Owls Well That Ends Well

by Donna Andrews

  No answer, but I assumed Horace had nodded because Rob let out a long breath and then said, “Man, that stinks.”

  Although they couldn’t see me, I nodded. No one in the family quite understood why Horace insisted on wearing his battered gorilla suit on every possible occasion, but we all knew how important it was to him. Recently, he’d discovered that he wasn’t the only person in the world with this hobby, and had begun attending occasional conventions of people dressed in animal costumes. I had no idea what else they did at these conventions, but they made Horace happy, which was more than I could say for Darlene. Unfortunately, he had met Darlene at a Fraternal Order of Police social, not one of his furry conventions.

  “I took it off because I was working,” Horace went on, “and gave it to Darlene for safekeeping, and she sold it.”

  “Well, ask her who she sold it to.”

  “I did,” he said. “She won’t tell me.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. Much as I disliked Darlene, I understood how she felt. And the idea of never having to look at Horace’s threadbare old gorilla suit again was appealing. But dammit, that wasn’t her decision or mine to make.

  And how had she sold it so fast, with the yard sale still closed?

  “Damn,” Rob said. Then, after a pause, he added. “I bet Meg could get her to tell.”

  “You think so?” Horace asked.

  I was torn between wanting to kick Rob for putting something else on my plate and agreeing that yes, Darlene would tell me. And I might even enjoy making her do it.

  Of course, if I was going to interrogate Darlene, I had to get out of the basement one of these years.

  I left Rob to commiserate with Horace and began slowly hauling myself up again. Back to the bedroom. I’d lose the advantage of surprise in my battle against Mother’s unilateral decoration schemes, but at least I wouldn’t embarrass Horace or get in trouble with Chief Burke.

  All this hauling up and down was getting exhausting. Maybe we should put in an electric motor for the dumbwaiter.

  But then, perhaps mechanization was overkill. After all, I wouldn’t normally be using the thing for transportation, and a couple of well-placed locks would prevent any visiting urchins from doing the same. If only Michael weren’t so charmed by it, I could see removing the dumbwaiter and turning the shaft into a laundry chute.

  Luckily, by the time I hauled myself up two stories, Mother and Michael had vanished. Though Mother had probably gone off to buy chintz, I thought gloomily.

  “Hey, Meg!”

  I looked out the window and saw Cousin Everett peering in. Standing on the platform of his boom lift, presumably.

  “Come on,” he said. “They’ve all been looking for you outside.”

  As busy as Everett had been, I figured this might be my only chance for a ride in the boom lift, so I crawled out the window onto the platform.

  “Hang on,” Everett said. I grabbed the railings and looked down. And then I started when I saw Eric down on the ground, standing beside the boom lift controls.

  “You’re not letting Eric drive this thing,” I gasped.

  “Of course not,” Everett said. “I’m running it—see?”

  I looked over and saw that the platform did contain a complete duplicate control panel.

  “Oh,” I said, as we began moving. “I didn’t know you could drive it from up here.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Uh … yeah,” I said. Instead of merely lowering me to the ground in the front yard, Everett lifted the platform up to its full forty-foot height, then rotated it ninety degrees so we were facing the backyard before lowering it again. The crowds on the ground looked like ants, and even relatives mending the roof looked doll-sized. Very cool, unless you happened to be slightly afraid of heights, which I hadn’t realized I was until we hit the thirty-foot level.

  “Thanks a million,” I said, when Everett finally deposited me just outside the yard sale entrance.

  “Any time,” Everett said.

  I stepped off into chaos.

  “Meg!” Sammy exclaimed. “There you are! We need your fingerprints!”

  “Meg!” Mrs. Fenniman called. “Where’s the key to the cash box. We need to lock up.”

  “Meg!” Dad shouted. “What channel is CBS on up here? And when do they have the local news? We have to watch it tonight; they just interviewed me about SPOOR!”

  “Hey, Meg,” Rob said, appearing at my side. “I’ve got the lawyer on the phone. He’s having trouble finding his way here—can you come and talk to him?”

  “Meg, dear,” Mother said, on my other side. “Are you sure you don’t want to come shopping with me? It’s for the house.”

  “Aunt Meg! Come look what I found in my owl pellet!” Eric called.

  For a moment, I seriously considered running back inside, crawling down the dumbwaiter shaft, and dumping myself out at Chief Burke’s feet. Maybe he’d arrest me for interfering with his investigation and I could spend the rest of the day in a nice, quiet jail cell.

  Chapter 17

  By the time I’d turned over the cash box key, sent Dad to guide the lawyer, given Mother my regrets, admired a small rodent skull that Eric had found, and allowed Sammy to ink and print my fingers, another dozen small crises had piled up, and I thought I’d never have a chance to continue what Michael called my snooping. Then I noticed a particular face appear in the circle surrounding me. Professor Schmidt. Just the person I wanted to talk to, although it looked as if I might have to solve a dozen other people’s problems before I got the chance.

  “Dad,” I said, when he reappeared from his conversation with the lawyer. See if you can help some of these people. I’ll see what I can do for Professor Schmidt; he’s been waiting a long time.”

  Schmidt didn’t even thank me for letting him jump ahead of the others who had, technically, been waiting longer than he had.

  “Someone has blocked my car in!” he exclaimed.

  “Okay,” I said. “Do you have the make and model and license plate number?”

  He frowned.

  “It’s an SUV,” he said. “Black. Or maybe dark blue.”

  “Show me.”

  He turned and headed toward the road, and I followed. I resisted the urge to say how idiotic it was, coming to complain about the SUV blocking him in without bringing full information. After all, it gave me a chance to get him away from the crowd and extract some information.

  “So, the police finally let you go?” I said, with deliberate casualness.

  “Finally let me go?” he said, starting. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said. I tried to look innocent, though I knew that wasn’t my forte. “I just assumed they’d question you pretty closely.”

  “Me?” he said, looking even more alarmed. “Why?”

  “I thought you were Giles’s competitor for the rare book Gordon found. Isn’t that why you were in the barn, talking to him?”

  “Good heavens no,” he said, with an exaggerated wince. “From what I heard, it was a mystery book. I’m a professor of literature!”

  His tone reminded me of my great-aunt Hester, whose complete lack of firsthand knowledge about pornography hadn’t diminished her passion for condemning it. As far as the family could tell, a Wonder Woman comic and a few mildly titillating historical romances were the closest things she’d ever seen to an obscene book. I wondered if Professor Schmidt’s knowledge of mysteries was equally sparse.

  “That’s odd,” I said. “I overheard that you were trying to buy a book from Gordon.”

  “Papers, not books,” he said.

  “Papers, then,” I said. “And they had nothing to do with Giles’s mysteries?”

  “It was about Mrs. Pruitt,” he said, with injured dignity.

  “Mrs. Pruitt,” I repeated, trying to sound both encouraging and noncommittal while racking my brain to think who Mrs. Pruitt might be.

  “Mrs.
Ginevra Brakenridge Pruitt,” he said, in a withering tone.

  “Oh, that Mrs. Pruitt,” I said. “I thought you meant someone living.”

  “I am the world’s leading scholar of Mrs. Pruitt’s oeuvre,” he said, sounding slightly offended.

  Ginevra Brakenridge Pruitt was a late-nineteenth-century poet whose name had been largely (and justifiably) forgotten outside her hometown of Caerphilly. She’d probably have been forgotten here as well if she hadn’t inherited a whacking great fortune from her robber baron father and doled out large portions of it to the college over the years in return for naming buildings after her and various members of her family.

  “I heard a rumor that Gordon had acquired a cache of Mrs. Pruitt’s papers,” Schmidt went on. “I wanted to find out if it was true.”

  “And was it?”

  “I still don’t know for sure,” he said. “I went into the barn to talk to him privately, but it was a waste of time. He was noncommittal. I suspect if he had the papers, he was probably putting out feelers to find out where he could get top dollar for them.”

  “Didn’t that make you mad?” I asked.

  “Irritated, perhaps,” he said. “But, of course, I knew he’d have to come back to me eventually.”

  “When he figured out there was nowhere else he could sell them,” I said, nodding. “Not if he wanted to get top dollar for them,” I added, hastily, seeing the offended look on his face. “I mean, he should have known that no one could possibly match your dedication and commitment to Mrs. Pruitt’s legacy.”

  “Yes,” Schmidt said. “We did some verbal sparring—he refused to admit he had any papers, and at the same time, kept asking me to estimate what they’d be worth if he did have them. As if I could put a value on something I’d never seen. I lost patience and left. Not a very good atmosphere for a negotiation anyway. He was clearly itching to get back to the yard sale. I thought I’d talk to him later.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “Guess you’ll have quite a wait now.”

  “Why?” he asked, frowning.

  “The police won’t release anything of Gordon’s until they’ve solved his murder, will they?” I said. “It could be weeks, even months. To say nothing of the delay until the estate goes through probate and you can start dealing with whoever inherits.”

  Schmidt smiled.

  “Mrs. Pruitt has been dead nearly a century,” he said, in a lofty tone. “I think I can wait a few more months to find out about these papers. If there are any papers to begin with. That’s just the sort of rumor Gordon would have loved starting.”

  “And the murderer’s done you a favor, too, hasn’t he?” I said.

  Schmidt looked startled again.

  “Favor?” he said.

  “Hard to think of anyone who wouldn’t be easier to deal with than Gordon, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Quite,” he said, with a dry chuckle. “Now, about my car …”

  I took down the SUV’s license plate—as it happened it was neither black nor blue, but a dark green Ford Expedition—and returned to make a few announcements to the crowd. I offered Schmidt a glass of lemonade, on the house, while he waited, but he declined. He seemed relieved to see me walk away.

  He was anxious about something. Or hiding something. I’d made him visibly nervous a couple of times, but he’d recovered, which probably meant I wasn’t asking the right questions. I made a mental note to see what Michael knew about him. Could there be some juicy departmental scandal involving Arnold Schmidt that would crack the whole case wide open?

  Chapter 18

  I borrowed the police bullhorn and strolled around announcing the SUV’s license plate number and politely asking the owner to move it. At first, I didn’t mind the excuse to wander around and see what everyone was up to. But about halfway through my second circumnavigation of the fence, my stomach growled, and I realized I was starving. My mellow attitude abruptly changed to annoyance at the inconsiderate SUV owner. So I reworded my announcement. Instead of “Will you please return to your vehicle and move it so others can leave,” I began saying. “This is your last chance to move your vehicle before the tow truck arrives.” Almost immediately, a stout, red-faced man sprinted toward the road. I deduced that I had accomplished my mission, so I headed for the grills to pick up a burger for lunch—although it was getting closer to dinner time, so I made it two burgers.

  “Meg?”

  I turned, still chewing my first mouthful of burger, to find Cousin Sidney standing before me with a reproachful look on his face.

  “You called another towing service? When you knew I was here?”

  Fortunately, with my mouth full, I couldn’t easily utter my first response—that even if I had the slightest idea which of Mother’s hundreds of relatives were here, I wouldn’t necessarily have remembered that one of them currently ran a towing service. By the time I finished chewing and swallowing, tact had returned.

  “There you are!” I exclaimed. “No, I didn’t call another towing service, because I knew you were around here someplace, and I figured I’d run into you before too long. There’s such a crowd here that people who want to leave are starting to get blocked in by the new arrivals.”

  “I can take care of that,” Sidney said, beaming.

  Of course, I was wary of just towing cars without any posted signs warning of the possibility—just my luck that we’d tow a newly fledged lawyer who wanted practical experience in litigation—but Cousin Sidney happily agreed to tow a few of the family cars back and forth at random intervals, and after his first few passes, I saw people heading for the road, so I figured our tactic was working. I also noticed fewer Grouchos, Nixons, and Draculas in the crowd—apparently people were realizing that the yard sale wasn’t starting up again soon and shedding their unneeded costumes.

  “Meg, can I have some money for a funnel cake?”

  I looked down to see Eric gazing up at me plaintively, as if the prospect of a funnel cake was the only thing that gave him the strength to continue.

  “I’d give you the money, but where on earth are you going to buy a funnel cake?” I asked. “This isn’t the county fair, you know.”

  “The funnel cake truck is out front,” he said. “And the Sno-Cone stand, too. Come and see!”

  I followed him around to the other side of the house where, indeed, a brightly painted funnel cake truck and a mobile Sno-Cone stand had set up and were dispensing their wares to a long line of customers.

  “Can I have one? Please?”

  I handed over the money for a funnel cake. Eric looked at it dubiously.

  “What about Frankie?” he asked. “Can’t he have one, too?”

  “He can’t share yours?”

  “He’s our guest!” Eric said. “Wouldn’t it be more polite to let him have his own funnel cake?”

  “Okay,” I said. “But you’ll have to hit up someone else for Sno-Cones.”

  “Oh, Frankie’s grandma is getting us those,” Eric said. “Thanks, Meg!”

  Nice to know I wasn’t the only soft touch in town.

  “That was a good idea,” said Dad, who happened to be standing nearby.

  “Giving the boys another sugar high?” I said. “Since it’s Rob watching them, not me, I suppose so.”

  “No, I meant having the food vendors come out,” Dad said.

  “And compete with the family run concession?”

  “I don’t think it will hurt,” Dad said. “Your cousins already have more customers than they can keep up with.”

  “Maybe I’ll have a funnel cake, then, if it won’t look disloyal,” I said. “I wish I could take credit, but the funnel cake and Sno-Cone people appeared on their own.”

  “Probably similar to the way flies and carrion beetles appear on a dead body,” Dad said, nodding. “It only takes minutes for the faint odor of beginning decay to attract scavenger insects.”

  “I would have said the way ants find a picnic,” I said. “Maybe I’ll wait on the funnel cake.” />
  “I think I’ll indulge,” Dad said, and joined the funnel cake line.

  You’d think I’d have gotten used to Dad’s metaphors by now, I thought, with a sigh.

  I spotted Cousin Rosemary. She’d been one of the people I’d had to turn down when they asked to join the yard sale at the last minute. Apparently she’d brought her stuff anyway, and now that the real yard sale was unavailable, had set up a booth in our front yard, near the Sno-Cones and the funnel-cake, between an aunt selling quilts and Horace’s ex-girlfriend Darlene, who crocheted afghans in remarkably loud colors. I glanced around, and saw that several other card tables had appeared, like mushrooms after a rain. A black market yard sale and craft fair was growing up outside the gates of the one still held captive by the police.

  Well, like the food, it would be something else to keep people entertained until we could let them back into the yard sale. And maybe Not-Rosemary was still selling the bath oils and bath salts she’d started making when she discovered aromatherapy. I actually liked some of her bath concoctions. And I realized that she’d hung a sign at the front of her booth with her new name conveniently blazoned across it: ROSE NOIR.

  Unless that was the name of her business. I stopped in front of her table.

  “Rose Noir,” I said. I figured if that was her new name, she’d think I was greeting her, and if it wasn’t, she’d just assume I was reading her sign.

  “Yes—do you like it?” she asked.

  “Very nice,” I said, while reaching into my pocket for the notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe.

  “I think I’ve finally found a name that really captures the true essence of my nature,” she said.

  “Yes, it certainly does,” I said, while scribbling a memorandum to myself: “Note: Rosemary = Rose Noir” and today’s date. “You’re still selling the bath oils, I see.”

  I picked up a jar of her lavender-scented bath oil.

  “How much for these?”

  She frowned.

  “Here,” she said. “Try this instead.”

  She tried to hand me something called “Scheherazade.” I could tell from the name, without even reading the label, that it would be dripping with musk.