“So you decided to get rid of some of it.”
“I thought I’d start with the things I can’t even get into anymore,” she said. “After all, I’m not the woman I used to be. I’m more like two of her!”
She laughed again, and patted her rounded stomach in a matter-of-fact way I envied.
“I figure if I clear out the stuff I can’t wear anymore, I can make room for the new stuff. After today, I should be set for another thirty years! Doesn’t he see that?”
“Apparently not,” I said. “He thinks it means that the passion has gone out of your marriage.”
“Good heavens,” she said, shaking her head. “What will I do with him? You can’t imagine how hard it is to change his mind once he gets a notion about something.”
“Actually, I bet I can,” I said, glancing around her booth.
Luckily, a customer came up and gave me a chance to escape before I did something stupid, like offer to talk to Cousin Morris. After all, Michael had already offered to do that.
“Meg!”
I looked up to see Cousin Rosemary waving frantically at me. I had forgotten overnight what I was supposed to be calling her. I waved cheerfully, and pulled out my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe as I strolled over to her table.
“Meg!” she said. “I have some important information.”
“What is it, Rose Noir?” I asked, after sneaking a peek at the notebook.
“It’s about the murder!” she said.
Chapter 26
“About the murder,” I repeated. “I see.”
Since, as far as I remembered, Rose Noir hadn’t been anywhere near the barn on Saturday, I had a hard time imagining that she could know anything useful. Had she overheard something? Perhaps two cops chatting about the case while waiting in line for Sno-Cones? Seemed unlikely. Still, you never knew.
“I should have warned everyone yesterday morning that something bad would happen,” she said. “I heard an owl hoot Friday night.”
“We have a whole nest of them in the barn,” I said.
“An owl’s hoot is always a dire omen.”
“What happened to the sacred owl, beloved of Athena, protector of warriors?” I asked.
“And it all goes back to feng shui,” she continued, ignoring what I thought was a very reasonable question. “I know in the long run your yard sale should have a very positive effect on the feng shui of your house. Though all those years of being packed with unwanted clutter probably left a lot of negative energy behind. I should probably do a house cleansing before you move in.”
“Mmm,” I said, noncommittally, while I tried to think of a tactful way of asking if a house cleansing merely involved waving around a lot of incense or if it included any actual scrubbing, and if the latter, whether she did windows.
“But, of course, in the short term having a yard sale, especially one so huge, means that you’ve gathered an immense amount of unwanted clutter here in one spot. Think of the incredible amount of negative energy that’s created!”
“You think this had something to do with the murder?”
“Of course,” she said. “You not only have acres of clutter, but you have all the greed and acquisitiveness that the yard sale has stirred up in the people who come here. It’s absolutely toxic!”
“Sort of a psychic cesspool,” I said, nodding. And rather like my notion of the evil Army of Clutter laying siege to the house. Of course, seeing eye to eye with Rose Noir on anything worried me. “I understand what you mean, but I’m not sure you could convince the police that it’s a factor in the murder.”
“Yes, but it is,” she said. “I’m sure of it. I think you should think very seriously before agreeing to hold another yard sale.”
“You know, you’re right,” I said. “I don’t need to think about it at all. You’ve convinced me. No more yard sales for us!”
“Wonderful!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands.
“Now, if I could convince you to change your mind about selling me the lavender stuff.”
Her face hardened, and I gave up. Probably not the time to approach her about interrogating Darlene, either. Time to do something useful, anyway. Like finding someone else to question.
The Hummel lady, for example. I was peering around, trying to spot her, when I ran into Dad.
“Looking for someone?” he asked. “An elusive suspect?”
“Just the Hummel lady,” I said. “Have you seen her?
“Why?”
“I happened to overhear Chief Burke questioning her,” I said. “She’s the last person who admits to seeing Gordon alive, and she claims that she saw Giles entering the barn as she left.”
“Aha!” Dad said. “Then she’s the prime suspect!”
“Not necessarily.”
“The last person to see the deceased alive should always be the prime suspect!” Dad said. He read far too many mystery books, and was fond of making such pronouncements.
“I thought the prime suspect was always the person who found the body,” I said.
“Well yes, them, too,” Dad said. “Sometimes you have multiple prime suspects. And, of course, you can’t overlook the deceased’s spouse. You’d be amazed at how many people are killed by their spouses.”
“I’m sure Mother appreciates your self-restraint,” I said. “But for now, I just need the Hummel lady.”
“Right,” Dad said. “There she is.”
He pointed, and I spotted the Hummel lady standing at one edge of the fenced-in area, studying the yard sale interior with a pair of opera glasses. She wore the same clothes she’d had on yesterday, including the strange hat with its bobbling flowers, so I deduced it was a costume of some sort.
Time to tackle the first prime suspect. I strolled over to the Hummel lady.
“Back again, I see,” I said. “Looking for anything in particular?”
The Hummel lady fixed me with an evil look. Then her expression changed. I imagined that I could see the thoughts passing through her mind—the angry impulse to be rude to me replaced by the sudden, surprised realization that I might be useful, and a fleeting look of cunning before she arranged her face into a smile that I might have thought authentically sweet and friendly if I hadn’t seen the whole sequence of expressions leading up to it.
“Oh, you know me,” she said, as if we were old friends. “Just an old yard sale hound. I have to say, though, I do think it’s much nicer when you don’t have those nasty old professionals.”
“Like Gordon, you mean?”
She blinked in surprise at the name, and then rearranged her expression into one of profound sadness.
“That poor man,” she said, shaking her head. “Such a tragedy. But, yes, I do think that those antique dealers and pickers lower the whole tone of a yard sale, don’t you think? Instead of a fun event it becomes something crass and commercial.”
I stifled the smart aleck impulse to say that so far our yard sale hadn’t proved nearly crass and commercial enough for me. For one thing, it wasn’t true. I didn’t care whether the sale was crass or classy; whether we made a huge profit or didn’t even cover expenses, as long as we got rid of a few tons of stuff. And for another, I didn’t think it would help me get her talking.
So I also refrained from saying that I thought the genuinely professional dealers and pickers improved the tone. With a few exceptions, like Gordon, they were a lot less trouble than the amateur bargain hunters. They showed up on time rather than early and went through the sale quickly and efficiently, gathering up large quantities of merchandise without trying to nickel-and-dime the sellers to death. I’d have been happy to have nothing but dealers and pickers if not for the large amount of junk we wanted to sell that no self-respecting picker would touch.
To her, of course, they were competitors who might snatch up some rare bit of Hummel before she could.
“Sorry you feel that way,” I said. “Do you think that’s why Gordon was killed—that someone resented him lowering t
he whole tone of the yard sale?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she said.
She paused, briefly, and then asked in an overly casual tone:
“What’s going to happen to the stuff he was buying? Or had he already bought it when he was killed?”
“He collected a great heap of stuff, but he hadn’t paid me a dime,” I said. “So as far as I know, as soon as the police release it, we’ll have to find someone else to buy it all.”
“I see,” she said. “If someone were interested in something that he might have gathered—”
“I’m afraid the trunk’s already spoken for,” I said. “A pity—the buyer will probably get a ton of money for it on eBay, but my conscience wouldn’t let me keep it.”
I deduced from her expression that she found the juxtaposition of “money” and “conscience” odd, if not downright unnatural.
“I see,” she said. “If you happen to come across any little bits of china …”
“You can have any Hummel we have at a dollar the lot on one condition,” I said.
“Yes?” she said, leaning forward eagerly.
“I want to know the truth about what went on when you were in the barn,” I said. “Not the pack of lies you told Chief Burke.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said, drawing herself up with apparent indignation. “Are you suggesting that I … would lie?”
“I happen to know more than Chief Burke about what went on in the barn yesterday,” I said. Which wasn’t exactly a lie. I was sure Chief Burke knew nothing about the fledgling owls, for example.
“Were you spying on me?” she asked.
“What makes you think that?” I asked, trying to strike the right note of nonchalance to convince her that the answer was yes. And then something struck me—she’d said “spying on me” not “spying on us.” I decided to take a chance.
“Why did you make up a whole conversation with him when you never even saw Gordon?” I asked.
Her shoulders fell.
“If I’d known someone was watching, I’d have admitted that I never found him,” she said. “I was afraid someone would think I’d killed him. I didn’t know I had a witness who could clear me. You could have said something.”
“I’ve told the chief everything I saw,” I said. “Just what did you think you were going to accomplish, anyway?”
“I was searching. For any little bits of … Hummel,” she said, forcing the last word out as if she were convinced that saying it aloud would jinx her quest.
“And you looked everywhere,” I said.
“Except in the locked trunk, of course,” she said. “I thought that must be where he’d put them. I even tried to force the lock open, but I couldn’t. And then I heard someone coming in, and I thought I should leave.”
I pondered. Okay, I wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t seen Gordon—I knew he had to be already dead and locked in the trunk when Giles entered the barn for the second time. But I was surprised that she’d admitted it so readily.
Unless she found admitting a lie easier than confessing to murder. For all I knew, she’d killed Gordon before searching the barn, and was barely restraining her panic until she could find out exactly how much I’d seen.
She didn’t look as if she was barely restraining panic. An urge to climb the deer-proof fence and scour the yard sale for Hummel, perhaps, but not panic.
“So if you didn’t do him in and stuff him in the trunk, who did?” I asked.
“I have no idea!”
“Did you see anyone else in the barn?”
“Well—not in the barn.”
“Then where?”
“I did see someone leaving just before I went in. But I have no idea who.”
“Can you describe the person?” I asked, trying to keep my tone patient.
“No, not at all.”
“Was it a man or a woman?”
“All I saw was this huge Mexican hat.”
“Aha!” I said. “Professor Schmidt with the sombrero in the barn!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Thanks.”
“So?” she said. “What about my reward?”
“Reward?”
“My Hummel!”
“The yard sale’s still a crime scene,” I said, slowly and carefully. “But as soon as they release it, you can have every bit of Hummel on the place.”
“For a dollar?”
“For a dollar,” I said. “In fact—what the hell—gratis. On me.”
“Excellent,” she said, positively beaming at me. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask her, so I didn’t object when she strolled off to study the stuff inside the fence from another angle.
I felt better already. As long as I could get her to repeat her story for the chief, it would create reasonable doubt of Giles’s guilt. Gordon was already dead and locked in the trunk when Giles came in. Of course, finding the real murderer would be more satisfactory than creating reasonable doubt, but still, I’d already made progress.
Of course, now I had to scour the yard sale for Hummel. And it wouldn’t be pretty if it turned out we had no Hummel at all. Perhaps I should scrounge up a Hummel or two to placate her, if it turned out no one at the yard sale was selling any. Make sure I had something to hold out as a reward for good behavior. Or would that look like a bribe?
I’d worry about it later.
I pulled out my cell phone and was about to dial Chief Burke when it occurred to me that so far I only had the Hummel lady’s word. And she’d already lied once. Should I tell the chief now, or look for some corroboration first?
I shoved my cell phone back in my pocket.
First I had to find Professor Schmidt.
Chapter 27
I prowled through the crowd looking for Arnold Schmidt. It wasn’t easy finding anyone, since both the crowd and the number and variety of vendors catering to them had grown exponentially. I saw people hawking vacuum cleaners, scarves, purses, home-grown vegetables, patented tear-free onion slicing machines, essential oils and incense, souvenir Caerphilly t-shirts and key chains, and bad imitation Rolexes. Someone was even trying to sell a litter of baby ferrets, which I hoped Dad, Michael, and Eric didn’t see.
My relatives were still selling hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, and potato salad as fast as they could dish them out, but now the discriminating outdoor diner could also find homemade fried chicken, barbecued ribs, kebabs, tacos, gyros, sushi, crab cakes, and at least a dozen different varieties of sandwich, along with popcorn, ice cream, and Sno-Cones for dessert. No more funnel cake, alas, thanks to our volunteer tree surgeons.
I even spotted Cousin Sidney cruising up and down the road in his tow truck, dragging a float on which one of the dark horse candidates in the upcoming Caerphilly mayor’s election was perched, wearing an Uncle Sam costume and haranguing the crowd through a megaphone. None of which exactly enhanced Sidney’s effectiveness as a deterrent to the parking scofflaws, though it did add to the day’s festiveness.
At one point, I heard several loud reports—they couldn’t be gunshots, could they? Not loud enough, I thought, as I ran toward them. No, not gunshots. A cousin dressed as a bunch of grapes, with about a hundred purple balloons fastened to his clothes, had given too enthusiastic a hug to another cousin in a porcupine costume.
Sammy, the young police officer, who stood nearby guarding the gate to the original yard sale, hadn’t been fooled. Or maybe, unlike me, Sammy had more sense than to run toward something that sounded like gunshots.
As I passed by his post, I saw Sammy sniffing the air and frowning.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Do you smell anything?” he asked.
I sniffed.
“Mainly charcoal-grilled hamburger,” I said. “I could fetch you one if you’re hungry.”
“No, something … funny.”
I sniffed again. This time, I caught a whiff of what I suspected was bothering Sammy.
Sammy looked puzzled.
“Smudging the area to clear away the bad energy,” I clarified, and looked around to see if I could spot the source of the odor. “Ah, there.”
I pointed to the edge of the yard. Apparently Rose Noir had decided to make a wide circle, taking in the house, the yard sale, and all the assorted outbuildings. She was marching at a stately pace, waving her smudging stick to create elegant arcs and crescents of smoke. Her mouth was moving, so I gathered she was either singing or chanting, but I couldn’t tell at this distance.
“What’s that she’s burning?” Sammy asked.
“Probably sage, cedar, sweetgrass—various herbs,” I said. “Legal herbs,” I added, remembering the time Mother had invited Rose Noir over to smudge the family house after the visit of a particularly unpleasant cousin. Rob had mistaken the odor of the smudging herbs for marijuana. I still wasn’t quite sure if he’d been relieved or disappointed when he found out that his parents hadn’t become potheads. I suspected Sammy had made the same mistake. He was still frowning suspiciously at Rose Noir.
Well, if he tried to report her, odds were the chief would set him straight, and if not, an unsuccessful drug raid probably wouldn’t daunt this crowd. And maybe it was just my imagination, but the aroma of the smudging herbs seemed to lift my spirits. I strolled on, invigorated.
But I had no luck spotting Professor Schmidt. Apparently, apart from his lust for the phantom Pruitt papers, he was immune to the call of the yard sale. I revised my opinion of him sharply upward, even as I fretted over how much trouble I’d have finding him.
I did run into Dad, who gazed at me reproachfully.
“Your cousin Rosemary says she’s disappointed in you, trying to sneak behind her back and use a scent that clashes with your personality,” he said. His tone of voice made it sound as if he shared her disappointment.
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