Town in a Wild Moose Chase (24 page)

He puffed on his pipe and nodded.

“Do you know who it was?”

Solomon shook his head. “Never saw him before. He was pretty well dressed, though. Expensive clothes and boots. Must have cost him a pretty penny, I can tell you that.”

“Do you know how he died?”

The old hermit nodded sagely. “Oh, sure I do. It was that hatchet in his back that done it.”

After that, she got a fairly complete version of the story, though it took a while, since Solomon kept digressing into all sorts of subjects. Even though he lived alone, he was not completely unsociable. Candy suspected he was even enjoying talking to a young, attractive woman who was sitting comfortably in his camp, sipping tea, nibbling on biscuits, and giving him her undivided attention.

It appeared there was still some life left in the old coot.

He’d stumbled across the moose’s tracks two days ago while out collecting firewood, he told her, and that had led him to the moose itself, and the body. That’s when he’d been spooked by something in the woods—possibly another person, he said, or possibly something else. He had started running and thought the thing was chasing him, though he couldn’t be sure.

He sounded confused when he tried to describe this part of the story. “I guess I lost my bearings in the woods and got turned around, which is a rare event for me, I can tell
you that. I thought I was headed back to my home camp, but somehow I came out in your field. Could’ve been that bump on the head.”

“How did it happen?” she asked him.

He puffed away thoughtfully before he continued. “Don’t know for sure, but I think I might’ve run into a branch or something. Knocked my hat clean off.”

“Were you attacked?”

“I don’t think so,” he said in a hesitating tone. “There for a while I lost track of things.”

“You scared the heck out of me when you stumbled out on the field behind the house,” she told him. “I was running to get the police, but when I looked around, you were gone. Where did you disappear to?”

“First I went to get my hat,” he said, “and then I went back to the body. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, but I had to check. I didn’t want to leave him out there alone in the woods, especially if he needed help.”

“Weren’t you afraid of that thing that was chasing you, whatever it was?”

“Sure I was, but I was careful. I moved slowly and quietly, just in case it came at me again. But it must have moved on. It had been there, though. I could tell.”

“What do you mean?”

Solomon shook his head. “Well, that’s part of what I don’t understand. You see, when I finally made it back to the body, something had changed. I figured out pretty quick what it was.”

“And what was it?”

He squinted his eyes, as if recalling the scene, and shook his head. “The place had been cleaned up. And all the footprints and tracks were gone. Someone had erased them all.”

Her brow furrowed. “How’d they do that?”

He shrugged. “Tree branch with some leaves left on it, or some other type of brush, sweeping it across the ground. You did that when you were a kid, didn’t you? So you could
hide somewhere and sneak around on your friends when you were in the woods?”

“I don’t… well, maybe, yes. So all the tracks were gone?”

“That’s right.”

“But you found the body?”

“Oh yeah, I found it.”

“Was he… still alive?”

Solomon pursed his lips and shook his head quickly. “He was dead when I got there. His face was white as the snow, and the body was turning stiff.”

Candy had read about this lately. She knew a body began to stiffen fairly quickly after death, and rigor mortis began in two to four hours. After a few hours, the entire body would feel stiff, though full rigor took between twelve and twenty-four hours, as far as she could recall.

So if the body had been stiff when Solomon had found it, it had been there for a while.

“Is the body still in the woods?” she asked after a few moments.

“No, I moved it.”

This surprised her. “Why did you move it?”

“It was lying in a gully. Snowmelt was starting to cover it up, and more snow was coming soon. It was about to get buried. I had to do something with it.”

Candy remembered. It had snowed later that day, though not too heavily. But it was reasonable for Solomon to think the body might have been quickly covered by snow.

“How did you move it?”

Solomon nodded with his head toward the sledge, parked next to the rock wall. “It took some maneuvering,” he said. Under his breath, he added, “I had to take that hatchet out of his back.”

Candy was afraid he’d say something like that. “Solomon, you disturbed a murder scene.” She didn’t frame it as an accusation, but simply as a statement of fact.

“Yup, I know all about that,” the old hermit said, “but there was no help for it. It was about to get buried, and then it’d be gone ’til spring, so I had to do something.”

She understood his reasoning—he was just trying to help—but she also knew Chief Durr would be livid when he found out.

He’d also be livid when he found out she was involved in the mystery, and had stumbled across Solomon on her own. She wondered vaguely what had become of Officer Jody. Hadn’t he been assigned to her so he’d be here when this sort of thing happened?

She let out a long breath. “Where did you move him to?” she asked the old hermit.

“I brought him here first,” Solomon said, nodding toward the cleft in the rock. “I put him in there for a while, but it just didn’t feel right.”

“You moved him again,” Candy said, finally beginning to understand what had happened.

“There wasn’t anything I could do for him,” Solomon said with a nod. “He couldn’t stay here all winter. It just wasn’t right. Somehow I had to get him back to the people he belonged to.”

“So you put his body on the sledge and took him out to the Loop.”

“It seemed like the best thing to do,” the old hermit said. “I hauled him over there right before dawn this morning. The moose went with me.”

She glanced again at the creature, which was almost invisible in the woods but still hung around, as if eavesdropping on their conversation.

“So it was Victor Templeton all the time then,” Candy said, pondering the ramifications of this latest revelation.

“Who?”

It took Candy a few moments to respond. She was thinking. “The body you found in the woods. His name was Victor Templeton. He was one of the ice sculptors scheduled to
give demonstrations in town today. Now we know why he never showed.”

Solomon considered the name for a few moments before shaking his head. “Never heard of him.”

“He’s a tourist,” Candy simplified. “He was supposed to visit Cape Willington this weekend to take part in the Moose Fest. He was married to a woman named Gina.” Candy paused, her mind working. When she’d asked Gina yesterday about her husband, and the fact that he had pulled out of the exhibition, she’d said it was a private matter. And she had seemed distracted and evasive when they talked. Was that because she was worried about him, or had she known more than she let on?

Candy tried to remember what else she’d heard about Victor over the past few days. She’d had so many conversations, and so many people had said so many different things to her. She couldn’t remember who had said what, and when.

But then she recalled that she had all her recent interviews on her digital recorder.

She looked down at her watch. It was nearly two thirty in the afternoon.

How long would it take her to go through all her recordings? And what might she find there?

As her brow furrowed in thought, she looked back at Solomon. “You said you took the hatchet out of his back. What did you do with it?”

The old hermit pointed to a burlap bag resting by the chair under the lean-to. “I got it all right there.”

“All of what?”

“All of everything. All his stuff.”

“His stuff? You mean…?”

Solomon held up a gloved hand and started counting off on his fingertips. “His wallet, money, cards, papers, watch, reading glasses—everything.”

“You stripped the body?” Candy asked, shocked.

Solomon seemed surprised by her reaction. Somewhat defensively, he said, “What else could I do? I knew I was gonna dump it by the side of the road so someone else could find it. What if the person who discovered it was a thief who just took all his stuff? Then no one would know who he was. I couldn’t take that chance.”

“But… what did you plan to do with all of his… stuff?”

“Weeell”—the old hermit gave her a look that told her the answer was obvious—“I was gonna give it all to you, of course.”

“To do what with?”

“Take it to the police so I don’t have to,” he said matter-of-factly.

Candy’s face lightened. “Ahh.” Now it was starting to make sense.

But Solomon must have taken her expression the wrong way and thought she was making a comment on his honesty. “I didn’t steal none of it, really. It’s all there.” And to prove it, he waved to her. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He set his pipe down, rose again, and walked to the lean-to, beckoning Candy to follow. He took up the bag and set it lightly on the table.

“I handled everything as carefully as I could,” he said as he untied the bag. Slowly he began to remove items from inside it, setting them one by one on the table in front of them.

A black, well-worn leather wallet, bulging with credit cards. A wad of bills in a gold pocket clasp. A variety of coins. A comb. An Omega watch. A cell phone. Car keys. A hotel room key.

And a hatchet.

Candy stared at it, shocked.

The murder weapon.

It had fallen right into her hands.

Now what was she going to do with it?

As her gaze swept over it, she noticed several things about it. It looked nearly new, with an oak handle, free of nicks or scuffs. It had a streamlined head, half coated in red, with a sharp, polished blade at one end that practically gleamed.

That struck her as odd. This was—allegedly, she reminded herself—the weapon someone used to murder Victor Templeton. But it looked like it had just come right off the tool shelf at Gumm’s Hardware Store. Shouldn’t it look, well, less clean? As if it had actually been used to murder someone?

There was no blood on it. No hairs, no fibers, nothing to indicate it had been plunged into the back of its victim.

She looked up at the old hermit. “Solomon, did you wipe off this hatchet?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t touch it much. Just pulled it out of the body and stuck it in the bag.”

“There’s no blood on it, no… residue,” Candy said.

“Nope, there wasn’t when I took it out of the body. There wasn’t much blood on the body at all, come to think of it.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” He motioned toward the hatchet. “You might want to take a look at the other side of that thing.”

She gave him a funny look and then curiously turned her attention back to the hatchet. Gingerly, using only the tips of her gloved index finger and thumb, she reached out, took the handle by its farthest end, and flipped it over.

Immediately she saw what Solomon was referring to. Burned into the hatchet’s polished wood handle, using some sort of heated engraving tool, in an old-fashioned typeface, were the words S
TONY
R
IDGE
M
USEUM
—H
ATCHET
-T
HROWING
C
HAMPION
, 2009.

She drew in her breath.

This was the clue, she realized with a jolt, that would lead the police to Victor Templeton’s murderer.

Her hands went to her mouth.

She didn’t know whether to be pleased or horrified.

She leaned forward and read the inscription again, thinking. After a moment she pointed to the inscription. “Have you ever heard of this place?” she asked Solomon. “The Stony Ridge Museum?”

He made a face, sticking out his chin and lower lip. “Nope. If it were around here, I’d know about it for sure. I’ve been here all my life.”

“Do you have any idea who this hatchet might belong to? Have you seen it around town? Have you seen anyone carrying or using it?”