“Let’s get that statement of yours,” the chief said. “Your grandfather’s given me temporary use of a small office near here.”
He led the way back through the employees-only door and into the office. Clearly its regular occupant was a dedicated small-mammal keeper—the walls of the office were covered with smiling pictures of a tall, shaven-headed African American man proudly holding up meerkats, chipmunks, squirrels, moles, voles, rabbits, gophers, and a seemingly endless variety of mice and rats. I was momentarily distracted when I noticed that the foot-high Christmas tree on his desk was covered with a variety of meerkat-themed ornaments.
“So what are you doing here,” I said in a mock stern tone as I took one of the absent keeper’s comfortable guest chairs. “Here I give you three perfectly good suspects to interrogate, and I find you hanging around our party, looking for more.”
“Ms. Fawn is over at Caerphilly General under psychiatric observation,” the chief said. “And I can’t very well interview the other two until they’ve lawyered up. Ms. Koenigslutter’s attorney is still working on arranging local counsel until he can fly down here himself, and Mr. Runk’s attorney is driving up from Richmond as we speak.”
“Okay, I know Cat Lady probably isn’t a prime suspect,” I said. “But is Koenigslutter still in the running? I thought you found Runk’s fingerprints on the hockey stick.”
“We did.” He pursed his lips, then sighed and continued. “But in some places they’re smudged. In a way that suggests someone wearing gloves handled the hockey stick after he did.”
“That’s not good,” I said. “Of course, he could have done that himself. What if he put on his gloves after killing Ian, and then picked up the hockey stick for some reason?”
“He could have,” the chief said. “Or he could have had an accomplice who picked up the hockey stick after he dropped it. Or maybe his story is true—what little he said before shutting up and asking for his lawyer. Maybe he took the hockey stick away from Ian, and someone else came along later and killed him with it.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “But not very plausible.”
“A good defense attorney could make it sound plausible enough to raise reasonable doubt in the mind of a jury.” His expression was grim.
And Runk had a very good defense attorney. I thought of pointing out that Runk was already convicted of one murder, and would be serving time for that. Unless, of course, his defense attorney managed to get the DNA evidence thrown out. In that case, the strength of the chief’s case might be the only thing keeping a dangerous man behind bars.
“Once their lawyers get here I’ll see what I can get out of the two of them,” the chief said. “Who knows? Maybe they were in it together, and I can pit them against each other. Given the vehemence of Ms. Koenigslutter’s antipathy for Mr. Meredith, I certainly consider her a viable suspect, either for the role of his accomplice or as the actual killer. For now, while I’m waiting to talk to them, I’m trying to find out how both of them knew enough to come to Caerphilly in the first place. The Canadians seem like very nice people, all of them, but someone has been giving inside information about Mr. Meredith’s whereabouts to people who aren’t very fond of him. And they’re the most likely suspects.”
“Everyone at Mutant Wizards knew, too,” I said.
“But the Mutant Wizards employees wouldn’t know about Mr. Runk’s connection to AcerGen,” he said. “Or Ms. Koenigslutter’s.”
“They might if they were true crime aficionados—which a lot of them are, thanks to Kevin.” I explained about the posts I’d seen on the members-only Virginia Crime Time boards.
“Interesting,” he said. “That might explain how Jerosha Fawn found her way here. Not sure about the others. Has Kevin’s podcast covered Runk’s case?”
“No,” I said. “At least not yet. But the members can start discussion boards about any case they’re interested in. A lot of them are pushing for the podcast to cover the Runk case. And they might—when he has time, Kevin sometimes checks out the discussions to get ideas for future episodes.”
“And he didn’t see this?”
“It only went up a few days ago,” I said. “He’s been putting in long hours on the AcerGen project and hasn’t had much time for eating and sleeping, much less going through the hundreds of messages the Virginia Crime Time fans post every day. But I see your point. If Runk is following everything said online about him—and if I were him, I would be—he might have seen from the Virginia Crime Time Facebook page that some of the fans were discussing his case on the members-only message boards, and then he could sign up for them. But that doesn’t explain Ms. Koenigslutter.”
The chief nodded.
“I might have thought that through if I hadn’t been interrupted in mid-think by Runk,” I said.
“It’s still useful,” he said. “If Ms. Koenigslutter was upset with AcerGen, she may have done some web searching to find out more about them. That could have led her to Cyrus Runk and Kevin’s message boards. We can get him to look into his users.”
“They all seem to use screen names,” I said. “I don’t know if he knows that much about any of them. The idea is to build a big community around the podcast, not to do a comprehensive background check on anyone who applies.”
“He may not know much about them right now,” the chief said. “But don’t tell me he doesn’t have ways of finding out about them if he needs to. Tracing their IP addresses and all kinds of things that I don’t even know the name of.”
“True,” I said. “And if we’re putting the AcerGen project on hold, he might have enough time to work on it. Let’s get him started.”
I pulled out my cell phone and called Kevin.
“Almost finished,” he said, in lieu of hello. “And I think I’ve mastered the NiceIce machine.”
“Great,” I said. “Let me know when I can send everyone home. Meanwhile, Chief Burke has a request for you.” I handed the chief my phone and listened in while he explained my find.
Maybe I should have told Kevin myself. From the chief’s side of the conversation I gathered that Kevin was mortified that a key bit of information was lurking inside one of his own proprietary message boards. It wasn’t often I heard either Grandfather or Kevin admitting to a mistake, much less both of them in one day. Then again, I doubt if I could have managed to do quite as good a job as the chief at reassuring Kevin that it was a perfectly natural oversight.
And by the sound of it, the chief definitely considered it possible that Runk and Koenigslutter could be in cahoots. I was relieved to know that they were both safely in jail.
The chief finished his conversation with Kevin, signed off, and handed me back my phone.
“I’m assuming that if your prisoners are still waiting for their lawyers, the odds are they won’t be getting out on bail anytime soon,” I said.
“Not tonight, for sure,” he said. “And not anytime soon if I can help it. Runk’s definitely going back to Buchanan County when we’re done with him. As for Ms. Koenigslutter, of course, there’s no predicting what will happen in a bail hearing, but I have a hard time imagining any of our local judges turning loose someone who’s suspected of bludgeoning someone with a hockey stick.”
“Doesn’t the fact that there are two of them complicate things?”
“It could,” he said. “And as I said, when the case comes to trial, it will certainly make it hard to convict either of them if we haven’t definitively cleared the other by that time. But for now, I’m optimistic. And I think we can all rest easy that the two of them will be spending some time in our jail.”
“If you end up having to turn either of them loose, maybe you could do what Grandfather’s been doing,” I said. “He’s been testing the next generation of his wildlife tracking devices by slipping them into the pockets of unsuspecting friends and family members. It would be nice to get a warning if any of them decide to visit our house again.”
“In the unlikely event that we let any of them out on bail, I’ll be pushing to have them wearing ankle monitors,” he said. “Because, yes, I would like the whole department to have warning if any of them even head out of town in your direction.”
“Grandfather will like that,” I said.
“By the way, Kevin says he’s finished with the NiceIce,” he said. “Does that mean something to you?”
“It means we can send everyone home and let the small mammals catch up on their sleep.”
My announcement that the rink was open was greeted with cheers, and everyone dashed out. Well, everyone except for a posse of relatives who stayed long enough to pack up any leftover food that needed to be taken back to the house.
And Mr. Meredith. He was standing in a corner, holding a white china mug of tea and nibbling half-heartedly on a cookie. A Norwegian Christmas cookie that I knew to be particularly irresistible, so the fact that he wasn’t wolfing it down and dashing over to score a few more spoke volumes for his mood.
“You’re welcome to come over to the house if you’d like to spend a little more time with your staff,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said. “But I think I will go over to the room your mother arranged, at the rectory. It’s not as if I can be of any use to them right now. I was going to see if I could arrange a bus to take them up to Washington tonight, and put them up in a hotel there, but it seems the bus charter companies are as overbooked as the airlines.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’re fine staying with us, and we’ll find a way to get them home somehow.”
“You’re very kind,” he said. “I’m changing the name back.”
“The name?” I wasn’t sure what name he was talking about, or what it had to do with getting the Canadians home.
“AcerGen.” He was staring into his mug as if looking for answers. “It was Ian’s idea. Silly one, if you ask me. I’m changing the name back to Maple Leaf Genealogy.” He looked up at me. “Or does that sound disrespectful?”
“It sounds sensible,” I said. “And maybe it will help people recover from their difficult stay here.”
“Help them forget, you mean,” he said. “Yes. So we will diminish, and go into the north.”
Anyone who copes with heartache by paraphrasing Tolkien is my kind of people, and if he’d looked any less heartbroken I’d have responded with a quote of my own. “All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you” came to mind. But while I was still trying to decide how he’d take it, he sighed, set down his mug and the half-eaten cookie, and shambled out.
I ended up chauffeuring a carload of elderly relatives who came from more southern climes and seemed to consider riding a few miles in a snowstorm in my Toyota to be as perilous as dogsledding in an Antarctic blizzard. Fortunately I distracted them by starting a Christmas carol singalong. Music not only had charms to soothe a savage breast, it also worked brilliantly to distract nervous passengers. So I led them in “Jingle Bells” as we dashed through the snow, followed by all five verses of “Good King Wenceslas.” At some point they figured out that no matter how deep and crisp and even the snow lay round about, the county snowplows weren’t leaving that much of it on the road. On the home stretch, they even got up enough nerve to venture “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”—bellowing out the recurring refrain with a great deal of bravado. Still, I could tell they were greatly relieved when I stopped in the loading zone at the end of our front walk to let them out. And luckily someone—probably Josh and Jamie—had already been busy with snow shovels, so the walk was beautifully clear. The walk, and the driveway, including the lane that led back to the Toyota’s usual parking spot.
As I parked by the barn I couldn’t help thinking that if we got enough coffee or hot chocolate into them, my nervous passengers might actually venture back to the rink to watch a little of the skating before bedtime.
Inside the festivities were going full blast. The crowd was smaller than last night, since most of the relatives who were lodging at Mother and Dad’s or with friends in town had wisely stayed put. But though smaller, the crowd was just as merry—in fact, maybe a little more so, as if we were all doing our best to undo any blight Ian’s murder had cast on our holiday spirits.
And Cousin Nora made a major contribution to the high spirits with her party menu. In addition to cakes, pies, cookies, ice cream, and crème brûlée, she had prepared a special treat for the Canadians.
“Oh, wow!” one of them exclaimed when he walked into the dining room with his plate. “Poutine!”
Soon the kitchen and the living room were filled with partygoers holding plates of poutine. Canadians closing their eyes with ecstasy at the first bite and assuring Nora that she’d gotten it perfect. Americans sampling it and either joining the Canadian enthusiasm or opting to switch to other, more familiar delicacies. Or doing what I did—after trying a small helping of poutine, just to see what it was like, I switched to plain old fries, seasoned with nothing more than sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. I wondered if there was any chance Nora could teach me to make fries as light and crisp and delicious as hers.
Chief Burke and Minerva had given their grandson Adam approval to have a sleepover with Josh and Jamie, and the three of them were out skating under the falling snow. As were several other young cousins and six or seven of the Canadians. We ended up having to make a rule against eating poutine—or anything else—on the ice, but Nora set up a satellite poutine-and-dessert station in the tent by the rink, so when hunger struck the skaters didn’t have to come all the way to the house to fend it off.
The only long faces at the party belonged to a few of the Canadians, who had begun trying to book plane tickets for Toronto and were not having much luck.
“I can’t find anything that doesn’t cost a whole month’s salary,” I overheard one of the young Canadian programmers say to another. “And that’s with two plane changes and the whole thing will fall apart if the first or second flight is even a few minutes late. I’m going to knock off for now. And I think tomorrow I’ll see if I can get a group to go in on a rental car.”
“Good luck with that, too,” his friend said. “The car rental companies are just as overbooked as the airlines.”
“Great,” the first one said. “I hope our hosts are okay with putting us up over Christmas if it comes to that.”
“No way,” I muttered. They were going home if I had anything to say about it. Not that I had any objection to their company, and Michael and I were rather used to having a house full of people over the holidays. But it was Christmas, and they’d want to spend it with their families back in Toronto. I was determined to get them there, even if I had to chauffeur them myself. Although surely I could delegate the driving to someone else. Randall Shiffley might be willing to lend us a truck and driver. Or now that school was out, maybe I could borrow a school bus and recruit someone to drive it.
I’d worry about that tomorrow. It had been a long day—a day that felt like at least three very busy days all rolled into one. I was settled in an easy chair with one of the Poms in my lap, listening to Uncle Wes playing Christmas carols on his harp, and promising myself that in a minute I’d get up and go to bed.
I vaguely recall saying “not just yet” when Michael asked me if I was going up to bed now. And then I must have dozed off. I woke up still in the armchair with a lap full of Pomeranians and a stiff neck from falling asleep with my head at an odd angle. The living room was silent and dark except for the Christmas tree lights and the fading glow of the fire.
I shifted so I could pull my phone out of my pocket. Just past midnight. The witching hour.
Also time for me to go to bed. Past time.
I carefully transferred the Poms from my lap to the floor where they could cuddle up to Tinkerbell, and got up.
Michael had probably gone to bed, assuming I’d follow when the harp concert ended. And he’d probably have made the rounds, as we called it—checked all the doors and windows to make sure the house was secure.
Then again, he’d probably gotten just as little sleep as I had. And even if the chief’s two prime suspects were safely locked up, they weren’t the only bad guys in the world. Christmas was a prime season for burglary. I should make the rounds, just in case.
I went around the living room, checking the windows. Peering out, I could see that we had close to half a foot of snow, with flakes still coming down. A lovely night to be safe indoors. Then I checked the front door. The dining room windows. The kitchen windows. The back door. The library windows. The sunroom door.
“And all through the house,” I murmured as I slowly trudged up the stairs. “Not a creature was stirring, not even a—”
Just then I heard an unearthly shriek.