Page 30 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Road Kill

“Mr. Holloman!” Her face was flushed and her hair stood out in
every direction. “I was right! Thanks for all your help. I couldn’t have
done it without you.”
I blinked. “Really? But what exactly have you done, Labelle? I’m
going to have a lot of explaining to do back at West Valley High
School.”
She dismissed any such concern with a wave of her hand. “You
don’t have to worry. The police, however, may have to come up with
some reason why they let a murder go uninvestigated and a murderer
almost get away with it.”
“You mean Ronny Knowles? But you saw Mr. Ewidge fall!”
“No, I didn’t. That was what I supposed to see, but there were too
many strange things about that scene to make it believable. It kept
bothering me that Sherrie and I just happened to be where we were
when the ‘accident’ occurred. And then there was the hat.”
“The hat?”
“Do you recall that photograph taken just before we split up that
morning? It showed Mr. Ewidge wearing his Panama hat. Well, like
all his clothing, it fit him perfectly. When I saw him again from a
distance about an hour later, he was still wearing it. But it didn’t fit
the same: it came down lower on his head, down to his ears. That
started me thinking it was someone else wearing it.”
“You mean—”
“Yes. What Sherrie and I witnessed was an illusion. She was part
of it, but she didn’t know it. Not until I got her up here today. You
see, as soon as Ronny knew the schedule of the field trip, he planned
the whole thing out. He must have come up here in advance and
picked his spots. Then, once we were here, at some point before we
went off in search of specimens, he must have arranged with Mr.
Ewidge to meet up on that ledge at a certain time, say ten-thirty.”
“And—and he killed him there?”
“He must have. He couldn’t have risked doing it somewhere else
and carrying the body to that place. Someone might have seen him,
and that would have ruined it. No, he needed to make it look like an
accident and to provide himself an alibi in case that failed. That
meant staging the fall we witnessed: it placed him nowhere near the
scene of the crime and shifted the time it occurred. To make it
succeed he arranged with Sherrie to meet him at that other lookout

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