Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

by Donna Andrews

  “Are you kidding?” Michael said. “She won’t miss us for hours.”

  Other Meg Langslow Mysteries by Donna Andrews

  We’ll Always Have Parrots

  Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon

  Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

  Murder with Puffins

  Murder with Peacocks

  AVAILABLE FROM ST. MARTIN’S / MINOTAUR PAPERBACKS

  PRAISE FOR DONNA ANDREWS

  AND HER MEG LANGSLOW MYSTERIES

  MURDER WITH PUFFINS

  “Andrews’s tale of two puffins has much to recommend it, and will leave readers cawing for another adventure featuring the appealing Meg and Michael.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The puffin angle proves very amusing … an enjoyable flight of fancy.”

  —Booklist

  “Muddy trails, old secrets, and plenty of homespun humor.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “The well-realized island atmosphere, the puffin lore, and the ubiquitous birders only add to the fun.”

  —Denver Post

  MURDER WITH PEACOCKS

  “The first novel is so clever, funny, and original that lots of wannabe authors will throw up their hands in envy and get jobs in a coffee shop.”

  —Contra Costa Times

  “Andrews combines murder and madcap hilarity with a cast of eccentric oddballs in a small Southern town.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Andrews’s debut provides plenty of laughs for readers who like their mysteries on the cozy side.”

  —Publishers Weekly

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  Read on for an Excerpt from

  Another Meg Langslow Mystery

  Owls Well That Ends Well

  Available now from St. Martin’s Minotaur

  When the doorbell rang, I stumbled to the still-dark window and poured a bucket of water where the front porch roof would have been if it hadn’t blown away in a thunderstorm two weeks ago.

  “Aarrgghh!” screamed our visitor. A male voice, for a change.

  Ignoring the curses from below, I poured another gallon jug of water into the bucket, added a scoop of ice cubes from the cooler, and stationed it by the window before crawling back into the sleeping bag.

  “I have an idea,” Michael said, poking his head out from under his pillow. “Next time let’s just hire someone to do this.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” I said. “We are never, ever having another yard sale.”

  “Works for me,” Michael said, disappearing under the pillow again.

  Within thirty seconds I heard the gentle not-quite-snores that told me he was fast asleep.

  A point in Michael’s favor, the non-snoring. The list was long on points in Michael’s favor and very short on flaws. Not that I normally keep ledgers on people, but I suspected that after several years together, Michael was tiring of my commitment phobia and working up to a serious talk about the M word. And no matter how much I liked the idea of spending the rest of my life with Michael, the M word still made me nervous. I’d begun making my mental list of his good points to defuse my admittedly irrational anxiety.

  Not something I needed to worry about right now. Now, I needed to sleep. I settled back and tried to follow Michael’s example. But I didn’t hear a car driving away, which probably meant our caller was still lurking nearby. Perhaps even trying to sneak into the yard sale area. I wished him luck getting past our security. But odds were he’d eventually ring the doorbell again. Or another early arrival would. If only someone had warned me that no matter what start time you announce for a yard sale, the dedicated bargain hunters show up before dawn.

  My family, of course, had been showing up for days. Every room that had a floor was strewn with sleeping bags, and my more adventurous cousins had strung up hammocks in some of the floorless rooms.

  From downstairs in the living room, I heard the thumping of Cousin Dolores’s morning aerobics and the resonant chants Cousin Rosemary emitted while performing her sun salutations. Perhaps this morning they would both keep to their own separate ends of the living room. If not, someone else would have to restore peace between East and West today.

  Michael was definitely fast asleep again. What a wonderful gift, being able to fall asleep like that. I felt envious.

  Just envious? the cynical side of my mind asked. Not even a teeny bit resentful? I mean, it’s no wonder he can sleep so soundly. He hasn’t spent every waking moment of the last two months getting ready for this weekend.

  In late August, we’d bought The House—a huge Victorian pile, three stories high plus attic and basement, with three acres of land and assorted outbuildings, including a full-sized barn equipped with a resident pair of nesting owls. The only way we’d been able to afford it was to take the place “as is,” which referred not only to the property’s run-down condition, but also to the fact that it still contained all of the late Edwina Sprocket’s possessions. And Edwina had been a hoarder. The house had been merely cluttered, the attic and basement downright scary, and the barn … apparently when the house became overcrowded, she’d started shoving things into the barn. When she’d run out of space on the first floor of the barn, she’d placed a ramp up to the hay loft and begun pouring junk in from above. She’d filled the barn and moved on to the sheds by the time she’d finally died, leaving her various grandnieces and grand-nephews with a hideous clearing-out job that they’d avoided by selling the place to us. As is. With a clause in the contract entitling them to ten percent of whatever we made by selling the contents.

  Eventually, I assumed, I would come to share Michael’s conviction that this was a marvelous deal. Perhaps tomorrow evening, when the yard sale was history. Right now, I just felt tired.

  I heard a car engine outside. Probably another caller heading for our doorbell.

  I crawled out of the sleeping bag and stumbled over to the window. I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and found myself staring into the pale, heart-shaped face of one of our resident Barn Owls, sitting on its favorite perch, a dead branch in the oak tree just outside our window. Apparently I’d interrupted its bedtime snack—the tail of an unfortunate field mouse dangled from its mouth.

  “Ick,” I said. “Are you trying to put me off spaghetti for good?”

  The owl stared at me for a few seconds, and then twitched its head. The tail disappeared.

  “That branch has got to go,” I said, to no one in particular. Certainly not to the owl, who wasn’t likely to give up his customary feeding station simply because I objected to having our front porch whitewashed with owl droppings and sprinkled with leftover rodent parts every night. Perhaps I could delegate the branch removal to one of the many uncles and cousins who kept asking what they could do to help, assuming I found one who could be trusted with sharp implements.

  Just then our latest caller rang the bell, and I emptied the bucket out the window, still staring at the owl.

  No screams or curses this time. Only a very familiar voice.

  “Meg? It’s me, Dad.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed.

  “I brought doughnuts.”

  I stuck my head out of the window, startling the owl into flight. A very wet Dad stood on our doorstep. Water beaded on his shiny bald head, and he was trying, with his chin, to brush several ice cubes off the stack of boxes in his arms.

  “I’ll be right down,” I said.

  I pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and headed down the hall for a quick visit to the bathroom. But when I was still ten feet away, a bathrobe-clad man carrying a bulgi
ng shaving bag emerged from the last bedroom on the right, waggled his fingers at me cheerfully, and disappeared into the bathroom.

  The only bathroom on this floor. Chalk it up to lack of caffeine, but I was so irritated it took me a few seconds to realize that I had no idea who the heck the man in the bathrobe was.

  Yet another visiting relative, obviously. But no one I recognized. I thought I knew all the relatives who’d invited themselves to stay at the house. I racked my brain to figure out which aunt or cousin might have brought a new husband or boyfriend along.

  Meanwhile, I headed for the third floor bathroom. I reminded myself that this was a temporary inconvenience. First on our long list of remodeling projects was creating a real master bedroom suite with a private connecting bath. And we weren’t inviting any more houseguests until we’d solved the bathroom shortage.

  Just then I heard the strains of Puccini’s “Un Bel Di Verdremo” wafting down from the third floor, which meant that Mrs. Fenniman, another visiting relative, had taken possession of the bathroom for her usual long and tuneful ablutions. I went downstairs instead.

  I followed voices to the kitchen. Apparently someone else had let Dad in. He’d put on water for coffee and was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, sharing his doughnuts with my brother, Rob, and a petite middle-aged woman who looked vaguely familiar. Although it was hard to tell, because she was wearing a set of Groucho Marx glasses, complete with the fake nose and mustache.

  “Morning,” I said.

  The bathroom off the kitchen was, of course, occupied. But since it was only a half bath, turnover should be faster than upstairs. I stationed myself by the door.

  “Morning, Meg,” Dad said, raising a cloud of powdered sugar as he waved at me. “You remember your mother’s Cousin Emma. From Wichita.”

  “Kansas?” I asked.

  Emma nodded, and raised her Groucho mask briefly so I could see her face. She wasn’t wet, so I deduced she’d come in with one of the family instead of ringing the bell.

  “Mother said her relatives were coming from all over for the yard sale,” I said. “But Kansas?”

  Whatever Emma started to say was drowned out by the loud thud and subsequent howl of agony from the bathroom.

  Keep Reading for an Excerpt from Donna Andrews’s Latest Meg Langslow Mystery

  No Nest for the Wicket

  Available now from St. Martin’s Minotaur

  “Move,” I said. “You’re blocking my shot.”

  The cow chewed her cud and gazed at me with placid bovine calm.

  “Go away!” I ran toward her, waving my arms wildly, only to pull up short before I ran into her. She was bigger than me. Half a ton at least. Maybe three quarters.

  I turned my croquet mallet around and prodded her black-and-white flank with the handle. Not hard—I didn’t want to hurt her. I just wanted her to move.

  She turned her head slightly to see what I was doing.

  I prodded harder. She watched with mild interest.

  “Hamburger!” I shouted. “Flank steak! Filet mignon!”

  She ignored me.

  Of course, those words held no menace for her. Mr. Shif fley, her owner, was a dairy farmer.

  I walked a few yards away, feet squelching in the mud. I could see why the cow insisted on lounging where she was. The evergreen tree overhead protected her from the March drizzle, and she’d claimed the only high ground in sight.

  I glanced down. My croquet ball was sinking into the mud. Did Extreme Croquet rules allow me to pull it out? Probably not.

  The little two-way radio in my pocket crackled.

  “Meg—turn!” my brother, Rob, said.

  “Roger,” I said. The cow still lay in front of—or possibly on—the wicket, but I had to move before the mud ate my ball. Didn’t mud that ate things count as quicksand? I set down the radio and whacked my ball. It bounced off the cow’s flank. She didn’t seem to mind. She had closed her eyes and was chewing more slowly, with an expression of vacuous ecstasy.

  “Done,” I said, grabbing the radio before it sank. “I need a cow removal here at wicket nine.”

  “Which one is that?” Rob asked.

  “The one by the bog.”

  “Which bog?”

  “The one just beside the briar patch. Near the steep hill with the icy stream at the bottom.”

  “Oh, that bog,” Rob said. “Be right over.”

  I pocketed the radio and smiled menacingly at the cow.

  “Be afraid,” I said. “Be very afraid.”

  She ignored me.

  I leaned against a tree and waited. The radio crackled occasionally as Rob notified the scattered players of their turns and they reported when they’d finished.

  In the distance, I heard a high-pitched cackle of laughter that meant my team captain, Mrs. Fenniman, had made a difficult shot. Or, more likely, had just roqueted some unlucky opponent, which she told me was the technical term for whacking someone’s ball into the next county. Annoying in any croquet game, but downright maddening in Extreme Croquet, where the whole point was to make the playing field as rugged as possible. On this field, being roqueted could mean half an hour’s detour through even boggier portions of the cow pasture.

  I pulled the cell phone out of my other pocket. Time to see what was happening back at the house. The construction site that would eventually be a house again, if all went well. Today we’d begun demolition of the unrepairable parts, and it was driving me crazy, not being there. I’d left detailed instructions with the workmen, but I didn’t have much confidence that they’d follow them. They were all Shiffleys, nephews of Mr. Shiffley the dairy farmer. Everyone in Caerphilly knew that if you wanted some manual labor done you hired a Shiffley or two—or a dozen, if you liked; there was never a shortage. They were cheerful, honest, hardworking, and reliable, as long as you didn’t need anything done during hunting season.

  Everyone in Caerphilly also knew that when you had Shiffleys on the job you needed someone else in charge. Not that they were stupid—some were and some weren’t, same as any other family—but they were stubborn and opinionated, every one of them, and you needed someone equally stubborn and opinionated telling them what to do. Me, for instance. I was not only stubborn enough, but thanks to my work as a blacksmith, they halfway respected my opinions about related crafts like carpentry and plumbing. Michael, my fiancé, would do in a pinch, as long as he remembered to suppress his innate niceness. Unfortunately, Michael was in town, attending the dreaded all-day Caerphilly College faculty meeting. We had Dad in charge. I was worried.

  “Come on, Dad, pick up,” I muttered as his phone rang on unanswered. I heard rustling in the shrubbery—either another competitor approaching or Rob arriving for cow removal. Either would cut short my time for talking.

  “Meg! How’s the game?” Dad exclaimed, when he finally answered.

  “I’m stuck in a bog with a cow sitting on my wicket,” I said. “How’s the demolition going?”

  “Fine the last time I looked.”

  “The last time you—Dad, aren’t you at the house?”

  “I’m up at the duck pond.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. Two weeks ago, when I’d left Dad in charge of another crew of Shiffleys to install the new septic field, he’d talked them into excavating a duck pond. Apparently Duck, my nephew’s pet duck, needed a place to paddle while visiting us. Or perhaps Dad thought Michael and I would soon acquire ducks of our own. Anyway, he’d sited the pond uphill from the septic field, but in a spot with exceptionally good drainage—so good that the pond didn’t hold water. Which hadn’t stopped Dad from trying to keep it full.

  “Let’s talk about the pond later,” I said. “I need you to keep an eye on the demolition crew. See that they don’t get carried away with the sledgehammers.”

  “Roger,” he said. “I’ll run right down. Oh, about those boxes in the front hall—the Shiffleys can work around them today, but next week—”

  “The boxes
will be long gone by next week,” I said. “The professor from UVa should come by before five to haul them off; keep an eye out for her, will you?”

  “Roger. By the way, speaking of the duck pond—”

  “Gotta go,” I said. “Rob’s here for the cow.”

  I had spotted Rob peering through some shrubbery.

  “Man, I thought last month’s course was tough,” Rob said. “Who set this one up?”

  “Mrs. Fenniman,” I said. “Possibly with diabolical assistance. Did you bring Spike?”

  “Right here,” Rob said. He pushed through the thicket and set down a plastic dog carrier. He’d gouged a small notch in its door opening so he could put Spike inside without detaching the leash. Smart.

  I peered in through the mesh.

  “Cow, Spike,” I said. He growled in anticipation. I could see he’d already done cow duty elsewhere—his fluffy white coat had disappeared under a thick layer of mud.

  “Here we go,” Rob said, grabbing the leash. “Go get her, Spike!”

  A small brown blur shot toward the cow, barking and snarling. The cow must have met Spike before. She lurched to her feet with surprising agility and trotted off.

  Annoying that an eight-and-a-half-pound fur ball could strike fear in the heart of a cow when I couldn’t even keep her awake.

  “I’ll just move her a little farther while we’re at it,” Rob said. He grabbed the dog carrier and ambled off.