Part of me wanted to stay and find out why a few kind words reduced her to tears. But another part of me—probably a better part—wanted to give her some privacy.
Maybe she was even crying over Clay’s death. I didn’t think they’d known each other that well. I couldn’t recall any run-ins between them.
Maybe not knowing him that well made it easier to feel sad over his death. She could be the one person in the house who had no negative feelings about Clay, and could react to it simply as the death of another human being.
“Got to run,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.”
She nodded but didn’t raise her head as I slipped out of the room.
I went back into the hall. It looked as if the chief was about to finish up with Alice. Sarah was sitting on the stairs with her chin in her hand, watching Ivy paint. Overnight the blue streak in Sarah’s hair had morphed into a rich purple that matched her sweater. I decided it was an improvement.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The chief’s got your room.”
“He’s only got a couple of people left to interview,” she said. “And he did point out that this was faster for us than having to go down to the station. I’m good with it.”
Ivy smiled over her shoulder at us, then got up and slipped down the hallway. In her brown skirt and brown sweater, she seemed to disappear into the shadows after a few steps. But oddly enough, she didn’t seem drab like Linda. More elfin.
“If we’re bothering you, we can leave,” I called out.
“Just going to the basement to mix some more pigments,” she said.
I heard the basement door close.
“I don’t think we’re bothering her particularly,” Sarah said. “She just needs a lot of time alone. It’s not quite the same thing.”
I nodded.
“Hell of a night last night,” I said.
Sarah nodded but didn’t say anything.
“What I wouldn’t give to have been anywhere but here,” I said.
Sarah giggled.
“Meg, if you’re trying to find out whether or not I have an alibi for the time when Clay was killed, you could just ask me,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “I gather you do have an alibi.”
“Yes,” she replied. “I was neutering tomcats.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that.
“Actual feline tomcats,” she went on. “Not Clay’s kind. And spaying the females.”
“I didn’t know you moonlighted as a vet,” I said.
“I was helping Clarence Rutledge. He’s been doing a lot of pro bono work down at the animal shelter, spaying and neutering that whole feral cat colony that lives in the woods behind the New Life Baptist Church.”
That made sense. Clarence was Caerphilly’s most popular veterinarian. And although his appearance was intimidating—he was six feet, six inches tall and almost as wide, and usually wore leather and denim biker gear, even under his white lab coat at the clinic—he was a notorious softie when it came to any kind of animal.
“His clinic’s so busy during the day that the only time he can do the surgeries is after hours,” she said. “And we’d trapped a lot of feral cats. We were running out of cages. So every night this week I’ve been going over there at nine or ten o’clock, as soon as I can get away from here, and we work until he’s too tired. Usually one or two in the morning.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Best alibi I’ve heard all day, in fact.”
“There is one thing I’m worried about,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“My fingerprints might be on the murder weapon.”
Chapter 10
My jaw fell open, and I couldn’t think of anything to say for several moments.
“How did that happen?” I asked finally.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But there’s a gun missing, and for all I know, it could be the murder weapon, and if it is, my fingerprints will be on it.”
“Missing where?”
“From the house,” she said. “From my room.”
“You were keeping a gun in your room?”
“Not on purpose,” she said. “It’s not even mine—it’s Kate’s.”
Kate—her business partner, the one Sarah had been having such an angry conversation with the day before—Kate saying “keep it” and Sarah saying “I don’t even want it around me.”
“Her husband got it for her when he started having to commute to Tappahannock for his job,” Sarah said. “She never really wanted it around. But then when I began working here at the show house, she kept telling me I should take it with me, for protection. Because of Clay.”