“Oh.” Kathleen looked faint.
I lost my appetite.
She ran for her car. I was already in the passenger seat, waiting.
The brick bungalow’s front shutters gleamed with recent paint in the porch light. Late-blooming pansies added color to the front flower bed. A red candle burned brightly in a toothy jack-o’-lantern on a front step. A skeleton in a pink tutu dangled from a planter hook in the porch ceiling. An engraved nameplate by the doorbell read isaac and evelyn franklin.
Kathleen rang the doorbell. She’d insisted that she be the one to talk to Isaac. I insisted I would accompany her, though unseen.
The door opened. Isaac Franklin was on the shady side of fifty, lined dark face, silvered hair, but he looked muscular and fit. The minute he saw Kathleen, his grim expression altered. “Come in, Mrs.
Kathleen. You come right in.”
Kathleen stepped inside. “Isaac, what’s this about your wheelbarrow?”
He folded his arms, frowned. “I don’t hold with taking a man’s 190
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work tools. Like I said, if a body can’t report mischief without stirring up a hornet’s nest, I don’t know what the world’s coming to.” A plump pretty woman bustled to his side. She was stylish in a pale violet velvet top and slacks and white boots.
I especially liked the boots. I’d remember them and perhaps another time . . .
She took Isaac’s arm in a firm grip. “Papa, you can’t be on your high horse when there’s been a murder. Come in, Mrs. Kathleen, and Isaac can tell you what happened.”
Kathleen was offered the most comfortable chair in the den.
Evelyn put the TV on mute. Isaac joined his wife on the divan, clamped his hands above his knees. “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Kathleen, I never been so surprised. First thing this morning, I saw somebody had been fooling around in my shed. I don’t leave things any old which way. Everything has a place and everything is in its place. So when I found the wheelbarrow jammed up next to the shovels—” It had never occurred to me to quiz Kathleen about her return of the wheelbarrow to the shed. I understood her panic and haste, but that hurried dumping of the wheelbarrow might be her undoing.
“—I checked to see if anything was missing. I can tell you I know what’s where.” He looked puzzled. “I looked real good and nothing was missing. Everything else was there and where it should be, but, like I told that officer this afternoon, somebody’d had my wheelbarrow out and I know that for sure because there was some mud on the wheel and I’d just greased it good the other day and I don’t put anything away dirty.” He nodded three times for emphasis. “Somebody took my barrow out and did I don’t know what with it. I’d guess kids, but I don’t see how they got into my shed. It was locked up like always when I left yesterday afternoon and locked again this morning, but somehow somebody got that barrow out and put it back.
That seemed mighty odd to me. I went over to tell the rector, but he wasn’t in his office. When I came home for lunch, Evelyn told me 191
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she’d heard on TV about Mr. Murdoch being found shot in the cemetery. I called the police because it seemed to me they should know there was something odd going on around the church.” He glowered. “I didn’t take kindly to it when that officer asked me about how Mr. Murdoch and I had words outside the parish hall on Monday.
Turned out Mamie Pruitt couldn’t wait to tell the police about me and Mr. Murdoch, but I told that officer to go and talk to Father Bill.
Father Bill took my part just like he should. I got those groceries out of the pantry for the Carter family that live down the block from us.
Mr. Carter, he’s in the hospital, and Mrs. Carter, she lost her job, and there’s five kids and no food for the table. Father Bill said of course I could take food for folks in need, but that mean-hearted Murdoch didn’t want help going to anybody but people approved by some committee or other. And the policeman badgered me about keys. Who had keys except for me? Well, like I told him, there are keys here, there, and everywhere. The rector, he has keys to everything, and so do the senior warden and the junior warden and the Sunday school superintendent and the head of the Altar Guild. So it isn’t like I was the only one that has keys. Then he wanted to know where I was between five and seven last evening and I told him it wasn’t no business of his.” His eyes glowed with outrage.
Evelyn patted his stiff arm. “Now, Papa.” She turned bright eyes toward Kathleen. “Isaac was with me. He got home right on schedule at a quarter after five and we had a quick supper then we went over to our daughter Noreen’s and took care of Ikie and Sue so Noreen and Bobby could go to a show.”
Kathleen’s smile was reassuring. “I’m sure the officer didn’t intend to offend you when he asked where you were yesterday. They ask everybody who might have been in the area.”
“See, Papa?” Evelyn patted his arm.
Isaac still frowned. “I don’t hold with that policeman taking my barrow away. He gave me a receipt. I told him I needed my barrow 192
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with all the stuff I’ll be hauling away after Halloween’s over, pumpkins and bales of hay and what all. I need my barrow. Mrs. Kathleen, can you get me my barrow back?”
Kathleen hunched over the wheel of her car. “If the police link that wheelbarrow to Daryl, Bill will be arrested.” She turned toward me, though, of course, the passenger seat appeared empty. In the wash of a streetlamp through the window, her face looked pale and desperate.
I agreed. Father Bill was definitely at risk. I was very much afraid for him. If only we knew where the chief’s investigation was headed.
There might be a way to find out if I were clever enough to remember what Bayroo had told me about computers. “I’ll go to the police station and see if I can work the chief’s computer. Bayroo showed me this afternoon.”
Kathleen’s glance at me was pitying. “I don’t think so, Bailey Ruth.
You have to know the password and it takes some skill to find files.” Files? I didn’t want to ask Kathleen what that meant. I pictured a gray steel cabinet. “I know the password. Cougar.” Kathleen’s eyes narrowed. “If I could get in, I can find out what we need to know.” She pressed fingers tight against her temples for a moment. Her hands dropped. She asked quickly, “Where is his office?”
“City hall. Second floor.”
“Do the windows open?”
“I’ll find out.” Before she could exclaim, I was in the chief’s office.
The windows were old-fashioned, with sashes. Back in the passenger seat, I reported, “Three windows on the south side. They open.”
“That’s all I need. Here’s what we’ll do . . .” It was a good plan, a daring plan. I hoped it wasn’t a foolhardy plan, but Kathleen was already shoving the car into gear and speed-ing toward the rectory and the supplies we would need.
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. . . .
The chief ’s office was chilly. I remembered my days in the mayor’s office and the way he turned down the thermostat when he departed for the day. He never arrived until a good hour after the staff, so he wasn’t concerned in winter with how long it took for the offices to get warm. I’d arrived to a frosty workplace often enough that I learned to nudge the thermostat up as soon as he was out the door. Now I found the thermostat, pushed it to seventy. I turned on the light.
At the window, I lifted the sash and leaned out.
Kathleen stood in the deep shadow of an old cottonwood. In her witch’s robe, she was simply a darker splotch in the shadow.
I held out my hands. I missed the tennis ball on her first try. The second time I caught it. A cord was taped to the ball. Swiftly, I pulled hand over hand and the cord lifted the rope ladder she’d retrieved from the Boy Scout troop’s storeroom in the church. I placed the hooks over the sill.