I paused for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the dimmer light level Kevin preferred. After a few seconds I could see my surroundings. A long, wide counter ran along one whole side of the room, holding a dizzying array of computers, monitors, printers, keyboards, mice, and other bits of electronic gear that I’d be hard pressed to name. Widget, Kevin’s Pomeranian, was lying sprawled on one of the few open spots on the counter—right beside Kevin’s Christmas tree, a two-foot-high artificial pine decked with some of his favorite Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, along with a lot of random bits of gold- and silver-colored computer gear to add a more festive touch. Widget lifted his head when I came in, thumped his tail a few times, then lowered his head again and sank back into the contented sleep of a dog who has been well and recently fed.
Kevin, on the other hand, didn’t immediately acknowledge my arrival. So, once I spotted my laptop on the counter, I sat down in the nearest of the half-dozen office chairs scattered up and down its length and pulled out my phone to check for any newly arrived texts, emails, or voicemails. Two could play at Kevin’s game.
“Kind of busy right now,” he said, after a few minutes. “Got a few things I need to get done for the chief before I head back to the conference.
“Understood,” I said. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up about something.”
“If it’s not connected to the conference or the murder—” he began.
“It’s connected to both.”
He whirled around, a frown battling curiosity on his face. I reached into my tote and pulled out a pen—the Virginia Crime Time pen I’d picked up at the conference. I flicked the little LED light on and off. His face relaxed into a smile.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
“Very cool,” I said. “Any minute now the chief’s going to be asking all sorts of questions about it.”
“Why?” The frown was back.
“Because Horace and Vern and I just found one out in the woods near Iris Rafferty’s house,” I said. “On a path that Norton may have taken to get to our house. Or maybe the path whoever killed him took. Could even be both.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
I explained about Iris’s report of ninjas and the resulting forensic hike through the woods.
“So the chief is probably going to want to know when I got to the conference with the pens,” he said. “And who I gave them to.”
I nodded. He frowned slightly, pulled out his phone, and did something on it.
“Okay,” he said. “Rose Noire called me at nine-seventeen a.m. yesterday to tell me that the box of pens had arrived. Really annoying, because they were supposed to come Wednesday. And I had to miss nearly all of Festus’s talk to make the round trip home to fetch them. And it’s no use asking me who I gave them to, because I don’t remember, and Casey had a bunch, too, and we left a box of them out on the freebies table for anyone who wanted one.”
“So anyone could have had one,” I said.
“Including Norton,” Kevin said.
“Yeah,” I said. “He definitely had one. Cordelia had to get after him about not flashing it in people’s eyes during that roundtable session he crashed. She took it away from him. And that wasn’t long before she kicked him out, but he probably had enough time to grab another.”
“Oh, he definitely grabbed another,” Kevin said. “As soon as Cordelia’s back was turned, he pulled another pen out of his pocket and started doing the same thing. So I took that one away from him and kicked him out of the session. And it was right after I did that he started tormenting Ezekiel’s dog.”
He was now gazing at the pen with a slight frown.
“Don’t let the Gadfly spoil your enjoyment of the pens,” I said. “It’s not your fault he found a way to misuse them. And it’s not as if the pen was the murder weapon.”
“Yeah.” He handed me back the pen. “I’ll get over it. It’s just galling, you know. Cordelia comes up with the great idea for a conference, and first the Gadfly tries to spoil it and then someone else…” He shrugged and let his words drift off.
“And neither the Gadfly nor his killer can spoil the conference if we don’t let them,” I said. “But please tell me you have an alibi for when the murder took place.”
“The chief made sure of that before he let me start working any evidence,” he said. “Good thing I’ve got a pretty thorough alibi for all of last night, since it doesn’t seem as if he knows yet when the killer struck. Has Grandpa weighed in yet on that?”
“Probably before midnight,” I said. “And Michael said Norton was pretty cold when we found him. What are the odds he’d come out here for a visit all that late?”
“Who knows?” Kevin grimaced. “He was pretty rude and entitled. And who says he was coming for a visit? What if he wanted to cause trouble? Egg the house, or set off firecrackers to wake us up, or cut the power lines or … Who knows? What if he totally lost his cool over being kicked out, and was coming out here to exact his revenge, and whoever killed him actually saved us from all having our throats slit last night?”
He paused dramatically. And then realized that perhaps his drama was a little over-the-top.
“Well, it’s possible,” he said.
“Getting back to my original question,” I began.
“My alibi,” he said. “Right. Some of the attendees asked me for some suggestions about where to eat, and I recommended Luigi’s, but I warned them how crowded it got on Fridays, so they did takeout, and I ended up having a pizza dinner with a whole bunch of them in one of their rooms. And we’d been talking about whether or not Norton could sneak back into the hotel, and the idea made Amber a little nervous, so I walked her back to her own room.”
He paused, and there was just a slight note of something in his tone—embarrassment?
“And how long can you and Amber alibi each other for?” I asked, making sure to keep my tone innocent.
“Only for the walk from the third floor to the fifth.” He rolled his eyes as if this was a ridiculous question. “And I was worried the stress would give her a migraine—she has them pretty bad.”
“I know.” I decided it would be tactless to mention that the reason I knew was that a migraine had been part of her alibi for her husband’s murder. Besides, he knew that, too.
“So before I left I made sure she had her meds handy. I think I probably annoyed her by fussing over her.”
“Making sure she has her meds handy doesn’t sound like fussing,” I said. “Just ensuring that she’s taking good care of herself.”
“Actually, I think it was offering to get Grandpa to look at her that kind of annoyed her,” he said. “I backed off on that when I realized how she felt about the idea. But I wish she’d talk to him. He really is very good at migraines and headaches generally, you know. He keeps up with new research in the area pretty closely, so he can do his best for Grandmother.”
“If he could get the county to outlaw polyester and paintings on black velvet, it would do a lot more to prevent Mother’s headaches than any medicine they will ever invent,” I said.
“Probably.” He snickered. “Anyway, Amber said that as long as she could get to sleep before too long, she’d be okay. So then I went down to the lobby and ran into Casey, and we decided we really needed to start recording our latest podcast episode, so he followed me back here.”
“I thought you’d recorded a couple of episodes in advance so you could take off time for the conference and the holiday,” I said.
“Yeah, but someone at the conference suggested this really cool idea for an episode,” he said. “A true-crime Christmas—the top ten cases that happened on or very close to Christmas.”
“How festive,” I said.
“Hey, we know our audience,” he said. “It’ll be a smash hit. Anyway, I’m not sure what time we got here—maybe nine or so? Horace would know; it was about the time he went off duty and he was here picking up Watson from Rose Noire’s doggy day care. And then Casey and I got online to record for the podcast, and it was like three a.m. before we finished and he drove home.”
I nodded. It sounded as if he was well alibied. And I found myself hoping that the earlier part of the evening, when he’d been with “a whole bunch” of conference attendees, would turn out to be the critical time period. If that were the case, late dinners and after-dinner get-togethers would give a lot of the attendees alibis. And even though Kevin’s cameras hadn’t detected the arrival of the Gadfly and his killer, at least they should enable him to prove that he hadn’t left the house to skulk behind the barn and bump off anyone after Casey’s departure.
Of course, if anyone was capable of eluding detection by our security system, it would be Kevin, since he’d designed it. And the hotel security system, too. But with luck, Dad would determine that the Gadfly had been killed well before Kevin’s alibi ended.
“I hope it doesn’t turn out to be one of the Keepers,” he said. “The murderer, I mean.”
“Ginny and Janet,” I said. “Who are trying to exonerate their high-school friend.”
“Right.” He nodded. “The Keepers.”
“Been meaning to ask you,” I said. “Keepers of what?”
“That’s just how I think of them,” Kevin said. “Because they kind of remind me of the ladies in that documentary, you know? The one where the two little old—er, two retired women get fired up to investigate the murder of one of their high-school teachers. You haven’t seen it?”
I shook my head.
“Man, you should check it out,” he said. “Remember that argument Dad was having with Cousin Julian.”
“No,” I said. “Julian argues with everyone, so it’s kind of hard to remember any of them in particular. And if you looked up mansplaining in the dictionary, you’d probably find his picture there, so it’s not as if I listen if I can help it.”
“Good thing he’s only a cousin by marriage,” Kevin said.
“What was he on about this time?”
“He was giving Dad a hard time about reading mystery novels with amateur sleuths,” Kevin explained. “Being a cop, Julian thinks they’re completely unrealistic and kind of stupid.”
“No more unrealistic than the kind of hard-boiled mystery where the cop goes rogue, constantly does things that would get his case thrown out of court in real life, and racks up a body count in the dozens. Isn’t that the kind of thing Julian reads?”
“The kind of thing he watches.” Kevin was snickering. “I’m not sure he reads anything other than menus and traffic signs. But getting back to The Keepers—you should watch it. It’s a real-life story of some amateur sleuths investigating a case and cracking open the most enormous can of worms. They find out—”
“No spoilers,” I said. “Let’s get back to Ginny and Janet.”
“Right.” He assumed a look of ostentatious cooperativeness. Or was it a look of ostentatious patience with what he probably considered my deplorable lack of knowledge about the world of true crime? I was still trying to figure out whether it was better to ask questions or just ignore the occasions when he tossed off what was obviously a reference to a case he was following that I’d barely heard of. Okay, sometimes I had to ask, when he tossed out remarks like, “not sure if I buy the killer owl theory” or “well, that’s what the egg lady juror claims.”
“Ginny and Janet are genuine amateur sleuths, just like the ladies in the documentary,” he said. “And pretty darn good at it, from what I’ve seen. I’m thinking of suggesting to Festus that he do a trade with them. Maybe he could take on their friend’s case pro bono in return for them doing some of the investigative work for some of his other cases. On top of being good at it, they’re kind of like a stealth weapon—everyone underestimates them for some reason.”
“Because they’re women of a certain age,” I said. “If they were my age or younger, they might be more likely to call out someone who ignores or undervalues them or suggests they go back to their kitchens. They just smile and get the job done, whatever it is.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I’m glad Casey and I haven’t ticked them off. You should see their takedown of Norton.”
“Define ‘takedown,’” I said. “Because if you said that about anyone else, I’d have suggested that maybe I’ve already seen that takedown—behind the barn this morning.”
“When he went after them online, they did their research thing and published a blog all about his many lies and half truths,” Kevin said. “In a sane world, that blog would have ended his career as a true-crime influencer, but you know how the internet works. ‘A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes,’ as someone said. Probably not Mark Twain, although he usually gets the credit.”
“Not Twain,” I said. “I tried to look it up once, and no one knows. Jonathan Swift said something similar in 1710, but I prefer to quote Terry Pratchett. Who definitely said it in one of his books, although he didn’t claim to have invented it—he credits the ever-useful ‘they say.’”
“Good to know.” Kevin rotated his shoulders, as if he’d suddenly realized that he’d been hunched over his computer too long, and then segued into a full stretch. “Anyway, the ladies pegged him. I’ll text you a link to what they said, if you want to read it.”
“I’d love to,” I said. “But later. For now, I’m headed to the Inn.”