“Going like a bat out of hell, and in his Wagoneer too. Those things can’t corner and hold the road.” Harry felt her shoulders tense.
“Look!” Mrs. Hogendobber could now see, once they were out of another snaky turn, that a car in front of Samson’s sped even faster than his own.
“Holy shit, it’s Lucinda! Excuse me, Miranda, I didn’t mean to swear.”
“Under the circumstances—” Miranda never finished that sentence because a second set of sirens screeched from the opposite end of the road.
“You’ve got them now,” Harry gloated.
As soon as Lucinda saw Sheriff Rick Shaw’s car coming toward her, she flashed her lights and stopped. Cooper, hot on Samson’s tail, slowed since she thought he’d brake, but he didn’t. He swerved around Lulu’s big brown Wagoneer on the right-hand side, one set of wheels grinding into a runoff ditch. Beaver Dam Road lay just ahead, and he meant to hang a hard right.
Sheriff Shaw stopped for Lucinda, who was crying, sobbing, screaming, “He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me!”
“Ladies, this is dicey,” Cooper warned as she, too, plowed into the runoff ditch to the right of Lucinda. The squad car tore out huge hunks of earth and bluestone before reaching the road again.
Samson gunned the red Wagoneer toward Beaver Dam, which wasn’t a ninety-degree right but a sharp, sharp reverse thirty-degree angle heading northeast off Whitehall Road. It was a punishing turn under the best of circumstances. Just as Samson reached the turn, Carolyn Maki, in her black Ford dually, braked for the stop sign. Samson hit his brakes and sent his rear end skidding out from underneath him. He overcorrected by turning hard right. The Wagoneer flipped over twice, finally coming to rest on its side. Miraculously, the dually remained untouched.
Carolyn Maki opened her door to assist Samson.
Cooper screeched to a stop next to the truck and leapt out of the squad car, gun in hand. “Get back in the truck,” she yelled at Carolyn.
Harry started to open her door, but the strong hand of Mrs. Hogendobber grasped her neck from behind. “Stay put.”
This did not prevent either one of them from hitting the automatic buttons to open the windows so they could hear. They stuck their heads out.
Cooper sprinted to the car where Samson clawed at the driver’s door, his head pointing skyward as the car rested on its right side. Oblivious of the minor cuts on his face and hands, he thrust open the door and crawled out head first, only to stare into the barrel of Cynthia Cooper’s pistol.
“Samson, put your hands behind your head.”
“I can explain everything.”
“Behind your head!”
He did as he was told. A third squad car pulled in from Beaver Dam Road, and Deputy Cooper was glad for the assistance. “Carolyn, are you okay?”
“Yes,” a wide-eyed Carolyn Maki called from her truck.
“We’ll need a statement from you, and one of us will try to get it in a few minutes so you can go home.”
“Fine. Can I get out of the truck now?”
Cooper nodded yes as the third officer frisked Samson Coles. The wheels of his Jeep were still spinning.
Carolyn walked over to Mrs. Hogendobber and Harry, now waiting outside the squad car.
Harry heard Sheriff Shaw’s voice on the special radio. She picked up the receiver, the coiled cord swinging underneath. “Sheriff, it’s Harry.”
“Where’s Cooper?” came his gruff response.
“She’s holding Samson Coles with his hands behind his head.”
“Any injuries?”
“No—unless you count the Wagoneer.”
“I’ll be right there.”
The sheriff left Lucinda Coles with one of his deputies. He was less than half a mile away, so he arrived in an instant. He strode purposefully over to Samson. “Read him his rights.”
“Yes, sir,” Cooper said.
“All right, handcuff him.”
“Is that necessary?” Samson complained.
The sheriff didn’t bother to respond. He sauntered over to the Wagoneer and stood on his tiptoes to look inside. Lying on the passenger side window next to the earth was a snub-nosed .38.
48
“Copious in his indignation, he was.” Miranda held the attention of her rapt audience. She had reached the point in her story where Samson Coles, being led away to the sheriff’s car, hands cuffed behind his back, started shouting. He didn’t want to go to jail. He hadn’t done anything wrong other than chase his wife down the road with his car, and hasn’t every man wanted to bash his wife’s head in once in a while? “Wasn’t it Noel Coward who wrote, ‘Women are like gongs, they should be struck regularly’?”
“He said that?” Susan Tucker asked.
“Private Lives,” Mim filled in. Mim was sitting on the school chair that Miranda had brought around for her from the back of the post office. Larry Johnson, who hadn’t told anyone about the diaries, Fair Haristeen, and Ned Tucker stood while Market Shiflett, Pewter next to him, sat on the counter. Mrs. Hogendobber paced the room, enacting the details to give emphasis to her story. Tucker paced with her as Mrs. Murphy sat on the postage scale. When Miranda wanted verification she would turn to Harry, also sitting on the counter, and Harry would nod or say a sentence or two to add color.
The Reverend Jones pushed open the door, come to collect his mail. “How much did I miss?”
“Almost the whole thing, Herbie, but I’ll give you a private audience.”
Herb was followed by Ansley and Warren Randolph. Mrs. Hogendobber was radiant because this meant she could repeat the adventure anew with theatrics. Three was better than one.
“Oscar performance,” Mrs. Murphy laconically commented to her two pals.
“Wish we’d been there.” Tucker hated to miss excitement.
“I’d have thrown up. Did I tell you about the time I threw up when Market was taking me to the vet?” Pewter remarked.
“Not now,” Mrs. Murphy implored the gray cat.
When Mrs. Hogendobber finished her tale for the second time, everyone began talking at once.
“Did they ever find the murder weapon? The gun that killed Kimball Haynes?” Warren asked.
“Coop says the ballistics proved it was a snub-nosed .38-caliber pistol. It was unregistered. Frightening how easy it is to purchase a gun illegally. The bullets matched the bore of the .38 they found in Samson’s car. It had smashed the passenger window to bits. Must have had it on the seat next to him. Looks like he really was going to do in Lulu. Looks like he’s the one that did in Kimball Haynes.” Miranda shook her head at such violence.
“I hope not.” Dr. Johnson’s calm voice rang out. “Everyone has marital problems, and Samson’s may be larger than most, but we still don’t know what happened to set this off. And we don’t know if he killed Kimball. Innocent until proven guilty. Remember, we’re talking about one of Crozet’s own here. We’d better wait and see before stringing him up.”
“I didn’t say anything about stringing him up,” Miranda huffed. “But it’s mighty peculiar.”
“This spring has been mighty peculiar.” Fair edged his toes together and then apart, a nervous habit.
“Much as I like Samson, I hope this settles the case. Why would he kill Kimball Haynes? I don’t know.” Ned Tucker put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “But we would sleep better at night if we knew the case was closed.”
“Let the dead bury the dead.” The little group murmured their assent to Ned’s hopes.
No one noticed that Ansley had turned ghostly white.
49
Samson Coles denied ever having seen the snub-nosed .38. His lawyer, John Lowe, having argued many cases for the defense in his career, could spot a liar a mile away. He knew Samson was lying. Samson refused to give the sheriff any information other than his name and address and, in a funny reversion to his youth, his army ID number. By the time John Lowe reached his client, Samson was the picture of sullen hostility.