The sheriff flushed. I watched in sympathy as his jaw clenched. Frustration seemed to radiate from every pore. Peggy frequently had that effect on people.
I turned a quelling glance at the little bird-like woman, only to surprise an odd expression in her eyes. Fear? Peggy? No, that had to be absurd. What had my aunt’s closest friend and neighbor to fear? Except possibly the same undisclosed worry that haunted Aunt Gerda?
“You want me to get on with the investigation?” Owen Sarkisian strode up to the table and glowered at all of us, indiscriminately. “Okay. Which of you ladies smokes?”
“Not in my house!” Gerda objected.
“Smokes?” I looked from my aunt to the sheriff, perplexed. “Why?”
“There’s a rather fancy lighter, a Navajo-design case of stamped silver with a chunk of turquoise, lying on the desk beside the body. But no smell of cigarettes, cigars, or smoke anywhere. Not on Brody, not in the room. So what’s it doing there?”
“Silver and turquoise…” Peggy’s voice trailed off. She fumbled at the strap that hung over her shoulder, dragged her cavernous hand-woven bag into her lap, unsnapped the top, and pawed through the contents. Slowly, her gaze rose to Gerda.
“I took it last time you were here,” Gerda said quickly.
Too quickly? I studied the set of my aunt’s features. I knew her expressions, could read them no matter how hard she tried to disguise them. I hadn’t a doubt she was lying.
“You took it?” Peggy blinked.
Gerda turned to the sheriff. “I’ve been trying to get her to quit smoking for years, now. Everyone in town knows that. Nothing’s worked so far, so I thought I’d try subtle means for a change. Like hiding her lighter, or her cigarettes. Make it more difficult for her.”
Owen Sarkisian looked from one to the other of them. “And when was she here last?”
“This afternoon,” Gerda said, at the same moment that Peggy announced, “Yesterday.”
“Yesterday,” Gerda corrected at once, while Peggy cried out, “This afternoon.”
“Yesterday?” Sarkisian jumped on Peggy’s first answer. “And you hadn’t noticed yet that your lighter was missing?”
“This afternoon,” Peggy repeated more firmly. “I—I forgot I’d come over.” Peggy cast a frantic glance at Gerda. “I do so often, you know. And I have other lighters, anyway.”
“You’ve been so busy, I don’t see how you could have noticed which lighter you were using,” Gerda stuck in, doggedly loyal.
“It’s been fun, though,” Peggy assured her. “I’m in charge of selling raffle tickets for the turkey drawing this year,” she explained to Sarkisian. From the depths of her bag she produced a rectangular booklet of printed orange strips of paper. “You haven’t bought any yet, have you, Sheriff?” she added, latching eagerly onto this new—and innocuous—topic. “It’s for a very good cause, you know. Our Service Club’s scholarship fund. And the prize is a smoked turkey, all ready for a buffet table. At least it was last year.”
“I told Cindy to go to the same place,” Gerda stuck in, readily abetting her friend in this diversion. “That’s the only detail she did take care of.”
“So how many do you want?” Peggy asked the sheriff.
“I don’t—”
“Of course you do. Everyone buys raffle tickets,” Peggy assured him. “One book or two? Or would you like to buy three?”
“I don’t want any. What did you do when you came over today?”
Peggy and Gerda exchanged glances, and it was Gerda who rushed into speech. “We were trying to figure out what still had to be done for our town’s Thanksgiving celebrations, of course. Our chairperson had just quit.”
Peggy, refusing to be diverted back to the real business of the hour, fixed Sarkisian with a look that put me uncomfortably in mind of my third grade teacher. “You should take three booklets, I think. After all, you are sheriff. You have to do something to support the community.” She fished two more of the orange books from her bag. “Two dollars for a book of five. That comes to a total of six dollars.” Her tone brooked no argument.
Apparently, Peggy’s look had the same effect on Sarkisian. Without saying a word, he fished in his back pocket, produced his wallet, and counted out the bills.
Peggy plucked these from his hand and presented him with the tickets. “Just deposit them in the fishbowl at the pancake breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. If you’re going to have to leave early, you can write your name and phone number on them, first. You don’t have to be present to win.”
A series of muffled bumps and scufflings sounded from the far end of the house. I moved to Gerda’s side, and my fingers clutched the chair’s uppermost rail through someone’s rain-beaded slicker.
Sarkisian grimaced. “They’re probably moving the desk so they can examine the carpet. They’ll still be awhile. Takes a minimum of a couple of hours to finish even the simplest crime scene.”
A young man and a girl barely out of her teens—the paramedics—emerged from the living room. Gerda took one look at their drawn faces and rose to pour the contents of the waiting saucepan into the teapot. The two slumped into chairs at the table.
“Ramirez threw us out,” the girl said. She cradled between both hands the mug Gerda poured her, her fluff of drying brown hair falling forward across her absurdly childish face. “God, there’re times I hate this job.”
“Ramirez?” I pushed the sugar bowl toward the girl. She looked like she needed something stronger, she must be new to the job. My aunt apparently felt the same. The canister with its raspberry chocolate chips joined the sugar bowl.
The girl leaned forward, sniffed, and a half-smile eased the tension in her face. “The crime scene investigator. Told us to get our big muddy feet out of there before we tromped on all the evidence.”
“Tromped on any more of it, he said.” Her coworker, an African-American youth with a face too innocent for the horrors he must have seen, scooped several spoonfuls of sugar into his mug. “You should have heard what he said about sheriffs and cats and people who…” He broke off, shooting an apologetic glance at me.
“And people who find bodies and try to help?” I suggested. “I only touched his shoulder, but I did walk around the desk. I was going to phone…” I shook my head, the memory of those staring eyes too vivid for comfort.
The young man grunted. “He has nothing to complain about here, compared to some cases.” His mouth tightened, and he turned his attention to his tea.
“That was a real mood lightener,” the sheriff murmured.
“Tickets! The very thing,” Peggy announced, which for her was not quite the
non sequitur
it might have sounded. She produced several more booklets for the raffle from the depths of her purse. “Gives us something pleasant to think about,” she explained. “You’re coming to the pancake breakfast on Thursday, aren’t you both? Of course you are. Everyone comes so they only have to cook the one big meal that day. Gerda, I told you we should sell advance tickets for the breakfast, too. But at least they can buy these. How many?”
Somehow, both paramedics found themselves holding two books, their wallets lighter by four dollars each. Peggy, positively burning with enthusiasm for her cause—or with enthusiasm for escaping Sarkisian’s suspicious scrutiny—had to be forcibly restrained by Gerda from going in search of Sarah Jacobs, the investigator Ramirez, and the photographer Roberta Dominguez to try her luck on them.
Thuds sounded from the stairs outside, and the front door flung wide to admit the breathless and red-faced Deputy Sheriff John Goulding. He paused just over the threshold, his considerable bulk heaving as he panted. “Why,” he gasped, “do you have to have—” another breath “—twenty steps, Gerda.” He shook his grizzled head.
“What is it?” Owen Sarkisian demanded.
“Fence post,” the aging deputy informed him. “Near the road. Been bashed over.”
Sarkisian swung around to Gerda. “You know about that?”
“A fence post? One of my fence posts? No, I’d have noticed if it were near the road. It wasn’t dark yet when I went to the store.”
Sarkisian ran a hand through the tightly curling mass of his hair. “It may have nothing to do with the murder. But then again…”
“Better not go tromping through the mud around it,” said the brown-haired girl at the table, “or Ramirez will have a fit.”
“Ramirez.” Sarkisian cast a darkling glance in the direction of the living room and, presumably, the study beyond. He stalked down the hall, to return a few minutes later with the bearded crime scene investigator firmly in tow. “Now,” he was saying as they crossed the living room together. “Before the rain washes away any more evidence. Why the hell didn’t you start out there, anyway?”
“And give you a chance to muck around all over the study before I could get in there?” The tenor voice of the gangly investigator held more than a touch of condescension. “If you’re so all-fired hot to get it done outside in a hurry, why don’t you try helping? I’ve got to have casts of tire treads and any and all footprints, and God knows what else I’m going to have to check.”
Sarkisian threw open the front door, letting in a blast of icy, wet air. “Everyone else stay in here!” he yelled back before the two men disappeared outside.
“They didn’t take their rain gear,” Gerda observed. “And we’ve already used all the spare towels.”
“They can always use Vilhelm’s cage cover. He— Oh, golly, I forgot him!” I sprang to my feet and dashed for my room. I’d never refilled the parakeet’s water dish. I threw open the door, to be met by a series of cheeps, from the midst of which emerged a somewhat squeaky, “Let me out! Let me out!”
“Not on your feathery little life. Too many cats around.” I swept the cover off the cage and found the bird hanging upside down from the corner bars.
The beady black eyes glared at me. As if he’d understood, he announced, “Yummy bird, here kitty, kitty. Yummy birdy brain.”
“Glad to see you’re your usual self again.” I detached his water dish and headed for the bathroom. Muffled cries of “Let me out, let me out,” followed me across the hall from behind my closed door.
I returned to the kitchen a few minutes later to find the group around the table studying a pad of paper held by Gerda. Everyone except the burly Deputy Goulding. He stood near the dining room door, clutching a booklet of raffle tickets with a defeated look on his jowled face. I’d had past experience of Peggy’s victims. I left him to recover.
“What’re you working on?” I demanded, resuming my seat.
Peggy looked up, her bright green eyes positively gleaming. “Lists. You’re just the one to take over our little Thanksgiving festivities, dear. I’m so glad Gerda talked you into it.”
“You mean I had a choice?”
Peggy just beamed at me. “Don’t worry, I’ve been making notes of everything we’re going to need for the Pancake Breakfast.” She included the two paramedics in her determined smile. “Such a wonderful time, we’ll all have. You’ll be so glad you came. Now,” she turned back to me. “The coffee maker at the Grange Hall is broken, so you’ll have to find another one. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble.”
“Find a coffee maker big enough to serve a couple hundred?” I stared at her. “Oh, sure. No problem. Where?”
Peggy waved a vague hand. “That’s up to you, dear. You’re in charge. I’ll just run along and find the list for you, shall I? It’s a long one, and the breakfast is only the morning after next. So much to do.”
“For me,” I muttered.
Peggy gathered her things and wrapped around her neck the long, trailing ends of a dusty rose scarf Gerda had knitted for her the previous Christmas when Peggy’s hair had been a less volatile shade. “Would you like the recipe book now? It’s just down in my car. And it tells how much of everything you’ll need.”
“Might as well.” I appropriated someone’s rain hat and slicker and followed my aunt’s friend out the door.
The wind whipped about me, freezing after the warmth of the house. Only a light rain fell now, and overhead a star flickered in and out of sight as the clouds surged past. Maybe the weather would clear by the time I had to start running my errands.
Peggy headed down the stairs, only to come to an abrupt halt on the landing. She peered over the railing to where a search light was trained on her car. “Whatever is that sheriff doing?” she demanded, and ran down the last steps. “Young man, that is my car, I’ll have you know. What are you looking for?”
Sarkisian straightened, his expression bland. “Dented fenders.”
“Dented— Are you suggesting I’d knock over Gerda’s fence post and not tell her? The idea!”
“You think the murderer did it?” I picked my way through the puddles to join them beside the old Pontiac.
“It was knocked down real recently, that’s all I’m sure of.” He ran his hand over his dripping hair.
“Well?” Peggy demanded, her voice as icy as the wind. “May I take my car, or did you find some scratch and now intend to impound it?”
He stepped back, gesturing her toward the aged sedan. “No recent damage. Go ahead. Just be careful going out the gate. Ramirez is prowling around.”
“I’m not blind. I can see his light through the trees.” Peggy rummaged in the front seat and emerged with a thin, hardback book, which she handed to me. “
Cooking for a Crowd,
it’s called, or something like that. Tell Gerda goodnight for me, will you?” She climbed in and, pointedly ignoring Sarkisian, started the engine. Her headlights flicked on, and the old car surged forward around the circular curve of the drive.