Some Like It Hawk (8 page)

“Yes, sir,” Sammy said. He loped off.

“Meg, if you don’t mind, can you keep an eye on that back stairway till I can get another deputy in here?” the chief said. “While you’re there, call your brother. You heard what I just told Sammy—brief him.” I nodded and pulled out my cell phone as I took my place at the bottom of the stairs. I dialed Rob, but his phone rang on unanswered.

“Randall—you said that newspaper photographer was in here?” the chief was asking.

“Taking pictures the whole time,” Randall answered, with a nod.

“Let’s get his film,” the chief said. “I want to see his pictures.”

“These days a lot of those fellows use digital,” Randall said.

“Then I need whatever he’s storing the photos on,” the chief said. “I could have an officer seize his camera, but maybe you could handle it more diplomatically.”

“Can do,” Randall said.

Rob’s phone finally went to voice mail.

“Call me,” I said. “ASAP.”

“Make sure he understands we’re not trying to take them away from him,” the chief said. “He can have his camera back as soon as we get copies of his pictures, but we need to see everything he’s taken so far today.”

“As soon as I find him,” Randall said.

“Check with Vern,” the chief said. “By now he should have the folks from the
Star-Trib
rounded up along with all the guards. I told him to keep the witnesses in the big auditorium tent.”

“Roger,” Randall said. “Soon as you’ve got some help down here, I’ll go over there and do what I can to make sure the media doesn’t get their version of the day’s events from the Flying Monkeys.”

He turned to leave and had to pause in the doorway as my father burst in with his old-fashioned black doctor’s bag in hand.

Chapter 9

“Sorry it took me so long,” Dad said, as he trotted over to where Colleen Brown’s body lay.

“You beat the ambulance,” the chief said.

Just barely. The EMTs swept in behind Dad, laden with high-tech equipment that I could have told them was going to be useless. They could probably see it, too, but like Dad, they were wearing determined looks.

If they were going to go through the motions of trying to revive the poor woman, I didn’t want to watch. I pulled out my cell phone and while I hit redial, I climbed a few steps up the stairway, to the point where I had to crane my neck to see Colleen Brown.

“She’s past anything we can do,” I heard Dad say, in a soft, discouraged voice.

This time Rob answered his phone.

“Where were you?” I snapped.

“At the other end of the basement,” he said. “You have to be up close to the barrier to get a cell signal down here.”

After relaying the chief’s instructions to Rob, I climbed up a few more steps. The stone walls and steps made the stairway curiously more comforting than the cinder block and linoleum of the basement. Or maybe I just wanted a little more distance between me and the crime scene. I called Michael.

“Meg! What’s going on?”

“There’s been a murder,” I said. “Someone who worked for the Evil Lender. Randall Shiffley and I were practically the first ones on the scene, so I might be tied up for a while being interviewed and processed and whatever.”

“What can I do to help out here?”

“Keep the boys safe. Get someone to change my sign so it says next blacksmithing demonstration to be announced. Plan something for dinner that’s not fried chicken, fried fish, or barbecue.”

“How about pizza?”

“Pizza would be excellent.”

We talked for a few more minutes, arranging all the small details of our afternoon and our evening. A welcome dose of the normal and mundane before I returned to the grim business at hand.

By the time I finished, another deputy had arrived to take my post.

“You can head over to the forensic tent,” he said.

The forensic tent. This morning we’d been calling it the town hall tent. As loudly as I used to complain that nothing much changed in Caerphilly from one decade to the next, I realized that I rather missed the quiet old days.

“Dr. Smoot!” Since climbing halfway up the back stairs I’d heard only indistinct sounds from below, but the chief’s bellow carried marvelously.

“I gather the medical examiner has arrived,” I said.

“Acting medical examiner,” the deputy said. Was he only imitating the chief, or did the entire department share the chief’s disapproval of the eccentric Dr. Smoot? “And arrived? That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Smoot!” People in next door Clay County probably heard that. I had been planning to go up the back stairs and out through the furnace room, but my curiosity kicked in and I headed back down to the basement.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw that Colleen Brown’s body was still there. Dad, Randall, several deputies, and the EMTs were anxiously staring at the chief, who stood at the bottom of the stairs with his hands on his hips and a thunderous look on his face.

“Smoot! Damn it, man, get down here!”

I was puzzled for a moment, until I remembered that our acting medical examiner suffered from crippling claustrophobia. He was probably balking at coming down the narrow, winding basement steps.

We all stared at the doorway for a few more moments.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have told him to leave his cape at home,” Randall said.

“We’re going to look foolish enough as it is,” the chief said. “We don’t need the
Star-Tribune
doing a human interest story on the town whose medical examiner thinks he’s a vampire.”

“He doesn’t think he’s a vampire,” Randall said. “He just likes to dress up like one. And it helps him with the claustrophobia.”

“He can dress any way he likes on his own time,” the chief said. “When he’s on the job he should look like a blasted professional. And if he can’t walk down a circular stairway or into an elevator without panicking, he should see a therapist, not an exorcist. It’s not as if I can move the crime scene upstairs for him.”

“We’re working on it,” Randall said.

“Moving the crime scene upstairs?” I asked.

“Getting your father appointed as a local medical examiner,” Randall said. “In the meantime, is there anything we can do?”

“I’ve already pronounced her dead,” Dad said. “It would be nice, of course, to have your medical examiner inspect the crime scene, but Horace and I have done so.”

“Looks a blessed sight better in court if your ME can bring himself to show up at the crime scene,” the chief said. “Of course, it also looks a blessed sight better if your ME’s not a complete nincompoop.”

Everyone looked uncomfortable. But I noticed that no one spoke up to say, “Oh, Smoot’s not so bad.”

“You’re going down to the hospital with the body, I assume,” the chief said to Dad.

Dad nodded.

“Can’t you find a way to take him with you?”

“Dr. Smoot?” Dad asked. “Why?”

“Surely he’s certifiable,” the chief said. “If he’s locked up in a psych ward somewhere I won’t have to explain his absence.”

“Yes, but it could call into question all of his recent findings,” Dad said. “Cause the state medical examiner a lot of extra work. And these days the bar for involuntary commitment is a lot higher than you’d think.”

“Heat exhaustion,” I said.

They turned to me with puzzled looks on their faces.

“You could admit Dr. Smoot to the hospital for heat exhaustion,” I said. “Even if he followed orders and left his cape home, you know he’s probably dressed in all black. And then running up the courthouse steps in the sun? An invitation to heatstroke.”

The chief and Dad looked at each other.

“I could give it a try.” Dad sounded dubious.

“I’ll help you.” I started for the stairs. “We’ll tell him he can either come down the stairs or pretend to have heat exhaustion.”

Once we reached the courthouse lobby, I saw Dr. Smoot cowering against the wall opposite the stairs. He was dressed in black slacks and a black turtleneck sweater, making him probably the only person in the county dressed even less suitably than the guards for heat in the high nineties. I revised my plan of action. Ordering him to do anything was probably fruitless.

“Dr. Smoot, are you all right?” I asked.

“I’ll just wait up here,” he said. “You can bring the body up here.”

“I’ve already certified her death,” Dad said. “Why don’t you just come along with me, and we’ll examine her together down at the hospital?”

“You’re trying to trick me!” Dr. Smoot shouted. He was scrabbling against the wall behind him as if looking for a doorknob. “You’re going to lead me down into that tunnel!”

“It’s not you we’re trying to trick.” I glanced around ostentatiously, as if making sure no one could overhear, and then dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s the chief. He’s insisting you come down. But Dad and I have a plan.”

“I’m going to admit you to the hospital with possible heat exhaustion,” Dad whispered.

Smoot didn’t say anything, but he cocked his head to one side and stopped clawing at the wall.

“Help us out a bit with a few symptoms,” I said. “That way we can keep you out of harm’s way until all this crawling through tunnels is over with, and nobody will be the wiser.”

“You’re experiencing weakness, profuse sweating, muscle cramps, headache, and nausea,” Dad prompted. “I think we can skip the actual vomiting. If you can faint plausibly, that would add a lovely note of authenticity.”

“But don’t do it unless you can carry it off properly,” I said. “Nothing worse than an obviously fake faint.”

Dr. Smoot was nodding furiously.

“Here comes the chief!” Dad hissed.

The chief popped out of the stairway door. Recognizing his cue, Dr. Smoot collapsed against the wall, clutching his head with one hand and his stomach with the other, and uttered several sepulchral groans.

“Good heavens,” the chief exclaimed. “What the dickens is wrong with the man now?”

“Heat exhaustion.” Dad patted Dr. Smoot on the shoulder, and Dr. Smoot sagged against him as if all his bones had suddenly turned to jelly. Dad staggered slightly under the weight. “I’m taking him down to the hospital ASAP,” Dad puffed.

“Vern, help Dr. Langslow,” the chief said. “Dr. Smoot, you just take all the time you need to get well.”

One of the deputies hurried to support Dr. Smoot’s other side, and the three of them lurched out the courthouse door.

“All the time you need,” the chief repeated under his breath.

We heard cheering outside.

“What the dickens?” the chief muttered.

“Come on, Meg,” Randall said. “Time we checked out how your cousin is doing with the Flying Monkeys.”

“Time I did the same,” the chief said. He strode briskly out of the door, and I got the impression he preferred arriving at the forensic tent first, so I paused to give him a few moments. Randall stood beside me.

“We’re going to need to help the chief on this one,” he said.

“The chief might not like that idea,” I replied.

“I figured as much,” he said. “And I don’t want to pull rank on him, but I will if I have to.”

More cheering from outside. Presumably greeting the chief’s appearance. I was willing to bet he wasn’t liking that much, either.

“So let’s discuss it at tonight’s Steering Committee meeting,” Randall added.

I suppressed a tired sigh. Publicly, the Steering Committee was the group tasked with organizing and implementing the ongoing Caerphilly Days celebration. Its covert mission was to ensure that the celebration included a sufficient number of noisy attractions to cover the opening and closing of the trapdoor. As one of the most prolific generators of noise, I’d been recruited to join. The committee was important, fascinating, rewarding—and, like all committees, incredibly time consuming. I’d have resigned long ago if they hadn’t taken to meeting in our library—now, temporarily the fiction room of the Caerphilly public library. Having the meeting that close made it easier to attend, but also a lot harder to weasel out of.

“We had a Steering Committee meeting last night,” I pointed out. “We don’t have one scheduled for tonight.”

“We do now,” Randall said. “And what’s more—”

Another cheer went up outside. Randall’s head snapped toward the door.

“Let’s see what that is, shall we?”

Chapter 10

Randall and I both hurried out the door and over to the top of the steps, where we had a panoramic view of the town square. A great many faces, tourist and local, looked back up at us from behind a barricade made of sawhorses and crime scene tape. Patrolling up and down the sidewalk just inside the barricade were several people wearing the red, white, and blue armbands we’d devised to identify the auxiliaries—citizens recruited by the Steering Committee and deputized by the chief to help with crowd control when the throngs attending Caerphilly Days grew unusually large.

Another cheer greeted our arrival, and at least a dozen digital cameras or cell phones captured it for posterity. I could see Chief Burke’s stocky figure striding across the cordoned-off street. Probably still scowling. Randall responded to the cheering with smiles and waves, and it continued rather longer this time.

“Chief’s going to love this,” I said. “A cheering audience for his investigation.”

“Soooo-EEEEEE!”

The amplified hog call rang out.

Normally our local hog callers were sticklers for competing the old-fashioned way, without microphones, but they’d agreed to sacrifice the purity of their art to the cause of making as much noise as possible. I could see people’s heads whipping back and forth, torn between the certain entertainment of the hog-calling contest and the dubious pleasure of standing in the hot sun waiting to see if something interesting would happen here at the courthouse.

I hoped the hog calling would win before they brought the body out.

Randall waved one last time and began striding down the steps.

“Mr. Mayor! Mr. Mayor!”

I watched as Randall deftly fielded questions from the few journalists present—the
Caerphilly Clarion
’s one general purpose reporter, a gawky sophomore from the college rag, a stringer from the
Richmond Times-Dispatch
, and our two
Star-Trib
witnesses, who had apparently eluded the deputies on the way to the tent. Randall managed to say nothing in particular with great charm and earnestness, so that the press all focused on him and didn’t even notice when the EMTs wheeled the gurney with Colleen Brown’s body down the handicapped ramp that zigzagged along the right flank of the courthouse. Then Randall cut the two
Star-Trib
reporters out of the herd and guided them gently toward the forensic tent.