Jaytee, Oscar, and Harold were hot on Coleman’s heels. They paid no heed to my admonitions to be safe.
“Someone is trying to kill you, Clarissa,” Tulla said. She grabbed Bricey and made for the door, pushing Clarissa and the Crenshaws out of the way. Clarissa grabbed Tulla’s ankle and brought her down with a whump.
“Damn you,” Tulla said.
Clarissa punched her and crawled on top of her, using Tulla as a doormat as she made for the door.
“Halt!” Friar Tuck came out of the shrubs with a crossbow and hunting arrows. “In the name of justice, take this!” And he shot another arrow right at Clarissa. Luck was with her and the arrow narrowly missed.
“Cece!” I ran toward my friend, who’d obviously lost her mind, intending to knock her down before she got another shot off. Where had Cece even gotten a real crossbow?
To my astonishment, another Friar Tuck—a second plump man of the cloth—came stumbling out of the bushes. He tumbled forward, tripped over his robe, and rolled into the Tuck with the bow. They both went down in a heap. In the dark they rolled around, one on top of the other, slugging away. They would flip, and the Tuck who’d been on the bottom would be on top, punching the one on the ground. They were grunting and cursing.
“What the hell?” Tinkie asked. “This has gone way too far now.”
“Indeed it has.” I rushed forward and hurled myself at the Tuck on top. I had enough speed to knock him off-balance. He hit the ground with an ooffph and rolled over me, crushing the wind from my lungs. I felt like I’d been run over by a linebacker.
Before I could do anything except heave for air, Tuck got up and ran in the opposite direction from the one Coleman had taken. The remaining Tuck got off the ground and waddled over to me, offering a hand. Her fat pads had shifted so that she looked like Quasimodo, and with her makeup all smeared and blurred, she could have been anyone. I was more than a little suspicious.
“Sarah Booth. Snap out of it. It’s me, Cece.” She jammed the hand almost in my face. “Take it. I’ll pull you up.”
I did as she suggested. The yard was finally quiet. The spectators had scattered to the winds. Tinkie ran up to join us. “What the hell happened?”
“There was a second Friar Tuck.” It was like a bad hallucination. Where had the other Tuck come from? And where had he gone?
“I saw that,” Tinkie said. “Who was it?”
I looked at Cece, who shrugged. “Sorry, he didn’t leave a calling card,” she said.
“We need to be on his tail. Was he the person who shot Clarissa with an arrow? He could have killed her.”
“I think he meant to,” Cece said. She was busy untying her friar’s robes. In a moment she had shucked out of the costume and was unstrapping the fat pads. Beneath it all she wore jeans and a sweatshirt.
Coleman and the men returned. “We lost him,” Coleman said. “He took off down the street and disappeared.”
“We need to see how badly Clarissa is hurt.” It had looked like a mere brush with death, but we needed to be sure.
“That arrow almost took her ear off,” Harold said, and he wasn’t being clever. He was worried. “Whatever is going on in this town, it’s dangerously out of hand.”
“Any idea—other than Cece—who was in the friar’s costume?” Coleman asked.
We all shook our heads. “I don’t think it was a man. Beneath the fat pads, the body seemed lean but compact. I had some close personal contact when he, or she, rolled over me.”
“Tulla, Bricey, and Clarissa were all on the porch. Sunny and Bart Crenshaw were there, too,” Tinkie pointed out. “That means the archer wasn’t part of Clarissa’s inner circle of wild things.”
“Jerry Goode is unaccounted for, but he’s too big to be the second Friar Tuck,” I said. Tinkie and I looked at each other. “Who else could it be?”
“We have to consider that there are multiple bad actors here,” Tinkie said. “Each incident may have a unique villain.”
She had a point, and she was aggravated. She started to stomp toward the porch.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To get our donation. We aren’t leaving without it. We were promised a donation for the animal shelter and I can’t help it that Clarissa’s ear got skinned a little. We need that money.”
I knew there was no dissuading her, and I watched her knock boldly on the front door. In a few minutes she returned with a check. “Clarissa is fine. She didn’t want to cough up the money, but I told her I’d take out an ad in the newspaper to say she’d reneged on her donation.”
“Was she hurt?” I asked.
“The arrow nicked her earlobe, but no serious damage. It isn’t even bleeding. Much.” She waved the check. “And we have a nice contribution to the animal shelter.” She tucked it in her pocket. “Now we’re going to resolve this so we can go home day after tomorrow without having to think about Clarissa Olson. I have a plan.”
26
Coleman joined us wearing latex gloves and holding what looked like a very expensive crossbow. “I found it in the ditch. Whoever shot this could have killed Clarissa,” he said. “This isn’t just practical jokes, this is attempted murder. I’ll call the police.”
“I don’t trust Jerry Goode,” I told Coleman.
“We have to report this.”
“Shouldn’t Clarissa report it? It was her ear that almost got snicked off by an arrow.”
“She should, but we’re witnesses. I have to uphold the law,” Coleman said. “Even when you don’t like it.” He rumpled the frizzy white hair that was my wig. “I’ll tell you what. You
