basement is not an option!”
“Sorry,” Ms. Ellie said, drawing back from Randall’s frown.