Beggars Would Ride

“You know,” I said, “I was looking again at Marvie Saunder’s book.”

            “No, Ned,” Pat interrupted. “Remember, you’ve given that up. You’re going to let Cade and Gerald handle whatever is going on about that house. You are fixating on that book of poetry so, stop it!”

            Stung, I said, “What a thing to say. I most certainly am not “fixating”. I just thought if I re-read her poems, maybe something would start to make sense.”

            “What new insight are you expecting to jump out of those pages?” Jackie asked.

            I explained the feeling I had that the barn acrostic on Pat’s grocery list and the same word I’d found in Marvie’s poem were actually messages about something important being in the barn.

            My friends sat silently for a few seconds, then Jackie spoke. “You won’t really be happy until you’ve gone to the Saunders barn and started digging through years’ worth of moldy hay and dust and rats…”

            “And, snakes!” Pat muttered. “If there are snakes in the basement of the house, there’re certainly snakes in the barn.”

            I nodded. “You’re right. Both of you. It would be foolhardy to put any stock in some theory, like an acrostic.”

            Pat reached for another brownie. Jackie pleated her napkin, her lips compressed.

            We all three spoke at the same time: “But, what if…”

            That sentence hung, unfinished, in the air. None of us wanted to venture further down the road of what we’d do, if Marvie had actually left something of importance in the barn.

            “If you were going to get involved in another murder case, I wish it had happened in a more pleasant location than that old barn,” Jackie said.

            I laughed. “I doubt that any location would be pleasant if murder happened there.”

            Pat smacked the table with her hand. “I wish Daisy had never given you the assignment of taking pictures of that house! If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here now, wondering if the right person was accused of murder fifty years ago. We’d be blissfully ignorant of the whole thing, just like everybody else and we could concentrate on these delicious brownies.”

            “And, you wouldn’t have gotten a warning note telling you to back off,” Jackie added.

            I nodded. Altogether, if I knew nothing about any of the Saunders’ problems, it would have been a far more peaceful November. “If wishes were horses…” I said.

            “Beggars would ride.” Pat finished the old, familiar rhyme.

            Jackie ran her finger around the rim of her plate. “What kind of woman would just hide hints and innuendoes and not come right out and say whatever was on her mind?”

            Pat nodded. “Right. Was she playing some sort of game? And, was she hinting about her husband’s death or something else? If I wanted something kept secret, I certainly wouldn’t drop hints about it, written or otherwise.”

The fourth Ned McNeil moonlight book, Murder By Moonlight. On Amazon, $4.97 or FREE if you have Kindle Unlimited.