“Hill-Bear, is that you?” Rountree cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, while he scribbled on a notepad in front of him. “I’m fine; how ’bout yourself? That’s good. Listen, Hill-Bear, we’re gonna need you to work tomorrow if that don’t interfere with your plans too much. Oh, just regular patrol in the squad car. Doris will be here in the office, keeping an eye on things. No, I won’t be off. Fishing? I wish I was. No, I’m afraid something pretty serious has happened out at the Chandler place and Clay and I will be investigating. No, it wasn’t a break-in. Listen, Hill-Bear, I don’t want to be talking about this on the phone. When I see you tomorrow morning, I’ll fill you in. Okay. Around eight. All right. ’Bye now.”
“He’s coming in?” asked Clay.
“Oh, yeah. He’ll be here at eight.” Rountree flipped through the card file on a metal stand beside the phone. “Hill-Bear’s a good old boy. You can always count on him.”
Hill-Bear Melkerson was not a full-time employee of the sheriff’s department as Taylor was. He worked for Rountree part-time on an as-needed basis, when he wasn’t on his regular job at the paper mill in Milton’s Forge. He usually handled the parking at Chandler High football games or at the county fair, and filled in for Rountree or Taylor on their days off. He was good for New Year’s Eve road patrols, too. No one was ever drunk enough to argue with Hill-Bear.
“Guess I better call Doris,” Rountree groaned. “I sure do hate to ask her to come in tomorrow.”
“You can’t be that concerned about spoiling her weekend, Wes,” said Clay.
“No, the fact is I’m not,” Rountree admitted. “But if I ask her to come in, she’ll want to know why, and if I tell her, it’ll be all over the county by morning.”
Geoffrey had been cutting tuna fish sandwiches in resolute silence for several minutes. Elizabeth had not talked to him, partly because she was preoccupied and partly because she didn’t know what to say. Any expression of sympathy might provoke either tears or an outburst of mordant wit, neither of which she was prepared to deal with. She had confined her utterances to basics: pass the mayonnaise, is there more bread? The rest of her mind retraced the sequence of the day’s events and tried to make sense of them.
She stole a glance at Geoffrey, still working like an automaton on the pile of sandwiches. “Do you think this will be enough, Geoffrey?”
“What? Oh. I suppose so. I won’t be eating any. Are you hungry?”
“Just a little,” Elizabeth admitted. She was starving.
Geoffrey set the last sandwich precariously on the heap. “I guess we’re finished. I seem to have run out of things to do.”
“Geoffrey, listen, about Eileen-”
“I’ll just carry the tray into the library,” he said quickly. “Then I’m going to my room.”
Elizabeth put away the bread and mayonnaise, lingering over her self-appointed task of cleaning the kitchen. Mildred would take care of it tomorrow when she arrived. To hell with Mildred, Elizabeth thought, she needed something to do right then. She tried to decide why she was so reluctant to join the family in the study. Because I feel like an outsider, she thought. Geoffrey’s grief and the fierce restraint of the others made her awkward. She couldn’t pretend, but to exhibit a lack of bereavement within the family seemed unnecessarily rude. The best course would be to go to her room, but she needed to talk. She felt that if she could hear herself talk, things would sort themselves out. She rinsed the tuna fish bowl and washed the knives while she considered the matter further.
A few minutes later, Elizabeth picked up the yellow wall phone by the refrigerator. “Long distance, please.” Soon she was connected with the proper city.
“Hello, Brookwood Apartments? Are you the manager? I’m calling long distance. My brother is a tenant of yours. In Apartment 208, and he doesn’t have a phone, but there has been an emergency in the family. A death, in fact, and I must speak to him.”
Elizabeth paced the length of the phone cord while she waited for Bill to be fetched from his lair. If he didn’t feel like listening to her in the manager’s apartment, which was probable, maybe he could call her back from a pay phone. She decided that it would be very comforting to talk to Bill, as long as they got it straight right from the beginning that he was to listen to her as a brother, and not as a student of criminal law. I know I have the right to remain silent, she quipped to herself; I waive that right just now. She heard the phone being picked up.
“Hello?”
“Bill! I have to talk to you. It’s urgent. Don’t interrupt. Can you talk or shall I give you the number here? You can call me back collect, just-”
“Uh-Elizabeth? I’m sorry, but Bill isn’t here right now.”
“He isn’t? Who is this?”
“Milo.”
“Milo! Oh, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m looking forward to meeting you.” Even in an emergency, we don’t forget our manners, Elizabeth thought grimly. “But listen, we have a sort of family emergency, and I really need to talk to Bill. Where is he?”
“What’s the matter? Where are you?”
He sounded quite concerned, as though he were ready to throw down the phone and come to her rescue. Elizabeth felt slightly better. “I’m all right,” she assured him. “I’m at Chandler Grove for my cousin’s wedding. At least, there was supposed to be a wedding, but she’s dead. The sheriff has been called in, and they’re investigating. They seem to think it was murder, but-” She was about to launch into the whole story, when she pictured Milo standing uncomfortably in a strange apartment, with the manager glaring at him. “I’m so sorry to be going on like this, Milo. I’ve never even met you.”
“It’s okay. Bill told me about your relatives. He was expecting melodrama, but I don’t think he would have predicted this. Are you all right?”
“Yes, of course. I just wanted to talk to somebody. Where’s Bill?” Much as she needed to talk, she didn’t feel like beginning at the beginning with even as kind a stranger as this. With Milo, she would only be reciting facts; with Bill she could progress to feelings.
“I’ll have him call you as soon as he comes in, of course, but I haven’t seen him since last night. I think he pulled an all-nighter with some other law students, something about a case…”
“Law or beer?” snapped Elizabeth.
“I just got home myself. My class is doing site work at some Indian mounds near here, and-well, don’t get me started about that… Bill should turn up soon. If you give me your phone number, I’ll have him call as soon as he comes in.”
Elizabeth supplied the number, and a brief account of the situation. She thanked Milo and assured him that some other time she would very much like to hear about Indian mounds, and then she hung up, unreasonably annoyed with Bill for not being in. She reluctantly admitted to herself that she felt better. Milo was all right. Idly she wondered if he had brought home any more bones for the kitchen table. With a weary sigh, she prepared to join the mourners in the library.
To her relief, she found that only Captain Grandfather remained downstairs. He was sitting at the table, making sketches on a notepad.
“The others have gone to bed,” he told her. “I have so much trouble sleeping that I have abandoned even the pretense tonight.”
“Is there anything I can get you?” asked Elizabeth.
“No. More coffee will only make the improbable impossible. Have you eaten anything?”
“That’s what I-no. I guess I will.” She sat on the couch with a napkin in her lap, and helped herself to sandwiches.
“The sheriff called Robert a little while ago. Says they got the results of the autopsy.”
“Oh? What was it? Heart failure?”
“They claim that Eileen was hit on the head, then thrown into that boat. It doesn’t seem possible, does it? It isn’t as if she were a stranger.”