hands.
Everyone looked back. The circle was vast in diameter. Unless a busload of seniors arrived in the next few minutes, seats were not going to be a problem. While Ian nattered on from the podium, I quietly removed a dozen chairs from the circle and pushed the remaining ones closer together. The burly man in the green warm-up suit helped me move half a dozen more. We put the extras in the kitchen.
Dot sat herself nearest the fire. The others, several of whom were using walkers, moved slowly. Once everyone was seated, Dot raised her hand. Still wounded by her rejection, Ian tried not to notice her, which worked until she started waving her
knitting needles in a menacing fashion.
“Yes?” Ian said, ever wary of a lawsuit.
“I’d like to go first, if that’s all right,” said Dot.
“Works for me!” shouted the burly man.
The idea, Ian explained for the benefit of the uninitiated, was that somebody in the group would spin a mystery yarn, ripped from the headlines or invented whole cloth, and the others would attempt to unravel it. And yes, Dot could go first.
She cleared her throat and the others leaned forward in anticipation. Turned out she was like Scheherazade. Her audi ence listened intently as she spun a labyrinthine tale involving the heist of an armored car, a shootout between rival gangs, and the kidnapping of the no-good son of a deposed mob boss. When she got to the part about the Baccarat crystal chandelier in the $2,000-per-night Las Vegas hotel suite crashing to the floor, it was time.
I doubled over coughing, and slipped into the night.
C HAPTER 1 7
irst things first. I consulted my glow-in-the-dark Swatch watch, which I’d won at a West Hollywood Bastille Day Fair for guessing how many condoms were in the jar. The watch was ugly, with a green-and-brown Eiffel Tower on the face, but it kept perfect time.
Five minutes past eight.
I had half an hour max before Dot sent a squad car to find me, or, worse yet, came looking for me herself. I needed to get to the Vicarage as fast as possible and didn’t want to be spot ted. I decided to bypass the brightly lit streets of Sittaford 2 in favor of the empty field just past Lansham Road, where the last of the Phase 2 houses were still being built. Nobody was going to see me out there, with the possible exception of a bobcat. And bobcats weren’t interested in large mammals in vintage orange-patent-leather Courrèges coats. They were interested in rodents.
The moon was no more than a sliver in the sky, the stars as tiny as pinpricks. They say it takes five minutes for your eyes to adjust to darkness once you get away from the white lights, but I wasn’t sure about that. It was 8:11 now and I couldn’t see a thing, unless you counted the half-framed houses, which looked like something left over from a fire. Some vaguely hulking forms in the middle of the street turned out to be cement mixers, abandoned for the night. I thought about climbing aboard one, but the good citizen in me prevailed.
The newly paved sidewalks were littered with construction debris. I did my best to steer clear of broken glass and stray ball valves. As I crossed from one side of the street to the other, a shaft of moonlight illuminated what looked like a key, just in front of an overflowing Dumpster. A key! Agatha Christie loved keys. They always turned out to be important clues. When I bent down to pick it up, however, it turned out to be nothing but a rusted piece of metal. I tossed it into the Dumpster, dis appointed at having found nothing instead of something.
By the time I left Lansham Road, my eyes had begun to adjust. I could see the clumps of lupine and prince’s feather growing wild in the foothills. The Kitanemuk Indians had once roamed those hills, hunting for berries, feasting on brown snakes. But that was hundreds of years ago—before the missions, before the stagecoach, before the railroad, before Christietown, before Dusk Ridge Ranch.
Now the vacant field
Everyone looked back. The circle was vast in diameter. Unless a busload of seniors arrived in the next few minutes, seats were not going to be a problem. While Ian nattered on from the podium, I quietly removed a dozen chairs from the circle and pushed the remaining ones closer together. The burly man in the green warm-up suit helped me move half a dozen more. We put the extras in the kitchen.
Dot sat herself nearest the fire. The others, several of whom were using walkers, moved slowly. Once everyone was seated, Dot raised her hand. Still wounded by her rejection, Ian tried not to notice her, which worked until she started waving her
knitting needles in a menacing fashion.
“Yes?” Ian said, ever wary of a lawsuit.
“I’d like to go first, if that’s all right,” said Dot.
“Works for me!” shouted the burly man.
The idea, Ian explained for the benefit of the uninitiated, was that somebody in the group would spin a mystery yarn, ripped from the headlines or invented whole cloth, and the others would attempt to unravel it. And yes, Dot could go first.
She cleared her throat and the others leaned forward in anticipation. Turned out she was like Scheherazade. Her audi ence listened intently as she spun a labyrinthine tale involving the heist of an armored car, a shootout between rival gangs, and the kidnapping of the no-good son of a deposed mob boss. When she got to the part about the Baccarat crystal chandelier in the $2,000-per-night Las Vegas hotel suite crashing to the floor, it was time.
I doubled over coughing, and slipped into the night.
C HAPTER 1 7
irst things first. I consulted my glow-in-the-dark Swatch watch, which I’d won at a West Hollywood Bastille Day Fair for guessing how many condoms were in the jar. The watch was ugly, with a green-and-brown Eiffel Tower on the face, but it kept perfect time.
Five minutes past eight.
I had half an hour max before Dot sent a squad car to find me, or, worse yet, came looking for me herself. I needed to get to the Vicarage as fast as possible and didn’t want to be spot ted. I decided to bypass the brightly lit streets of Sittaford 2 in favor of the empty field just past Lansham Road, where the last of the Phase 2 houses were still being built. Nobody was going to see me out there, with the possible exception of a bobcat. And bobcats weren’t interested in large mammals in vintage orange-patent-leather Courrèges coats. They were interested in rodents.
The moon was no more than a sliver in the sky, the stars as tiny as pinpricks. They say it takes five minutes for your eyes to adjust to darkness once you get away from the white lights, but I wasn’t sure about that. It was 8:11 now and I couldn’t see a thing, unless you counted the half-framed houses, which looked like something left over from a fire. Some vaguely hulking forms in the middle of the street turned out to be cement mixers, abandoned for the night. I thought about climbing aboard one, but the good citizen in me prevailed.
The newly paved sidewalks were littered with construction debris. I did my best to steer clear of broken glass and stray ball valves. As I crossed from one side of the street to the other, a shaft of moonlight illuminated what looked like a key, just in front of an overflowing Dumpster. A key! Agatha Christie loved keys. They always turned out to be important clues. When I bent down to pick it up, however, it turned out to be nothing but a rusted piece of metal. I tossed it into the Dumpster, dis appointed at having found nothing instead of something.
By the time I left Lansham Road, my eyes had begun to adjust. I could see the clumps of lupine and prince’s feather growing wild in the foothills. The Kitanemuk Indians had once roamed those hills, hunting for berries, feasting on brown snakes. But that was hundreds of years ago—before the missions, before the stagecoach, before the railroad, before Christietown, before Dusk Ridge Ranch.
Now the vacant field
Similar Books
