It was late in the morning when I received a text from Chief Gardner—“Mr. Doty first.”
I wandered across the clearing behind the castle, finally taking a seat on a bench not far from where Big Ben Redding had burned his cross. We are none of us just one person, but rather many different people depending on the circumstances. Ben had been a good man until he wasn’t, well-liked by the people who knew him; a serial philanderer, true, yet also a sports hero, an entrepreneur, a businessman; funny and pleasant; he made me smile. Yet the majority of people would always remember him now as the despicable jerk that burned a cross in his own backyard. Probably, he deserved it, too. What was it Shakespeare wrote? The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. I thought it was sad just the same.
When Chief Gardner’s black-and-white SUV entered the lot, I left the bench and walked to where she had parked. I made a production of looking at my watch while she exited the vehicle.
“What?” I asked. “Did you decide to sleep in this morning?”
“You should have my problems, McKenzie, you really should. Have you seen Mr. Doty?”
“No.”
Chief Gardner started across the parking lot toward the barn. I joined her.
“How’s the mood in the castle?” she asked.
“Everyone’s behaving like someone died, Jenness especially.”
“Any ugly rumors I should know about?”
“I overheard a couple on the patio blame the Sons of Europa.”
The chief stopped walking.
“I wish to God it was them. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than frog-marching Lawspeaker Fredgaard and his entire racist, terrorist cell into a courtroom. Only they’re going to come out of this looking like some damn victim-hero; a martyr to the cause of white supremacy. Fucking Ben Redding, what was he thinking?”
The evil men do, my inner voice said.
“I take it you don’t think the Sons are involved in Ben’s death,” I said aloud.
“I’ll tell you why later. Mr. Doty first.”
We found Mr. Doty sitting on a high stool in front of his workbench surrounded by his tools. Only he wasn’t working, just sitting there, as if the tools were talking to him, telling him stories.
I said, “Good morning, Mr. Doty.”
He ignored me.
“Chief of Police,” Mr. Doty said. “Been waitin’ on you.”
“Oh?”
“Come to arrest me, ain’t cha?”
“Have you committed a crime?”
“No.”
Chief Gardner moved to the workbench and leaned against it so she could look him directly in the eye.
“It’s time for the truth, Mr. Doty,” she said. “Don’t lie to me again.”
“Truth and nothin’ but the truth.”
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t lie to you before.”
“I asked if you knew how the cross got there; you said you didn’t. That was a lie.”
“Ma’am, you don’t know…”
“We know about Ben Redding.”
Mr. Doty stared like he was playing Texas Hold’em and wondering if the chief was bluffing.
“Did you help him build that cross?” Chief Gardner asked.
Mr. Doty stared some more.
“Mr. Doty…”
“No, ma’am. Didn’t help. When I found him in the barn; I heard a noise, knew someone was about, so I come down and found him.” Mr. Doty pointed toward the corner where the extra wood was being stored. “He had already doused the cross with gasoline time I got here. Tried to talk Mr. Ben out of it, I did; told him this was a bad thing he was doing. Mr. Ben said he was saving the castle. He asked me if that was a bad thing. I said no, it wasn’t only—you gotta remember, Chief of Police, I worked for Mr. Ben. Technically, I work for all them Reddings, not just Miss. Been workin’ for ’em since they was just little kids.”
“You cut the cross down and smothered it with sand.”
“That was only after McKenzie here got involved. Mr. Ben said he wanted to make a statement. I figured by then the statement had already been made whatever that was supposed to be. Am I in trouble?”
“Last night…”
“Chief of Police, I ain’t got nothing to do with that, I ain’t lyin’.”
“Where were you last night at about eleven fifteen?”
“I was in my cabin.” Mr. Doty tapped the top of the workbench. “I was in bed.” He tapped it again. “That ain’t no lie. You can ask the missus.” He tapped the bench a third time. “I heard McKenzie here. Went to the window when I heard ’im around the barn.” Another tap. “I saw him hurrying off with the ladder. I told myself, whatever it is I ain’t involving myself this time. Whatever the Reddings are up to is on them. That’s a fact.” He emphasized his last statement with an even louder tap.
“Did you see anyone besides McKenzie?”
Mr. Doty didn’t answer.
“Did you see anyone on the grounds besides McKenzie?” Chief Gardner said.
“Not then,” Mr. Doty replied.
“When?”
“Hour before McKenzie I saw someone. I was getting ready for bed.”
Make it ten thirty, my inner voice said.
“What did you see?” Chief Gardner asked.
“Over there.” Mr. Doty gestured more or less at the edge of the clearing. “Where the woods meet up with the driveway.”
The chief was thinking the same thing I was; I could see it in her eyes. The shadow we had spotted on the parking lot security footage.
“What did you see?” Chief Gardner asked.
“At first I thought it was a deer,” Mr. Doty said. “Then I saw her face clear. It was Miss Carly.”
It wasn’t difficult to learn that Carly Zumwalt lived in a house located two blocks from Redding High School. Chief Gardner took us there in her SUV. Along the way I quizzed her about how she knew that the Sons of Europa had nothing to do with Big Ben Redding’s murder.
“I spent most of the morning meeting with my nerds,” the chief said. “In Minneapolis, a murder investigation is just a job. Ballistic experts, fingerprint analysts, forensic pathologists, evidence technicians—I don’t care how dedicated they are, how conscientious, they’re all just doing their jobs and when you’re investigating fifty murders or more a year, it gets treated like a job. Out here, though, where you have one homicide in a decade, it becomes a very big job. Everyone gets excited. Everyone wants to do their best. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet and I already have a ballistics report. Ben was shot with by a .32-caliber handgun purchased in 2001 by Joseph R. Redding.”
“Joseph Redding?”
“Tess’s husband; he passed in 2004.”
“Do you think the piece was left in the room he shared with his wife; the room where Ben and Olivia were staying?”
“That’s just one of the items on the long list of things we don’t know. Anyway, my guys…”
“Your guys?”
“I think of them as my guys now, screw the sheriff. My guys said the gun was wiped down. However, they were able to lift a partial off the end of the barrel. They’re running it through the FBI’s fingerprint database as we speak.”
“The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System,” I said. “You’d think they’d come up with a catchier name.”
“Whatever they call it, nearly a third of the population is in there for one reason or another, so fingers crossed. What else? Angie, Dr. Angelique Evers, told me that Big Ben had sexual congress—her words, not mine—with an unidentified female almost immediately before he was killed. She swabbed his dick and found plenty of woman jizz—my words, not hers.”
“DNA from the fluid?” I asked.
“In the Cities, I’ve seen DNA tests take as long as fourteen days to go from the crime scene to a reliable profile. What’ll you bet I get mine within seventy-two hours? I might even get it sooner than that. This afternoon. Angie says she has friends.”
“What about Ben’s cell phone?”
“My new best friend in the county’s Investigative Division says they haven’t unlocked it yet.”
“The slacker,” I said. “What’s he been doing for the last”—I glanced at my watch—“twelve hours?”
“I know, right? He told me he’d call as soon as they have access. I’m very curious to learn where Ben’s been in the past couple of days and who he’s called.”
“Have you cleared Olivia?”
“Yes. Her and Boeve. The old man at the Thai restaurant says they make a nice couple.”
“Maybe Olivia can unlock the cell for us.”
“Something to consider.”
By then we had arrived at Carly Zumwalt’s house. There were two cars in the driveway of her three-bedroom split-level and I assumed that one of them belonged to Madison. I had hoped that she wouldn’t be home, except it was early afternoon on a Saturday in Redding, Minnesota. Where else would she be?
Chief Gardner knocked on the door. It was Madison who answered it. She looked as if she had been crying and for a moment I was relieved. I’m sure the chief was, too. Explaining to someone that their loved one had died, much less that they had been murdered, was the worst duty a cop can perform.
“Morning, Madison,” the chief said.
“Chief. McKenzie.”
“I am so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
“Madison, we would like to speak to your mother.”
Madison moved to keep us from entering the house.
“She’s not home,” she said.
“Isn’t that her car in the driveway?” the chief asked.
“What I meant is that she’s not home to visitors. She’s still in bed.”
“Awfully late in the day.”
“She—she isn’t feeling well.”
“Do you know what happened to your uncle?” the chief said.
“Yes. I can’t believe—it’s a terrible thing.”
“Madison, it’s important that we speak to your mother.”
“I told you, she’s sick. Why do you need to talk to her, anyway? She didn’t do anything.”
“Madison…”
“She was here all last night.”
“I need her to tell me that.”
“She’s sick, I told you.”
“What she means is that I’m hungover,” Carly said. She appeared behind her daughter. She was wearing a sweatshirt and pants that announced her allegiance to the Redding High School Red Hawks; her hair and face, especially the eyes, suggested that she had been awake for approximately thirty seconds.
“Let them in, Maddie,” she said.
“Mom…”
“It’s all right.”
Madison opened the door wide and moved out of the way. The chief and I stepped inside. Madison closed the door and leaned against it as if she couldn’t wait to open it again.
“I’m sorry that you’re not feeling well,” Chief Gardner said.
Carly moved deeper inside her house and we followed.
“A self-inflicted wound; that’s what Ben would say,” she told us. “You shouldn’t feel sorry for people who hurt themselves, he would say.”
“When did you last see your brother?” the chief asked.
“On the patio right after Jenny’s presentation. McKenzie was there. He’ll tell you. I was pissed off because Ben and Annie and Eden—don’t think for a second it was Alex; Eden does all the thinking in that family; she’s had him by the balls for years. Decades. They voted against selling the castle. Even Jenny’s mother knew it was a good deal, yet they decided against selling. Cheated me out of one and a half million dollars.”
“Mom,” Madison said. She moved to a stuffed chair and sat on the edge. “Mom, you talk too much.”
“I’m not saying anything that they don’t already know,” Carly told her. “Anyway, McKenzie heard what they said to me, what Annie said to me. I just—I just couldn’t deal with them anymore so I walked out. I haven’t seen any of them since.”
“You heard what happened to your brother?” the chief asked.
“Last night. Jenny called. She said—she said I should know.” Carly looked for a chair, found one, and sat down. “Someone murdered my brother. Probably…”
“Probably?”
“Ben slept around. Everyone knew it. Livy knew it. My first thought was to blame her, only he’s been doing it for so long and she’s been doing it, too, so … They had an open marriage, I guess. I tried something like that myself with my second husband. It didn’t work out. Besides, Ben—he wasn’t that bad a guy.”
Carly lowered her head and covered her eyes with her hand. If we had left her alone with her grief she might have started crying. The chief didn’t have time for that.
“Madison said you were here all night,” she said. “Is that true?”
Carly looked up at her daughter; I couldn’t read her expression.
“That’s right,” she said.
“All night?” Chief Gardner asked.
Carly took her time replying as if she was weighing the consequences of her words.
“No,” she said. “I went to the liquor store for a bottle of vodka. We were out.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“Give me an estimate.”
“Ten, ten thirty.”
“How long were you gone?”
“Ten minutes. Fifteen. The store is like a mile and a half from here.”
“How did you pay?”
“What?”
“How did you pay for the vodka? Cash? Check?”
“Credit card.”
“You know we can check with the liquor store; we can check with the credit card company.”
“Go ’head.”
I was watching Madison fidget throughout the exchange.
She seems awfully anxious, my inner voice told me.
“Did you go back to the castle?” Chief Gardner asked.
“No, why would I?”
“When you went to the liquor store…”
“I said no.”
“You’re saying that you went directly to the liquor store…”
“Yes.”
“And you came directly back home…”
“Yes.”
“And the entire trip took ten, fifteen minutes.”
“That’s right.”
“Ms. Redding, I have a witness who places you at the castle no later than ten twenty-six P.M.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“I have video showing…”
“That’s bullshit,” Carly repeated. “I was nowhere near the castle last night.”
I watched as Madison ground her fingernails into the palms of her hands. Unlike Chief Gardner, I didn’t think she was doing it to keep from laughing.
She’s trying to keep from screaming.
I took a chance.
“For the record,” I said, “Big Ben was killed at exactly eleven seventeen P.M.”
Chief Gardner’s head snapped toward me. Her eyes suggested that I was insane.
Madison looked at me, too. Her eyes expressed surprise.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“I said your uncle was killed at eleven seventeen. Exactly.”
“Oh God, oh God, Mother.” Madison slipped off her chair and knelt on the floor. She used her hands to steady herself. “I thought … Oh, my God.”
“Maddie…”
“She was here. She was here at eleven seventeen. She came through the door—it was a quarter to eleven. I know it, I know it. I swear it’s true.”
Carly came off her chair and knelt next to her daughter.
“Maddie, what are you saying?” she asked.
“You were here when Ben was shot. You were here. You couldn’t have…”
“Oh, Maddie, you thought I killed your uncle? How could you think that? What is wrong with you?”
“Me? What is wrong with you? You said you could kill them all. You said you wanted to kill them all. Your brothers. Your sisters. For what they did to you, you said. And then you left. You drank and drank and then you left and you were gone for over an hour. An hour. Then Jenny called and said—what was I supposed to think?”
“You’re supposed to think that I’m your mother. You don’t accuse your mother of murder.”
“She didn’t accuse you,” I said. “She was trying to protect you at considerable risk to herself. Let’s move on. Let’s talk about that missing hour. The hour you spent at the castle.”
“I wasn’t at the castle,” Carly said.
“Yes, you were.”
I glanced at Chief Gardner. She waved her hand as if she was giving me the floor.
“It’s an interesting problem,” I said, “from a legal standpoint, I mean. The paintings that were stolen…”
“Paintings?” Madison said. “What paintings?”
“Jenness didn’t tell you?”
“She told me about Ben and I—I don’t know if she said anything about paintings. I just—I just lost it, I guess.”
I had eyes on Carly, yet I spoke directly to her daughter.
“The Remington and Whistler were stolen last night just before your uncle was killed,” I said. “They were removed from the art gallery and taken down the back stairs, the servant stairs. For argument’s sake, let’s say they were stolen by your mother here. Technically, twenty percent of the paintings belong to her; that’s what I meant by a legal problem. ’Course, if she had just moved them from one room to another inside the castle, of which she also owns twenty percent, it’s not actually stealing. She could argue that she was moving the paintings to protect them from vandals or something. Or simply that she thought they looked better hanging somewhere else. No harm, no foul. If, on the other hand, she had put them in the trunk of her car and drove home with the idea of selling them without the permission of her brothers and sisters, her co-owners, now we’re talking burglary in the first degree punishable by as many as twenty years in prison—if your mother’s brother and sisters choose to prosecute. Do you think they would choose to prosecute your mother?”
“I didn’t steal the paintings,” Carly said. “Go ’head and check the trunk of my car if you want.”
“Where are they?” Chief Gardner asked.
Carly stared for one beat, two, three, four …
For chrissake, my inner voice said. We’re giving you an out. Take it.
“I put them in the shack for safekeeping,” Carly said.
“What shack?” I asked.
“Behind the Oglesby Cabin.”
“Where the honeybee hives are?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about this,” the chief said.
“It’s like McKenzie said, I wanted to protect them from vandals, you know, because of the cross burning and all that. The Sons of Europa.”
She doesn’t know that Ben burned the cross.
“At ten thirty at night?” Chief Gardner asked.
“They burned the cross at night.”
“When you were at the castle, did you see anyone?”
“No.”
“Did you hear anyone?”
Carly didn’t reply.
“It’s important, Ms. Zumwalt,” the chief said.
“If you know something that can help about Uncle Ben,” Madison said.
“I heard someone, I don’t know who,” Carly said.
“Where?”
“On the servant stairs. McKenzie guessed right, I took the paintings down the servant stairs…”
“So you didn’t need to pass the security cameras in the lobby,” Chief Gardner said.
“Because it was easier; an easier trip to the shack. Do you want me to…”
“Keep talking.”
“I don’t need to answer your questions, you know. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Mom,” Madison said.
“I’m sorry,” the chief said. “Please continue.”
“I took the paintings down the stairs and out to the shack one at a time,” Carly said. “They weren’t heavy, but they were bulky and I didn’t want to damage them. The third time—after I put the Remington and the Whistler in the shack I went back for a third time for the Nast illustrations and some of the other things and I heard—there was someone at the top of the servant stairs. They seemed to be having trouble opening the door like they couldn’t find the latch. So, I left. I ran across the clearing to the edge of the woods…”
“Outside of camera range,” Chief Gardner said.
“Where I parked my car on the road leading to the castle instead of the lot because I didn’t want to take up a space that was reserved for a guest.”
“Good answer,” I said.
Chief Gardner looked at me as though she didn’t agree.
There were more questions and answers after that, only they didn’t amount to much. Finally, we left. Neither Madison nor Carly led us to the door. Before I closed it myself, I heard Madison speaking to her mother.
“I think you should know, I decided to take the scholarship offered by the University of Colorado,” she said.
I had traveled between the City of Redding and Redding Castle so often in the past few days that I was beginning to feel like a yo-yo. We had escaped the downtown and were back on the highway before Chief Gardner spoke to me.
“A perfectly good felony bust shot to hell,” she said, although her voice suggested that she wasn’t particularly disappointed.
“You wanted to recover the paintings; we’re recovering the paintings.”
“If they’re where Carly says they are. Besides, we would have recovered them sooner or later, anyway. That woman wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in an interrogation room.”
“What would arresting her have accomplished except screwing up her family even more than it already is? Screwing up Madison? Besides, I wasn’t kidding. There really are issues involving possession to consider.”
“That’s not for you to decide. Or me. It’s the county attorney’s job. My job…”
“Is to keep the peace?”
“All right, all right.”
“Look at it this way, Dee—we’re closer to learning who shot Big Ben.”
“Oh, we are, are we?”
“We’re eliminating suspects.”
“Yeah, we only have about twenty left. By the way, how did you guess that Maddie was protecting her mother?”
“Body language.”
“Angela Lansbury would be proud.”
“I like to think so.”
“Imagine thinking that your mother committed murder.”
“Imagine deciding to cover for her.”
“I hope Maddie does make it to the Olympics; I really do.”
We parked in the castle’s lot and walked side by side across the clearing toward the General Oglesby Cabin. Eden Redding came out to meet us.
“McKenzie,” she said. “Where were you?”
Was she looking for you? my inner voice asked. Do you care?
“Not now,” I said aloud.
The chief and I moved past her.
“Where are you going?” Eden wanted to know.
I turned toward her and pointed.
“Stay here,” I said.
I had no reason to be angry with her; she hadn’t burned the damned cross, after all. Yet I was. Go figure.
Chief Gardner and I gained the dirt path and followed it through the collar of trees to the large meadow behind it. The chief was in the lead. I stopped when I saw a few honeybees hovering above the flowers. The chief glanced over her shoulder at me.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I told her.
The chief moved past the dilapidated hives to the shack and pulled on the door handle. The door was sealed by a hook and eye latch. She unlocked it and pulled, again. The door swung open and I watched as the chief placed her hands on her hips and stared inside.
This time I was the one who asked, “What?”
“I’m not an art person,” Chief Gardner said. “But locking paintings in what amounts to little more than an outhouse…”
“I don’t know. Have you seen what they’re hanging at the Walker Art Center these days?”
I rounded the chief’s shoulder and peeked inside the shack. The two paintings were leaning against the wall; they had barely fit inside.
“Despite the problems we’d have prosecuting Carly, I’m still tempted to call the crime scene guys,” the chief said.
“They’re busy.”
“So they are.”
The chief reached inside and pulled out the Whistler. I took the Remington.
“Try not to drop it,” the chief said.
I was more concerned about tearing the canvas with a branch from a tree or shrub as we carried the paintings along the narrow path back to the clearing. Eden was waiting for us at the end of the path; Alex Redding had joined her.
“What the hell is going on?” Eden asked. “Where did those come from? Chief? McKenzie? Where did you find them? Were they stolen? Answer me.”
“It would be improper of me to comment on an ongoing investigation,” Chief Gardner said.
We continued across the clearing. As we approached the castle, Jenness, Nina, and Barbara Finne emerged to join the parade. Jenness seemed concerned that we were carrying a million dollars’ worth of fine art like they were flat-screen TVs that we bought on sale at Kmart. Barbara catalogued them with her camera. Nina was grinning as if this was just another day in her life.
“Where did you find those?” Jenness wanted to know.
“I’ll explain later,” the chief said.
“May I have a word with you, Chief?” Barbara asked.
“Later.”
Instead of heading for the front entrance to the castle and its lobby, Chief Gardner deliberately went around to the back and entered through the kitchen. I followed closely behind her. Once inside the kitchen, she moved to the door that opened on the servant stairs and began to climb them. The stairs were very narrow and it was tough going while carrying the paintings. When she reached the top, she fumbled for the latch.
“I can’t open it,” the chief said.
I was directly behind the chief. Jenness was behind me. The stairs were so narrow that she couldn’t push past us to unlock the door.
“About halfway up on the right side of the door, there should be a handle,” she said.
“I can’t see it in the dark,” the chief said. “Oh wait…” I heard the door click open. “I got it.”
Chief Gardner passed through the doorway and carried the Whistler down the corridor to the art gallery. The door was shut and yellow crime scene tape blocked her path. She rested the painting against the wall, removed the tape, opened the door, and carried the Whistler inside. She didn’t attempt to mount it; merely leaned it against the wall under the space where it had been hanging. I did the same with the Remington.
“Safe and sound,” the chief said. “Although, when you think about it, the castle’s security is a joke. If I was an insurance company, I’d be very upset. Might even raise my rates.”
We stepped back into the corridor. It was crowded with Eden, Alex, Jenness, Nina, and Barbara. Questions came to us from all sides, mostly concerning how the paintings got from here to there and back again. Chief Gardner’s answers remained vague. I said nothing at all, although I did give Nina a wink. She smiled and shook her head as if to say “Really, McKenzie?”
“Carly,” Eden announced. “It was Carly, wasn’t it? She killed Ben and stole the paintings because we voted against selling the castle.”
“No.” It was the only definitive answer that Chief Gardner had offered. “She did not.”
“Prove it.”
“I already have.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I do,” Anna said. “It is a pity, though.”
I was startled yet again by her presence. She seemed to possess an uncanny facility for appearing seemingly out of nowhere.
“What does that mean—a pity?” Eden asked. “Do you want her to be guilty?”
Apparently, she’s willing to accuse her sister-in-law of murder, yet is outraged when someone else does, my inner voice said.
“Don’t you?” Anna asked. “William of Occam relentlessly wielded the proposition that the simplest of theories should be preferred to the more complex. It would be so much simpler if we could hold Carly responsible, wouldn’t it? So much more convenient. No one likes Carly.”
“No one likes you, either,” Alex said.
“Please stop,” Jenness said.
“I wear my detractors like a medal,” Anna said.
“You are your own hero—I’m sure that’s what you tell yourself when you’re all alone and you’re always alone, aren’t you, Annie? That’s because you’re such a pill.”
“Stop it,” Jenness said. “Just stop it. You people make me want to cry and I am so tired of crying.”
She pushed past the small crowd and moved down the corridor. Nina gave me a shrug as if to say “this is my life now” and joined her friend. Anna allowed them both a healthy head start before following. Eden and Alex waited until she was nearly to the staircase before they trailed in her footsteps. Barbara Finne remained behind.
“Deidre,” she said.
“Barb.”
“I would like to interview you on the record.”
“I have nothing to tell you right now.”
“The sheriff has been doing a lot of telling; I just want to make sure I get the facts straight.”
The chief rubbed her eyes and face as if the few hours of sleep she had the night before weren’t nearly enough.
“What did Doogie have to say?” she asked.
“He said he has faith in you.”
“Whaddya know, Dee,” I said. “You’ve made a friend.”
“He said that after he assembled the county-city joint task force, he personally put you in charge of the investigation because of your many years of experience investigating homicides for the Minneapolis Police Department.”
“Meaning he’ll get the credit when we make an arrest and I’ll get the blame if we don’t,” the chief said.
“He said he expects an arrest within twenty-four hours.”
“When did he say that?”
“Eight twenty this morning.”
I glanced at my watch and did the math.
“So you have eighteen hours and forty-two minutes left,” I said. “Easy-peasy.”
“Barbara,” the chief said. “When this is over I promise I will give you a very long interview on the record. You can ask me anything you want.”
“I look forward to it.”
“In the meantime, what do you have for me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who have you interviewed? What did they say?”
“I’m not sure it’s proper for you to ask me that,” Barbara said. “An impartial press…”
“Girl, help a sister out. I only have eighteen hours…”
The chief looked at me and I looked at my watch.
“And forty minutes,” I said.
“Eighteen hours and forty minutes to solve the case,” the chief said. “How time flies when you’re having fun.”
“I spoke to Ed and Marian Crawford before I came out to the castle,” Barbara said. “They’re heartbroken but they have a harvest to worry about, that’s what Ed told me. Rain in the long-term forecast; no time to waste. He also has an alibi.”
“You asked for an alibi?”
“No, Ed sort of volunteered that he and Marian were in Willmar last night for a dinner put on by the Kandiyohi County Corn and Soybean Growers Association.”
“Okay.”
“I interviewed Eden and Alex Redding at length, too. They said that they were asleep when the murder took place.”
A likely story, my inner voice said.
“They’re claiming that the timing makes the Sons of Europa a likely suspect in the murder of their brother,” Barbara added.
“Swell,” I said.
“But they’re also willing to give the justice system time to act before they make any accusations.”
“Swell, again.” I said.
“Do me a favor, Barb,” Chief Gardner said. “When you send out your daily briefing, don’t mention the Sons.”
“Is there a good reason for that?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not going to tell me what it is.”
“With a little luck, we’ll be able to do that interview before you go to press next Wednesday.”
“I’m going to hold you to that, Chief.”
“By the way, have you seen Olivia Redding?”
“She was in the computer room off the lobby a half hour ago. She’s refused to answer my questions, too. She said if there’s anything I need to know, I should ask the chief of police.”