“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
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.
