put the rest of this stuff in my truck unless you got someplace around here I could use for a few hours.” He wound tape around them. “I’m headin’ over to The Plains after this to finish setting up another show.”
We did have someplace. Randy’s barn.
“I guess you could use the old hay barn,” I said. “You know the one I mean? South vineyard. Over by the big orchard. You can get there through the visitor parking lot if you take the service road.”
“I can find it. That’d probably work good.” He pulled a red bandanna out of the back pocket of his baggy jeans and wiped his forehead.
“I’ll go on over and make sure everything’s cleared out. We used to let Randy use it. I haven’t been there since before everything happened.”
“Damned shame about that,” he said. “What a waste.”
I nodded. “If you need me for anything, I’ll be in my office after that.”
He promised to call with a weather update around five o’clock. When I left him, he had more tape hanging out of his mouth, twisting fuses together.
The barn looked like it had been well and thoroughly searched. Overturned folding chairs and music stands were piled in a corner and the stall doors were flung wide open. I leaned my cane against one of the stalls and set about stacking the chairs and righting the stands. Someone in the band should come get these things. After what happened here, it no longer seemed like a place to make music.
When I was finished I went to get my cane. It must have slipped, because it was now wedged in the space between two warped boards. I had to go inside the stall to pull it through. I knelt and eased it out so I wouldn’t scratch the metal. There was something else there besides the cane. One of our old yellow flashlights—one of the original eight.
I didn’t see the dent on the rim where the glass met the aluminum barrel until I moved back into better light. Caught in the off-on switch were several strands of red hair.
Georgia Greenwood had been a redhead.
No doubt about it. Randy must have had this with him that night in the barn. I’d just found what he’d used to knock Georgia unconscious before he killed her.
Chapter 17
I put the flashlight back more or less where I’d found it, then drove to the house to call Bobby.
“Dammit, you moved it,” he said when I finally got through to him.
“Of course I moved it. I picked it up.”
“Well, don’t touch it again. And don’t let anybody near that barn. I’ll be right there.”
He came with another detective and two technicians from the crime lab. By then Quinn had joined me.
“So now we know what Randy used to hit Georgia over the head,” I said.
“We won’t get his prints off that flashlight,” Bobby said. “If that’s what you’re getting at. You can’t lift fingerprints off a ridged surface.”
He pulled a pack of gum out of his pocket and offered it around.
“No, thanks,” I said.
Quinn shook his head. “What about the switch?” he asked.
“A hundred people could have touched the switch, the two of you included,” Bobby said. “Besides, something’s off about this. That flashlight wasn’t there the other day when we searched this place.”
“How can you be sure?” I said. “It was inside a dark stall. I only found it by accident because my cane fell through the space between two warped boards.”
“Place isn’t locked. Somebody could have walked in and planted it.” “After you searched? That doesn’t make sense. Maybe you just overlooked it.”
“I don’t know.” He stuck a piece of gum in his mouth. “Maybe. But I sure as hell don’t like this.”
It rained long and hard enough to dampen attendance at the Memorial Day picnic and our wine tasting. Only eighty of the nearly two hundred people who bought tickets showed up, even though we’d advertised that in case of rain we’d move indoors to the villa. Unfortunately, the hayrides planned for the rest of the afternoon were a complete washout and the grass was still too wet to set blankets or lawn chairs by the pond to get a good viewing spot for the fireworks. So everyone went home after lunch with most folks promising to return that evening. I talked to Hamp about postponing until the next day, but he’d been checking with the National Weather Service all afternoon. He told me the storms were heading southeast toward the Chesapeake Bay, so we’d have a clear evening.
“You gotta have fireworks on Memorial Day, Lucie,” he’d argued. “Unless it’s real bad weather and there’s wind. Having them the next day is kind of a letdown.”
So the fireworks were still on.
She, Joe, and I stood on the rain-slicked terrace, watching as heavy cumulonimbus clouds slipped slowly into the distance like freighters leaving port. In their wake, the late-afternoon sky was washed clean and clear.
“Three what and two what?” Joe asked.
“It’s an old French expression. Three peeled ones and two shaved ones. It means nobody’s coming,” I said.
Joe laughed and slipped an arm around Dominique’s waist. He kissed her lightly on the mouth and said, “You people say the weirdest things. I think we’ll be fine. Birds are singing again, so that’s a good sign. I think a lot of people will show up. Peeled, unpeeled, shaved, hairy. Everyone loves fireworks. They’ll come.” Then he added ruefully, “Though I’ve got final exams to grade, so I might not make it.”
“You’ve got to!” I said. “It’s only half an hour. Can’t you leave your papers for later?”
“Graduation’s right around the corner,” he said. “June tenth. The prom is next week and I’m chaperoning. It’s always insane at the end of the school year, plus the kids are so wound up.”
“Please come,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”
He smiled. “I know it will. All right, I have a free period tomorrow. The sheriff’s bringing the sober-up car over to the school parking lot for the next ten days and the kids will be at a special assembly. I guess I could get to those papers then.”
“What is the ‘sober-up car’?” Dominique asked.
“Your worst nightmare,” Joe said. “We do it every year. The cops bring an honest-to-God wreck from an accident and give a talk to the kids about no drinking and driving on prom night or graduation.”
“Does it work?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We hope it does, but I think we really only know for sure when it doesn’t. Some kid goes joyriding after knocking back a bunch of beers, then wraps Daddy’s Lexus around a telephone pole.”
I looked at my watch. “I’m sorry to bring this up considering the conversation, but I’m late to get to the cemetery,” I said. “I’ll see you both tonight.”
“Why are you going to the cemetery?” Dominique asked.
“It’s Memorial Day.”
I had left a note on the kitchen table for Mia and a message on Eli’s answering machine saying I wanted to leave flowers and flags at the graves of our family members who served during the wars. Neither my brother nor my sister was sentimental about things like this, so I didn’t count on them showing up. I retrieved the white roses I’d picked earlier in the day and a box of small American flags and drove over to the cemetery. My foot, once again, ached from standing on it for so long.
Surprisingly, both of them were waiting next to Eli’s Jaguar. Mia, smoking a cigarette, dressed in yet another miniskirt and a cropped top, and Eli, deeply tanned in navy shorts and a new pale yellow “Sea Pines Resort” polo shirt, were talking and laughing as I drove up.
