“I called our chairman. Perhaps that’s he now,” he said pedantically as he peered over his glasses toward the doorwa.
yAn officer stationed at the door called down the hall,
“Futrell’s here, Chief.”
A youthful-looking plainclothes officer entered the library, carrying a case with the basic tools of an investigation. For anything more complicated, they would have to send for the division’s crime scene van, which was centrally manned by the state police.
Radcliff explained what had happened and asked Mayhew, “Did you handle the case?”
“Not this morning,” said Mayhew. “Well, I did lift it by the corner there just to see if it was locked. Which it wasn’t. But I’ve certainly touched it in the past. Not since Christmas, though. I’m almost positive not since Christmas. Is there a way to tell how old fingerprints are?”
Futrell stooped and cast an experienced eye over the case. “Wouldn’t matter if there was. Looks like it’s been wiped clean.”
A few minutes later, his brush and powder confirmed that eyeball appraisal.
“Jonna must have taken them,” said Mayhew. “They’re gone, she’s gone, and she had access to the keys. But why? Unless—oh goodness! She’s been acting oddly lately. You don’t think she took the presentation gun for the same reason her father did?”
“Whose father?” asked a new voice.
“Ah, Nathan! Betty! I’m so glad you’re here.”
Mayhew quickly introduced Nathan Benton and Betty Coates Ramos, chairman and treasurer, respectively, of the Morrow House board of trustees. “The Bentons and the Coateses were two of Shaysville’s earliest families,” he told the lawmen. He hastily described for the new arrivals how he had entered the library to turn on the lights in 9 case there were any visitors today. “I thought I would lay the updated Morrow genealogy on the table—people always want to know the dates of our ghost—and that’s when I saw the empty case.”
Mrs. Ramos was a tall attractive blonde who appeared to be in her late fifties or early sixties. Her ski pants and leather boots were black and she wore pearls and cashmere beneath a quilted white parka. She had pushed the hood back and her short hair was a windblown tangle of loose but well-styled curls. Diamonds flashed on her fingers as she pulled off her gloves and extended her hand, first to Radcliff, whom she seemed to know already, and then to Dwight.
“Major Bryant? Are you Jonna’s—?” She hesitated, searching for the tactful term.
“Her ex?” Dwight said bluntly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And has she really taken the guns?” asked Mr. Benton, who looked to be in his mid-sixties.
There was something so familiar about the man that Dwight almost felt as if he should salute.
He was roughly five-nine, but carried himself with the authority of someone taller. Trim of body, with piercing blue eyes, iron gray hair, and a neat gray mustache, he wore brown slacks and a brown leather jacket over a white shirt and tie. The brown clothes only added to his military air, and that was when Dwight pegged his familiar look. Nathan Benton could have stepped out of one of those old war movies that he and Deborah liked to watch, central casting’s idea of a stiff-upper-lip British colonel whose gruff, no-nonsense demeanor would in-spire his men to feats of heroism.
“We only just arrived ourselves,” said Chief Radcliff.
“It’s too soon to know who did what. Sounds as if they could have been taken anytime during the last month.”
“Nonsense,” Benton said crisply. (Dwight wondered if he heard a faint English accent.) “The cleaning man would have noticed.
“Mr. Benton donated the derringer and the World War I Colt,” Mayhew explained for those who had not made a connection between this trustee and the labels beneath two of the indentations. One read, “(L-46.3) Derringer Black-Powder Pistol, ca. 1872. Originally owned by Leti-tia Morrow Carter, daughter of Peter Morrow.” The other was simply described as “(L-46.2) Government Model Colt automatic pistol, ca. 1912.” Both labels carried the line, “Gift of Nathan Benton.”
“And I distinctly remember seeing all three guns in the case as recently as last week,” Benton told the two lawmen.
“Wait a minute,” said Dwight as he straightened from reading the label. “Black powder? Did the presentation gun use black powder cartridges, too?”
“Well . . .” Mayhew deferred to Benton, who said,
“No, it’s post–Civil War. Used .36-caliber cartridges, I believe, although that gun was never meant to be fired.”
“And yet it was,” Radcliff said grimly. “At least twice that we know of.”
“Twice?” asked the puzzled Mrs. Ramos.
“Jonna’s great-grandfather killed himself with that gun,” Mayhew said in a half-whisper, as if repeating scandalous gossip. “So did Eustace Shay.”
“Jonna’s father?”
Mayhew nodded.
“But that’s awful!” Betty Ramos looked distressed.
“How can Jonna stand its being here?”
“In the first place, she was only a baby when it happened,” said Mayhew as he repositioned his glasses. “In the second place, does she even know?”
