The Hen of the Baskervilles (16 page)

“Yes, it's one thirty-seven a.m.,” I said. “The murder took place sometime between one fourteen and one nineteen.”

“Oh,” he said. “Where?”

“In the gate between the Midway and the rest of the fair.”

“On my way.”

I hung up.

“You're sure of that time window?” Evidently the chief had been eavesdropping.

I explained about looking at my watch when we'd heard the fox—if it was a fox—and then Michael announcing the time after we'd found the body. And then the chief took me through an account of the entire evening, which didn't take long, since the sum total of what we'd done was to walk up and down the fence for several hours until we'd heard the shriek.

By the time he'd finished with me, Dad and Horace had arrived and were doing forensic things to Brett's body and the surrounding area. Plunkett returned, presumably from setting up his perimeter guards, and leaned against the fence to watch. The chief turned back to me.

“We need to talk to Mrs. Riordan,” the chief said.

“Yeah, you don't have to look far for the culprit on this one,” Plunkett said.

“I can't imagine Molly killing anyone,” I said.

“Not even her no-good, womanizing, hound dog of a husband?” Plunkett asked.

I winced. Molly would hate it that her marital problems had become such common knowledge.

“If you ask me she has good reason to get rid of him,” Plunkett went on.

“And she was getting rid of him, the only sane way,” I said. “They're separated and were getting a divorce.”

I wanted to keep going and say that she had nothing to gain and everything to lose by killing him, but I had no idea if it was true. Would Brett's death help or hurt Molly's efforts to save her farm? That would depend on who inherited Brett's share.

If he hadn't made a will—and he didn't strike me as the kind of guy who thought about messy things like dying—wouldn't Molly inherit his half of the farm? In which case her financial problems would be solved. As long as she could prove she hadn't killed him.

Then again, they hadn't been getting along well for some time. What if Brett, since the separation or even earlier, when things began going wrong, had made a will with someone other than Molly as his beneficiary? Like his mother, who had never approved of Molly. Or the Brett pack, as Molly called her husband's four brothers, whose ongoing skirmishes with the law and an ever increasing number of debt collectors made it obvious that Brett was, God help us, the responsible one in his family.

Or maybe even the new girlfriend? Genette would probably define herself as Brett's fiancée, but I found myself agreeing with Mother's refusal to apply that term to someone who was dating a married man. But Mother's disapproval wouldn't prevent Genette from causing trouble if she was in Brett's will.

I looked up and saw the chief looking at me with a sympathetic expression, as if he'd read my thoughts and understood how painful they were.

“Right now, we just need to talk to Ms. Riordan.” The chief's voice was gentle. “And for that matter, if they're still legally married, we need to notify her of his death. Do you know where she is?”

“Probably in the exhibitors' campground,” I said. “I doubt if she has the money to spend on a hotel room, even if there were plenty available.” The chief nodded. Caerphilly had only two hotels—the expensive five-star Caerphilly Inn, and the Whispering Pines Cabins, which was still trying to overcome its lurid past as a hot-sheets motel. Both of them, plus every B and B and boardinghouse and spare bedroom in the county, had been booked for this week for months. That was why we'd set up the campgrounds. “But I have no idea if she has an RV or a tent or if she's just sleeping in her car,” I added.

“I've got the info from the DMV.” Vern pulled out his radio and spoke into it. “Fred? Aida? I want you to check the parking lot for a vehicle. A 1997 Dodge Caravan. Maroon.” He rattled off a license number, listened for a moment, then looked up. “Chief? What should they do when they find it?”

“I want to interview her myself,” the chief said.

“Take no action,” Vern said into the phone. “Advise me and the chief of your location and sit on the vehicle and its owner.”

Vern strode off in the general direction of the campgrounds, presumably to help with the search. Plunkett looked back and forth between him and the chief a few times, then scurried off after Vern.

“Mind if I use your fair office as my temporary headquarters?” the chief asked. “It's pretty close to my crime scene.”

“Fine with me,” I said. “And I can't imagine Randall would mind. Look—may I go with you when you notify Molly? She'll be terrified if a stranger shows up at her tent or van in the middle of the night. It might help if someone she knows is there.”

The chief studied me with narrowed eyes for a few moments. Then he nodded.

“You will be there solely to help us avoid startling Ms. Riordan and to reassure her that we really are the police,” he said.

I nodded.

“Okay, then.”

We waited a minute or two until another Caerphilly deputy showed up. Then the chief tasked her with supervising the crime scene and we set out for the other end of the fair. We strode in silence, except for the occasional static-filled burst of chatter from the police radio on his belt. I hoped Caerphilly's small but lively criminal community didn't have police radios, because it was pretty clear from the radio traffic that the whole department, plus all the borrowed officers from nearby counties, were converging on the fairgrounds, leaving the sleeping town woefully unprotected.

We arrived at the edge of the informal campground—it had been a cow pasture until Randall began working on the fair project—and stood for a few minutes, gazing over the sea of cars, pickups, vans, RVs, trailers, and tents.

“Whoever did it could just have slipped back here,” I said, in an undertone. “If anyone spotted him, he could just say he was on his way back from the bathroom.”

I indicated the line of blue plastic portapotties along the edge of the field closest to the fair.

“In fact,” I went on. “If I were the killer, I'd make a beeline for the portapotties. As soon as I'm anywhere near them, I have a legitimate reason for being out and about in the night. And maybe a nice place to dump anything I wouldn't want to be caught with. Like a recently fired handgun.”

“Good Lord,” the chief said. We both studied the portapotties in silence for a while.

“Horace might still find it at the crime scene,” he said. He didn't sound optimistic.

“Maybe you could assign searching the portapotties to some of the borrowed deputies,” I suggested.

The chief frowned.

“Like maybe the Clay County ones. Plunkett could supervise.”

“I'll take that under advisement.” He didn't actually smile, but his frown had disappeared.

The chief's phone beeped.

“Yes?” He listened for a few moments. “On my way. Do you know your way around this campground?” he asked me.

“Pretty well.”

“Vern says they're at location Fifteen R,” he said. “Can you find that?”

I nodded, and pointed up at the sign above us, which told us we were at location 1-A. Then I set off down the edge of the campground toward row fifteen.

I'd originally suggested having separate sections of the campgrounds—a motorized section for trailers, RVs, and people sleeping in their vans, and another for tents only. Apparently I was the only one who saw any merit to this idea, and the exhibitors had camped according to how far they wanted to be from the road, the bathrooms, or the fair itself, and who they wanted to camp next to, and what space was still left when they showed up. Each aisle we passed was a motley mixture of everything from pup tents to RVs the size of an aircraft carrier. But I had insisted that we put up location signs, to help people find their way back to their campsites.

I craned my neck when we past the third row, where Rose Noire had camped, but as far down as I could see, the tents and campers were all dark. Good. I hoped she and the boys would sleep through all of this.

We set out down the end of the rows. The chief followed a step or two behind me.

“This is Fifteen,” I said, as I turned into the row.

Now we were walking by campsites. Thank goodness it was past 2:00
A.M.
, and most of the exhibitors were presumably fast asleep. Once we waved as we passed some people sitting around the remnants of a campfire. A little farther along, I heard a noise and a flashlight beam suddenly blinded me. Then it snapped off as suddenly as it appeared.

“Sorry, Meg,” a woman's voice murmured. “Just being careful.”

“No problem,” I murmured back. “Good night.”

Probably a good thing she had spotted me, not the chief. People were expecting to see patrols, but I didn't think people would find the sight of the chief reassuring. Especially not if he was glowering the way he usually glowered when in pursuit of someone who dared break the peace in his county.

Just past the 15-Q sign, I spotted Vern and another deputy standing in the middle of the roadway. Apparently they were waiting until we got there before closing in on 15-R. As we approached, I could see that Vern had unscrewed the other deputy's flashlight and appeared to be trying to fix it.

“What's wrong with the flashlight?” the chief asked.

“Nothing,” Vern said. “But we thought it might be a good idea to look as if we stopped here for a reason. Here you go, Fred.”

He handed the flashlight back to Fred, who pointed it at his shoe and flicked the beam on and off again, very quickly.

Vern, meanwhile, was pointing at a campsite occupied by a dark van and a small tent. It was the last occupied campsite in row fifteen, and not far from the fence surrounding the camp. I wondered if Molly had arrived later than most of the campers or if her frame of mind had made her choose an isolated spot.

“That's her van, and the tent seems to be with it,” he said quietly. “No idea if she's in there.”

“Meg,” the chief said. “You want to knock and see if she's there?”

I nodded and stepped over to the tent. The front flap was zipped, though there was a mesh ventilation window. I tried to peer inside, but it was too dark to see anything. And how does one knock on a tent, anyway? I tapped on the tent pole and spoke as softly as I could.

“Molly?” I called. “It's Meg. Are you there?”

After a few moments, I heard the sound of a zipper and the tent flap opened. Molly peered out.

“Meg? What's wrong?”

She looked anxious, but so would I if someone awakened me at 2:00
A.M.
in a strange place.

“There's bad news,” I said. “I came to help the police find you so they could tell you.”

“Bad news?” Molly tugged the zipper all the way open and glanced beyond me to where the police and the two deputies were standing.

I turned and looked back at the chief. He walked over to stand beside me at the tent.

“It's about your husband,” he said. “I'm afraid he's dead.”

 

Chapter 19

Molly blinked as if she didn't quite understand.

“Dead?” she repeated. “Did he wreck his car again? That's it, isn't it? He's had two DUIs in the last year but nothing seems to—”

“Molly.” I didn't say it very loudly, but it got through to her. She fell silent and looked up at the chief, waiting.

“Your husband was murdered,” the chief said.

“Brett?” Molly looked genuinely baffled. “Who would want to kill Brett?”

“That's what we'd like to find out,” the chief said. “I'd like to talk to you. Can you come down to the fair office with me?”

“Okay,” she said. “Just let me find my shoes and— Wait.”

She suddenly looked completely awake for the first time since she'd opened the tent flap.

“You think I did it, don't you?” she said. “I'm the obvious suspect. The abandoned wife. But you're wrong. I couldn't kill Brett. I couldn't even kick him out. He finally left on his own.”

“Should she have an attorney?” I asked the chief. I was already pulling out my notebook.

“If she wants to have an attorney present—” the chief began.

“No,” she said. “I didn't do it and I have nothing to hide.”

“Here,” I handed her a sheet of paper from my notebook. What did it say about my friends and family that I'd memorized the name and phone number of a local defense attorney?

“May we search your tent and your van?” the chief asked. “It's routine in a murder investigation.”

“Murder?” Molly repeated. “How did he—how was he killed?”

“He was shot,” the chief said.

Molly flinched at his words.

“Oh.” She closed her eyes and remained perfectly still for a few seconds. Then she opened them up again and set her jaw.

“Okay,” she said. “Let's get this over with. Search all you like.”

She reached behind her, pulled out a pair of canvas shoes, slipped them on, picked up a small purse, then walked off with the chief.

I glanced over at the two deputies, who were putting on plastic gloves. Plunkett, the Clay County deputy watched them for a few minutes, then shook his head and chuckled.

“You got a spare pair of them things?” he asked.

Vern rolled his eyes, but Fred pulled another pair of gloves out of his pocket.

“I'll go back to the fairgrounds with the chief,” I said, and then hurried to catch up to the chief and Molly. It didn't feel like a good night for wandering around alone. The chief didn't say anything when I joined them. In fact, neither of them said anything until we drew near the fair office. We could see that activity was still ongoing over at the site of the murder, and someone had set up a couple of portable floodlights to illuminate the area.