Some Like It Hawk (35 page)

I heard someone squelching through the mud at the bottom of the ladder. And then a shoe scraping on one of the treads.

Could he hear me as well as I could hear him? If he could, he might be planning to ambush me when I reached the top of the ladder. I paused long enough to wipe the sweat off my right hand and get a better grip on the gun.

I reached the bottom of the ladder only to see a foot disappearing at the top.

I ducked back into the tunnel and was peering up to see what happened next when I heard a report that sounded like a gunshot, a low bass growl, a human howl, and then frenzied barking from Spike.

“What is he doing to Spike?” I muttered, and scrambled up the ladder. I managed to drop Hamish’s gun in the process. It went splat in the mud at the bottom of the shaft. Was it still usable? I didn’t climb back down to find out, but leapt out of the open trapdoor.

Spike was fine. Lieutenant Wilt was not. He was sprawled on his stomach with Tinkerbell standing on his back, growling in a deep rumble whenever he twitched a muscle. Spike was dancing around the pair of them, barking in triumph.

“Good dog!” I said. “Stay! Guard him!”

I considered stopping to tie Wilt up. But that would take time. And I had no idea how much or little time I had. He was safe with the dogs for now. If Spike took a few chunks out of him, I didn’t think anyone would complain.

I patted down Wilt’s pockets. I couldn’t find anything that looked like a detonator device. Only his wallet and his cell phone. Of course, I had no idea what a detonator device looked like. Maybe he could do it with his cell phone. I put the wallet back and pocketed the phone.

Or maybe he had it on a timer.

“How are you detonating the courthouse?” I asked.

His answer was singularly uninformative, and if he’d uttered it on network television it would have come out as one long bleep.

I whirled to see if there was anyone else in the tent to help. No, apparently they’d gone off to watch the fireworks, leaving the dogs to mind the trapdoor. They hadn’t even tidied up—the whole tent was littered with stuff from the history pageant. A British redcoat’s uniform. Several oversized quill pens. Assorted reproduction guns.

Guns. I should go and retrieve Hamish’s gun. Maybe that would make Wilt more cooperative. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to brave the tunnel again.

An idea struck me. I grabbed one of the stage guns—a sleek musket with a bayonet attached to the muzzle. I ran to stand where Wilt could see me.

“Let’s try again. How were you planning to detonate the device?” I asked. I shoved the bayonet right next to his eyes, so he could see it, but I hoped a little too close for him to see that it wasn’t sharpened.

He looked up at me and grinned.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Given time, I could probably have extracted the information from him, with Tinkerbell’s and Spike’s help. But time might be the one thing we didn’t have. There could be a timer. Or some third confederate with a detonator.

I raced out of the tent.

Rose Noire was standing about ten feet away.

“Call the chief!” I shouted to her. “They’re planning to blow up the courthouse!”

“Who?” She looked at me strangely, and I realized I was still holding the musket.

“Just tell him!” I said. “It could go up any minute!”

She pulled out her cell phone and began punching buttons.

I ran toward the courthouse. The wide marble steps were packed with people. People were standing on the plaza at the top of the steps, and the street below was also crowded with people.

“Everybody out!” I shouted. “Evacuate! Evacuate!” I repeated it a couple of times, and I wasn’t even sure anyone heard me.

I spotted Aida at the top of the steps. I raced up to her, earning quite a few harsh words from the people I bumped into or stepped on.

“The Evil Lender has wired the courthouse to blow,” I shouted in her ear. “We need to get these people off the steps. And Stanley Denton’s inside.”

Aida sent another deputy inside to look for Denton and began trying to help me. But we didn’t make much headway until Seth Early figured out what we were trying to do and deployed Lad, his Border collie. Lad’s efforts tipped the scales in our favor. Within minutes, he had several hundred tourists on their feet and moving. And when Aida took out her service revolver and fired several warning shots into the air, the tourists really took off.

Then two police cars pulled up, sirens shrieking and lights flashing, and Sammy and Vern Shiffley leaped out and helped guide the flocks of tourists into a more orderly evacuation. We had the steps clear and were working on the road when suddenly the music reached a huge crescendo and an enormous “boom!” shook the air.

I dropped to the ground and covered my head, hoping a huge chunk of courthouse wasn’t going to fall on me.

Then I felt someone shake my arm.

“It’s okay, Meg.” Aida. “It’s only the cannons and the fireworks.”

I lifted my head and looked around. Dozens of people, like me, had dropped to the pavement to shelter in place.

I rolled over onto my back and watched the firework show. I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as I normally would have. But when it was all over and the courthouse was still in one piece, I got up, still a little shaky on my feet, and nodded my agreement when I overheard several townspeople say that this had been the most exciting Fourth in years.

Chapter 44

“At least you did get to see the fireworks,” Michael said, for about the seventeenth time. I didn’t mind. I’d figured out right away that what he would have said, if little ears were not around to hear, was “Thank God you weren’t shot, buried alive, or blown up.”

And it was nice, sitting quietly with Michael and the twins in a corner of our tent—now temporarily the chief’s crime scene headquarters. The former forensic tent was serving as a field hospital where Dad and several doctors from Caerphilly Hospital could patch up all the minor injuries people had incurred while being stampeded off the courthouse steps. And a squad of FBI agents had commandeered Randall’s office tent. I was looking forward to hearing how they happened to be so close by that they could show up less than half an hour after the end of the concert. And odds were I would hear—the tent was buzzing with people dashing out to tie up the evening’s loose ends and then dashing back in to report on them.

“Fah-wah!” Jamie was wiggling excitedly on my lap.

“Yes, you saw the fireworks,” I said.

“More!” Josh demanded, from his perch on Michael’s shoulder.

“More fah-wah!” Jamie agreed.

I was afraid we’d have a small rebellion on our hands when we told the boys that no, we were going home without any more fireworks. But just then Rob showed up with frozen juice cones to distract them, and within a few minutes both boys were asleep in the pen, using Tinkerbell as a cushion while Spike ate the remains of the cones and licked their sticky faces.

“More ice, Mr. Denton?” Mother asked. I wasn’t sure if she was offering to freshen his tea or replenish the ice pack he was holding on the bump on his head.

“I’m fine, thanks,” he said.

He still looked a little shaky to me, but he’d assured us he didn’t need to lie down.

“I want to hear everything that happened after that jerk sidelined me,” he said whenever we tried to send him over to the hospital tent.

And he was looking better than when they’d first brought him out of the courthouse. Dad kept popping in to check on him, and was still insisting that Denton stay with him and Mother overnight. “So I can watch for any signs of concussion,” he’d said. But knowing Dad, I assumed he was less worried about Denton’s health than interested in hearing war stories from a real private eye.

The chief strode in and slumped into a plastic lawn chair. Randall followed on his heels.

“Good Lord, what a night,” the chief said. “The bomb squad from Richmond is finally here, and they say it’ll take them all night and maybe into tomorrow. Apparently Wilt snuck in while we were evicting the mimes and wired that building six ways to Sunday.”

“How come Meg and I didn’t see any sign of it when we searched the courthouse?” Denton asked.

“They didn’t do anything on the second or third floors,” the chief said. “They mainly hit the furnace room and the part of the basement they could reach, and apparently they did that at the last minute, while you two were upstairs. They may have put some stuff outside, near the foundations. We’ll find out soon enough. Incidentally, he was going to set it off with his cell phone. Thank God Meg was sharp enough to take it away from him.”

He’d have been thankful in any case, but two of his grandchildren had been in the crowd that Lad, Aida, and I had shooed off the courthouse steps.

“Where is that damned snoop?” Muriel Slatterly strode into the room. She looked around, frowning as if searching for someone who’d stiffed her on his check. Her eyes fell on Denton, and her frown intensified. She stalked over and stood over him, glowering.

“Here,” she said finally, tossing something into his lap.

A small cardboard take-out box. Denton opened it, his fingers fumbling with eagerness. Inside were three slices of pie—apple, blueberry, and pecan.

“On the house, this time,” she said. “On account of your helping save the town. And you can have the space if you want it, but board’s not included.”

With that, she strode out.

“Space?” I asked.

“The vacant office space over the diner,” Denton said. He had picked up the fork Muriel included in the box and was hovering indecisively between the three slices of pie. “I’ve got no family ties in Staunton, and I hate the winters. Been thinking of relocating to someplace closer to D.C. and Richmond. Someplace that gets a lot less snow. I expect Caerphilly will work just fine.”

He finally stabbed his fork decisively into the blueberry pie and leaned back to chew with his eyes closed and a blissful expression on his face. Convenience and climate my foot. Clearly Muriel’s cooking was the real attraction.

I glanced around the tent to see that several other people were concealing grins. And the chief wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding an enormous yawn.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Chief?” Randall said. “Nothing to do tonight but watch the bomb crew and the FBI work. I can call and wake you if they ask any questions I can’t answer.”

The chief frowned for a moment, and then his face cleared.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll head out in a few minutes, as soon as I clear up a few more things. Thank you kindly, Randall.”

“Just why were the FBI in town?” I asked. “Because we know they couldn’t possibly have shown up so fast unless they were here already.”

“In hot pursuit of our ex-mayor, I expect,” Randall said. “They’re from the financial crimes unit. Apparently they were thrilled to find out he was back in their jurisdiction.”

“And do we know why he came back?” I asked. “And where—”

“This is incredible!”

Festus Hollingsworth had arrived. As soon as I’d realized that the fireworks were over with and the town was still in one piece, I’d borrowed Aida’s cell phone to make two calls—one to Michael, and then one to Festus, to tell him what we’d found.

His parents would definitely never forgive me.

And then, before I handed the phone back, I’d made a quick call to Kate Blake, offering her—and her only—an exclusive interview.

“But not until tomorrow,” I’d added.

“I’ll be there at seven,” she’d said.

“And I’ll let you in at nine.”

And even nine would come much too early. Assuming she waited till morning. I just hoped she wouldn’t show up tonight. But I’d wanted to stay until Festus arrived.

“And I’m very interested in hearing the answer to Meg’s question,” Festus said. “But first, do you have all the crooks safely in custody?”

“I can’t swear we’ve got all of them,” the chief said. “But we’ve already sent Mr. Wilt and Mr. Hamish Pruitt down to be locked up in Richmond. I don’t want to entrust them to Clay County. Everyone there must have known the ex-mayor was hiding out there for weeks, and not a one of them had the decency to tell us.”

“Maybe we should find a new home for all our prisoners,” Randall said. “The Goochland County sheriff’s a friend, right? We could check with him.”

“We could,” the chief said. “After all, we’ll also need someplace to put Mr. Fisher and Mr. George Pruitt—we just picked them both up for questioning.”

“Were they all in on it?” I asked.

“We might be a while sorting that out,” the chief said. “Right now it looks as if Hamish and Mr. Fisher cooked up the phony contract, either on orders from our ex-mayor or with his full knowledge. We could have a mite of trouble proving that, of course.”

“I doubt it,” Festus said. “I’d be astonished if we don’t find e-mails back and forth, especially after George fled to Mexico.”

“Let’s hope so,” the chief said. “Hamish was definitely the killer. Ms. Brown caught him working on his forgery, and he was terrified she’d blow the whistle on him. He claims he doesn’t remember what happened next, but I think we can guess. He lured Ms. Brown to the basement on some pretext and tried to solve both his problems with one bullet.”

“But how did he get out afterward without being seen?” I asked.

“He didn’t,” the chief said. “He ran up the back stairs and hid in the furnace room until the guard had raced past him into the basement. Then he popped out into the lobby and managed to look so helpless and terrified that one of the guards took pity on him and hustled him out the back door. They all knew him, apparently because he would sneak in regularly to confer with Mr. Fisher.”

“And to work on his forgery,” I said. “Strange that the guard didn’t think to mention it when you questioned him.”

“He thought we already knew,” the chief said. “He said he’d told his superior officer—that would be Mr. Wilt—and assumed Mr. Wilt informed us. A bit short on common sense and long on blind obedience, these guards.”

“And instead of telling you, Wilt dashed off to become an accessory after the fact?” I asked.

“It looks that way,” the chief said. “Supposedly, Hamish skulked down the handicapped ramp while all eyes were focused on the main steps, and hid his bloodstained clothes in the Hamishburger booth, from which we have now retrieved them. And while Hamish may have suggested blowing up the courthouse, it was Mr. Wilt who had the expertise in demolition, according to his military record. Festus is right—with any luck, an examination of their phone, text, and e-mail records will prove enlightening.”