The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain (15 page)

“There’s no wind tonight. Ben, don’t go. It may be that man in the car, back with a gang. Let me call Sergeant Mac Vicar.”

“Relax, Dittany. Look at Ethel. She just picked up her ears, then went back to sleep. This the outside light?”

Frankland flipped on the switch, then let himself cautiously out the back door while Dittany held her breath and prayed. A minute or so later he was back, holding something long and slender wrapped in the end of his jacket.

“Maybe you’d better give the sergeant a buzz, eh, after all?

He’ll want to see this.”

Ben Frankland didn’t have to tell Dittany what “this” was. His jacket didn’t hide the wooden shaft with the wide black band painted above the gray feathers. She went to the phone and i called the police station.

“Then you heard no sound until this arrow struck the house?”

Sergeant Mac Vicar scrutinized the lethal projectile that lay on the kitchen table among the teacups and Fig Newtons. “Yet Ethel had growled when this stranger came to collect his car from the street?”

“Oh yes, she fussed like anything and pawed at the door.”

“And what were you doing at the time, Dittany?”

“I’d been watching out the front window right beside her. I believe I’d just heard the kettle come on the boil and was turning around to go make the tea when he showed up.”

“Mr. Frankland was not with you?”

“No, he was down cellar fixing the sump pump. It’s been making funny noises.”

“It is still making noises,” said Sergeant Mac Vicar.

“I know,” said Frankland. “I hadn’t actually gotten around to doing much of anything when Dittany called me upstairs. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it needs a new gasket.”

“Ah. So you abandoned the task to confront the man in the car and then came back here to have your tea. Where were you sitting?”

“I was here facing the window where I always sit,” said Dittany, “and Ben was there at my right where the other cup is.”

“And the curtains were drawn as they are now?”

“Yes. I think I started to push them aside when I heard the noise, but then I-didn’t.”

“A wise decision. This light over the table was on?”

“Of course.” Dittany flushed slightly. Surely Sergeant MacVicar didn’t suppose she and Ben had been sitting here in the dark on such short acquaintance. “It’s a good strong light, too.

We’ve always kept a hundred-watt bulb in it because Gramp liked to sit here and read the paper.”

“I am cognizant of that circumstance. Therefore one might assume your shadow and Mr. Frankland’s would show up well enough against the curtains.”

“They certainly ought to -have. The curtains are just muslin.

Do you want us to sit down again so you can go out and take a look? That is, if you’re-“

“I am not afraid of being shot at, if that is what you are so tactfully not saying. That is a sensible idea, Dittany. Please take your places as before and do whatever you were doing when you heard this horrendous thump.”

Looking rather sheepishly at one another, Dittany and Frankland went through the motions of sipping their tea and passing the cookies back and forth. Sergeant Mac Vicar went outside and returned, unscathed and nodding.

“Your silhouettes are clearly visible and easily distinguished.

If there had been any serious intention of shooting either one of you, I doubt not you would have been hit.”

“Maybe the glass deflected the arrow,” Frankland suggested uncomfortably.

“There is a fresh chip knocked out of a stone in the foundation, directly below the spot where Dittany was sitting. We may, I think, assume that was done by the arrow. Glass would not have deflected an arrow traveling with enough velocity to break stone. At the very least we should find a starring of cracks radiating from a noticeable point of contact, and we do not.

Thus one might conclude that this was another random shot such as the one that narrowly missed you two on the day John Architrave was killed.”

“But you don’t jump to conclusions, Sergeant Mac Vicar,” said Dittany.

“I do not, and on sober reflection I am thinking those would have had to be two almost preternaturally serendipitous random shots.”

“Huh?” said Frankland.

“He means you couldn’t shoot like that by accident unless you did it on purpose,” explained Dittany, who was used to Sergeant Mac Vicar.

“Precisely,” said the sergeant. “The first, or what we may deem the first arrow by virtue of its paramount importance as well perhaps as its having been loosed before the others, spitted John as neatly as a chicken on a skewer. The second arrow, or that which we have tended to regard as the second arrow, was not aimlessly loosed to fall to earth one knew not where but did instead plant itself neatly in the trunk of a not very large tree close to but not dangerously close to the spot where you were.

Again it has been conjectured that the shot was meant to frighten you away, but in fact it served to call your attention to reckless shooting in the area and led to your discovery of John’s body perhaps considerably sooner than would otherwise have been the case.

“Now,” Sergeant Mac Vicar went on, warming to his hypotheses, “we have another of these theatrical black-banded arrows striking this house directly beneath a considerable expanse of lighted window at which could be seen two well-defined sitting targets. That somebody could be potting at such a window without malice aforethought is almost unthinkable. That it could have been done on purpose yet with such total ineptitude would lead one to ponder the reason anyone might employ a weapon he didn’t know how to use.”

“Oh, I see what you’re driving at,” said Frankland.

“Good. The most credible conclusion, you comprehend, is that the archer is by no means without skill. The window was meant to be missed. The shot may have been intended to call your attention to something you were meant to see, in which case it appears thus far to have failed of its purpose. It may have been, conversely, an attempt to distract your attention from something that was happening elsewhere and may in fact have done so although we do not yet know what that something might be.

“In view, however, of the petty persecutions to which you have already been subjected, not excluding today’s episode of the ill-placed automobile, I am inclined to think that the purpose of this shot was to heighten the atmosphere of ominous portent.

Does that supposition appeal to you, Dittany?”

“Not much.”

Who’d want to keep scaring her like this without hurting her, except someone who hadn’t minded plugging old John Architrave but drew the line at young Dittany Henbit? Somebody who perhaps thought she’d seen more than she had that day on the Enchanted Mountain? Somebody Ethel knew well enough not to bark at if she’d sensed that person’s presence out behind the house tonight, and wouldn’t have gone charging after if she’d caught a familiar scent the day Architrave was killed. Somebody who could move quietly and confidently on well-known terrain, even in the dark. Somebody who could shoot accurately enough to put an arrow close but not too close. Somebody like Minerva Oakes, for instance, or Zilla Trott or practically anybody else she’d ever gone roving with.

But the Wallaby-McNaster forces were working the nasty tricks department, surely. None of her friends could be hand in glove with that lot, because they were all slaving their heads off to defeat Andy McNasty’s foul purpose.

And how could any of them do otherwise without attracting suspicion? As it was, not everybody had leaped full armored into the breach. Joshua Burberry, for instance, had barely lifted a hand to help with his wife’s campaign on the paltry excuse that he had to write a paper for the conference he’d be attending with his father right after the party. And Dittany squirmed a bit as she recalled how Samantha herself had balked at running against Sam Wallaby until she was strongarmed into it, and how puzzled Hazel and Dittany had been that the unflappable Samantha could get into such a flap about a mere family party when she’d tackled so many bigger jobs without turning a hair.

Suppose Joshua had got involved with McNaster out of misplaced philosophy or something?

But why suppose anything of the sort? Dittany realized she was in no shape to think straight now. After a hot bath and a good long sleep, maybe her brains would unscramble. At the moment she could barely find words to thank Sergeant Mac Vicar, who was promising to detail a member of his doughty force to guard her slumbers through the night, and Ben Frankland, who was promising to order a new gasket for the sump pump. She bade them a frazzled farewell and went upstairs to draw her bath, only to find that Hazel had left twenty-three heads of lettuce in the tub to crisp for Samantha’s party.

Perhaps Patrolman Bob or Patrolman Ray maintained nocturnal vigilance or perhaps he conked out in the porch swing and let the Archer of the Black Band bombard the house at will. Dittany neither knew nor cared. All she was aware of was that far too soon it was Saturday morning, Ethel wanted out, and she herself ought to be over at the bandstand setting up tables for the bake sale.

She hurled an anathema at the lettuces in the tub, sponge bathed as best she could in the bathroom sink, and put on heavy wool pants and a Fair Isle sweater. She was soothing her nerves with a mug of tea when Ben Frankland hauled up to the back door driving Minerva’s big old station wagon.

“in, Dittany. Mrs. Oakes told me to swing by and pick up all those cakes and pies people have been leaving here for sale. I thought you’d be champing at the bit to get started.”

“Aren’t you the merry little jokester?” she snarled. “Since you’re so full of beans, you can start lugging out whatever’s on the pantry counter except those ten dozen cupcakes with the yellow frosting. They’re for the Burberrys’ luncheon and not to be trifled with. Trifle! I mustn’t forget those three bowls of trifle in the fridge. And the roll of white paper to cover the tables.”

Therese had worked out a neat floor plan for setting up the bake sale but it never got implemented. By the time Ben and Dittany got to the bandstand, donors were already flocking around with paper plates and old stationery boxes full of coconut drop cakes and butterscotch meringues. Therese was frantically trying to price the goods while fending off would-be buyers.

“We can’t start yet,” she protested. “Dot Coskoff has to bring us some silver from the bank first so we can make change.”

So they squeezed the tables in as best they could among the providers and the provender. The bandstand was not the world’s most convenient place to fit anything into, being dodecahedral in shape and only about twelve feet in diameter. Aesthetically it was delightful, built of wrought iron in the Later Prince Albert style, repainted in its original colors of white, pink, green and gold every third year by the Loyal Order of Owls, and standing on its own tiny plot smack in the middle of Queen Street.

Nobody who wanted to get much of anywhere in Lobelia Falls could avoid passing the bandstand, so this was the ideal spot to hold any sort of fundraiser. Local custom decreed that any group so inclined should post its intention on the library’s community calendar under the appropriate date. The first name down got the honor.

Therese had dutifully checked, found as she’d expected that there were no other takers for the last Saturday in March, which would usually be too insalubrious for any event but a snowball fight, and written down the bake sale with no thought of being challenged. Dittany did get a small jolt when she happened to spy a large baby-blue car heading down Queen Street but McNaster didn’t try to ram the bandstand or anything so she went on tacking clean white paper covers to the banged-up folding tables. This was no time to dither.

Though Dot Coskoff was still sorting dimes and quarters, though it still lacked fifteen minutes to ten when Mrs. Gumpert mounted the bandstand steps with a lavish donation of pumpkin spice cakes, the slavering hordes could be held back no longer.

Therese wisely shelved the witty little speech she’d planned to declare the sale formally open and contented herself with refereeing the first battle over who got to buy the pumpkin cakes.

Business was all that could be desired and often a bit more.

Poundcake and gingerbread were there one minute, gone the next. Date squares and fudge brownies melted away like the snows of yesteryear. Even Sam Wallaby sauntered over to purchase a frosted cake in the shape of a bunny rabbit with coconut fur and pink jelly-bean eyes. Roughly seven and a half minutes after Wallaby had gone off with his bunny, Ormerod Burlson, Sergeant Mac Vicar’s left-hand man, waddled up full of bluster and self-importance.

“Who’s in charge here?” he roared.

“Therese Boulanger,” said Dittany, who happened to be nearest.

Burlson inched his belly among the tables to where Therese was bagging chocolate chip cookies with the light of profit gleaming in her lustrous dark eyes. “Sorry, Therese. I’ll have to close you up.”

“Ormerod Burlson, are you out of your mind?” gasped Therese. “What are you talking about?”

“Can’t sell food in the bandstand. Against regulations.”

“Since when? What regulations? Everybody’s been holding bake sales here since Hector was a pup, and nobody ever got stopped before.”

“Well, I’m stopping you now. Get that stuff out of here or I’ll have to arrest the lot of you.”

“Oh yeah?” Dittany Henbit wedged her slender frame in between them, hands on her hips and blood in her eye. “Now you listen to me, you old jelly bag. If you think we don’t know who put you up to this just because Sergeant Mac Vicar took his wife shopping over to Scottsbeck and isn’t here to fire you as you richly deserve, you might as well think again. Sam Wallaby panicked when he saw how much money we were making, didn’t he? So he buttonholed you and threatened to shut off the beer for the Policemen’s Picnic this year if you didn’t put a stop to it fast, right? And if that doesn’t constitute bribery and corruption of a public officer, suppose you tell us what does, eh? If you want to arrest somebody, why aren’t you over there enforcing the anti-litter law?”

Dittany pointed over to Wallaby’s where, sure enough, a pimply weed on a Suzuki was in the very act of tossing an empty beer can down in the already littered parking space that had so hideously replaced the magnificent old black locust trees.