“You hurt yourself?” He looked up in concern.
“Not me. Jake?”
Jake strode forward, bent toward the chief. “Anything wrong, sir?”
I dug my heels into the ground, but I was losing the battle. There was only one solution. With my left hand, I gave the chief’s fanny a big pinch.
Startled, he let go of the phone and my hand and shot to his feet like a man poked by a pitchfork. “What the heck!” His exclamation brought everyone to a standstill. All eyes focused on him.
He looked around, frowning. “Something poked me in the rear.
I guess a bug or something got me.” He gave Jake, who was nearest him, an odd glance.
By this time I was once again on my tree limb. My heart raced.
Obtaining the phone had been touch and go. I held tight to it, but I was far from home free. What if it rang again? All eyes would swing up. Probably there was a means of forestalling that occurrence, but I
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didn’t have any idea what it might be. I couldn’t simply secrete it up here in the tree. The ding-dong ring would reveal its hiding place immediately.
“Jake, did you jab me with something sharp?” Jake looked shocked. “No, sir. There was nothing close to you.
Absolutely nothing.”
The chief shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s see. Oh yeah, that phone.”
I worried about taking the phone to the rectory. If it were found there, Kathleen would be in direr straits than she’d ever imagined.
However, I had no expertise with the cunning little machine and I needed Kathleen’s help. Wafting through the air with the phone in hand posed a danger. Even though it was dark, someone might glimpse an airborne object in the glare of a passing headlight or in the radiance of a streetlamp. That would cause comment.
I had an instant’s qualm. Had I undertaken a task beyond my capabilities? Sternly, I quelled my misgivings. I was on a mission.
If there were unfortunate repercussions, odd incidents that would go down in Adelaide folklore as the peculiar occurrences attendant upon the discovery of Daryl Murdoch’s body in the cemetery one wind-whipped night shortly before Halloween, so be it.
Below, flashlights crisscrossed the ground. The chief knelt again by the body. “The damn phone has to be here. Everybody stay where you are. Jake, grab me a Maglite.”
All eyes were on the ground. I made my move.
Ca ro ly n H a rt
Kathleen, I did not make an instantaneous leap to the rectory kitchen as I had from the rectory kitchen to the crime scene. Instead I swooped from the branch to the rectory and, in consequence, passed over the church parking lot.
Below me two elderly women were progressing slowly toward a large white car. One leaned on a cane. The other bobbed beside her, speaking in a club woman’s clarion voice. “Absolutely a disgrace that the rector—”
The ding-dong bell of Daryl’s phone pealed, its shrillness emphasized in the quiet of the parking lot.
The woman with the cane jolted to a stop. She looked up, startled.
“Look, Maisie.” She pointed her cane at the sky.
The smaller woman’s gaze rose, but, fortunately, I was beyond the bright circle from the light pole. “What?” The voice was loud.
The older woman bellowed, “Maisie, don’t you have your hearing aid turned on? There was a bell and something flew by right up there.” She gestured with the cane. “It sounded like a cell phone. It looked like a cell phone. Up there all by itself!” Maisie looked huffy. Her voice had the loudness of the hard of hearing. “I declare, Virginia, you don’t need to try and fool me with any Halloween nonsense just to make me turn on that fool hearing aid that makes me feel like I’m inside a washing machine. And—
Virginia, look over there. All those lights in the cemetery. Oh, my goodness, something’s happened. We’d better go see.” Maisie headed for the path to the cemetery.
Virginia couldn’t keep up with her short plump friend. Her progress was also slowed because she kept pausing to look back, her face a study in bewilderment tinged by shock.
I wished I could reassure Virginia. Obviously, she was a woman who knew what she had seen. But I had problems of my own. I waited in the darkness near the trunk of the big sweet gum behind the rectory. At all costs, I hoped to prevent anyone else from glimps-60
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ing the phone. I was tempted to appear so I could slip the thing in my pocket. I started to appear, changed my mind. It would be just as detrimental for me to be seen as for the airborne phone. Adelaide was a small town. I would immediately be noted as a stranger and, once seen, an interesting subject for discussion.
I could imagine the conversations now: “Who was that redheaded woman in the backyard of the rectory Thursday night?” “She was there and then she seemed to disappear. Do you suppose she was visiting Kathleen?” “Did you ask her name?” ”I was hurrying toward her and then she was gone.”
I know small towns. I was positive calls had already begun, spread-ing word of Daryl Murdoch’s demise to almost every household in Adelaide. Virginia and Maisie wouldn’t waste an instant in sharing the exciting news
