Owls Well That Ends Well

by Donna Andrews

  I considered it a benefit that only about half the units were rented. The slow pace of business had forced the landlord to postpone his plans to erect a second, third, and fourth tier of bins atop the original tier. Given his reputation for shoddy construction, I hoped we wouldn’t need a bin by the time the upper tiers rose and then inevitably collapsed.

  Or by the time the owner realized that a few well-placed sparks could turn his sagging business into a lucrative insurance claim.

  But in the meantime, it was just what we needed for our temporary overflow.

  And probably just what Gordon needed to hide any number of valuable assets from the covetous Carol.

  “No one here,” Michael said, as we pulled up.

  “That’s good,” I said. “Let’s find someplace to hide the car.”

  “There’s an old dirt road that goes down by the river,” Michael said, “popular with the more wayward students as a lover’s lane.”

  “That should work as a hiding place,” I said. “And you know about this lover’s lane because … ?”

  “Prudish members of the administration periodically try to make being caught there punishable by expulsion,” he said, with a grin. “Forcing wild-eyed radicals like me to battle these encroaching forces of repression.”

  “Now I know why you’re so popular with the students,” I said. “And if we run into any of your wayward students?”

  “On Sunday night?” he said. “They’ll all be home trying to do their Monday class assignments at the last minute.”

  “It’s been a few years since you were student, hasn’t it?” I said, with a laugh.

  “Not that long,” he said. “So if we run into anyone, just do your best to look furtive and disheveled. In fact, now that they’ve cleaned it up, I heard Caerphilly Creek is quite lovely by moonlight. If we have time before Carol arrives …”

  “Perhaps after we deal with Carol,” I said.

  He pulled the car off the lane at a picturesque spot where the creek widened and deepened into a tree-shaded pool that made me wish momentarily that it was still summer and warm enough for skinny-dipping. Then I focused back on the task at hand.

  I grabbed my key ring, in case the key to our bin proved useful, and a flashlight, since the sky was not only moonless but rapidly clouding over. We both had our cell phones, of course, in case we wanted to report Carol, though I hoped we could pick her brain first. We crept back up the lane to the Spare Attic and found a place to hide behind an abandoned Dumpster.

  “So why are we after Carol,” Michael asked, in a whisper, once we were settled. “And why do we expect her to show up here?”

  I brought him up to date on my day’s snooping, as he called it.

  “Incredible,” he said. “Three people wander into a crime scene and can think of nothing better to do than mess it up. No wonder the chief’s having a hard time getting to the truth.”

  “Well, I don’t think the Hummel lady realized it was a crime scene,” I said.

  “No, but Ralph Endicott and Arnold Schmidt did,” he said. “And how do we know any of them are telling the truth?”

  “We know the Hummel lady is telling the truth because of Schmidt,” I said. “And what Endicott said validates Schmidt’s story.”

  “And makes Carol look like a murderer,” he said.

  “Unless Endicott’s lying.”

  “True,” he said. “And if you ask me, we should keep looking at Endicott. His story’s rather suspicious, isn’t it? Being harassed by Gordon’s creditors doesn’t sound like much of a motive for murder, does it?”

  “You suspect him because he doesn’t have much of a motive?”

  “I suspect him because even though he doesn’t have much of a motive, he still hid the body. I think there’s more going on that we don’t know about.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “That’s all I could find out.”

  “Hey, you did better then Chief Burke.”

  “Still, we remain suspicious of Endicott until we find out whether Carol’s story validates or contradicts his.”

  “And if her story contradicts his, how do we decide who to believe?”

  “I’ll worry about that when we get there,” I said. “First we have to find Carol.”

  “And what if Carol points the finger at yet another of our yard sale customers?”

  “Then we’ll hunt them down next,” I said. “And badger them until we have the truth.”

  Just then we heard a car approaching. We drew back behind the Dumpster and watched as a battered Toyota Corolla crawled slowly across the parking lot and disappeared down the dirt lane.

  “Preparing their Monday class assignments,” I said, nodding.

  “I hope they don’t grab the swimming hole,” Michael grumbled.

  “I just hope they don’t recognize your car.”

  We both burst out laughing at that, and were still suppressing the occasional giggle when we heard another engine.

  The hulking shape of a large SUV turned into the parking lot and pulled up in front of the old factory’s front entrance. I couldn’t tell the make or color in the dark, but when its door opened, the dome light let me recognize the person inside.

  “Carol,” I whispered.

  We watched as she got out of the car, wearing a black-and-white warm-up suit and pink-and-white running shoes so clean they practically glowed, even in the near darkness. What the well-dressed amateur burglar will wear. She looked all around to see if she was being watched—a fairly useless maneuver when you’re the one holding a flashlight in the middle of an unlighted parking lot. Then she tiptoed over to one of the tall, multipaned windows that filled most of the front of the building. She glanced around again, and then pulled out the crowbar that she’d been unsuccessfully trying to conceal beneath the warm-up jacket.

  “I’ve always wondered if this place had a security alarm,” Michael murmured.

  “I haven’t,” I said. “I just figure we’re lucky it has four walls and a roof that doesn’t leak all that much.”

  Carol looked up at the window. She could probably reach the glass with the crowbar, but climbing in would be a challenge.

  Evidently Carol had done her homework. She returned to her SUV and hauled out a small stepladder. She set it up beneath the window and climbed up, so she had a much more comfortable angle for wielding the crowbar, and then she bashed in enough of the panes and surrounding window frame to create a hole large enough to let her enter.

  “Okay, so either it’s a silent alarm or there’s no security,” I said.

  “Let’s go,” Michael said.

  “Hang on a second,” I said, tugging at his sleeve.

  A few seconds later, the front door opened. Carol stuck her head out, looked around, and vanished inside.

  “Now let’s go,” I said.

  “Why would she do that?” Michael asked.

  “Maybe she’s not just planning to inventory Gordon’s stuff,” I said. “Maybe she’s planning to haul stuff away, now that she’s found it. Why carry things down the ladder if you can just march right out the front door?”

  We darted across the open space between the Dumpster and the front door and crept inside.

  There was a small vestibule inside the door, and beyond it, an archway led to the cavernous three-story main body of the former factory. A light came on in the open area. Not a lot of light, but enough that Carol could spot us if we weren’t careful. Michael and I stayed in the vestibule and peeked out to see what Carol would do.

  Chapter 38

  The old factory building looked a lot different by night.

  By day, and as long as the temperature wasn’t extreme, it wasn’t all that unpleasant. It had been built with great banks of windows, to save on lighting costs, which meant that during the day, natural light filled the huge central area. But now, with only a few widely spaced 25-watt bulbs providing light, it was uninviting. In fact, downright spooky.

  I’d have turned on my flashlight if I wasn
’t afraid of Carol spotting us. We waited to see what she would do.

  Ahead of us, Carol turned on her own flashlight and started down the first aisle, waving the flashlight from side to side in what appeared to be a pointless fashion, until I realized that she was checking the bin numbers on either side as she went. As she swung the flashlight back and forth, huge chain-link shadows loomed up and subsided around us, along with a variety of other odd shadows, harder to identify and thus infinitely more sinister. Although they’d probably turn out to be odd bits of furniture and little-used skis and exercycles. I wondered, briefly, how much of the stuff at our yard sale had come from these bins or others like them; and how much would end up here after a year or so. Ah, well. Not my problem.

  Following Carol would be tricky. The chain-link dividers provided security, but not a lot of cover. Here and there, a bin tenant with a more highly developed sense of privacy—or possibly something definite to hide—had hung curtains of some kind inside their bin, so you couldn’t readily see the contents. The curtained-off bins would provide a little cover, but not necessarily enough.

  “Let’s go,” Michael whispered, as the light moved away from us.

  “Not yet,” I whispered back. “She’s on the wrong aisle. She’ll figure that out any second now and turn around.”

  “What if we lose her?” He was visibly twitching to follow.

  “We won’t lose her,” I said. “I know where she’s going, and no matter whether she’s taking stuff or just doing an inventory, it’ll take time. Besides, this is the only exit, unless she wants to smash a few more window panes.”

  Sure enough, a few seconds later, the swaying light steadied and headed back our way. We pulled back into the shadows of the vestibule and watched as Carol emerged from the first aisle. She checked the numbers at the head of the second and third aisles, and then disappeared, correctly, down the fourth.

  “Come on,” I whispered, as I slipped out into the open area.

  We crept along the aisle, keeping a safe distance behind Carol. Her flashlight beam continued to swing back and forth until she was about two-thirds of the way down the aisle. Then it steadied, and I heard keys rattling. Michael and I stopped and crouched in the shadows about twenty feet away.

  “Now?” Michael whispered.

  “Not quite,” I said.

  I waited until I heard the hinges creak as the chain-link door opened. Then I stood up and turned on my own flashlight. Carol froze when the beam hit her. She was holding a key ring in her hands, and had just hooked the open padlock on the chain link of the door.

  “Carol, Carol,” I said. “Closing time was hours ago.”

  She shaded her eyes with her hands, trying to see us.

  “Chief Burke won’t like this,” Michael said.

  “I bet he will,” I said. “He’s been looking for the keys that were taken from Gordon’s body.”

  It was only a guess, but I saw from the way she winced that I was right.

  “Let’s just give him a call,” I said.

  “Roger,” Michael said, taking out his cell phone.

  “No, please,” Carol said. “Let me explain.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Start explaining.”

  “Just an idea,” Michael said. “But why don’t we take the explaining outside? Just in case anyone has already called the cops about Carol’s unauthorized entry.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “First, give me Gordon’s keys.”

  I stepped closer to Carol and held out my hand. She balked, but finally surrendered them. I took them from her, using the hem of my shirt, to avoid messing up any fingerprints or leaving any, and got Michael to give me his handkerchief to wrap them in.

  Gordon was one of the sneaky few who’d curtained his bin. Not surprising. He had one of the largest-size bins, and while most of the stuff in it was packed in boxes or shrouded under tarps, the few things I could see didn’t look like cheap junk. Carol would probably be much wealthier as a widow than she would have been as a divorcee. Assuming she wasn’t also a murderer. The jury was still out on that.

  I closed the door to Gordon’s bin and clicked the padlock shut.

  “Lead the way,” I said to Michael.

  We set off, with him preceding Carol and me following. Halfway down the aisle, a sudden thought hit me.

  “Stop for a second,” I said. “Did I lock up?”

  “Yes, of course,” Michael said.

  “Are you sure?” I said, raising my eyebrows and hoping Michael got the message. “I’m not sure the padlock clicked.”

  “Well, not absolutely sure,” Michael said, looking puzzled, but deciding to agree with me.

  “I’m not either,” I said. “I’ll check; you and Carol wait outside.”

  I ran back to Gordon’s bin, unlocked it, and rummaged around for a few minutes. It didn’t take me long to find a box, near the front, with GBP lettered on it with a thick, black Magic Marker. Sure enough, it contained a stack of old, musty poetry books. I opened one at random and saw FROM THE LIBRARY OF MRS. GINEVRA BRAKENRIDGE PRUITT, printed in old English lettering on an ornate Victorian bookplate.

  Although I knew I shouldn’t take the time, I couldn’t resist flipping through a few pages of the book—a fairly conventional poetry anthology from the turn of the century, featuring all the usual names. Suddenly I noticed that someone had been scribbling, in ink, on one of James Russell Lowell’s poems. I had to choke back laughter when I realized that the unknown book defacer had been hard at work changing nouns, adjectives, and verbs, transforming Lowell’s “What Is So Rare as a Day in June” into the far more pedestrian “What Is So Fine as a Morn in May.”

  I flipped through a few more pages, spellbound by Mrs. Pruitt’s temerity. Surely eminent poets throughout the English-speaking world must have rolled over in their graves when she published these travesties. In fact, so many of them must have been spinning so rapidly that I was surprised no scientist had yet spotted a correlation between Mrs. Pruitt’s publication dates and periods of unusual seismic activity.

  “Hail to you! Proud student!” (presumably written on the occasion of someone’s graduation) would have made the normally blithe spirit of Percy Bysshe Shelley wince. Lord Byron would probably have consulted his solicitor upon reading what she did to “She Walks in Beauty,” but I suspect Edgar Allan Poe would only roll his eyes upon reading “Once upon a midnight bleak, while I studied, tired and weak.” Then again, maybe he’d have hit her up for beer money. And probably have gone thirsty, judging from her revision of Tennyson’s “The Lotus-Eaters” into a tract in favor of Prohibition. (“‘Temperance!’ he cried, and pointed at the bar, ‘My trusty axe will bring that downward soon.’”)

  I snapped the book shut, realizing I’d already spent too much time on it. At least now I had that much more confirmation of Professor Schmidt’s story. And since the bin where Michael and I were storing our stuff was only one aisle over and a few bins down, I decided to make sure the box didn’t disappear, just in case we didn’t have the only set of keys.

  After locking Mrs. Pruitt’s books in our bin, I hurried out to the parking lot. It suddenly occurred to me that if Carol tried to escape, Michael wasn’t the best person to have guarding her. I’d have no qualms about knocking her down and sitting on her if necessary, but Michael might have a sudden attack of chivalry.

  Chapter 39

  “All secure,” I reported, when I emerged into the parking lot.

  Carol and Michael stood face to face, beaming their flashlights at each other. Carol’s feet were planted firmly and she frowned at Michael. His back was to me, and he appeared to be pointing something at her, in addition to the flashlight. Okay, I knew he hadn’t brought a weapon, but I didn’t know about Carol. What if after I’d left them alone, she’d pulled a gun and he’d had to disarm her? Then I relaxed. He wasn’t holding her at gunpoint. More like cell-phone-point.

  “Carol was thinking of leaving,” he said, as I came closer. “But I convinced her to
stay and talk to you first.”

  “If you call the cops, I’ll tell them you were trespassing, too,” she said.

  “But we were following you, Carol,” I said, aiming my flashlight at her face. “And we are bona fide customers. You, on the other hand, appear to have broken into the building and used a stolen key to access someone else’s bin.”

  “It’s all mine now,” she said.

  “Only if you didn’t kill Gordon,” I said.

  “How could I possibly kill him?” she hissed.

  “You were in the barn with him,” I said.

  “I was not!”

  “Then why did Ralph Endicott say he saw you leaving?”

  “He didn’t!

  “He did, and he’s not the only one who saw you there,” I said. “I saw you there myself. So give me one reason to believe you didn’t kill him.”

  “I couldn’t have!” she wailed.

  “Why not? He cheated on you, and now he was trying to cheat you out of your fair share of the property by hiding half his assets in there,” I said, jerking my head at the building. “Why couldn’t you have killed him?”

  “Because he was already dead when I got there!”

  “Not another one,” Michael muttered.

  “But you told Chief Burke you talked to him,” I said. “You were fairly specific about your conversation. I heard you. Are you saying you lied to the cops?”

  She sighed and slumped as if suddenly exhausted.

  “I figured if I claimed to have found him dead, they’d think I did it,” she said. “Don’t they always suspect the person who finds the body?”