"We could go over to where Maury McKinchie was killed, in the hall outside the gymnasium," Tucker suggested.
"Good idea." Mrs. Murphy hurried out the door.
"She could at least wait for us. She can be so rude." Pewter followed.
The cavernous gymnasium echoed with silence. The click of Tucker's unretractable claws reverberated like tin drums.
"Know what hall?"
"No," Mrs. Murphy answered Tucker, "but there's only one possibility. The two side halls go to the locker rooms. I don't think Maury was heading that way. He probably went through the double doors, which lead to the trophy hall and the big front door."
"Then why did we come in the backdoor?" Pewter grumbled.
"Because our senses are sharper. We could pick up something in the lockers that a human couldn't. Not just dirty socks but cocaine lets off a sharp rancid odor, and marijuana is so easy a puppy could pick it up."
"I resent that. A hound puppy is born with a golden nose."
"Tucker, I hate to tell you this but you're a corgi."
"I know that perfectly well, smart-ass." Ready to fight, she stopped in front of a battered light green locker. "Wait a minute." She sniffed around the base of the locker, putting her nose next to the vent. "Sugary, sticky."
"Hey, look at that." Pewter involuntarily lifted her paw, taking a step back.
"Dead." Mrs. Murphy noted the line of dead ants going into the locker. She glanced up. "Number one fourteen."
"How do we get in there? I mean, if we want to?" Pewter gingerly leapt over the ants.
"We don't." Tucker indicated the big combination lock hanging on the locker door.
"Why go to school if you have to lock away your possessions? Kids stealing from kids. It's not right."
"It's not right, but it's real," Mrs. Murphy answered pragmatically. "We aren't going to get anyone into this locker. Even the janitor has burnt rubber."
"He rides a bicycle," Tucker said laconically, picturing Powder Hadly, thirties and simpleminded. He was so simpleminded he couldn't pass the written part of the driving test although he could drive just fine.
"You get my drift." The tiger bumped into the corgi. Tucker bumped back, which made the cat stumble.
"Twit."
"It's all right if you do it. If I do anything you bitch and moan and scratch."
"What are you doing then?"
"Describing your behavior. Flat facts."
"The flat facts are, we can't do diddly." She halted. "Well, there is one trick if we could get everyone to open their lockers. Not that the dead-ant locker has poison in it. That would be pretty stupid, wouldn't it? But who knows what's stashed in these things."
"Do the faculty have lockers?" Pewter asked.
"Sure."
"How do you know the faculty lockers from the kids'?"
"I don't know. We're on the girls' side. Maybe there's a small room we've missed that's set aside for the teachers."
They scampered down the hall and found a locker room for the female faculty. But there was nothing of interest except a bottle of Ambush perfume that had been left on the makeup counter. The men's locker room was equally barren of clues.
"This was a wasted trip, and I'm famished."
"Not so wasted." Murphy trotted back toward the post office.
"I'd like to know why. Roscoe's office was bare. We passed through April's office, nothing there. The sheriff has crawled over everything, fouling the scent. The gym is a tomb. And my pads are cold."
"We found out that the killer had to have left the gym before Maury McKinchie to wait outside the front doors. They're glass so he could see Maury come out, or he waited behind one of the doors leading to the boys' locker room or the girls'. He dashed out and stabbed Maury and then either ran outside or he ran back into the gym. In costume, remember. He knew this setup."
"Ah." Tucker appreciated Mrs. Murphy's reasoning. "I see that, but if the killer had been outside, more people would have seen him because he was in costume—unless he changed it. No time for that, I think." Tucker canceled her own idea.
"He was a Musketeer, if Kendrick is telling the truth. My hunch is he came from the side. From out of the locker rooms. No one had reason to go back there unless they wanted to smoke or drink, and they could easily do that outside without some chaperon or bush patrol. No, I'm sure he ran out the locker-room side."
"You don't believe Kendrick did it?" Pewter asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear her friend's reasons.
"No."
"But what if Maury was sleeping with Irene?" Tucker logically thought that was reason enough for some men to murder.
"Kendrick wouldn't give a damn. A business deal gone bust, or some kind of financial betrayal might provoke him to kill, but he'd be cold-blooded about it. He'd plan. This was slapdash. Not Kendrick's style."
"No wonder Irene mopes around," Pewter thought out loud. "If my husband thought money was more important than me, I'd want a divorce, too."
"Could Maury have been killed by a jilted lover?"
"Sure. So could Roscoe. But it doesn't fit. Not two of them back-to-back. And April Shively wouldn't have vacuumed out the school documents if it was that."
They reached the post office, glad to rush inside for warmth and crunchies.
"Where have you characters been?" Harry counted out change.
"Deeper into this riddle, that's where we've been." Mrs. Murphy watched Pewter stick her face into the crunchies shaped like little fish. She didn't feel hungry herself. "What's driving me crazy is that I'm missing something obvious."
"Murphy, I don't see how we've overlooked anything." Tucker was tired of thinking.
"No, it's obvious, but whatever it is, our minds don't want to see it." The tiger dropped her ears for a moment, then pricked them back up.
"Doesn't make sense," Pewter, thrilled to be eating, said between garbled mouthfuls.
"What is going on is too repulsive for our minds to accept. We're blanking out. It's right under our noses."
50
The uneasiness of Crozet's residents found expression in the memorial service for Maury McKinchie.
There was a full choir and a swelling organ but precious few people in Reverend Jones's church. Darla had indeed flown the body back to Los Angeles, so no exorbitantly expensive casket rested in front of the altar. Miranda, asked to sing a solo, chose "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" because she was in a Lutheran church and because no one knew enough about Maury's spiritual life to select a more personal hymn. BoomBoom Craycroft wept in the front left row. Ed Sugarman comforted her, a full-time job. Naomi Fletcher, in mourning for Roscoe, sat next to Sandy Brashiers in the front right row. Harry, Susan, and Ned also attended. Other than that tiny crew, the church was bare. Had Darla shown her famous and famously kept face, the church would have been overflowing.
Back at the post office Harry thought about what constituted a life well lived.
At five o'clock, she gathered up April Shively's mail.
"Do you think she'll let you in?"
Harry raised her eyebrows. "Miranda, I don't much care. If not, I'll put it by her backdoor. Need anything while I'm out there? I'll pass Critzer's Nurseries."
"No, thanks. I've put in all my spring bulbs," came the slightly smug reply.
"Okay then—see you tomorrow."
Ten minutes later Harry pulled into a long country lane winding up at a neat two-story frame colonial. Blair Bainbridge had lent Harry his truck until hers was fixed. When she knocked on the door, there was no answer. She waited a few minutes, then placed the mail by the backdoor. As she turned to leave, the upstairs window opened.