“ Charlotte 's inside,” one of them said in response to my asking where Mrs. Macmillan was.
“Don't you find it odd that she's here so soon after her husband's death?” I asked the girl.
She looked surprised that I would ask such a question. “Of course not. We have a competition coming up in a few weeks. She's got to help us get ready for it.”
I entered through the open door and recognized Mrs. Macmillan immediately. Even though I'd seen her only briefly at the funeral, the elastic mask covering her face was unforgettable. My imagination conjured up visions of Vincent Price in House of Wax and Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera. What was she hiding under it? Since she was without the veil she'd worn to the funeral, I could see some shiny blond hair swinging loose around her shoulders. Today she wore faded blue jeans, white T-shirt, and a bedraggled beige cardigan. She looked no older than the college girls around her. Ivy Leaguer, I'd bet my life on it.
When she noticed me standing by the door, she excused herself and approached. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked.
“I'm Tori Miracle. President Godlove has asked me to look into your husband's… uh… accident.”
“Don't beat around the bush. My husband is dead. You can say the word.” Her blue eyes looked calmly at me through the holes in her mask.
I decided right then I admired her for her forthright-ness. “Okay, I'm sorry. I've been asked to look into your husband's death. Try to find out exactly how it occurred.”
“I'm so glad to hear that. That new police chief seems to think labeling it an accident is going to put an end to my questions. I want to know how… and why… this happened. Someone was to blame, and I want to know who!”
“Do you have any ideas?” I pulled my notebook out of my purse and opened it.
“I certainly do. Those men from Gettysburg who loaded the guns. I think you ought to begin with them.”
I didn't tell her I already had. “That's a good idea, Mrs. Macmillan.”
“Please call me Charlotte.”
“ Charlotte, do you know why Professor Nakamura disliked your husband?”
“That's news to me. We had very little contact with him. As a matter of fact, I've been teaching here for a year and can only remember talking to him once, at the president's Christmas party. What gave you the idea he didn't care for Mack?”
“I was told he turned in his resignation when your husband was named chairman of the board of trustees.”
She smiled wryly. “Ken Nakamura has got to be seventy-five or eighty. I'd say it was about time he retired.”
“Were you at the reenactment when your husband was-”
“Killed? You can say that word, too. No, I was at Penn National. That's the racetrack near Hershey. A friend of mind had a horse running, and she asked me to go along with her. We were planning to be there from Friday afternoon until Sunday. But of course I came home Saturday as soon as I heard what had happened.”
“What is the name of your friend?” I asked.
“Minta Sue-” She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Good grief, young lady, are you asking me for my alibi? Are you suggesting I had something to do with my own husband's death? Well, I can assure you I was at Penn National, Friday and most of Saturday. There are plenty of people who can tell you they saw me at dinner and the parties afterward. And the stable hands will tell you that Minta Sue and I spent the night in the stable with her horse.” A few tears stained the front of her mask. “Now look what you made me do,” she snapped, dabbing at the elastic with a tissue. “It's going to be all spotted. Shall I give you some names?”
“Yes, please.” At times like this, when I had to break into other people's private tragedies, I hated myself and the entire journalism profession. At times like this, I wish I'd done what my mother suggested and gone to library school.
She rattled off a bunch of names. “Sorry I don't have their phone numbers memorized, but… Do you ride?”
I nodded, a little surprised at the sudden change in topic.
“Then why don't you come over to my place Saturday and ride with us? Some of them will be there. You can talk to them then.” She sniffed once or twice, but the tears seemed to have stopped.
“What about the stable hands you mentioned?”
She sighed and snapped out a few more names, which I wrote down in my notebook.
She looked down at the tiny gold watch on her wrist. “Excuse me, I have to get changed for my class.”
One thing I could do today was interview the second reenactor, Darious DeShong. I had his address in my notebook and some typical Lickin Creek directions on how to find the Hostettler farm where he lived. “Head west, till you get to the fruit stand, the one what sells the good peaches not that other one, turn right at the second or third stone house, drive a couple of miles and after you pass the place where the dairy used to be, turn left…” Surprisingly, I'd actually become accustomed to following directions like these and figured I'd have little trouble finding the place. It would have been nice to have been able to call ahead to make sure he was there, but Woody had made it clear Darious didn't have a phone. I'd just have to chance it.
When I returned to my car in the nearly empty faculty lot, I found it had been ticketed by the campus security police for illegal parking. I jammed the ticket into my purse. President Godlove owed me something for roping me into this. At the very least, he could fix a parking ticket.
CHAPTER 7
I DROVE WEST, WITH THE AFTERNOON SUN SHINING brightly in my eyes. The peach stands were all closed, of course, for it was well past peach season. But I guessed that the second one was probably the home of the “best” peaches, because that's what the sign out front said. I turned right, I turned left, I backed out of someone's driveway, I tried again, and soon I found myself at a black mailbox with the name Hostet-tler printed on it in white letters. Set back from the road was a brick farmhouse, looking like many others I'd seen around Lickin Creek. It stood two stories high, had a small balcony with a white railing opening off a second-floor room, and a small front porch. I also noticed it had no power lines going out to the road, which meant it was most likely owned by an Amish family.
I knocked on the door. Waited. Knocked again. Heard a dog bark. Then the door opened and a slender middle-aged woman smiled out at me. She wore a long, full-skirted purple dress with a black apron over it. Against the black background, I could see the glint of the straight pins that held her clothes in place. I'd heard once the Amish don't use buttons. And they always wore the pins pointing inward so they wouldn't scratch the babies. She had blond hair, pulled straight back, and a rosy complexion that could only come from drinking milk and eating healthy foods. Although I didn't think she looked old enough to be married, a toddler peeked out at me from behind the skirt. She bent to stroke his head, and I saw the net bonnet covering her hair in back. She dried her hands on a blue crocheted dishrag and said, “We do not want any more magazines.”
“I'm not selling anything. I'm looking for someone I was told lived here. A Darious DeShong.”
“Oh yes, the Englishman.”
I knew the Amish and other Plain People liked to refer to the rest of us as the English, so I didn't really expect to find someone from Great Britain on the farm.