Six Geese A-Slaying (20 page)

“Thanks,” he said. “I promise I won’t ever do anything like this again.”

“One thing,” I said. “Did you mess with his pictures?”

He shook his head.

“I didn’t even look at more than the first one or two,” he said. “I could tell it wasn’t yours.”

“Good,” I said. “I want to be telling the absolute truth when I say that you had nothing to do with the missing pictures.”

“But how do you even know there are any missing?” he asked.

“There may not be now, but before I give this back to him, I plan to look through all of them and delete any that I’d cringe
to see published in the
Trib
. For instance, I remember him taking a picture of my rear end when I was bending over to see if Spike was bleeding to death.”

Eric grinned.

“So you’re going to do the same thing I was going to do.”

“You bet. Now run along and sin no more. Leave that to me.”

“Thanks, Aunt Meg.” He hesitated, then reached over to give me a quick hug before turning to go.

“Oh, Eric—can you do something for me?”

“Sure.” He paused in the doorway.

“If you see Michael, could you get him to send someone up with the key to the office?”

Eric grinned.

“So you can keep people like me from bothering you,” he said.

“So I can lock it up when I leave,” I said. “We’ve got all the presents here—including yours.”

“Oh, in that case—yeah, I’ll find him,” Eric said. He closed the door behind him.

I stood up to look over the desk at Spike. He was still under the chair, curled up so tightly he looked like a black and white
fur hat.

“You’re a lot of help,” I said. “Next time, bark, will you?”

He ignored me.

I sat back down to examine the camera.

Chapter 29

Luckily, since Werzel’s camera was the same make and practically the same model as my own, I didn’t have much trouble turning
it on. Not exactly a professional photographer’s camera. No wonder Werzel had been so desperate for his lost photographer
to show up.

Though it was odd that even after the real photographer arrived, Werzel continued looking so insistently for his camera. Especially
since he wasn’t much better a photographer than I was. His photos didn’t have as many of what Michael called “unidentified
flying pink sausages”—pictures in which I’d accidentally put part of my thumb or forefinger in front of the lens—but just
as many of his shots were ever so slightly out of focus. Or noticeably askew. Or awkwardly framed. The occasional shot good
enough to print looked more like an accident than anything else.

I deleted half a dozen embarrassing or unflattering shots of myself and others—shots sufficiently in focus that some editor
at the
Trib
, in an evil moment, might have considered using them. Of course, by the time the news about the murder had broken, the photographer
had arrived, so odds were the
Trib
wouldn’t need any of Werzel’s shots at all.

Except, of course, for the shots of Ralph Doleson while he was still alive. Those might have a news value that outweighed
their poor quality. My temper flared all over again when I saw the shots of Doleson booting poor Spike out of the pig shed.

Perhaps it was a pity I’d decided to wait until after the parade to report Doleson for animal abuse. If I’d dragged one of
the several nearby police officers over to have him arrested on the spot, maybe he’d still be alive.

No use second-guessing things like that, and it wasn’t as if it was my fault the killer had found Doleson alone. Like Ebenezer
Scrooge, he’d helped seal his own fate by the way he’d lived.

Werzel had snapped a couple of shots of Spike lying in wait outside the pig shed, and then a rather nice shot of Clarence
ministering tenderly to the small evil one. And another predictable but amusing shot of Spike sinking his teeth deep into
the heavy leather gloves Clarence had taken to wearing when treating his more savage patients, like Spike and the zoo’s wolverines.

I reached over and plugged the card reader into Michael’s computer. The shots of Spike and Clarence were too good to let go.
Before I gave the camera back, I was going to keep copies of them for myself.

I turned back to the camera and clicked ahead. Another couple of photos of Spike, none of them as good as the first few. A
distant shot of Michael, Dr. Blake, and the chief on their camels.

Followed by a candid shot of Ralph Doleson, sitting on the seat of the sleigh. He was looking up at the camera as if surprised,
and he was holding a boot in his hand.

“What’s that?”

I jumped a foot. I’d been staring so intently at the camera’s tiny LCD screen that I hadn’t even heard Rob open the door and
walk in.

“You scared me to death,” I said. “I’m definitely going to get Michael to rearrange his office furniture before one of his
students sneaks up and gives him a heart attack.”

“I bet he doesn’t spend much time on the computer with his back to the door like that,” he said. “I wouldn’t, if I were him.
You’re the one who gets so wrapped up in the computer that you don’t notice what goes on around you.”

“Did you at least bring the key?” I asked.

“Key?”

Okay, so Michael hadn’t sent him.

“Never mind,” I said looking back at the camera.

“What’s so interesting?”

“It’s a picture of Ralph Doleson,” I said, handing him the little camera.

Rob peered at the screen and frowned.

“He’s sitting in the sleigh where he was killed,” he said. “With one boot on and one off. I only got a quick glimpse through
the door, but doesn’t this look a lot like . . . ?”

“Like a picture of Santa taken just before the killer staked him,” I said. “I got a lot more than a quick glimpse, and that’s
exactly what it looks like to me, too.”

“What’s it doing in your camera?” Rob asked.

“This is Werzel’s camera,” I said. “It only looks like my camera.”

“You switched cameras by mistake?”

“That’s what it looks like,” I said. Which wasn’t precisely a lie, but it kept Eric’s secret. “Let me see that again.”

“No wonder he was so frantic to find this,” Rob said.

He handed the camera back. I studied the picture of Ralph Doleson for a few more seconds, and then clicked the button to see
what was next.

Yet another of Werzel’s badly shot mistakes. A blurry brown shape on the right, a blurry red blob on the left. I squinted,
to see if I could figure it out. Rob leaned over my shoulder.

“Closeup of Rudolph’s nose?” he suggested.

“No,” I said, as my stomach turned over with a wrenching twist. “Blood spatter on the lens.”

“Are you serious?”

I turned the camera over and peered at the lens.

“Maybe it’s my imagination,” I said. “But there is something crusted around the edge of the lens. See?”

I held it out for his inspection. He stared for a few seconds, then turned pale and sat down in one of Michael’s guest chairs.

“That’s really blood?” he asked, in a slightly choked voice.

“Put your head between your legs and breathe slowly,” I said, mentally kicking myself for having forgotten Rob’s notorious
squeamishness at the very thought of blood.

“Maybe we both just have overactive imaginations,” he said.

“I doubt it. No wonder Werzel was so frantic to get it back. He’s the killer—and this camera proves it!”

“Wait a minute,” Rob said, sounding stronger. “That can’t be blood. How could there be blood spatter on the camera, when there
wasn’t any on his clothes? I think someone would have noticed if he was running around looking like Sweeney Todd.”

“I bet there was blood on his clothes,” I said. “That’s why he suddenly showed up in one of the county-issue shepherd’s robes.”

“I just thought he was trying to blend in and get into the spirit of things,” Rob said. He shook his head which looked rather
odd, since he was still hanging upside down in fainting prevention mode.

“Maybe you thought that,” I said. “I knew he had a sneaky reason for doing it, but I just assumed he was trying to make us
forget he was a reporter so he could catch people doing embarrassing things.”

“We have to tell—”

“I know, I know.” I automatically reached into my pocket and took out my cell phone.

And got absolutely no signal, of course.

“You’ll never get a signal in this weather,” Rob said, peering up at me. “I’m even having trouble on the iPhone. This whole
county might as well be back in the twentieth century. Use the land line.”

I nodded, and used Michael’s phone to dial the police station’s non-emergency number.

Debbie Anne, the dispatcher, answered. She’d have answered 911, too, but she’d be less apt to gossip about my calling if I
used the non-emergency line.

“Meg!” she exclaimed. “You made it into town! Does this mean Michael’s show is on?”

“With or without an audience,” I said. “Look, could I talk to the chief for a moment?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s not here. He’s out at—out of the station.”

I had to smile. The chief had probably told her off again for talking too much and telling too much police business to civilians.

“I don’t suppose you know where he is,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can take a message.”

“Could you tell him to call me as soon as he can?”

“Can I tell him what it’s about?”

Debbie Anne and I fenced back and forth for a few more rounds, with me trying to find out where the chief was and her trying
to find out why I was calling, before we settled for a draw. I gave her Michael’s office number, told her I’d be there for
the time being, and signed off.

“He’ll call back,” I said.

“Why didn’t you just tell her why you called?” Rob said.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe because Werzel showed up at the burglary scene almost as soon as we did. What if he has a police
radio? A lot of reporters do. Or what if Debbie Anne says something to the wrong person? I hear a lot of stuff leaks out of
the police station, and I suspect Debbie Anne’s part of the problem.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I looked at the phone as I thought it over.

“A watched phone never rings, you know,” Rob said. “We should think of something else.”

“Such as?”

“If Werzel’s the killer why did he do it?”

“How should I know?” I said. “Unless—hang on.”

I turned back to the computer and Googled Emerson Drood.

“What’s that?” Rob asked. He came and perched on the desk so he could look over my shoulder. I felt less stupid about not
recognizing Drood’s name when Heather first mentioned it.

“A state politician,” I said. “From somewhere near Charlottesville. He killed himself about ten years ago. If I’m right .
. .”

But nothing on the first couple of pages looked promising.

Most were pages that mentioned both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Dickens’s
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
. A couple of the articles mentioned Emerson Drood’s death, but nothing about the circumstances.

“So far this is not keeping me awake,” Rob said. “Are you sure what you’re looking for is even available online? Not a lot
of newspapers were ten years ago, you know.”

“Yeah, and the one I’d really like to see is defunct anyway,” I said. “Let me try something else.”

This time I typed in “Emerson Drood” and “Whispering Pines” and clicked on the most promising of the resulting links.

“What does the Pines have to do with this Drood guy?” Rob asked.

“Maybe everything,” I said, as I scanned down the article. “Aha!”

“Aha what?”

“Fifth paragraph. ‘Drood’s body was found at 1:14 A.M. on the morning of August 5 by the night desk clerk of the Whispering
Pines Motel in nearby Caerphilly County.’ ”

“Someone was murdered at the Pines?” Rob said, looking pale again. “What room number?”

“It doesn’t say,” I said. “And the death was ruled a suicide, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Not appreciably, but thanks.”

“I wonder what the clerk was doing, snooping in the rooms in the middle of the night?”

“Looking for small portable valuables, I imagine,” Rob said. “That was one of Doleson’s hobbies. So what does Werzel have
to do with this?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But whatever it was, I think Doleson was blackmailing Werzel about it. You heard about the way Doleson
was always photographing people who came to the Pines. I bet he had some kind of dirt on Werzel.”

“Like maybe that Werzel killed Drood?”

“Maybe,” I said. “No idea why he would, though. Werzel supposedly got a dramatic last interview with Drood just before the
suicide. Seems more plausible that Doleson knew there was something fishy about that interview.”

“What do you mean, fishy?” Rob asked.

“What if Doleson knew that Werzel wasn’t there with Drood long enough to get such a long interview? Maybe Doleson eavesdropped
and knew Werzel had faked some of the interview.”

Rob shook his head as if it all sounded rather weak. I agreed with him. Then I had another idea.

“Doleson was always snooping, right?”

Rob nodded.

“What if Doleson found the body and didn’t report it?”

“Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he wanted to loot the dead guy’s luggage before calling the police. Or dump the hassle of dealing with the cops on
his poor night clerk. Or maybe he was on the way back to his office to report it. Whatever it was, before he could do it,
Werzel drives up. What does Doleson do?”

“Grabs his digital camera and starts snapping shots.”

“Bingo!” I said, so loudly that Spike woke up and growled at me. “Doleson gets some lovely shots of Werzel entering the room.
Then Werzel fleeing the room. And then the dead body Werzel apparently left behind. Werzel’s the prime suspect if the police
are thinking murder. And Doleson could have made it look even worse—like claiming he’d heard what sounded like a struggle.
He’s got the perfect ammo for blackmailing Werzel.”

Rob whistled.

“Sounds plausible to me,” he said. “Why doesn’t the chief call back?”

“It’s Christmas Eve, he’s got a big murder case, and he doesn’t know I’ve got a key piece of evidence.”

We both looked at the phone again. It stubbornly refused to ring.

“So are we just going to stay here till it rings?” Rob asked. “No offense to Michael, but it’s kind of creepy up here with
no one else around.”

“Very creepy,” I said. “And no, we’re leaving. Minerva and the chief are coming to the show—she said so this morning. Let’s
go downstairs and wait for them, and I can tell the chief in person.”

“What if he skips the show to keep working on the case?”

“Then we’ll tell Minerva, and she’ll help us reach him. Debbie Anne might not put me through to the chief, but she wouldn’t
stonewall Minerva.”

“Great idea,” he said.

I shut down the browser and began turning Michael’s computer off. Rob went over, opened the door, and stood fidgeting in the
doorway.

“The small evil one should go back in the crate,” I said, over my shoulder.

“Okay, I’ll—damn!”

I glanced up to see Rob clutching his hand, as the tip of Spike’s tail disappeared out the door.

“I think we’re going to have to start spelling in front of him,” I said, as I picked up my coat and purse.

“Won’t work,” Rob said, over his shoulder. “He’s psychic. I’ll get him.”

He took off down the corridor. I stuck the camera in my pocket and went over to prop the carrier door open. I heard a clatter
outside in the corridor.

“Rob?” I called. I stepped out into the corridor and looked in both directions. Only a few scattered bulbs on the night system
lit the corridor, but I could easily see that it was empty. No Rob. No Spike. Nothing at all, except for a cleaner’s mop and
an overturned bucket at the far end of the corridor on the right, where it turned a corner. The noise had probably been Rob
tripping over them.