when this sort of thing happened?
She let out a long breath. “Where did you move him to?” she asked the old hermit.
“I brought him here first,” Solomon said, nodding toward the cleft in the rock. “I put him in there for a while, but it just didn’t feel right.”
“You moved him again,” Candy said, finally beginning to understand what had happened.
“There wasn’t anything I could do for him,” Solomon said with a nod. “He couldn’t stay here all winter. It just wasn’t right. Somehow I had to get him back to the people he belonged to.”
“So you put his body on the sledge and took him out to the Loop.”
“It seemed like the best thing to do,” the old hermit said. “I hauled him over there right before dawn this morning. The moose went with me.”
She glanced again at the creature, which was almost invisible in the woods but still hung around, as if eavesdropping on their conversation.
“So it was Victor Templeton all the time then,” Candy said, pondering the ramifications of this latest revelation.
“Who?”
It took Candy a few moments to respond. She was thinking. “The body you found in the woods. His name was Victor Templeton. He was one of the ice sculptors scheduled to give demonstrations in town today. Now we know why he never showed.”
Solomon considered the name for a few moments before shaking his head. “Never heard of him.”
“He’s a tourist,” Candy simplified. “He was supposed to visit Cape Willington this weekend to take part in the Moose Fest. He was married to a woman named Gina.” Candy paused, her mind working. When she’d asked Gina yesterday about her husband, and the fact that he had pulled out of the exhibition, she’d said it was a private matter. And she had seemed distracted and evasive when they talked. Was that because she was worried about him, or had she known more than she let on?
Candy tried to remember what else she’d heard about Victor over the past few days. She’d had so many conversations, and so many people had said so many different things to her. She couldn’t remember who had said what, and when.
But then she recalled that she had all her recent interviews on her digital recorder.
She looked down at her watch. It was nearly two thirty in the afternoon.
How long would it take her to go through all her recordings? And what might she find there?
As her brow furrowed in thought, she looked back at Solomon. “You said you took the hatchet out of his back. What did you do with it?”
The old hermit pointed to a burlap bag resting by the chair under the lean-to. “I got it all right there.”
“All of what?”
“All of everything. All his stuff.”
“His stuff? You mean…?”
Solomon held up a gloved hand and started counting off on his fingertips. “His wallet, money, cards, papers, watch, reading glasses—everything.”
“You stripped the body?” Candy asked, shocked.
Solomon seemed surprised by her reaction. Somewhat defensively, he said, “What else could I do? I knew I was gonna dump it by the side of the road so someone else could find it. What if the person who discovered it was a thief who just took all his stuff? Then no one would know who he was. I couldn’t take that chance.”
“But… what did you plan to do with all of his… stuff?”
“Weeell”—the old hermit gave her a look that told her the answer was obvious—“I was gonna give it all to you, of course.”
“To do what with?”
“Take it to the police so I don’t have to,” he said matter-of-factly.
Candy’s face lightened. “Ahh.” Now it was starting to make sense.
But Solomon must have taken her expression the wrong way and thought she was making a comment on his honesty. “I didn’t steal none of it, really. It’s all there.” And to prove it, he waved to her. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He set his pipe down, rose again, and walked to the lean-to, beckoning Candy to follow. He took up the bag and set it lightly on the table.
“I handled everything as carefully as I could,” he said as he untied the bag. Slowly he began to remove items from inside it, setting them one by one on the table in front of them.
A black, well-worn leather wallet, bulging with credit cards. A wad of bills in a gold pocket clasp. A variety of coins. A comb. An Omega watch. A cell phone. Car keys. A hotel room key.
And a hatchet.
Twenty-Seven
Candy stared at it, shocked.
The murder weapon.
It had fallen right into her hands.
Now what was she going to do with it?
As her gaze swept over it, she noticed several things about it. It looked nearly new, with an oak handle, free of nicks or scuffs. It had a streamlined head, half coated in red, with a sharp, polished blade at one end that practically gleamed.
That struck her as odd. This was—allegedly, she reminded herself—the weapon someone used to murder Victor Templeton. But it looked like it had just come right off the tool shelf at Gumm’s Hardware Store. Shouldn’t it look, well, less clean? As if it had actually been used to murder someone?
There was no blood on it. No hairs, no fibers, nothing to indicate it had been plunged into the back of its victim.
She looked up at the old hermit. “Solomon, did you wipe off this hatchet?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t touch it much. Just pulled it out of the body and stuck it in the bag.”
“There’s no blood on it, no… residue,” Candy said.
“Nope, there wasn’t when I took it out of the body. There wasn’t much blood on the body at all, come to think of it.”
“Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.” He motioned toward the hatchet. “You might want to take a look at the other side of that thing.”
She gave him a funny look and then curiously turned her attention back to the hatchet. Gingerly, using only the tips of her gloved index finger and thumb, she reached out, took the handle by its farthest end, and flipped it over.
Immediately she saw what Solomon was referring to. Burned into the hatchet’s polished wood handle, using some sort of heated engraving tool, in an old-fashioned typeface, were the words STONY RIDGE MUSEUM— HATCHET-THROWING CHAMPION, 2009.
She drew in her breath.
This was the clue, she realized with a jolt, that would lead the police to Victor Templeton’s murderer.
Her hands went to her mouth.
She didn’t know whether to be pleased or horrified.
She leaned forward and read the inscription again, thinking. After a moment she pointed to the inscription. “Have you ever heard of this place?” she asked Solomon. “The Stony Ridge Museum?”
He made a face, sticking out his chin and lower lip. “Nope. If it were around here, I’d know about it for sure. I’ve been here all my life.”
“Do you have any idea who this hatchet might belong to? Have you seen it around town? Have you seen
