“For which we’re all grateful.” Sister half smiled at him. “But you see people in crisis daily. Surely you get a feeling about the real person. Do you have a sense of this person?”
“Well, yes, I think our killer is rational and opportunistic. The fog gave him—or her—a chance to do what he or she was ultimately planning to do. Sister, I think it was Ralph who called you,” Walter said.
“Me too. Shaker and I thought of that. And I told the sheriff, too.”
“Shock. It’s a hell of a shock to see someone you know like that.” Shaker wanted to get his hands on the killer. “Poor bastard, flat out in the rain.”
“Which brings me back to why?” Sister said. “Why make a spectacle of Ralph? Why not kill him away from everyone? Why not dispose of his body and be done with it just like he thought he had done with Nola and Guy? I wonder if this isn’t a warning.”
“The hanging tree, a warning to all, the place of punishment.” Shaker nodded up toward the ridge.
“Shaker’s right. This was so dramatic. He’s arrogant. He thinks he’s invincible. He must have some incredible sense that he’d never be suspected.”
“No one would think Sybil killed her sister,” Shaker said quietly. He didn’t want to think Sybil capable of such a deed, but she had the best motive that he could discern.
“Paul Ramy certainly fingered her for a suspect. But he couldn’t make anything stick,” Ben confided to them. “He thought if she killed her sister that her family would protect her.”
“Tedi? Never!” Sister quickly responded.
“Sister’s right. But Edward might cover for her,” Shaker added. “He’d lost one daughter. What good would it do to have the other in jail? I assume that’s what a father would think.”
“I don’t believe it. I know Edward is protective of his girls, well, fathers always are, aren’t they?” Sister’s voice rose quizzically. “But he’s a man of principle. I don’t know that he would provide an alibi for her. Even if he thought the original murders were an isolated incident, you know, if he was sure she’d never kill again, he wouldn’t help her.”
“Paul’s reports say she stayed at the party, then went to the C&O with Ken. Other witnesses confirm seeing her there.”
“The Bancrofts could pay off the entire county,” Shaker said.
“Oh, come now, someone would talk. Keep a secret for two decades? Not here.” Sister interlocked her fingers. “I agree that Sybil had a financial and perhaps even an emotional incentive, but I don’t think she did it. Had Nola lived, Sybil’s inheritance would still be beyond most people’s wildest dreams.”
“Never underestimate the greed of the rich,” Ben Sidell said. “But you’re right, Sister, that our killer feels we can’t touch him. He’s fooled everybody for twenty-one years. I doubt he’s even that scared now.”
“Pride goeth before a fall,” Sister said quickly. Then she whirled around, as did Shaker, their senses sharper than either Ben’s or Walter’s.
A brush, brush in the cornfield alerted them.
Raleigh and Rooster charged down a row, the stalks bending deeply.
“It’s Clytemnestra and Orestes,”Raleigh informed them.
Encouraged by the canine companionship and hearing the human voices, the large Holstein cow and her calf walked out of the corn, making a squishy sound with each step.
“You two!” Sister was disgusted with them. “Raleigh, Rooster, let’s herd them home with us. We’ll get them over to Cindy’s later.”
“You bet.”The dogs paced themselves behind the two bovines, keeping just out of reach of a cow kick.
“Guess we might as well walk you home, too,” Ben said. “I’ll take down the yellow tape tonight.” He indicated the police tape used to cordon off Hangman’s Ridge. “Nothing else to find here.”
CHAPTER 32
A Titleist golf ball, white, rolled to a stop next to a small grooming brush, bristles full of flaming red fur.
“You thought that golf ball was an egg when you brought it home, didn’t you?”Inky mischievously batted the golf ball.
Charlie, a natural collector of all sorts of objects, replied,“It’s fun to play with, but I don’t think thehumans that play with them have much fun. They curseand throw their sticks. Why do they do it if they hate itso much?”
“Human psychology.”Inky observed the flat-faced species with great interest. For one thing, their curious locomotion intrigued her. She thought of human walking as a form of falling. They’d catch themselves just in time. It must be awful to totter around on two legs.
“They do like to suffer,”Charlie noted.“I believe theyare the only species who willingly deny themselves food,sex, pleasure.”
“And they’re so happy when they finally give in andenjoy themselves.”Inky laughed.
Charlie’s den used to belong to Aunt Netty, but she’d wanted to be closer to the orchard, so she had moved last year. Netty was like a perfectionist lady forever in search of the ideal apartment.
Charlie had enlarged the den. Given his penchant for toys, he needed more space.
“Look at this.”He swept his face against the dandy brush.“Feels really good.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Cindy Chandler. She left it on the top of her tacktrunk. When she forgets potato chips or crackers, that’sthe greatest. Not only does the stuff taste good, the bagscrinkle!”
“Some sounds are so enticing. Sister’s big wind chimes—I like to sit in the garden and listen to them ringing atnight.”
Inky and Charlie, the same age, belonged to two different species of fox. Inky, a gray, was slightly smaller. She could climb trees with dexterity, and in many ways she was more modest than the red fox, who had to live in a grand place, making a conspicuous mound so everyone would know how important he was.
The reds found this lack of show on the part of the grays proof that they were beneath the salt. Nice, yes, but not truly first class. And their conversational abilities missed the mark most times, as well. The reds enjoyed chattering, barking, even yodeling when the mood struck. Grays were more taciturn.
Both types of fox, raised in loving homes, went out into the world at about seven or eight months. The annual diaspora usually started in mid-September in central Virginia.
And both types of fox believed themselves the most intelligent of the land creatures. They allowed that cats could be rather smart, dogs less so. Humans, made foolish by their own delusions of superiority, delighted the foxes because they could outwit them with such ease. Nothing like a small battalion of humans on horseback and forty to sixty hounds, all bent on chasing a fox, to reaffirm the fox’s sense of his own cleverness.
“Charlie, howdidyou disappear in the apple orchard?”Inky had heard from Diana how the red fox evaporated as if by magic, leaving not an atom of scent.
He puffed out his silky chest.“Inky, there I was in themiddle of the apple orchard, fog like blinders, I tell you, the heavy scent of ripe apples aiding me immeasurably.I’d intended to duck into that abandoned den at the edgeof the orchard. You know the one?”She nodded that she did, so he continued.“But along came Clytemnestra andOrestes. And I thought to myself that those hounds, youngentry, mind you, have denned a fox each time they’vebeen cubbing. Getting too sure of themselves. If I simply vanish, they’ll be bumping into one another running incircles, whimpering,‘Where’d he go?’ I jumped on a bigrock and up on Orestes’s back. Up and away.”He flashed his devilish grin.
“You shook their confidence,”she admiringly complimented him,“for which every fox is grateful.”
“The T’s and R’s are going to be very good, I think.Trinity, Tinsel, Trudy, and Trident, Rassle, and Ruthie.Good. And now that the D’s are in their second season, well, we may have to pick up the pace. Aunt Nettywas right.”
“Usually is,”Inky agreed.
Outside, the arrival of soft twilight announced the approaching night.
“Would you like a golf ball?”