Certainly wouldn’t have been my choice of weapon.
The other was taller. Vaguely shaped like an abstract hourglass, it flared at the base and again at the top, but narrowed in the middle until it was about the diameter of a baseball bat handle.
Joyce appealed to her husband, who had rejoined us. “Honey, didn’t we have five of these to start with?”
Bobby Ashe stroked his big brown walrus mustache and his brow wrinkled as he tried to visualize the way this candle-laden slab must have looked before the party started. “Them the ones we got at that forge up in Pennsylvania?”
“No, these came from that blacksmith over near Hillsborough.”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I believe we did buy five. He said he’d give us a better price break if we took all six, but you didn’t want an even number, remember?”
We were all counting with our eyes. Only four of that particular style remained on the ledge, and Joyce was becoming more positive that the evening had begun with five.
“If the men don’t find it out there, could we maybe borrow one of these to show the ME?” asked Underwood.
“Sure,” Joyce and Bobby said together.
Underwood carefully slid the lone candle into a plastic bag. “And in the meantime, we’ll check this for fingerprints. If we get anything usable, we may have to ask y’all to come down and give us yours. You, too, Judge.”
“But we live here,” Bobby protested. “Me and Joyce, we got our fingerprints on everything in the house.”
He was a big bulky man, and with his head reared back like that, he reminded me of a bull walrus defending his territory.
“Well, hell, Bobby,” said Sheriff Horton, “we know that. It’d be for elimination purposes. And don’t y’all have a woman comes in to help?”
“I’ll need her name, too,” said Underwood.
As if summoned by a bell, a plump middle-aged white woman came halfway down the stairs and paused to catch Joyce’s eye. “Mrs. Ashe?”
Joyce excused herself to go see what was wanted upstairs in the kitchen and the men went back out on the terrace. Left to my own ends for the moment, I rejoined Tina Ledwig, who hadn’t stirred from the couch.
“You must think I’m a coldhearted bitch,” she said lazily as I helped myself to a slice of cheese.
“Not at all,” I murmured inanely.
She sighed. “Half the people in this town will tell you Carl hung the moon. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe he did. I’ll have to check tonight. See if his name’s on it.”
“I heard he’s responsible for the town’s new senior center.”
“The Carlyle Grayson Ledwig Senior Center. Oh yes. Lots of brownie points for that.”
“They say it’s quite a facility.”
“State of the art,” she agreed. “God knows it cost enough.”
“What else do they plan to build on to it?”
“Build on?”
“I understand Dr. Ledwig left money to expand it?”
“Expand it? Where’d you get that idea? It’s already three times bigger than this town’ll ever need.”
“Mrs. Osborne said that’s what she’d heard. That your husband left money to expand the center.”
“Don’t know where she’d hear that.”
“From Mr. Osborne, maybe?” Not that I gave a damn. I was just making conversation till Underwood came back and drove me to pick up my car at the courthouse.
“Not from Norm,” Tina said firmly. “He’s on the current board—was on the current board,” she corrected herself. “Once it was built, Carl turned title, running, and maintenance over to the county. Saint Carl of Cedar Gap.”
“Sounds like a good thing to have done,” I said.
She gave a cynical snort. “Good for the clinic, too. Boosted the summer client base. Always kept his eye on the balance sheet, Carl did.”
“Is that where your daughter gets her business flair?”
She looked at me blankly.
“Your daughter Carla.” Did she not know her daughter had opened a café? Was she as in the dark as my cousin Beverly?
Comprehension dawned in her blue eyes. “Business flair? That little tea room thingy that her friends talked her into blowing her trust fund on? Thank God Carl never found out about that! He couldn’t stand Simon Proffitt.”
Before I could ask what Simon Proffitt had to do with the price of watercress sandwiches, Joyce came down the stairs, and from outside I heard a shout followed by a babble of voices.
“Oh,” said Joyce. “Sounds like they found it.”
CHAPTER 20
On our drive back to town, George Underwood wasn’t optimistic about lifting fingerprints from the surface of the iron candleholder his men had found.
“Too rough and dimpled,” he said.
“That’s the price you pay for handmade craftsy stuff,” I told him.
He gave a rueful smile. “I doubt if the Ashes were thinking murder weapon when they bought it.”
“Lucky for the killer, though. He probably wasn’t thinking about fingerprints either.”
“Just snatched up the closest solid thing at hand,” Underwood agreed.
“Which probably means he did intend to kill Osborne when he followed him out onto the terrace.”
“He?” There was an amused note in his voice.
“Or she. I’m not a member of the PC language police. ‘He’ works for me till we know for sure. Especially since more men kill than women.”
“More men get caught, anyhow,” he conceded, a definite grin on his face.
I laughed. “And on behalf of women everywhere, we thank you for that dubious praise.”
The sun had gone down shortly before we left the Ashe home, but the moon had already cleared the horizon. Nearly full now, it sheathed the hills in a silvery blue light. Leaf people come and go with the sun, and the narrow road was almost deserted on this Tuesday night.
Only Tuesday? It felt as if I’d been here a week.
Possibilities from last night played through my mind.
“Impulsive like Ledwig’s killer,” I mused, “but not in the heat of the moment.”
“How you figure that?”
“Would you go out on a deserted terrace with someone you’d been fighting with?” I asked.
“If it was coming to blows, I might take it outside.”
“With someone who was bringing along an iron candlestick?”
“It was dark. The killer could have palmed it.”
“Then why was he struck on the back of his head? If Osborne expected to fight, he’d be facing his attacker.”
“Not if he walked out first.”
“Then you’d have found blood on the terrace near the door, not over at the edge.”
“True. On the other hand, maybe Osborne thought the fight—argument, whatever—was over and he walked out there to cool off, not realizing his killer had followed.”
“When I went down to freshen up, that level was almost deserted,” I said. “Osborne could’ve gone to use the lavatory, too, and the killer followed him. If others had been around, Osborne might still be alive. But if the killer got lucky and it was just the two of them, he might have suggested they step out for a breath of fresh air or to look at the moon or a half-dozen other things. Once Osborne was leaning on the railing, looking out over Pritchard Cove—”
“Then it’s just one good blow to drape him over the railing, up with the legs, and ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’” said Underwood, finishing my scenario.
“That’s why I think it was pure impulse. Carpe diem.”
“Seize the day? But why this particular day, I wonder? What was Osborne going to do or say last night or today that made the killer feel he had to do it then?”
“What I said before. It could’ve been sheer impulse and nothing more. He’d already decided Osborne had to go. What better time than at a large party where suspicion could be spread around? If it were me, I’d start with all the usual suspects—wives, children, beneficiaries, business associates, and enemies—then eliminate any of those who weren’t at the party last night or who had alibis for when Dr. Ledwig was killed.”