Owls Well That Ends Well

by Donna Andrews

  I thought of explaining that it might be the end of the day, but the yard sale would probably be continuing next weekend. But that would probably start a long discussion.

  “Okay, on one condition,” I said.

  She snapped to attention.

  “You can have it for fifty cents if you go out and find something else on sale for a dollar that’s just as large and hideous,” I said. “If you can do that, I’ll give you both things, two for fifty cents. Otherwise it stays a dollar.”

  She frowned for a second. Then she picked up the vase or statue or whatever it was and raced back out into the yard sale.

  “But it has to be something really hideous, remember,” I called after her. “And I get to decide if it’s hideous enough!”

  The next customer stepped up and plunked two large cardboard boxes on the table. But instead of efficiently emptying her boxes so I could add things up, she handed me a plate. A rather ordinary china plate.

  “How much for this?” she asked.

  I turned the plate over. Yes, it had a price tag.

  “Fifty cents,” I said.

  “Can you do twenty-five for it?”

  I looked at her two large boxes. And then at the long line of people waiting to check out. Waiting and watching.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “But I tell you what—”

  I broke the plate over my knee and handed her the larger half.

  “I can do twenty-five for this,” I said.

  Apparently she wasn’t in the mood for bargaining. She ignored the proffered plate, unloaded her two boxes without attempting to dicker, and paid the total in silence.

  I left the two halves of the plate at my elbow, just to keep people motivated.

  A long afternoon.

  “Hello, dear.”

  I glanced up to see that my next customer was Mother, carrying the hideous lamp shade, its garish colors glowing in the afternoon sunlight like some strange tropical fungus.

  “Where were you planning to use that?” I asked, pointing to the lamp. And then I braced myself, hoping that the answer wouldn’t be “In your living room, dear.”

  “Good heavens,” Mother exclaimed. “You really didn’t think I’d use that on a lamp!”

  “Isn’t that usually what one does with lamp shades?”

  “But not one this vile,” Mother said, recoiling from the lamp shade, as if the possibility of using it for interior decoration was a new and profoundly disturbing notion.

  “Then why are you buying it?”

  “For my costume, dear,” she said. She placed the lamp shade on her head and struck a pose. The lamp shade was so huge that it dwarfed her slender figure. She really did look like a tall floor lamp afflicted with the ugliest of all possible shades.

  “Oh, I see,” I said, trying to sound merely enthusiastic rather than profoundly relieved. “Is Dad going as a lamp, too?”

  “We didn’t think it quite suited,” she said. “He’s wearing Eric’s old warped skis and going as a rocking chair.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “You always think of the most unusual costumes.”

  Mother beamed at that. And it wasn’t a lie, either. How nice to have reached the age where I found my parents’ enthusiasm for wearing outlandish costumes endearing; as a child, of course, it had been only one of many reasons I’d found them mortally embarrassing.

  “How’s it going?” Michael asked, appearing in front of me instead of a customer. I glanced over and saw that Mrs. Fenniman and Rob were helping the next customer drag a small mountain of boxes over to my table. I took a deep breath.

  “We’re getting there,” I said, nodding at the large pile of sales receipt carbons on the table.

  “How about the sleuthing?” he asked, in an undertone.

  “Well, it obviously hasn’t been going anywhere for the last several hours.”

  “If you needed to get away from the sale, you should have told me,” he exclaimed.

  “There’s nothing more I can do before sundown anyway,” I said. “But if you’d care to help me with a surveillance this evening.”

  “I would be delighted,” he said, with a bow. “Who are we tailing?”

  “Carol McCoy,” I said.

  “The grieving widow?”

  “She’s not grieving,” I said. “She’s probably celebrating Gordon’s demise, and she may have caused it.”

  “Then I dislike her on principle.”

  “Because she might be a murderer?”

  “Because she’s contributing to your unreasonably negative view of matrimony, which is an honorable estate, and so forth. You look beat. Why don’t you knock off now? I can finish up, and you can take a hot bath, and maybe even a nap.”

  “You’re just trying to get on my good side,” I said.

  “Always,” he said, with a smile.

  I glanced at the woman with the mountain of boxes, and the umpteen other customers behind her. I was about to pull my usual stiff upper lip routine, deny being tired, and insist on staying to the bitter end. But, dammit, he was right. I was beat.

  “You’re an angel,” I said. “Just give a yell if anyone needs me for anything.”

  “On the contrary, I will kill anyone who tries to bother you,” he said. “See you at sundown.”

  Chapter 36

  Things really were winding down. I was only stopped half a dozen times on my way to the house.

  And a large amount of stuff had left the yard. I tried to focus on that, and not on the fact that we hadn’t gotten rid of nearly as much stuff as we would have if the yard sale had been open all weekend. Think positively. We’d probably unloaded several tons of stuff.

  I also tried to shake off the thought that we’d released several tons of noxious clutter into other people’s lives. Should I feel guilty, I wondered, remembering Rose Noir’s feng shui advice. Only if it really was clutter, I decided.

  Now that I had time to breathe, I remembered a few customers who made me feel good about the yard sale. The woman in neat, though slightly worn, clothes who’d looked so pleased at her box full of children’s toys and books. The elderly woman clutching a vase exactly like one she remembered from childhood visits to her grandmother. The two college students who’d been so happy with their armloads of vintage clothes. Not to mention all the cheerful people carrying around Cousin Ginnie’s telltale lavender and silver bags.

  And Cousin Ginnie herself. I’d have to ask Michael later what he’d said to Morris. Evidently it worked. For the last several hours, he and Ginnie had been minding the booth as a team, beaming merrily every time they rang up a sale and giggling together in between times. Planning new feats of lingerie shopping with the proceeds, perhaps. At least they were happy.

  So what if some of our customers took their purchases back to languish unused in houses already filled with clutter? Not my fault. If they hadn’t come to our yard sale, they’d have found another. I resolved to work on being grateful for the gift of empty space we were getting from the sale, and not condemning people with different attitudes toward stuff.

  Maybe that was a decorating theme I could give Mother. Stencil William Morris’s motto in the front hall: “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” And then work on matching the rest of the décor to that philosophy.

  When I reached the back door, I turned to survey the crowd and realized that one of the few people I hadn’t spotted was Carol McCoy. I pulled out the cell phone and tried her number again. No answer. Not a problem. We’d tackle her tonight.

  I cringed when I glanced at our makeshift kitchen table and saw a large shopping bag sporting a tag with my name written on it in large, loopy letters. An elegant lavender bag decorated with silver hearts. I considered ignoring it—I wasn’t sure I wanted to know which of Cousin Ginnie’s fripperies someone thought I would like. Then again, better to get it over with while Cousin Ginnie was still here and could take returns.

  I peered in and brea
thed a sign of relief when I found it wasn’t lingerie, but cosmetics. A small ocean of Rose Noir’s handmade cosmetics, all scented with lavender, rose, or lavender and rose. Bath salts, bath oils, powder, body lotion, shampoo, room spray—the works.

  I picked up the business card tucked under one corner of the bag. A note on the back read, “Thanks for letting me participate in the yard sale—RN.” And the card now read Rose Noire. I had to look close to see that the final “e” was inked in, so carefully had it been done.

  “Good grief,” I said. “I hope Mother didn’t traumatize her too badly.”

  Okay, Rose Noire didn’t surrender unconditionally. Nestled at the very bottom was a small brown bottle marked: “Eau de Meg. Ingredients: cinnamon, cloves, and just a hint of very, very light musk.”

  I wondered briefly if Rose Noire had been shopping at Ginnie’s booth, or just borrowed a bag. Not something I needed to know. I grabbed the bag—I needed both hands to lift it—and took it with me to the second floor, where for the next hour I proceeded to set a terrible example as a hostess by hogging the bathroom and using up a good portion of the available hot water.

  I then retired into the master bedroom. I didn’t expect to nap, but I rested, soothed by the welcome sounds of car doors slamming out in the yard, and car engines disappearing in the distance. The occasional baaing of sheep made me tense up at first. But once I decided that each baa meant another of Farmer Early’s sheep returning to the fold, I found them soothing—all the benefits of counting sheep, without the bother of arithmetic. I relaxed again. Inside the house, my relatives scuttled up and down the halls, obviously planning some sort of outing. When they knocked on the bedroom door, I played possum.

  I tried to forget all about everything outside. About Mother and her determination to decorate the house. Though I realized, with the clarity that sometimes comes on the verge of sleep, that perhaps I was being so stubborn because it felt as if she wanted to design not just our house but our entire lives. I’d try to explain that to Michael later, I thought, shoving the subject aside.

  I also tried to push the murder out of mind, because I started getting angry if I thought about Endicott and Professor Schmidt and the Hummel lady all messing with the crime scene, lying to the police, and digging a deeper and deeper hole under poor Giles’s feet. And, of course, I tried to forget about the yard sale.

  For some reason, I found myself thinking about Sophie, the barn owl, and her mate, whom Dad had probably also named, though I didn’t know what. At nightfall, the barn owls would swoop silently out into the darkness and begin their night’s hunting, ridding the nearby farms of any number of rodents. Just as Michael and I would steal out after sunset to rid Caerphilly of another kind of vermin.

  Of course, all Sophie had to do was swoop down and pounce on the rodents. Michael and I would be trying to track down Carol and wring the truth out of her. Probably a confession of murder, unless she pointed the finger at still another lurker in the barn. And even if she did, I wasn’t sure I’d believe her. I should have seen it all along. And Chief Burke definitely should have seen it—she was always the most logical suspect.

  Interrogating Carol was difficult, but she had confessed to the murder and was apologizing nicely for ruining the yard sale when someone began shouting my name and interrupting us.

  “Meg?”

  Okay, I’d dropped off to sleep after all, and dreamed I was interrogating Carol. Apparently counting sheep by proxy really worked. It was dusk, and Michael was shaking me awake.

  “I wasn’t sure I should wake you—”

  “Except that you knew I’d be furious if you didn’t,” I said. “Come on. The game’s afoot, as Sherlock Holmes and Dad would say.”

  Just for the heck of it, I tried calling Carol’s number as we went downstairs. No answer. I didn’t really expect one. I reminded myself that she wasn’t deliberately trying to dodge me. Though she might be trying to dodge the police.

  The house was strangely empty. Not that I was complaining. It just seemed too good to be true. Downstairs, we found Dad and Rob in the kitchen. Dad was sitting on the floor in the center of the room, doing something with aluminum foil. Rob was examining the ceiling lamp with great concentration.

  “No thanks,” Rob was saying. “It was a lot of fun when I was a kid, but I think you should save your pellets for Eric.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” Dad said.

  Now that I was closer, I could see that Dad was wrapping owl pellets in aluminum foil. I decided Rob had the right idea. The ceiling lamp was fascinating.

  “Do you remember dissecting owl pellets when we were kids?” I asked Rob, in an undertone. “Because I don’t.”

  “No,” he said. “Unless it was so traumatic that I’ve blotted it out of my memory. I’ve never been all that keen on animal droppings.”

  “Owls are birds, not animals,” I said. “And owl pellets aren’t droppings, they’re—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Rob said. “They barf them up. Doesn’t make it a whole lot better, knowing they’re owl spit instead of owl—”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I might want to eat again one of these days.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Rob said, in a more normal voice. “Are you up for pizza at Luigi’s?”

  “Maybe later,” I said.

  “You would have to mention pizza,” Michael said. “I’m trying to remember when I ate last.”

  “The whole family’s going,” Rob said. “In fact, most of them are already there. I’m just waiting for Dad to get ready.”

  “Later,” I repeated.

  “Aw, come on,” Rob said. “Pizza. Celebration. What’s the problem?”

  “Michael and I have to be … elsewhere,” I said.

  “Right,” Michael said. “Maybe we’ll join you when we’re back from … elsewhere. I’ll grab something we can eat on the way.”

  He opened the refrigerator door and began rummaging.

  “Just ignore these,” Dad said, waving a foil-wrapped object. “I’ll move them later.”

  Rob shuddered.

  “You’re not just leaving the cashbox lying around,” Barrymore Sprocket said. I glanced over to find him standing in the doorway behind us, looking shocked and indignant.

  “I thought we’d lock it up,” I said. “And do the accounting in the morning.”

  “I was hoping to report to the family,” he said, “on the results of the sale so far.”

  “He’s got a point, Meg,” Dad said. “We really ought to take care of that before we start celebrating. If you have something else to do, I’ll stay behind and count it.”

  “And I’ll help him,” Barrymore said.

  “But Dad—” Rob said.

  “Have them put the tab on our Visa,” Dad said, thereby showing that he knew the way to Rob’s heart: free food. “Your mother will be there to sign. And have them deliver a pizza for us. How about a sausage and mushroom—will that work for you, Barrymore?”

  I didn’t stay to the end of Barrymore’s explanation of what sausage would do to his stomach.

  “We’ll be back later,” I said, and headed for the driveway.

  On the way, we passed Rose Noire loading her leftover merchandise into her car. Actually, she was sitting cross-legged on a large box supervising while Officer Sammy and a gorilla-suited Horace loaded the car.

  “And it’s important not to let ridicule and social pressure prevent you from expressing your true nature,” Rose Noire was saying. “I expect some people to laugh when I explain that in a previous life I was one of the sacred cats in the temple of Bastet.”

  “Narrow-minded people,” Horace said. “The Egyptians considered the ape sacred to Thoth, the lord of books.”

  “I like cats,” Sammy put in, hastily.

  Michael and I waved and continued on to the car. Michael’s car, which wasn’t as blocked-in as mine, though we did have to drive across part of what had once been a flower bed to get out.

  “That flowe
r bed was in the wrong place anyway,” I said.

  “That’s the spirit,” Michael said. “So we’re off to Carol’s house,” he added as he maneuvered his car off the grass and onto the driveway. “I trust you know where it is?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “That’s not where we’re going. Head for the Spare Attic.”

  “It’ll be closed by now,” Michael said, but he didn’t argue with me, and at the end of our driveway he turned right, not left. A left turn on our small rural road took us to civilization, or at least to the town of Caerphilly, and from there we could pick up the main roads that led west to Richmond, south to Yorktown, or north to D.C. A right turn led us even farther out into the countryside until the road finally dead-ended five miles away at Caerphilly Creek. Apart from the nearby farmers and anyone unfortunate enough to be living in converted 1920s motel rooms at the ramshackle Whispering Pines Cabins, the only reason anyone ever had for going past our house was to visit the Spare Attic.

  Chapter 37

  The Spare Attic was a clever name for a fairly utilitarian place. The same local businessman who’d turned the Whispering Pines Cabins from a hot sheets motel into a residential hotel soon realized that many of his unfortunate clients had more stuff than they could possibly fit into their dinky cabins. So he’d bought the old abandoned Brakenridge textile mill, dirt cheap; thrown up inexpensive chain-link partitions in the central factory floor; and rented out the resulting storage units at exorbitant prices.

  At least he’d tried to charge exorbitant prices until a lack of renters forced him to realize that apart from the tenants at the cabins, not many people wanted to rent his bins.

  When old Ezekiel Brakenridge, Ginevra’s father, had built the factory in the nineteenth century, he’d doubtless put it on the banks of Caerphilly Creek for a good reason, though I didn’t know whether he needed the creek for power or just liked to have a convenient source of running water to pollute. But the mill was even farther from town than we were—probably about fifteen miles. However much people in town needed storage space, most of them balked at driving that far for a bin. And the people nearby were mostly farmers who had plenty of barns and outbuildings for storage—as we would, once the Sprockets were out of our lives and we could bring our possessions onto the property without the risk that Barrymore and his kin would redefine them as Sprocket family heirlooms. So for now we’d rented a bin for our overflow stuff. At least the stuff that wouldn’t suffer from the Spare Attic’s lack of sophisticated climate controls—in fact, its almost complete lack of any heat or air conditioning whatsoever.