And I am right,
And you are right,
And all is right as right can be!
—CHORUS, The Mikado
Home had never looked so good as it did that day. For that matter, the house hadn’t looked so good for a long time. It was past noon when Joan, Andrew, and Fred arrived for a celebratory lunch. Walt was already halfway through the undercoat on the new porch.
“Sorry I didn’t get over to your office to show you the paint chips,” he said. “I figured I could prime it first and catch you later. And I wondered, while I’m painting the porch, you want me to put a fresh coat on the front door?”
“Why not?” Joan said, feeling reckless. “I think red, don’t you?”
“Sure thing. I’ll bring those chips this afternoon.” Walt didn’t bat an eye, not even at the red mud she was wearing.
Andrew and Fred took over the kitchen while Joan went up to shower and change. Mighty nice to have men you can trust, she thought while she let the water pound her and then wrapped her ankle in the wide Ace bandage she still had from after the tornado. But she didn’t expect to find pink roses on the kitchen table when she came down. Someone had arranged them in her best crystal vase and set the table with her wedding china.
“Where did these come from?” She bent and inhaled their sweetness.
Andrew looked up from whatever he was concocting today. “One of the neighbors saw the police car and came over. She asked if there was trouble, and if she could do anything.”
“I told her yes,” Fred said. “Then I traded her gossip for roses. You’re going to be a hero, you know that.” He pulled out a chair, seated her, and poured her a cup of steaming coffee that smelled almost as good as the roses.
Andrew took a tossed salad out of the refrigerator. Then he carried a platter piled high with buttered toast, crisp bacon, and scrambled eggs with little peppers to the table.
“Fred’s been telling me all about it,” he said.
Oh, it’s Fred now. Well, why not?
“You didn’t say you disarmed him and broke his leg.”
“I didn’t even tell Fred that.” Joan dug in, suddenly ravenous. “Andrew, this is wonderful.” He beamed.
“Didn’t need to,” Fred said. “Virgil gave me a real earful. He seems to think you’re a dangerous woman.”
“And a smart one,” Andrew said. “Even if you did think I’d be dumb enough to dive into a quarry. You ought to know me better than that, Mom.”
“I do, I do.” It was true. “Years of worrying about you and Rebecca took over. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. How did you figure all that out about Virgil?”
“I almost didn’t. But Esther Ooley had just told me about the case Virgil settled out of court and how he didn’t do his own concrete work. Then, while he was driving me out to the quarry—he told me you were drowning out there, Andrew, and I believed him!—he talked to me about quarries to keep me calm. He said he had to get the gravel for his concrete business from a different quarry. I didn’t put those two things together until we didn’t find anyone there and he wouldn’t take me back to the hospital. Then he sent Zach away and picked up a big rock. I finally caught on, and I ran. While I was sitting there after I knew I was safe, I started remembering all kinds of things. Like that conversation he had with David. It was kind of like the honor system, Andrew. David was giving Virgil a chance to clear his name. Like the dukes under the witch’s curse, he died because he was too good. And Virgil almost got away with it.”
“I believed him, too,” Fred said, and patted her hand again. “Funny, how you believe what you expect to hear. Like old Mrs. Snarr. She wanted us to arrest Shoals after her roof blew off in the storm. I couldn’t do that, of course. But I didn’t blame him for a minute. I told her it was tornado damage, even though none of our spotters said the twister touched down where she lives. Mrs. Snarr always blows things out of proportion. This time she just might be right.” He took a bite of eggs and saluted the cook.
“I don’t get it,” Andrew said. “The guy got stabbed with a dagger, right? But a little while ago you said something about an awl in Zach’s toolbox. What does that have to do with it?”
Fred quickly explained that there had been two weapons, and that the autopsy had made it clear that Putnam had been dead of a wound made by something like an awl before he was stabbed again with the dagger, after he was already dead. “Only question was why. At first I thought there were two attackers, but your mom’s idea made more sense, except for one little problem.”
“What’s that?”
“She suggested that the second stabbing was to hide the first one, so we’d let the killer—Shoals, as it turns out—take off with the awl that really did the job. Trouble was, I couldn’t see how there’d be time for one person to do both without being spotted.”
“I still can’t,” Joan said.
“Wait till you hear this. While you were upstairs just now I checked one bit of the story Shoals gave us before we suspected him. He said he sat over on stage right and knew when to open the curtain by the sound of the music. He left out the fact that he relayed a signal from Biggy, the stage manager, to your conductor, so she’d know when to start. So Shoals controlled that time we’ve been so worried about. It was easy for him to pick up the awl from Putnam’s toolbox and the dagger from the prop box. He killed Putnam and planted the dagger in his back between when he got the signal and when he passed it on.”
“And no one saw him?” Andrew asked.
“No one was looking. Once Biggy gave the signal, he was watching the stairs and the chorus, not the stage. He couldn’t see Putnam from there even if he’d been looking. When I asked just now, both Biggy and the conductor confirmed that the music started late that night.”
“That’s right!” Joan remembered now. “After you and I talked I just made it into the pit, and then we waited forever, it seemed.”
“Both the stage manager and the conductor figured it was the other one. No one thought of Shoals, and no one mentioned it to us. If Shoals had just taken that awl home with him instead of palming it off on Yoder, he’d have been home free.”
“Never mess with Mom,” Andrew said, grinning.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Fred said, with a slow smile that reached his eyes and melted Joan. He reached for her hand. “I have every intention of messing with your mom for a long, long time.”