I Am the Only Running Footman by Martha Grimes Page A

minutes, it made no difference. Just as last year’s murder was still today’s news for Macalvie. He never gave up.
    Jury smiled. “The world wags by three times, Macalvie: God’s, yours, and Greenwich Mean.”
    Macalvie might have been checking his watch against the other two because he shook it before he nodded. “Yeah. Have a beer. Just be careful of the Gopher; it’d take the scales off a brontosaurus.” He picked his pint from the top of the jukebox and walked to a table beneath the painting.
    When Jury came back with his own pint, Macalvie was standing and drinking and studying the painting. “That’s what we are, Jury, messengers. Good news, bad news — people’d complain no matter what we brought.” He sat down. “Where’s Wiggins?”
    For a divisional commander who was his own one-man police force because he couldn’t put up with the slightest show of foot-dragging or malingering, it was surprising that he got on so well with Wiggins. As good a man as Wiggins was, he could be sluggish. Sickness wouldn’t slow Macalvie down any more than a flea on a cheetah.
    Macalvie brought out a cigar. The cellophane crackled like Macalvie’s eyes. A walking conflagration with its roots in his Scotch-Irish ancestry spiked by a strong predilection for American cop films.
    â€œWhy aren’t you chief constable yet, Macalvie?”
    â€œBeats me,” he said, with no trace of irony. “I would’ve got here sooner, only that train from Dorchester stops for chickens.”
    â€œYou got here fast enough, considering we found the girl early this morning. I take it you think there’s a connection —”
    â€œOf course. Sheila Broome, found on a stretch of road beyond Taunton. For ten months I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
    â€œYou were sure it would? And Ivy Childess is the shoe?”
    Macalvie shot him a look. “Yes.”
    â€œI don’t want to tread on your theory, Macalvie —”
    As if you could, the look said.
    â€œâ€”but murderers aren’t all serial killers, and women get mugged every day. I don’t much believe in startling coincidences.”
    â€œOh, come on. You don’t believe this started out as a mugging any more than I do.”
    True, he didn’t. “I’m just more conservative, Macalvie.”
    â€œNo wonder you got to be superintendent, Jury.”
    Jury ignored that. “So tell me about this Sheila Broome.”
    â€œShe set out on the night of twenty-nine February to go to Bristol. That’s according to her mum, only she told Mum she’d got a ride. To Bristol, that is. Since none of her friends knew anything about her leaving town and no one gave her a ride from around here, we figured she was getting lifts from along the road. She was not prissy Priscilla. There was nothing unusual about her — she snorted coke and slept around, her friends said. Age, twenty-six, hardly a schoolkid, never married. Pretty in a sulky way; not very likeable; did two O levels and then quit, so not ambitious, either. Worked at a pub in the new part of Exeter and didn’t tell the landlord she was quitting. She put me in mind of an old newspaper; you could have blown her to Bristol, and no one would notice.”
    â€œWhat is it about the murder that makes you think it was more than Sheila Broome being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
    â€œBecause she wasn’t robbed and she wasn’t raped. And they were out of the car, both of them, smoking grass in the woods. Now, if you were tooling along looking over the hitcher situation, what’d you be looking for? Sex or money or both. But with Sheila it’s neither. I think it was someone who knew her; could have been a man, could have been a woman. I think it was someone looking for her —”
    â€œThat’s a chancy way to get your victim, waiting until she hitches a