Her face worked. “But when I brought him the first check to sign, he refused. He actually said he’d changed his mind. And after he’d pledged!”
“He didn’t do it in writing, did he?” I asked.
“I should have made sure he did,” fumed Peggy. “He had the nerve to claim the pledge wasn’t legally binding! And then he gave that exact same amount to himself every month and called it a bonus, just to spite me because I called him a skinflint to his face.”
“So you came up with a creative way to make him honor that pledge anyway?” Sarkisian sounded resigned.
Peggy raised her eyebrows. “Well, wouldn’t you?”
That silenced the sheriff, but I got the distinct impression he didn’t wholly disapprove of Peggy’s outrageous stunt. “Is that why you lied about being at the shelter on Tuesday?” I asked.
She hesitated, then nodded. “I really didn’t want to bring attention to how much time I spend there. How much the place means to me.” She straightened, and her chin came up in defiance. “It’s important work, you know.”
Sarkisian stared at her, frowning, then looked to me.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that my aunt can help out with this. Hugh Cartwright listens to her, sometimes. I think she can shame him into endorsing what Peggy did.”
He nodded, obviously relieved. “We’ll have a talk with Ms. Lundquist, then.”
Peggy beamed at him. “Did you want to arrest me? That would have been quite an experience. I’ve never been arrested before.”
“One can only wonder why not,” Sarkisian muttered as we at last headed out the door.
“No one’s dared, I expect.”
He climbed into the car, then turned to look at me. “If she didn’t really mind our finding out, it doesn’t seem likely she’d panic over Brody’s finding out, either.”
“Or Dave’s,” I agreed. “And Tony would have known it wasn’t a matter of life and death to her, so that lets him out, too.”
His expression went blank with that look I was beginning to recognize as a rapid review of facts. “Hatter’s prints weren’t on the ledgers,” he announced abruptly. “Only on the inventory sheets waiting for processing.”
I groaned. “You mean we’ve been wasting our time on the wrong thing?”
Sarkisian ran a hand through his curly pepper-and-salt hair. “Hatter had been going through papers. Maybe he knew what he was looking for, maybe he was just doing it as part of his job. But someone didn’t want him doing it?” He made the last a question.
“Not Peggy,” I asserted. “She was fiddling the books, not the inventory-” I broke off, realizing what I had just said.
“Fiddling the inventory,” Sarkisian repeated, an odd expression in his gray eyes. “Damn.”
We fell silent, then reason intervened and I shook my head. “Sorry. That doesn’t make sense. The employees can get all the bottles-”
“The experimental batches,” he corrected. “Good for personal drinking, but not for resale. Hugh Cartwright will never let anyone have the bottles with labels bearing the Brandywine Distillery seal. Because,” he added with emphasis, “they sell for so much money.”
“So Dave might have caught someone making off with stock?” I warmed to this line of thinking until I realized it didn’t let out Peggy, or for that matter, Gerda. “Anybody in the whole damned town could have been stealing from the Still!” I said in disgust. “Dave might even have been taking bribes to keep quiet about it.”
“Until his conscience got the better of him, perhaps?”
We crested the hill to be greeted by a bright spotlight focused on Aunt Gerda’s gate. Or more accurately, on the fence post beside it that Simon’s van had knocked over the night of the murder. The halogen bulb flared from a massive battery, illuminating Simon, his van, a new post and the remnants of cement mixing.
Sarkisian slowed to a stop, and Simon waved to us. “A bit late, isn’t it?” Sarkisian called to him.
“Thought I’d better do it before it started pouring again.” Simon’s mouth twitched into a lopsided grin. “I’ve felt damned guilty about this.” He turned back to his labors.
Sarkisian guided the Honda along the winding drive-missing most of the potholes, I noted-and stopped again behind the garage.
The front door opened, and Gerda came out on the deck and looked down at us. “Annike? I was getting worried.”
“It’s been a long evening,” I agreed as I crawled out of the car. Right now, I wanted my bed and twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sleep. I’d be lucky if I got six.
“Is that the sheriff? Good. I’ll be right down.”
Sarkisian waited while Gerda hurried back into the house. She emerged a couple minutes later, wrapped in her purple cloak, and came down the stairs.
“Here!” With an air of triumph, she thrust out her hand, holding a piece of paper liberally smeared with garbage. “The cash register receipt for my vanilla, with the date and time of purchase printed right on it.”
“Your alibi?” Sarkisian took it by a corner, eyeing the crumpled, slimed thing with distaste. I could only hope it would satisfy him.
Simon’s rattling old van pulled up beside him. “All done, Gerda,” he called. He opened up the back and dragged out a spare fence rail. “I’ll shove this in the crawlspace.” With the board balanced on his shoulder, he opened the garage, felt around until he found Gerda’s spare key, then unlocked the low doorway that led to her tool storage area. He came out several minutes later. “Some of that floor insulation has come loose,” he said as he returned the key to its not-very hidden home. “I’ll come by in the morning and fix it.”
“You know where the spare keys are?” asked Sarkisian.
“Well of course he does.” Gerda regarded the sheriff as if he’d just said something particularly dim. “He’s been doing odd jobs for me practically since he moved here.”
The key. The murderer had to have had access to a key to Gerda’s. I’d forgotten that. Again.
I glanced at the sheriff and recognized the calculating look in his eyes as they rested on Simon. Lowell had just given away the fact he knew where to find the spare key. Just how many people around here shared that knowledge?
I had the horrible sensation it was going to become very important to discover the answer to that.
Chapter Seventeen
My head ached. I wanted to go to bed. I didn’t want to think about the murder-or rather, the murders-any more. I still had tomorrow to survive. And that meant dealing with the Dinner-in-the-Park. Owen Sarkisian was never going to have the time to call the school officials for permission for us to hold it in the cafeteria, which meant I was stuck doing it. Leaving the sheriff talking to Gerda and Simon, I dragged myself up the stairs, let myself into the house and went into the kitchen. Next Thanksgiving, I swore, I would be hundreds of miles away from Upper River Gulch.
For several minutes I just stood there, glaring at the phone. I had no way of reaching anybody. Anyone high enough in the school hierarchy to have the authority to give permission also would have the sense to have an unlisted phone number. Frustrated, I tried calling a couple of party rental firms before admitting it was too late on a Saturday night and I hadn’t a chance of getting through. I sank onto the kitchen chair, and at once the manx Hefty scrambled up my leg, using all his claws, and into my lap. I was so tired I made no more than a token protest, then just sat there, cradling the purring beastie. Infinitely better than cradling That Damned Bird. Tedi Bird, for God’s sake. I felt like crying, but at the moment it would take too much effort.
If I was going to put that much energy into anything, it ought to be solving the problem of the dinner. If I couldn’t rent a pavilion, maybe we could make one. Tarps, lashed together, to create one giant canopy covering for the entire park. We could anchor it to trees on one side, the electrical pole on another, and with sufficient ropes we could probably reach across the street to another tree on the fourth corner. Or maybe with sufficient rope I could just hang myself.
With an effort, I dragged my thoughts from the wistful back to the practical. Everyone around here had a tarp
