smoking gun

She was just finishing some nasty yogurt and granola, somewhat ameliorated by the pleasant sight of a vase of early Japanese iris, when she heard Bobby’s van pull in. He must have already met the 8:00. And she didn’t even have her face on yet. Yesterday had been a long day. Or was it the day before? She was losing track.

      She opened her purse. At least she could put her lipstick on.

     He knocked on the back door and walked in, looking grim, she thought, though it was hard to tell through the beard.

     “What is it?” she asked. “Young Kate?”

     “No. Well, kind of. Better call Big Chief Joe and tell him to meet us at my place. I have a smoking gun.”

     “I’ll just be a minute,” said Merideth. She wasn’t going out of the house looking like she’d been dragged backwards through a bramble bush.

      The door to the outdoor shower was open. “We found it in here,” said Bobby. “I put it back kind of the way it was.”

    “We?” asked Joseph.

    “Me and Kate. It was her backpack. She stayed here last night.”

     Joseph raised his eyebrows. “Not with her stepmother? Where is she now?”

    “I don’t know. She must have gone to town. She took my bike.”

     “Don’t be looking down your nose like that, Joseph,” said Merideth. “You’d think you’d never heard of premarital sex before.”

     Joseph looked at Bobby. “Oh, are you getting married soon?”

    “Well, now that she’s an heiress. Unless she’s the one trying to pin this murder on me.”

      “So you’ve already handled the weapon.”

      “Well, yeah. Kate couldn’t find her backpack last night when I came in after the bars closed. Your guys who stake out the Yellow Kittens saw me head home, no doubt. We looked around outside and found a bunch of her clothes in the bushes over there. But we didn’t find the backpack until we came out this morning.”

     “So you picked the backpack up. And you opened it. Who opened it?”

     “Kate. She was hoping her dopp kit was in there with her shampoo so she could take a shower.”

      “This time of year?”

      “Seems warm to me. I shower outside most of the year. On demand hot water heater.”

       Joseph shuddered.

     Merideth was unfazed. She had endured plenty of cold winters with no hot water but what was heated up on the wood stove. And no other heat at all. Even the coals she used to pick up on the beach were hoarded for special occasions. Her son’s generation was soft.

      “She opened the backpack up, and inside was the gun, wrapped in one of my T-shirts.”

      “So her prints are on it.”

      “It slid out of the T-shirt and we both tried to grab it. Instinct. Then we wrapped the pistol up again like it was and put it back in the bag so you could see it.”

      “So both of your prints are on it.”

      “Probably. Neither one of us was wearing gloves!”

      Chief Winfield sighed. “So either one of you could have had the gun, planted the backpack, et cetera.”

      “Trying to pin it on the other?” asked Merideth. “She could have done it while you were working. You could have done it by parking up the road and walking back here, then going back to the van.”

       “She was awake when I got home. Said something woke her up, and she was afraid.”

       “She should be very afraid. Somebody murdered her father and planted him in my mother’s garden. And that lunatic, if it wasn’t her, is probably on the island.” Joseph looked at the backpack and took his phone out of his pocket. “This is not my field of expertise. But you moved the weapon already.” He snapped a few pictures with his phone and put it back in his pocket. He rootled around in the trunk of his car and found a plastic bag. Fabric probably didn’t take fingerprints anyway, but best to send this off island for the big boys to deal with. 

    “Just out of curiosity, why didn’t you call me first thing?”

     “Because he’s not a fool,” said Merideth. “He was probably wondering whether to throw the thing off Payne’s Dock!”

     “Well, I would have chosen Ballard’s,” said Bobby. “More likely to be guns down there. But we want to know what can be discovered from the thing, too. So we called you.”

    Joseph looked at his mother. “Have you figured anything out yet?”

     “We haven’t had a moment,” said Merideth. “Maybe after this ridiculous holiday weekend is over.” She pronounced it ovah. “Too many extraneous people around. I can’t hear myself think!”

      “This weapon is going to put some pressure on. And now they’ll know about Bobby’s relationship with the daughter of the deceased. They’ll find out that her father disapproved of him, and then you’ll both be suspect.”

    “Crime passionnal. Well, I’ve got to make the ten o’clock,” said Bobby. “Better go.”

    “What happened to her toiletries?” asked Merideth? “Toothbrush? Shampoo? Comb? Makeup, if she wears any? Medications?”

      “They were dumped out in the bushes.”

      “That makes no sense,” said Merideth. “If you were trying to throw suspicion on her you wouldn’t do that.  And no female would throw her own toiletry kit around!”

      “Unless she was being really tricky,” said Joseph. “I guess I better go to the station and seal this up and put it on a plane.” He put the plastic bag in the back seat of his car and put the phone to his ear as he drove off down the dirt track.