Dad examined the body, both on the scene and again at the morgue, once the coroner had arrived from the county seat. He kept trying to discuss the findings at the dinner table and was sternly and repeatedly repressed. I could understand it in Jake's case; he wasn't used to Dad, and it was, after all, his sister-in-law. But I found it hard to see how Mother and Rob could still be so squeamish after years of living with Dad.
Rob and Jake fled after dinner, and Pam and Eric joined us for dessert, and Dad was at last able to discuss what Mother was already referring to as 'your father's case.'
'And just what is that in English?' Pam queried, after Dad had given a detailed, polysyllabic description of Mrs. Grover's injuries.
'There was no water in her lungs, so she didn't drown,' I translated. 'She had a fracture on the left rear side of the top of her skull, apparently from a rounded object; she died within minutes of the fracture; and the way the blood settled in her limbs indicated she may have been moved after death. Right?' I asked.
'Very good, Meg,' Dad said. 'Of course, the moving may have been due to being washed about in the water; hard to tell yet whether it's significant. And they'll have to do more tests to determine the precise interval between the fracture and her death; that's just my estimate. Incidentally, I estimate the time of death as sometime during the day on Tuesday, but, again, the medical examiner's office will be able to tell more accurately. An examination of the contents of the stomach and the digestive tract as well as--'
'James,' Mother warned.
'Well, anyway, they'll be able to tell,' Dad went on, unabashed. 'But there's one more important thing about the fracture.'
'What's that?' I said.
'Consider the location and angle,' Dad said. Pam and Mother frowned in puzzlement. I fingered my own skull with one hand, recalling Dad's description.
'You think it's homicide,' I said.
Dad nodded with approval.
'Homicide? Why?' Pam demanded.
Dad looked expectantly at me.
'Try to visualize it,' I said. 'The fracture was on the top of her skull. It's a little hard to figure out how she could do that falling. Unless she fell while trying to stand on her head. Sounds more like what would result if someone hit her on the head with a golf club or something.'
'She fell off the cliff,' Pam said. 'If she was falling head over heels, couldn't she have landed smack on her head?'
'From forty feet up? It would have been like dropping a melon on--'
'James!' Mother exclaimed.
'Well, it would have,' Dad protested. 'Consider the velocity of a straight fall. She would have sustained far more extensive injuries, particularly to the cranium if that's where she landed. And if her fall was broken one or more times by the underbrush or by intermediate landings, why were there no significant abrasions or contusions elsewhere on the body? No torn clothing, no leaves or twigs caught in her hair or clothes? I don't believe she fell from that cliff, before or after her death,' he stated firmly. 'I believe she was murdered and then left on the beach. The sheriff may not realize it yet, but I do. And I'm going to do my damnedest to prove it.'
Well, at least someone was happy. I went to bed trying to fight off the uncharitable thought that thanks to Mrs. Grover's inconveniently turning up dead almost in our backyard, I was now yet another day behind in my schedule. And I had no doubt further interruptions would be coming thick and fast.
Friday, June 3
Either the sheriff had come around to Dad's way of thinking or he was taking no chances that Dad might be right. When I woke up the next day, the bluffs were swarming with deputies. Well, six of them, anyway, which was a swarm by local standards, being exactly half of the law enforcement officers available in the county. They were searching the beach and the top of the bluff, and had even gotten the cherry picker from the county department of public works, which they drove down to the beach and used to search the side of the bluff. About the only thing of interest they'd found was the missing Spike.
One of the deputies spent several hours and a whole truckload of Police Line--Do Not Cross tape cordoning off the bluff and the beach for half a mile on either side of where Mrs. Grover's body was found. Which seemed idiotic until the crowds began showing up.
Everyone in the neighborhood turned out to watch the excitement, and not a few people from the rest of the county. Mother organized about a dozen neighboring ladies to provide tea, lemonade, and cookies, and the whole thing turned into a combination wake, block party, and family reunion, with Mother holding court on the back porch.
The only good thing about the gathering was that I met Mrs. Thornhill, the inexpensive calligrapher Mrs. Fenniman had recommended, and turned over Samantha's invitations and guest list to her. What a nice, motherly woman I thought, as I watched her drive off, her backseat piled high with stationery boxes. Of course Samantha was paying her, but it still felt as if she were doing me a favor by lifting that enormous weight off my shoulders.
The forces of law and order knocked off at sunset, leaving a lone deputy standing guard. The festivities went on long after dark. About ten o'clock I snuck off to my sister, Pam's, to sleep.
Saturday, June 4
The show resumed at dawn, and since it wasn't a work day, the crowds were even larger. I pointed out to the sheriff that anyone he might possibly need to interrogate about Mrs. Grover's death was probably milling about in our yard or the neighbors', rapidly replacing whatever genuine information they might have with the grapevine's current theory--which seemed to be that Mrs. Grover, arriving early for her appointment with Dad, either fell over the bluff or was coshed on the head and heaved over the edge by a prowling tramp.
So the sheriff was using our dining room as an interrogation chamber and enthusiastically grilling a random assortment of witnesses, suspects, and fellow travelers. He was concentrating on our whereabouts on May 31, and what we had seen then. Mother and Jake were of no use, of course, since they'd spent the entire day together running errands. I thought it was a very lucky break for Jake that they had. Dad is fond of remarking that in small towns, people tend to kill people they know. The sheriff had heard this often enough to have absorbed it, and Jake was the only one who really knew Mrs. Grover. And might have had reason to do her in, considering the quarrel I'd overheard. But if her death did turn out to be a homicide, not only Mother but half a dozen sales clerks and waitresses would be able to prove that he hadn't been within fifteen miles of our neighborhood between 7:00 A.m. and 9:00 P.m.
The sheriff was particularly interested in the fact that between ten and two-thirty or so I'd been sitting on our back porch making phone calls. Evidently that was a critical time period, and the stretch of the bluff I could see from the porch was the most likely spot for Mrs. Grover to have gone over the cliff, if that was indeed what happened to her.
'And at no time did you see Mrs. Grover or anyone else enter the backyard,' he said.
'No,' I replied. 'I didn't see anyone except for the birthday party going on in the yard next door and Dad on the riding lawn mower.'
He didn't look as if he believed me.
Dad, on the other hand, believed me implicitly, but that was because my evidence supported his theory that Mrs. Grover had not fallen or been pushed but had been deposited on the beach.
With the exception of Mother and Jake, nobody else in the neighborhood had anything that even vaguely resembled an airtight alibi for the time of the murder. Of course, the sheriff had yet to uncover anything vaguely resembling a motive, either, so the dearth of alibis was not yet a problem for anyone in particular. I began to wonder if there was a homicidal maniac hidden among the horde of locals, who, from their sworn statements, appeared to have spent the day after Memorial Day wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood, borrowing and
