Lord of the Wings (10 page)

“What an excellent idea!” Dr. Smoot smiled so broadly that we could get a clear view of both fangs. “Let me give you a tour!”

I soon realized that my project might have been easier if Dr. Smoot hadn't been quite so keen on documenting the contents of the house. He wanted to show me every item in the museum and tell me every single shred of information he knew about it, while I snapped photos from every possible angle. The inauguration ball gown alone took up seventeen photos—Dr. Smoot wanted to be sure I appreciated all the intricate tailoring, beading, and embroidery. We managed to cover Arabella Shiffley's skimpy flapper dress in a mere ten or eleven, and then moved on to the military photographs. Dr. Smoot seemed to know every biographical detail of every soldier or sailor who appeared in them—at least the ones from Caerphilly. Fascinating to know that soldiers from tiny little Caerphilly had served in nearly every war our country had ever fought. But I wished we could postpone the full tour to a day when I didn't have dozens of other things to do.

Michael finally intervened.

“Oh, my goodness!” he exclaimed, looking ostentatiously at his watch. “It's getting close to your opening time! I think I hear one of the shuttles arriving! You must have a million things to do!”

“Oh, dear.” Dr. Smoot looked harried. “But this is important.”

“I tell you what,” Michael said. “You go and get the house ready to open. Meg and I will race through the photography part of the documentation, and then we can come back before you open tomorrow to record the provenance of all the objects.”

“An excellent idea! Thank you!”

Dr. Smoot raced away and Michael and I both let out sighs of relief.

“You're a lifesaver,” I said.

“Let's hurry up and finish this,” Michael said. “Before he decides that what we're doing is more important than whatever he's doing.”

Without Dr. Smoot's involvement, we finished off the rest of the basement in five minutes. Another ten minutes took care of the less-cluttered first and second floors. He'd set up each of the rooms as a spooky tableau. In one room, flickering candelabra and arrangements of black flowers surrounded a coffin that slowly opened to reveal a grinning, fanged vampire. In another, he'd set up a trestle table covered with herbs and flasks and other alchemical accoutrements. Jars with labels like E
YE OF
N
EWT
and F
ILLET OF
F
ENNY
S
NAKE
suggested that this was intended to represent a sorcerer's potion lab, and I suspected he'd be throwing bits of dry ice in some of the flasks and test tubes from time to time to produce suitable fumes.

Still, the rooms weren't cluttered—he'd left plenty of room for people to crowd in to admire each tableau—so photographing them was quick. Since the third floor contained only Dr. Smoot's private quarters, we decided it fell outside the bounds of our project—though we did test to make sure he'd locked the door at the foot of the stairs that led to it.

The whole time we were working, I couldn't help thinking about that clearing outside the zoo fence, where Cousin Horace and the other police officers were probably taking pictures of their own. By now they'd probably already found my father, who had succeeded Dr. Smoot as the local medical examiner. Maybe the sad, rat-faced dead man was already on his way to the hospital, where Dad would perform the autopsy. And perhaps it was illogical, but I felt bad that I hadn't stayed long enough to learn his name.

“Mission accomplished,” Michael said, rousing me out of my preoccupation.

“Some mission,” I said. “I know we're mainly doing this to document how the Haunted House looks now, and maybe I should feel happy that we didn't find anything that looked like an important clue to the murder. But still—not sure we need to rush down to the station to deliver these photos to the chief.”

“Probably not,” Michael said. “And we have other things to do. Let's make tracks.”

 

Chapter 9

We slipped out the front door just as Dr. Smoot was scurrying down the walk to fling open the front gates, and although I felt like a salmon swimming upstream, we eventually fought our way through the crowd of ghosts, pirates, zombies, and ghouls to our car.

“Of course, you do realize that now he expects us back to finish the tour tomorrow morning,” I pointed out.

“I'm sure we can think of some emergency to postpone it,” Michael said. “Better yet, when you get a chance to send your photos to the chief, send Smoot a copy, too, and tell him that it would be so much more helpful, since he's the expert, if he wrote up the descriptions.”

“I like the way you think,” I said.

Michael dropped me off at the school, where I reclaimed my car. He was due back at the college to teach his afternoon classes.

“A pity the college turned down Randall's proposal that they give the students today and tomorrow off so they could join the celebration,” I remarked.

“They didn't actually turn it down,” he said as he kissed me good-bye. “They just pretended not to have ever received it. Much more tactful that way.”

With that he drove off to the delights of Drama 350 (Advanced Theater History), Drama 380 (Script Analysis), and Drama 730 (Graduate Vocal Technique). I hopped into my car, pulled out my notebook, and began adding items to my day's to-do list.

My phone rang. Looking at the length of my list, I wasn't sure whether to welcome a distraction from it or worry that the call would add to it.

It was Chief Burke.

“Meg? Are you still out at Dr. Smoot's?”

“No,” I said. “I've finished up there and I'm back at Caerphilly Elementary, picking up my car. What's up?”

“If you can spare the time, would you mind dropping by my office? I could use your help.”

Did he mean that literally, I wondered? Or was “I could use your help” a euphemism for “I want to chew you out for butting into my case.” The way “helping the police with their inquiries” often seemed to mean “being interrogated as a really suspicious person but not technically under arrest … yet.” Or—

“Meg?”

“On my way in a sec,” I said. “I was just trying to calculate an ETA. Normally I'd have said I can be there in five minutes if you like, but given the crowds, I suppose I'd better double that estimate.”

“Avoid the town square if you don't want to quadruple it,” the chief said. “We're having a bit of a problem down there. Vern's arresting some people who are running around without costumes.”

“I thought the town council vetoed Randall's suggestion that we require everyone to wear costumes,” I said.

“By without costumes, I actually meant without any clothing whatsoever,” the chief said. “Apart from some remarkably extensive tattoos. We do have statutes against public nudity.”

“Roger,” I said. “Okay, I'll take the long way round to avoid the copiously inked streakers and see you as soon as possible.”

I did a quick calculation of the route least likely to take me past any crowd-pleasing attractions and set out. I was delighted when I managed to reach the police station in only nine minutes. And as I strolled into the station I realized that while I was still a little apprehensive that I'd done something to irk the chief, I was also elated that I might have a chance to find out what was happening with his murder investigation.

“He's waiting for you,” said a voice from the Jabba the Hutt costume that occupied most of the space behind the front desk. “Go on back.”

“Thanks,” I said, while trying to recognize the voice. Clearly not one of the sworn officers, since the chief had vetoed Randall's suggestion that they be allowed—or even required—to wear costumes on duty during the festival. Probably one of the volunteer auxiliaries, or even a member of my Goblin Patrol, helping out while all the officers dealt with the arrest of the clothing-impaired tourists. I gave up trying to identify Jabba and just waved as I went past.

The chief was sitting in his office, frowning down at a piece of paper.

“What's up?” I asked.

“Our prisoner isn't talking much,” he said. “In fact, I think he said more to you when you captured him than he's said the whole time we've had him.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Don't be sorry,” he said. “I'm not going to fault you for talking to someone you didn't know was a suspect in a murder we hadn't even found yet. And thank you again, both for spotting that little scrap of paper at the body dump site and for not just picking it up and handing it to me, the way some people would.”

“Body dump site?” I echoed. “Does that mean he was killed elsewhere?”

“Not enough blood and … er, other tissue at the scene, according to Horace and your father,” the chief said. “Someone killed him elsewhere, drove to the edge of the parking lot, and dragged the body into the woods a ways, presumably to delay its discovery. Or possibly because it was convenient on his way to breaking into the zoo.”

“So you think it was Justin Klapcroft who killed him.”

“Too early to tell.” The chief sighed and rubbed his temples. He looked exhausted. “The evidence is against him. But if he did it, he's one heck of an actor. Tell me, does the name Arabella Walmsley mean anything to you?”

“Arabella Walmsley? Yes, of course,” I said. “Though it wouldn't have an hour ago.”

“An hour ago?” The chief sat up straighter and looked a lot less tired. “What happened an hour ago?”

“Michael and I went over to the Haunted House and took pictures of everything—remember?” I gave him an overview of our visit and the details on Arabella's connection to the museum through her namesake.

“Interesting,” he murmured.

I waited a moment to see if he'd explain. And then I gave up waiting.

“Interesting how?” I asked.

“We didn't find any identification on our murder victim,” he said. “No wallet, no phone—we've sent his fingerprints to AFIS to see if they have him on file, and I borrowed a digital photo technician from your brother to clean up our morgue shot of the victim so we'll have something to give the newspapers if we need to ask the public to help us identify him. But we did find this in his pocket.”

He handed me a photocopy of an article from the
Caerphilly Clarion.
The headline read “Tragic Death of Richmond Resident with Caerphilly Roots.” I scanned the article. The first paragraph reported the scant details of Arabella's death—she was the victim of a hit-and-run a few blocks from the hotel where she'd been staying in San Francisco. In typical
Clarion
fashion, the rest of the article focused on her connection to Caerphilly, with much the same information I'd heard from Dr. Smoot about Billy and Arabella Pratherton, and the present-day Arabella's generous donation to the museum. I'd be willing to bet that Dr. Smoot was the reporter's main source.

“So I wasn't lying when I told Dr. Smoot that there might be a connection between his burglary and the murder.” I handed the article back to the chief.

“Although precisely what connection I haven't the slightest idea yet,” the chief said. “For that matter, I'm still trying to figure out how the scavenger hunt fits in. So tell me again about your encounter with Mr. Klapcroft. I want to know everything he did and said.”

I followed orders. When I'd finished, he nodded slightly and handed me two more papers—photocopies of the small folded paper that Vern had taken from Justin's pocket and the scrap I'd found near the body.

“What do you make of these? Mr. Klapcroft refuses to tell me anything about them. Even tried to deny that he owns one of them.”

“And you reminded him that Vern took it out of his own pocket?”

“Claims he picked it up somewhere intending to recycle it.”

“How civic minded of him.”

“Hmph!” He looked down at his notebook. “‘Just one of my tasks,'” he read. “‘If I finish the first set of tasks by midnight, I advance to the next round.' And when you called it a game, he said it was an adventure.”

“And a quest,” I reminded him.

“It looks as if he was almost finished with his day's tasks. His cell phone contains a photo of him eating a small cricket—he's got that as his wallpaper or whatever you call what you see when you turn it on. He'd also completed the tombstone rubbing—we found it in a knapsack that he hid in the shrubbery behind the reptile house, near where he gained entry to the zoo. And we found one of those tiny apple-sized pumpkins at the bottom of his knapsack.”

“So he was taking care of the last two tasks when we tackled him,” I said.

“But he won't tell us anything else,” the chief said. “He continues to assert his right to an attorney, and since he doesn't know any, I'm trying to scare up a court-appointed one for him. Which is not going to be easy. Two of the public defenders chose this week to take vacation, and the third's in Richmond representing a client who's in court down there.”

“You'd think the PDs would have realized that this might be a busy time for them,” I said.

“I think they realized it all too well and fled town.”

“Don't you have a roster of local lawyers you can call on to do pro bono work?” I asked.

“Yes, and we're working through it, and as soon as we actually reach one who's in the same time zone as we are, we'll demand that he or she come down here to represent Mr. Klapcroft.”

“Can't you get the paperwork you need to check out his cell phone?” I asked. “I'd be astonished if he hasn't called, e-mailed, or texted anyone about this scavenger hunt thing.”

“I agree,” he said. “Assuming we're ever allowed to get into it, the phone could give us a great deal more information. I've asked Judge Shiffley for a warrant. She's thinking about it. We'll probably get it eventually, but you know the judge. Big on protection of privacy. Likes to think through all the ramifications, and I suppose in her view, since we have the kid in custody, there's no big rush.”