“Home would be Boston?” I asked instead.
“Near there,” she said with a fleeting smile. “Worcester.”
At least I assumed that was what she meant. Sounded more like “Woosteh” in her accent.
We packed in silence for a few moments. Suddenly Francine dropped the rather large book she was packing.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d just admit that maybe he was partly to blame,” she said, in an undertone. “Not wholly to blame—the county board were fooled, too. And not even mostly to blame—that would be the mayor. But it did happen on his watch.”
“Oh, dear,” I said.
“And it’s ridiculous to go blaming a dead man,” she said.
Now that was interesting.
“He blames Parker Blair?”
“He keeps saying everything would have been all right if Mr. Blair had stayed out of it,” she said. “And that’s ridiculous.”
Not only ridiculous, but highly suspicious. When had Terence Mann started blaming Parker for the problems that had eventually lost him his job? Before or after the murder?
I didn’t dare ask Francine, though. No matter how innocently I tried to ask it, she’d guess that I was asking if her husband had a motive for murder. I couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound as if I suspected her husband, though I kept trying for another ten or fifteen minutes as we packed in silence.
I heard a soft dinging sound coming from somewhere nearby.
“Oh, that’s my phone,” Francine said. She got up and scrambled to the end of the aisle, where she had left her purse.
She answered it, and after a few murmured words, she shut the phone and put it back into her purse.
“I’ve got to run,” she said. “See you later.”
My own phone chimed. I scrambled to pull it out of my pocket. Was something up?
It was Rob.
“Meg? Are you with Dad?”
“No, I’m breaking the no cell phone rule at the library.”
“Damn. Do you know where he is? We sort of need him here.”
“Need him? Why? Rob, if there’s a medical emergency, call 911.”
“There’s something wrong with one of the cats,” Rob said. “I paged Clarence ten minutes ago, and he hasn’t answered, so I thought maybe Dad could help, but he isn’t answering either, and—”
“What do you mean, ‘something wrong’?”
“I can’t see any wounds or anything, but he’s howling in agony. You can probably hear it from there. Wait, I’ll hold the phone closer to him.”
Yes, I heard it. A prolonged “rrrrowl!” It did indeed sound like a cat in agony.
“Rob, which cat?”
“The fat yellow striped one. He’s just lying there in his crate, looking at me and howling horribly.”
“Rob, he’s a she, and she’s not fat, she’s pregnant. She’s probably about to give birth.”
“Oh, my God!”
Maybe I should have broken the news more gently. I could hear Rob beginning to hyperventilate.
“Calm down,” I said.
“What should I do? Where’s Dad? Why doesn’t Clarence answer?”
“Aren’t any of the other Corsicans there?”
I knew even as I was asking that of course there weren’t. Any of the other Corsicans would have known in an instant what was going on. And since Rob had been known to faint at the possibility of blood, he wasn’t exactly the best choice for a feline midwife.
“Fix her a box with something soft in it,” I said. “A blanket or a towel—not any of mine, please. Put it someplace quiet, like my office. She’ll probably do just fine until Clarence gets there.”
“But she sounds as if she’s in agony.”
Only Rob.
“She is in agony,” I said. “It’s called labor pains. She has my sympathy, but all she needs from you right now is a clean, safe, quiet place to get on with it.”
“Okay,” he said. “But can you come back and help? You’ve been through this—you’ll know what to do.”
“Roger.” I hung up. Then I stretched and looked at my watch. Odds were that by the time I got there, someone else would have taken pity on Rob and sent him to boil water or something. But it was probably time to collect Timmy and head home for some lunch.
Timmy was already provided for. Ms. Ellie had ordered in pizzas for her helpers, and a festive, if impromptu, party was in progress. Timmy didn’t look happy when I beckoned for him to go.
“You’re welcome to stay and have some pizza,” Ms. Ellie said.
“I need to check on the twins,” I said. To be perfectly accurate, I also wanted to pump some more milk for them in a place less crowded than the library, but I wasn’t fond of announcing that fact in public.
“Let him stay and help,” Ms. Ellie said. “I can drop him off this afternoon.”
Timmy beamed at the chance.
“Fine with me,” I said.
I grabbed a slice of the pizza to eat in the car on the way. I had plenty of time—the trip took longer than usual, because the town streets were still choked. Though there were fewer cars and buses bringing in volunteers and more vans and trucks hauling boxes out of town. If I’d had any doubt where the various town and county offices were located, I had only to glance down the street to see which ones had clusters of boxes and furniture on the sidewalk in front of them. The lavender-hatted garden ladies running in and out with potted plants in their purple-gloved hands were another dead giveaway.
While I was waiting for a volunteer to back a very large truck into a very small space at the town hall loading dock, I pulled out my cell phone and called Chief Burke.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Langslow?” he asked.
“I wanted to share something I heard,” I said. “Terence Mann has been blaming Parker Blair for his problems.”
“According to whom?”
“Mrs. Mann, who was down at the library packing books with me a little while ago.”
“Now that is interesting,” he said. “Did you find out anything else?”
“I thought of asking her if he’d started blaming Parker only in the last day or so or if he was already mad at him before the murder,” I said. “But I figured if I did, she’d know I suspected her husband of murder, and besides, you’d probably rather ask that yourself.”
“Good call,” he said.
“But she did volunteer that when her husband gets a new job—when, not if, because she’s expecting the county to fire him any day now—she may or may not be leaving with him.”
“Did she say why?”
“No, but it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What does she know that is suddenly making her want out of a marriage that seemed, up to now, pretty solid? But I figured that’s also something you’d rather find out for yourself.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For the information and for your commendable self-restraint.”
He didn’t say “uncharacteristic self-restraint,” so I decided to accept that as a compliment.
The truck pulled out, freeing up the road ahead of me.
“Got to go,” I said. “Good luck.”
Halfway home, it occurred to me to wonder where all the visiting Hollingsworths were lunching. Not, I hoped, with us. To my relief, Mother had only invited a select few out to the house—a mere two dozen—and someone had had the sense to drop by the Caerphilly Market for provisions.
They all took turns trooping upstairs to inspect the twins, and out to the barn to view the animals, including an ever-increasing number of kittens from the yellow tabby. A fine time was had by all with the possible exception of Rob, who had recovered from his panic over the feline blessed event, but was now wandering around the house looking under chair cushions and in wastebaskets and drawers and behind pieces of furniture.
“Hasn’t anyone seen my video camera?” he kept wailing. “The most exciting thing to happen in this town since the Civil War, and I’m missing all of it!”
I wa
sn’t sure whether he meant the Great Migration, as Ms. Ellie had started to call it, or the birth of the kittens, in which he’d begun to take an almost paternal pride.
I thought of suggesting that he could borrow our video camera, but Rob was notorious for losing anything smaller than a basketball.
After I’d pumped milk and spoiled everyone’s fun by determining that the boys were getting cranky and needed to be put down for a nap, I decided to head back to the library. I checked to see if Mother needed a ride.
I found her standing in the living room, looking around. I noticed that some of the wicker furniture from our sunporch had migrated into the living room to take the place of the missing items. And she’d brought a cheerful indigo-and-white batik tablecloth to throw over the macaw’s cage in place of the rather utilitarian canvas tarp that had been there before.
Still, she had that look. The decorating look.
“Perhaps we should repaint while everything’s out of the room,” she said.
I was about to point out that everything wasn’t out of the room. They’d only removed about a fourth of the furniture. Of course, Mother would counter that the burly cousins could come back for another hour or two. I thought of a more practical deterrent.
“Why repaint now?” I asked. “We could just touch things up a little. As soon as the boys start crawling, it’s open season on the walls. Makes more sense to repaint after they’ve had a chance to mess them up.”
“That’s why I was thinking of repainting,” Mother said, with a delicate shudder. “We could use one of those paints that clean up easily with just soap and water. Like the one we found for the nursery. So much more practical for a room where small children will be playing.”
I looked at her in astonishment. When had Mother begun taking practicality into account in her decorating?
“And I’ve never been entirely happy with the shade,” she added. “We can adjust that when we repaint. I’ll bring you some paint chips later this week.”
Aha. She wasn’t turning practical; she was using my focus on the practical to talk me into some minor redecorating.
Still, not a bad idea.
“Sounds like a good plan,” I said aloud.
She nodded absently. She was still gazing around. I braced myself. She was probably going to suggest that as long as the living room was all torn up anyway, perhaps she could add a few more decorating touches.
“I have to say,” she said finally. “I like this macaw much better.”
I pondered this a moment. Did she mean that she liked it better than she had before—that the macaw had grown on her? Or that she preferred the macaw to some of the other animals we were fostering? Or …
“Better than what?” I asked finally.
“Better than that other macaw.”
“We’ve only ever had the one macaw,” I said. “Multiple dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, and even rabbits, but only one macaw.”
“I think you’re mistaken, dear.” She wasn’t really trying to argue—she was using the tone of exaggerated patience that all of my family had taken to using with me. A tone I’d begun to find very, very irritating, because it seemed to suggest that due to the hormones and possibly the sleep deprivation, my brain was on a leave of absence.
I walked over to the mantel and picked up a stack of papers.
“Here’s Clarence’s inventory.” I began running my fingers down the list and flipping through the pages. “First page is all dogs. So’s the second. More dogs, Then cats. Then the rodents.”
Mother shuddered delicately, as she usually did when rodents were mentioned.
“Here,” I said, flipping to the last page. “The birds. Not a lot of them. Three canaries, which I don’t remember seeing, so I suppose I should inspect all the cats’ whiskers. A pair of racing pigeons. And one macaw.”
“Clarence must be mistaken, then,” Mother said. “You must have two macaws. Perhaps they’re hiding some of the animals from you.”
I sighed. That seemed more than possible. Maybe it wasn’t just my imagination that the number of animals seemed to have grown larger every time I went out to the barn. Last night’s adoptions didn’t seem to have made as much of a dent as I’d hoped. Maybe they were importing them from other nearby shelters to take advantage of public sympathy.
Well, if it helped get homes for the animals … I’d worry about that later.
“What makes you think this isn’t the same macaw?” I asked aloud.
“The color, dear. The macaw you had yesterday was mostly a very harsh Prussian blue. It didn’t fit your living room decor at all. This new macaw is a very lovely shade of turquoise instead. Very nice. Matches the upholstery.”
Mother beamed at the macaw. The macaw ruffled its feathers slightly, and I braced myself, hoping it would only say something rude and brash, like “Hiya, toots!” instead of something from the X-rated end of its vocabulary.
The macaw only emitted a soft squawk and began preening its feathers.
“Now that’s odd,” I said. Yesterday the bird had missed no opportunity to speak. I didn’t recall hearing it say anything this morning. Could Mother possibly be right?
And then I realized that of course she had to be right. Mother might have many strange notions and knowledge gaps, but she was absolutely sound on any subject even remotely related to decorating. And color was one of her passions. She had once spent an excruciating hour trying to explain to me the differences between purple, violet, lilac, mauve, heliotrope, magenta, lavender, orchid, grape, puce, pomegranate, Tyrian, wine, solferino, amaranthine, amethyst, fuschia, eggplant, and aubergine. And while other decorators usually carried swatches, Mother always relied on her color memory, which was the chromatic equivalent of a musician’s perfect pitch.
So if Mother said that the turquoise macaw had been Prussian blue yesterday, she undoubtedly knew what she was talking about.
But what had happened to the other macaw?
“The break-in,” I said aloud. “That’s what they were after. The other macaw.”
“Why would anyone want to steal a macaw?” Mother asked. “Particularly that rather unattractive one you had here yesterday?”
“Beats me,” I said. “I’m with you—I like this new macaw much better. But so far, the other macaw is the only thing missing. Unless you count Rob’s video camera, and I really don’t think the intruder took it.”
“What about the vase your aunt Penelope gave you as a wedding present?”
“It’s not missing,” I said. “The intruder broke it.”
Mother winced.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “She’s sure to notice it’s missing.”
“I’ll tell her I lent it to you.”
Mother winced again.
“She’ll never believe that,” she said. “Penelope will know I think that vase is hideous.”
“Then help me find a solution to the broken vase that doesn’t involve buying a replacement,” I said. “Because I thought it was hideous, too, and I’m sure it’s also hideously expensive, and I’d like to avoid spending a vast sum of money replacing something I didn’t want in the first place.”
“Don’t even think of replacing it,” Mother said. “If Penelope ever notices, I think you should just say that you’ve started putting the breakables away in the attic so they’ll be safe when the boys start walking.”
I opened my eyes and stared at her in amazement.
“That’s perfect,” I said. “I mean, in a couple of months, it will be true. In fact, we’ve already started putting all the breakables up high so the boys can crawl here.”
“And you may as well start childproofing now,” she said. “Put a few more breakable things aside to make it look plausible. They’ll be crawling any day now. You’d be amazed how it creeps up on you.”
I could tell from the faint wistfulness in her tone that she was still remembering the memorable day that Rob took his first tottering steps and made a beeline for a wobbly table holding a
rare piece of Art Nouveau glass.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll start childproofing this room tomorrow. Or perhaps later today. I must run. A lot more plants to rescue! By the way, there are a few plants down at the town hall that are too much for the ladies to manage. Could you possibly drop by and help us with them?”
“Glad to,” I said. It would make a break from packing books.
“Thank you, dear.” She waved cheerfully and sailed away.
After waving back, I returned to pondering the mystery of the missing macaw. Much more interesting than the missing vase, not to mention potentially more important. Maybe Grandfather hadn’t been the intruder’s target after all. Maybe he’d only been collateral damage in the intruder’s quest to steal Parker’s macaw.
Which didn’t make the intruder any less dangerous.
I followed Mother out to the foyer.
“Don’t tell anyone about the macaw swapping,” I said. “It could help us catch whoever did it if they don’t know we know.”
“Of course not, dear.” She was arranging her lavender garden club hat at just the right angle in the mirror on our hall coat stand, completely ignoring two kittens who were playing tag on the stand, knocking things off its shelves and doing who knows how much damage to the coats with their tiny little razor claws.
I fetched a box and retrieved the kittens from their playground. Out to the barn with them. As it happened, I was going that way anyway. I needed information about the macaw. And with any luck, there should be at least one animal expert still hanging around the barn.
Chapter 19
I found Clarence out tending the animals. He seemed to have relocated his veterinary practice to our barn. A card table with a clean sheet over it stood ready for any patients who needed examining, and just inside the door, he’d set up half a dozen of the wooden folding chairs we used for parties. No one was waiting on them, fortunately. Clarence was just saying good-bye to an elderly man with a rather stout bulldog in tow. I waited until the two had waddled out the door before interrupting.
The Real Macaw Page 18