finger to do anything mechanical, but that only applies when there's someone else around who'll do it for her if she bats her eyes. Remember how she bailed us out when we were trying to reinstall my distributor cap?'
'I stand rebuked. Return her to the top of the suspect list. What about the bomb?
Surely most of our suspects have little or no experience with bombs.'
'No, but I hear you can build one with fertilizer, which everyone in town has by the ton, and these days I'm sure any eight-year-old could find step-by-step instructions on the Internet.'
We both glanced at the back of the car, where the troop of eight-year-olds appeared to be sound asleep, oblivious to the new level of destructiveness they could be achieving with a little initiative.
We continued to dissect the case all the way home, without coming up with anything else useful. Was the murderer really that brilliant, or were we all being particularly dense?
Wednesday, July 20
I was helping Dad with some gopher stomping the next morning when Aunt Phoebe showed up to introduce a visiting cousin.
'Cousin Walter?' Dad said. 'I don't remember a Cousin Walter.'
'I'll explain the genealogy to you later, Dad,' I said, poking him with my elbow.
Cousin Walter was about six two, very physically fit, with a crew cut and a bulge under one arm of his bulky, unseasonably heavy navy sports coat. I'd never heard of Cousin Walter either, but if the FBI or the SBI or the DEA or whatever law enforcement agency sent him wanted us to pretend he was a cousin, that was fine with me.
No one in town would be fooled--we were all chuckling already about the half-dozen locals who'd introduced relatives nobody had ever met before or even heard of. Everybody was going along with the joke--we were glad to have them. I apologized for not inviting our newfound cousin to the wedding, he graciously accepted an oral invitation, and Dad and I returned to our gopher stomping. We were still at it when Michael showed up.
In my book, gopher stomping is useless but fun. Dad is convinced that if you systematically destroy a gopher's tunnels by treading on them to cave them in and then stomping to pack the dirt, the gopher will eventually get discouraged and go elsewhere. I think that far from discouraging them it probably pleases them immensely; they get to have the fun of digging all over again. But Dad likes to do it, and I help him out. Besides, with an outdoor wedding coming up, to which at least half a dozen middle-aged or elderly relatives would insist on wearing spike heels, reducing the pitfalls in the yard seemed like a good idea.
'I've come to a fork,' Dad announced. 'Are you at a dead end, Meg?'
'No, I'm still going strong,' I replied. 'Michael, would you like to take one?'
'One what?' Michael asked.
'One fork of the gopher trail,' Dad explained, stopping for a moment and mopping his face with a bandanna. 'Come over here and I'll show you.' After Dad demonstrated the basics of gopher stomping, we all three stomped a while in silence. Michael looked as if he wasn't sure whether or not we were putting him on.
'By the way,' Michael said, pausing to stretch, 'I was actually looking for Spike. Have you seen him?'
'No, not for several days,' Dad said. 'How did he get loose?'
'Took off after the peacocks and hasn't been seen since.'
'Do I detect a note of concern?' I asked. 'Don't tell me you're actually getting fond of the beast.'
'I wouldn't say fond,' Michael replied. 'But after two months of feeding him and walking him and giving him so many doggie treats Mom will probably have to put him on a diet when she gets back, we've reached a sort of truce.'
'That's great,' I said.
'Yeah,' Michael said. 'He hardly ever bites me anymore. Unless I try to take away something he ought not to be chewing. Or give him a flea bath. Or wake him suddenly. Or sometimes when he gets too frustrated at not being able to kill the postman.'
'Next thing you know he'll be fetching your pipe and slippers,' Dad remarked.
'Hardly.' Michael snorted. 'But just when I was beginning to think we could get through the summer without one of us killing the other, he disappears like this. What am I going to tell Mom?'
'We'll put the word out on the neighborhood grapevine,' I said.
'And we'll add that you've offered a small monetary reward for information leading to his capture,' Dad added.
'Every kid in the neighborhood will be scouring the bushes for him,' I said.
'Remember to warn them he bites,' Michael said.
'I think the entire county has figured that out by now,' Dad remarked. 'Well, I think that will discourage the little critters for a while,' he added, finishing off his trail with a crescendo of stomping around an exit hole. 'Let's go find the local urchins.'
The local urchins had a lively afternoon looking for Spike, but things quieted down by late afternoon. The storm we'd been expecting all day broke about five o'clock. The power went out almost immediately, of course. It always did when we had a thunderstorm. Mother had had the foresight to be visiting a cousin in Williamsburg, and called to say she'd be staying the night.
Rob went out with his bar exam review group to celebrate getting through the bar exams. Celebrating was a little premature if you asked me; he wouldn't know for months if he'd passed. But even if he hadn't, at least he wouldn't have to study night and day for a while, which I suppose was worth celebrating. I didn't expect him home till the wee hours, if at all.
Usually I like a good thunderstorm, especially since there was hope that it would break the latest heat wave. But tonight the candles I'd lit made the house look unfamiliar and creepy, and I was abnormally conscious of being by myself. The kitten was under the bed, spitting and wailing occasionally. The peacocks, who by rights should have been roosting somewhere, were awake and shrieking. I found myself starting at shadows, jumping at every clap of thunder, and straining to hear the suspicious noises that I was sure were being muffled by the steady drumming of the rain. Or drowned out by the menagerie.
When the rain let up at about nine-thirty, I decided to go out for some air. The ground was soaked, and it looked as if it would start raining again any time, but I couldn't stand being cooped up in the house any more. I put on my denim jacket and fled to the backyard. I found myself staring down at the river from the edge of the bluff, wondering if we'd ever find out the truth about Mrs. Grover's death. Morbid thoughts. Here I was in the backyard of the house I'd grown up in, and yet I found myself looking over my shoulder for shadowy figures. But it was only because I was so on edge, and straining to hear the slightest noise, that I heard the faint whining coming from somewhere down the bluff.
I peered down. I caught a faint glimpse of movement, a flash of something white.
'Hello,' I called. I heard a feeble little bark.
Spike.
I suppose I should have waited until I could find someone else to help me, but Michael had been looking for Spike for several days. The poor animal could be starving, injured--I couldn't wait. I rummaged in Dad's shed until I found a rope that seemed sound, tied one end to a tree and let myself down, half rappelling and half climbing hand over hand down the rope, toward the whining sounds. It was starting to rain again, of course. About twenty feet down, I found a vine-tangled ledge that I could stand on, and there at one end of the ledge, was Spike.
He cringed away from me, whining softly. His collar was caught on a branch, and I could see that he'd rubbed his neck raw trying to get out of it. Upon closer examination, I began to doubt that Spike had gotten into this mess by accident. It almost looked as if someone had deliberately buckled his collar around the branch. I felt a surge of anger. How could anyone treat a helpless animal that way! The poor thing was sopping wet, trembling like a leaf--
And still as nasty-tempered as ever. When I reached toward him, he lunged at me, teeth bared, and I
