Lord of the Wings

by Donna Andrews

  “Good idea,” he texted back. “I’m on it.”

  At some point I looked out the window and spotted Jamie, who was standing in the middle of the front yard, looking as if he’d lost something. And as if he were on the verge of bursting into tears about whatever it was. I put my phone away and hurried outside to see what was wrong.

  “Mommy!” He greeted me as if I’d abandoned him for weeks, and ran over to cling to me. He wasn’t just on the verge of tears—they were starting to leak out and trickle down his cheeks. Not the sort of face you expect from a six-year-old on Halloween. And I noticed Josh standing nearby watching us. He wasn’t as upset as Jamie, but he definitely didn’t seem as excited as he had yesterday.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked Jamie.

  “Daddy breaked his leg,” he said.

  “Broke,” I said, automatically. “It’s okay. He’ll be fine.”

  “But if he can’t walk, how can he trick-or-treat with us?”

  Good question.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Daddy has a plan. He’ll be there.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely!” He’d be there, even if I had to load him into the boys’ Radio Flyer wagon myself and haul him all over town. “Let’s go talk to Daddy.”

  The boys scampered ahead of me to the barn. We found Michael sitting on a hay bale, holding a rubber bat in one hand, and studying something that was out of our field of vision.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Ghouling up the llama cart,” he said, pointing to the vehicle in question.

  Until Michael had come home one day with the llama cart—which looked rather like the sort of vehicle you’d hitch to a Standardbred horse for harness racing—I hadn’t known that llamas could be used as draft animals. Pack animals, yes—we’d already taken the guys on several camping trips. But apparently as long as you had the proper harness, a llama could easily pull a cart. Michael had been trying to train the llamas to pull ours, though last time I’d heard, with only limited success.

  Upon its arrival, the llama cart had been bright red. Now it had been repainted a matte black, and Rob and Dad were fussing over it, adding decorative bats, rats, and skeletons.

  “It’s shaping up pretty well,” Dad said.

  “Needs more bats,” Rob countered, shaking his head.

  “We’ll have to make them, then,” Dad said. “The craft store has been out of bats for weeks now.”

  “How about adding some of that orange glitter stuff?” Rob asked.

  Orange glitter stuff? Making bats?

  Hosting the Halloween festival had certainly revolutionized Halloween decorating in Caerphilly. There had been a time when most people just popped a jack-o’-lantern on their doorstop and called it quits. The few people who went further, with things like orange lights on their shrubbery, fake gravestones in the front yard, and skeletons dangling from the rafters, had been somewhat admired but little emulated. But this year, Caerphillians had applied to their Halloween decorating the frenzy they usually saved for Christmas. The local craft store had made valiant efforts to keep up, pumping tons of black and orange decorations into the local economy. The more energetic householders had made pilgrimages to larger craft stores and Halloween emporiums in Richmond and Washington, D.C., and not long ago, at one of Trinity Episcopal’s potluck suppers, I’d spotted two matrons off to one side, in furtive conversation. I sidled close enough to eavesdrop and found that one was lending the other her collection of mail order catalogs with a good selection of Halloween merchandise.

  I found myself wondering how hard it would be for some people to manage the transition from bats and skeletons to pilgrims, turkeys, and in due course, reindeer.

  But in the meantime, it was both useful and amusing that even Rob and Dad could manage a reasonably competent Halloween decorating job.

  “Are any of the llamas actually ready to pull the cart?” I asked.

  “Groucho has been showing the most promise,” he said. I assumed this meant that unlike Harpo, Chico, Gummo, and Zeppo, Groucho didn’t pitch a fit the minute he saw the cart. “If we bribe him with enough cantaloupe he’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll drop by the grocery store and stock up,” I said, pulling out my notebook. Groucho would do anything for cantaloupe. Harpo was similarly fond of cucumbers. Perhaps we could change his mind about pulling the cart if he saw us offering cucumbers to Groucho when we harnessed him?

  Time enough to worry about that later.

  “What’s this, then?” Grandfather and Michael’s mother had appeared at the barn door.

  “Grouchy is going to take Daddy trick-or-treating,” Jamie said.

  “And if the boys’ bags get too heavy, they can put them in the cart with me,” Michael was saying. “In fact, if they get tired out when we’re half a mile from the car, like last year, we can put the boys in the cart.”

  Learning that Grouchy would be taking Daddy trick or treating had restored Jamie and Josh to good moods, and they began discussing which of his costumes the llama should wear.

  “Even the llamas have costumes here in Caerphilly,” Grammy said.

  “Llama shows almost always have costume competitions,” I said. “Michael doesn’t enter those, but Rob seems to enjoy them. Boys, how about the vampire llama costume for Groucho?”

  The boys dragged Grammy off to the other end of the barn to inspect the contents of the llama costume closet—yes, we now actually had such a thing. I called Randall to ask if he could send a truck to haul the llama cart to town—not that Groucho couldn’t cover the distance from here to there, but it would take rather a long time and tire him and Michael both.

  “I’ll have cousin Shep pick it up this afternoon and drop it off in the college parking lot,” Randall said. “And wait till you see what’s going on in town.”

  “I don’t like surprises right now,” I said. “Give me a hint. What is going on in town?”

  “Nothing at all,” he said. “The town square’s almost empty—even the protesters didn’t show up today. About ninety percent of the tourists are out at the Haunted House, or the Fun Fair, or just hanging around in the meadow, watching my workmen put the final touches on the new stage.”

  “I assume we got permission from whoever owns that meadow to turn it into a concert venue.”

  “My cousin Peewee owns it, and he’s fine with our using it for now. The stage is portable—built on the back of an old flatbed truck—so if Peewee tries to hold us up for outrageous rent next time we want to have an outdoor concert, we can haul it someplace else. That was a stroke of genius on your part, moving the Dreads out here where the only creatures they can annoy are Peewee’s cows.”

  “As long as the Dreads don’t curdle their milk,” I said.

  “They’re beef cows,” Randall said. “They’re pretty stolid. And if the Dreads’ music makes them suicidal, I’ll save you and Michael a few steaks.”

  Another problem solved.

  For the next couple of hours, I pitched in to get ready for the party and followed the action in town from afar. More accurately, the lack of action. I’d have been delighted to hear that things were so quiet in town if not for the nagging fear that a quiet day meant an all-too-lively night.

  I also helped encase Josh and Jamie in their costumes. Josh was an evil robot, complete with glowing red eyes in his mask and lights shooting out of the ends of his fingers when he pushed a hidden button. Jamie was a space alien. His headgear featured a Plexiglas panel that appeared to give a view of a glowing green brain, and when he flexed his fingers, little clusters of slimy green glow-in-the-dark tentacles shot out of the ends of his fingers. Rob’s techies had outdone themselves—maybe in addition to Mutant Wizards, Data Wizards, and Security Wizards he should start another division: Costume Wizards. The boys roamed around, happily showing off their lights and tentacles to the assembled parents.

  Around 11:30, Luigi, owner of Caerphilly’s beloved town pizza restaurant, show
ed up with boxes of pizza.

  “But the pizzas aren’t supposed to be here till four!” the mother in charge of refreshments moaned. “The kids won’t even get here till one!”

  “My guy will be back at four with the kids’ pizzas,” Luigi said. “These are for your volunteers. On the house. Mangia!”

  While we were still eating pizza, Frank Ledbetter, the owner of the Caerphilly Clarion, showed up with his digital camera to document the festivities. Mother and Grammy wanted to drag him all over the house and yard to take pictures of their work, but he managed to convince them that the decorations would show better with costumed trick-or-treaters included, so even he managed a slice of pizza. By the time the kids began arriving, we were all tired from our decorating efforts, but well fed, and the children’s excitement buoyed everyone’s mood.

  Mother shooed the children inside for party games—bobbing for apples, throwing darts at orange and black balloons, and that old Halloween favorite, Pin the Tail on the Headless Horseman. This was intended to keep them busy while, outside, Grammy and her team spent the next hour or two hiding candy all over our yard for the candy hunt.

  I stationed myself in the front hall with Frank so I could steer the arriving partygoers to the games.

  “Nice of you to come and cover the party,” I said, during a lull between arrivals. “Especially with so much going on back in town.”

  “I like to do it every year,” he said. “It’s a popular feature. And frankly, I’m happy to have an excuse to get out of my office right now.”

  “Too close to the festival action?” I asked.

  “Festival’s okay,” he said. “I’m getting a lot of great material—not just for the paper and the Web site, but for my freelance business. I sell a lot of my shots through stock photo agencies, and this Halloween stuff is going to be a gold mine. No, it’s not the festival that’s bugging me.”

  “Is it the murders making things crazy at the office?”

  “No—we’re a weekly. We don’t have the frantic scramble the dailies do. I bet the chief will have solved it before we put out our next issue. No, what’s really bugging me is that some creep thinks he owns some of the photos in the Clarion archives. He must have called eight or ten times, and then yesterday he dropped into the office and I thought I’d have to call the police to throw him out.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Josiah Brimfield.”

  “You’ve run into him, too?”

  Just then another pair of guests arrived—an eight-year-old little girl in a princess dress, and her younger brother, who made an adorable baby koala bear. Frank took their pictures, separately and together, while I admired the costumes. The children and their mother scampered inside to join the party and Frank and I resumed our conversation.

  “I’ve met Brimfield,” I said. “I was there at the police station when Brimfield stormed in demanding that the chief take his pictures back from Dr. Smoot.”

  “Yeah, he threatened to sue me for giving prints to Dr. Smoot for the museum,” Frank said. “He doesn’t have a leg to stand on, but he can make my life a misery while he finds that out.”

  “So maybe I shouldn’t tell him that I took photos of all the photos?” I said. “And shared them with Ms. Ellie at the library? Heck, maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Is that a copyright violation?”

  Frank chuckled.

  “I’d keep it to myself when someone as litigious as Brimfield is around, but you’re not in any trouble as far as I’m concerned. Look—first of all, the person who owns a photo isn’t the person in it or his heirs—it’s the photographer. So the fact that his great-great-uncles are in the photo doesn’t prove ownership. We have no information on who took that photo. About the only thing we do know is that it was first published in the Clarion in 1919, which is important because, according to copyright law, anything published before 1923 is now in the public domain.”

  “So if he tries to sue you, he’ll lose.”

  “And if he’s consulted a lawyer, he already knows that,” Frank said. “I’m guessing he hasn’t, or even if he has he just figures he can browbeat me into giving him the photos.”

  “But why does he care so much?” I wondered aloud.

  “Beats me,” Frank said.

  “Not sure if it’s relevant,” I said. “But Ms. Ellie says the photo’s proof that William Henry Harrison Brimfield didn’t die in 1916, as recorded in local history.” I gave him the capsule version of her explanation.

  Frank grew thoughtful, and almost failed to notice the entrance of a set of twins dressed as Dr. Seuss’s Thing One and Thing Two. Then he jerked to attention and took their photos. When they and their father had moved on to the party proper, he spoke again.

  “It could be relevant if there was some hanky-panky with their wills,” he said. “What if, for example, William Brimfield made a will leaving everything to some French barmaid he met on leave in Paris? They might want to hush up the fact that he outlived his brother, who left all his worldly goods to his grieving family.”

  “That would make sense if William had actually inherited the family fortune before he was killed,” I said. “Did he?”

  “No,” he said. “When I was checking the files to find material for Dr. Smoot’s museum, I found a photo of his aged parents looking solemn at the ceremony where they unveiled the war memorial. And besides, the Brimfields lost all their money in the depression anyway, so there wouldn’t be much for my hypothetical French barmaid’s descendants to lay claim to by now.”

  “The Brimfields struck it rich in California,” I pointed out.

  “But they seem to have started out fresh with nothing,” Frank said. “I looked it up on the Brimfield Corporation’s Web site after he started badgering me. John Adams Brimfield, the old man, went out to California with his two surviving sons and carved an empire out of the wilderness, to hear them tell it. So I don’t think it’s a money issue. More likely they’re hiding something disreputable. What if William, the one with the inconsistent death date, didn’t actually die in the war? What if he deserted or got court-martialed or something and they drummed him out of the family?”

  “And he just went quietly?”

  “If the rest of his family was anything like Josiah, he might have gone off singing ‘glory, hallelujah!’” Frank said. “We may never know.”

  “Ms. Ellie’s going to do some research on it,” I said. “After the festival is over.”

  “Good,” he said. “If she finds any dirt on the Brimfields, I’ll do a front page article on it, and send a stack of copies to the Brimfield Corporation. Probably cost me an arm and a leg in legal costs, but it’d be worth it.”

  “Talk to Festus,” I said. “He takes a dim view of big corporations beating up small businesses. You never know; he might take it on cheap for the chance to take a whack at this Brimfield Corporation.”

  “I’ll do that,” Frank said. “Well, one good thing about Brimfield showing up this week—the festival seems to be driving him bonkers. You should have seen him freak out when he found someone had tucked a fake finger into one of his overcoat pockets.”

  We both chuckled at that. And then, since a flock of small Ewoks, Stormtroopers, and other Star Wars characters had arrived, I left Frank to the task of capturing their cuteness for posterity.

  In due course, Grammy’s crew announced that they were ready for the great Halloween candy hunt, and we herded the children outside and turned them loose. Astonishing that it only took them fifteen minutes to find the candy that had taken the adults nearly two hours to hide.

  Meanwhile, Luigi’s son had arrived with the kids’ pizzas and the party ended with a delightfully noisy and enthusiastic meal. Pizza was a good choice, I realized, because most of the kids liked it enough that they would actually put down their candy and eat a slice or two. And then all the parents began the chore of dragging their kids away from their friends so they could get home and refresh their costumes before nightfall.

  Michael watc
hed while his mother and the boys decked out Groucho in the black cape and fake fangs that made up his vampire costume while I attached the horse (and llama) trailer to the back of the Twinmobile and fetched the boys’ empty goody bags.

  “Not quite sunset yet,” he pointed out.

  “It probably will be by the time we get to town and hitch Groucho up,” I said. “And besides, we’re going to stop at Mom and Dad’s.

  So the five of us set off. Michael’s mother drove the Twinmobile, and I followed in my own car, in case anything really dire happened and I had to split the party.

  Mother and Dad and Grandfather made a big fuss over the boys’ costumes, even though they’d already seen them at the party. Dad had been waiting until our arrival to head out to his medical tent, relocated from the town square to across the street from the Haunted House. Mother and Grandfather were going to stay in and hand out candy to any trick-or-treaters who made it this far out of town.

  “Actually, I expect I’ll handle the brats for the rest of the night,” Grandfather said when he was sure Mother wasn’t near enough to hear. “Your mother’s had a rough day.”

  “Don’t scare them too badly,” I warned him. “Dad, how’s Dr. Smoot?”

  “He hasn’t regained consciousness yet,” Dad said. “But all his vital signs are good. I think it’s only a matter of time.”

  We finally left Mother and Dad’s and drove to the college parking lot, where Randall’s cousin had left the llama cart. I led Groucho out of the trailer and hitched him up. Then I handed each of the boys their enormous black-and-orange canvas treat bags and turned them loose. They made a beeline for the nearest houses, with Michael’s cart trotting on behind them. Grammy and I brought up the rear.

  “What’s that,” she said, pointing to the paper I’d pulled out of my tote.

  “A map of Caerphilly,” I said.

  “I should have thought you’d know your way around town fairly well by now.” Was there a note of disapproval in her voice?

  “I do,” I said. “I’m going to use it to keep track of where we’ve already been. Last time we figured out about halfway down one street that we’d already been to all the houses on it. Hard to tell whether the boys circled around deliberately, because it was a particularly generous street, or whether it was accidental, but we’re not having that again. If they say ‘but we haven’t been this way yet!’ I can tell if they’re lying.”