OXFORD - The latest deadline has come and gone for a clockmaker who was supposed to finish restoring the Lafayette County Courthouse clock, leaving county officials to start the process over - and to decide how to recover their parts from Lloyd Larish's Minnesota shop.

The clockmaker took on the restoration job three years ago, when the courthouse was closed for renovation. Since then he has reportedly suffered ill health but no longer answers phone calls, said Lloyd Oliphant, Lafayette County Board of Supervisors president.

"Our only contact with him is through Mr. Will Lewis," Oliphant said, referring to a prominent Oxford businessman who had known Larish before the clockmaker's contract with Lafayette County.

Two other possibilities have surfaced for finishing the job Larish began - a nonprofit group of retired clockmakers who rebuilt the University of Mississippi's Lyceum clock, and an Atlanta clockmaker who has serviced the Peddle Bell Tower clock, also on the Ole Miss campus.

The first order of business may be to reclaim the clock's parts.

"We don't have any significant parts here; they're all in Minnesota," Oliphant said.

After that, they'll consider how to recover the nearly $30,000 they had already paid Larish for the uncompleted work.