He shook his head.
“Maybe it won’t be a problem,” I said. “Even if he says no, you probably won’t be the only person in the house without an alibi.”
“No,” he said, looking slightly more cheerful. “Not even the only person without an alibi who hated Clay’s guts. I do hope your mother’s alibied.”
“Probably alibied ten times over,” I said. “Michael’s giving his one-man show of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol tonight, so we have tons of family and friends coming into town to see it. If I know Mother, she was up till midnight visiting.”
Deputy Sammy appeared in the doorway from the living room.
“Mr. Goodwin? The chief’s ready for you now.”
Eustace stood up and squared his shoulders.
“Wish me luck,” he said, and sailed out.
I followed him and Sammy out into the living room. Mother was standing in the center of the room, gazing at the tree. Apparently she’d recruited Tomás and Mateo to work on the redecoration. They’d placed two stepladders next to the tree and were scampering down to grab ornaments and then back up to put them on the tree with Mother directing them in sign language and scraps of broken Spanish.
I glanced over at the French doors. Eustace was talking, gesticulating dramatically. I had a feeling he’d be there for quite a while.
Randall and my cousin Horace were standing at the top of the stairs. I ran up to join them.
Chapter 8
“Hey, Meg,” Horace said. “The chief says it’s okay for you guys to have the room back.”
“Great,” I said. “How bad is it?”
Randall stepped aside so I could see.
The master bed frame stood, stripped of its hangings, its bed linens, and even its mattress.
“We took all the bedding down to the lab,” Horace said, following my look. “And there was almost no blood on the walls.”
I didn’t see any blood on them. But it looked as if someone had gone after the walls, the floors, and the furniture with an ax. And there was fingerprint powder all over everything—the furniture, the carpet, and the walls up to a height of six or seven feet.
“Soon as your mother’s finished with Tomás and Mateo, I’m to turn them loose in here,” Randall said. “First thing’s to scrub off all that powder. Then we can patch and repaint.”
“And clean or replace the carpet,” I suggested.
“Roger.” He was scribbling on his list. “Couple of my guys are headed down here with some new drywall, and the hardware store’s mixing up a big batch of that god-awful red paint. We’ll get it back as fast as we can to where it was when Clay left yesterday, so start talking to whoever you think you can get to finish it off.”
“We’ll also need a new mattress,” I said. “King-sized.”
“And I assume we should be replacing the black sheets.”
“Part of the design,” I said.
“See you later,” Horace said. “Got to get back to the lab.”
“Oh, my!”
I looked over to see Violet standing in the doorway. She was holding something—a rolled-up rug, by the look of it—and staring at the room.
“What’s left of the crime scene,” Randall said.
“Horrible,” Violet said. She turned and fled—presumably across the hall, to her room.
“I should go and see if she’s all right,” I said.
Randall nodded. He was holding a box of trash bags. As I was turning to leave, I saw him pull one out and stoop down to start picking up some of the debris on the floor.
I followed Violet. She was standing in her room, holding her head.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’ve got a bit of a headache,” she replied.
Probably a monster headache, by the look of her. She was pale and hollow-eyed, and I noticed she was shading her eyes against the light.
“Want me to help you with that?” I asked, pointing to the rolled-up rug.
“Please.”
I tore the brown paper off the roll and set it down on the floor. I figured it would go where the damaged rug had gone, and Violet didn’t correct me. Then I unrolled it, revealing a very familiar-looking petit-point rug.
“Is this a new rug or the one Clay damaged?” I asked.
“The damaged one.”
“It looks great!” I exclaimed.
“It’s Daphne’s doing,” she said. Daphne, the proprietor of the Caerphilly Cleaners, was well known as a miracle worker when it came to removing stains. In a less enlightened era, her competitors would probably have tried to have her burned at the stake. “I can still sort of tell where the paint was,” she added.