Just then Eric glanced upwards. Jac was leaning against the wall beside him. She wore a flirtatious look, which altered at the word ‘wacko.’
“I need to use the phone,” Jac said. Her lips were smiling, but her eyebrows had scissored together with temper.
“Uh, someone needs the phone here, so I have to say goodbye.” Eric cut the connection. Before he could hang up, Jac took the receiver, wrapping her hand around his. Her eyebrows softened slightly. “Wacko, huh?” she purred. “Pretty fine words for a guest.”
Maxwell smiled idiotically. “Joke,” he chirped.
She eased him out of the way with a hip. Befuddled, Maxwell let himself be pushed back. Her hand was still gripping his on top of the receiver. Jac smiled again and chucked him under the chin with the receiver. Then she released him. Even more befuddled, he fled up the back stairs.
That afternoon, Arthur was blowing bubbles behind a pine tree when he heard a gruesome yell from Richie. His cousin had tracked him down. But this time Rose and Briarly were with him.
Rose was clutching her purse. “Do you want to go see Woofie?” she asked in an excited camp-counselor, wouldn’t-it-be-nice-to-row-across-Lake-Michigan-sort-of-way.
Arthur scowled at her suspiciously.
“She wants to get us out of the house. Mom’s still upset,” Richie added. He tried to laugh again, but it petered out. For once, even he appeared uneasy. Briarly looked scared.
Rose said, much too brightly, “I want you kids to have a chance to see the family farm before you go. There’s a barn and a herd of sheep, and we grow many fruits and vegetables as well, some of which you’ve eaten at your meals. Of course you want to see the farm, Arthur. Close that bottle and come on.”
Glumly, her son obeyed.
Rollingwood Farm consisted of, as far as Arthur could tell, a herd of sheep, a barn with decaying boards but new-looking paint, a metal watering trough and pump, and an apple orchard off in the distance. There was no sign of an ostrich, and Arthur guessed that Woofie must be housed inside the barn.
The children whooped and yelled at the sheep, and Rose had to shoo both children and animals away before she could swing the gate open. Arthur wasn’t sure about the sheep. He had studied them in school, but had never seen a live one. The sheep seemed too big, at least in comparison to himself.
Rose took Richie by the hand and made for the barn. Too surprised to resist, the boy allowed himself to be led, making a nauseated face at Rose’s back. Arthur was surprised as well. He hadn’t known his mother understood Richie. Loose, his cousin would have destroyed the farm before he’d gone ten feet.
“We’re going through the barn on the way to Woofie’s pen,” Rose said. Curious sheep began to crowd the newcomers, bleating, and Arthur watched them anxiously. Was it safe to stroll among them like this? One sheep halted directly in front of Arthur, looking at him in a wall-eyed way. Its dirty brownish wool was stuck with burrs. This was surprising, as Arthur had always thought sheep were supposed to be cotton-ball white. The sheep looked kind of punk to Arthur. It was making chewing motions. Probably tobacco, the boy guessed. The sheep bleated, startling him backwards.
“Do they bite?” Arthur asked his mother.
“Of course not, sheep are perfectly nice,” Rose replied without turning around. The boy doubted it, but followed the others into the barn.
The top of the barn door was lined with hairy birds’ nests and inside were several stalls, bales of hay, and an empty grain bin. Old leather harnesses and some peculiar-looking tools hung on the walls. The whole place had a smell of rotting hay, leather, old motor oil, and manure, the latter drawing the inevitable remarks from Richie. The others ignored him.
It was so dim that Arthur had to strain to see. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a long wooden rod with a curved knife and a short handle sticking out the side. The knife-thing hung on the wall.
“That’s a scythe,” Rose explained, “it’s used for cutting grass. Woofie’s pen is right out here. Let's all go see the ostrich.”
Arthur hesitated. There seemed to be a dark stain along the blade of the scythe-thing. A little pool was on the floor beneath it, maroon and sticky-looking.
“Where’s Woofie?” He heard his mother saying outside. “Can anyone find Woofie inside his pen? Oh!”
At the latter sound, a wobbling gasp, Arthur ran to join the others. Rose’s hand was over her mouth. Next to the barn was a tall chicken-wire pen with a sand floor. Briarly and Richie were pressed against the chicken-wire, staring.
Then Arthur saw it. On the ground was a large, blackish lump covered with feathers, some of which were waving lightly in the wind. A long, hairy stalk with a few reddish hash-marks on it extended from one side of the lump, leading to a round, bird-like head. The hairy eyelids were closed, but the beak was gaping open. On the other side of the lump were two thick but flamingo-ey legs, bent at an angle and ending in some large toes with heavy nails. The lump had a wet crack across it, streaked with something that looked like blood. Flies were taking off and landing on the lump and around the head. Arthur tilted his own head and realized the splayed-out thing was an ostrich.
“Oh, oh, oh,” Rose was moaning, her hand over her mouth.
Chapter 10
They made the drive back to Rollingwood in heavy rain, both inside and outside the Camry. In the back, Briarly was emitting gasping sobs and blotting her face with her shirt. Arthur was wailing thinly in the passenger seat, a box of kleenex on his lap. As keeper of the tissues, he had to dispense one now and then to his mother.
Rose sobbed openly as she drove, alternating between blowing her nose, wiping her eyes, and scrubbing the windshield. So much moisture was inside the Camry that though the fan was blasting away, the windows were still fogged up.
“That was really, really, cool,” gloated Richie for the twentieth time.
“It was not!” said Rose sharply. “You don’t know the consequences! I can’t believe this horrible thing happened. Arthur, what color is the traffic light? I can’t tell.”
“Green, Mom,” Arthur sniveled, helping himself to a tissue.
“I mean, that was so cool,” said Richie for the twenty-first time. “If only I could have seen that old ostrich being offed. I wonder how it happened?”
“It was probably a wild animal,” said Rose sadly. “Wolves and bears live around here.”
Arthur said nothing. In the stress of the last half-hour he had forgotten the bloody scythe.
“Cool! That would have been really great to watch, ostrich-wolf-bear death-slam!” replied Richie.
When the car reached Rollingwood, they ran inside to tell their bad news, but were stopped by a confrontation in the foyer.
“This is your doing!” Armagnac was shrieking. Boyle was facing his aunt, holding an object in a purple-knuckled grip by the neck. Two identical pairs of glasses and protruding teeth were meeting face to face, and the sight jolted Arthur. “You’re trying to make fun of me!” Armagnac galed on, shaking the stuffed rabbit.
“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous,” Katherine replied.
“Frederick!” Arthur wailed, forgetting Woofie in this new peril.
Armagnac lurched around, saw the newcomers, and focused on their tear-stained faces.
“There!” he yelled, vibrating a hand in the air, “there, see? Somebody empathizes with me! Unlike you!”
“Woofie’s dead!” Rose keened.
Lance entered, attracted by the noise. His expression froze neanderthalically. “What the hell does that matter?” bawled Armagnac as he waved the rabbit. “Look at this outrage--”
“Oh shut up!” said Katherine to her nephew. “Are you sure?” the old lady asked Rose. Rose nodded tearily.
Katherine took a deep, ragged breath. “Well, it looks like we need to call Hamilton.”
“Probably a vet too,” added Bert somberly.
“Hey,” said Lance, “this isn’t going to affect my inheritance?”
“I’m afraid it mi
ght,” said Katherine wearily.
“Hey! That’s not fair! I hadn’t even gotten custody of the damn bird yet. I think I’m entitled to some sort of compensation here! Did anyone have some insurance on that animal?”
“Get out!” Armagnac squealed. “Get out, all of you! Go talk to Hamilton! None of you cares about me! You don’t understand! Whoever brought this rabbit here just tried to kill me the way he killed Father with that CD! You don’t care about me at all. Letitia!”
“Rose, I hate to ask you this,” said Katherine, ignoring her nephew, “but could you return to the farm? Someone needs to be there to meet the vet. I’d ask my nephew,” she added icily, “but he’s too self-absorbed right now.”
“Self-absorbed?!” bawled Armagnac.
“I’ll go with her,” said Bert. He guided Rose out the door.
“Who’s taking me?” Lance demanded.
“Looks like we’ll have to take the rest in the Lincoln,” said Phil. “Are you coming?” he asked his wife.
“I might as well, since my brother refuses to shut up.” Jac gave Armagnac an acid look.
Once the Salisburys and Lance had left, Briarly escaped up the stairs. Boyle’s arms were quivering as if he had Parkinson’s.
“Aw, isn’t that cute?” said Richie, pointing at the rabbit. “Do you collect dollies as well, Uncle Armagnac?”
Armagnac lunged, but Richie had already run off.
“Stop squeezing Frederick!” Arthur shouted angrily. In that moment, the boy felt brave enough to face down a dozen uncles.
“Frederick! Who the hell is Frederick?” gabbled Armagnac. “Letitia!”
Mrs. Marshpool appeared on the stairs. “Letitia,” Boyle wailed. “I was going to confront and expose the perpetrator, but they’ve all just ignored me or laughed at me.”
Mrs. Marshpool gasped. Armagnac sniffled. The housekeeper snapped at Arthur, “Go away!”
“No!” stormed Arthur. With Frederick in danger, he felt fierce enough to face even Mrs. Marshpool.
“You had better,” the housekeeper snarled. “Because I found that disgusting obscenity in your room. You’re the one who tried to humiliate your uncle! How dare you?”
Arthur could only stare back, astonished that Mrs. Marshpool had been going through his belongings. Boyle’s eyes widened. He looked his nephew up and down in disbelief and started to shake Frederick, but Arthur let out such a violent squall of protest that Armagnac startled backwards. Quivering, Boyle hurried off down the side hallway and left the house. Arthur followed.
His uncle was heading for the gardener’s shed. When Boyle reached the door, still open after Heydrick’s earlier accident with Richie, he hurled Frederick inside. The rabbit hit the shed wall with a loud thump, and Arthur was horrified.
Still shaking, Boyle slammed the door shut and went back to the house. Arthur hid in a bush, waiting until his uncle passed, then ran madly for the shed. He found the rabbit against the opposite wall. Carefully, he picked Frederick up and brushed off a few grass clippings. The rabbit didn’t seem to be hurt. Then Arthur glanced at a shelf on his left and saw a gardener’s handfork lying there. The prongs were much closer together than was normal for handforks and covered with something that looked a lot like blood. Arthur picked the handfork up and held it out in the light of the doorway, and it still looked like blood.
He put the handfork back on the shelf and saw a CD case sitting next to it. The label read ‘Jazzy F*KU.’
Chapter 11
How could the CD case have gotten here? Arthur wondered. He remembered he’d noticed Heydrick out the window while examining the CD case for the first time in the attic. Could the gardener have seen him, too? And run up to grab the case? But that meant Heydrick must have known the case was already in the attic.
A distant shout interrupted Arthur's thoughts, and he saw Heydrick getting out of a pickup truck. The boy dropped the case and took off for the door under the arch, hugging Frederick. He could face Uncle Armagnac, but not the gardener.
Once inside, Arthur disappeared into his parents' room and hid the rabbit under the bed. Then he went out and opened the door that led to the observation deck. Through the ironwork steps he saw Heydrick fastening the shed door with a combination lock. The gardener looked back at the house. Quickly, the boy fled again to his parent's room.
About an hour later the phone rang, and Katherine answered it. “Hello? Dr. Anderson? Yes, we've been waiting to hear from you. A wolf? Well, that's too bad. Lance won't be happy to hear that. I wonder how it could have entered the pen.” She paused to listen. “You found a space in the wire? It was cheap wire, I admit; James hated to spend money.” Katherine noticed that Briarly was listening and lowered her voice.
“Who's that?” asked Armagnac.
“Well, thank you very much, Dr. Anderson. I hope that's not my nephew Lance I'm hearing in the background. It is? Oh, dear.”
A distant voice was yelling, “Hey, I could have bought a lot of steroids with that money!”
The old lady shook her head. “Well, try to placate Lance as much as possible. I'll tell the family. Goodbye.” She hung up. “That was the vet calling from the farm. He says that judging from the marks, it looks like a wolf.”
“We don't have wolves around here,” Armagnac protested.
“Apparently we do, the vet says. A wire was loose on the stake. The vet thinks that's how the wolf squeezed in.”
“Aunt Katherine?” Briarly was standing expectantly.
“Yes, dear?”
“Could you show me how to use the washer and dryer?”
“What for?”
“Mom wants me to do our laundry.”
The old lady stared at the little girl.
“Mom doesn't trust Mrs. Marshpool to do it,” Briarly added hesitantly. A blast of disgust came out of Armagnac's nose.
“Don't you worry about that,” said Katherine. “You're a guest. I’ll wash the clothes myself, if your mother is so upset. Here, why don't you help me arrange some flowers? You can have a vase of your own to fill.”
Frantically, Boyle signaled his aunt with his eyebrows. “Um, the wolf?”
Katherine glanced aside at the girl. “Pick out your vase, dear. We have several on the sideboard.” Then she said to her nephew, “The slash marks looked like they came from a wolf’s claws, though the wolf didn't seem to eat anything. The vet said that was odd.”
Armagnac snorted. “So Lance and Colette won't receive an inheritance. I can't say I'm upset.”
“I've left them something in my own will,” Katherine replied firmly. “Is that your vase, dear? It's very pretty. I'll show you where to cut the stems. Do you know what? I think I’ll have a formal tea today. Armagnac, go ask Bradley and Eric if they'll take tea in the living room at four o'clock.”
“This is hardly the time to be giving tea parties!” yelped Boyle.
“I haven't invited you. This is only for the guests. It's time they saw we can be civilized people here at Rollingwood.”
Irritated, Armagnac stomped off to carry her message, while Katherine went into the kitchen and told Sheila about her plans for the tea. Arthur, meanwhile, was sneaking down the back stairs. Heydrick hadn't come to accuse him, so the boy thought it might be safe to emerge. But Arthur wasn’t going to tell anybody what he'd seen in that shed. His father had already threatened him if he talked about that CD. Yet the memory of it, and that bloody handfork, made him hesitate. Maybe he should tell anyway.
“There you are, Arthur. We're going to have tea shortly in the living room, at four o’clock, and you're invited,” Katherine said.
Arthur almost told her, then decided to say nothing.
Later that day Bradley was dressing for tea while Eric paced back and forth, waiting for him to finish. Smith was almost done, but still needed to decide about a jacket. “The turquoise and black one is my favorite,” he said as he dug through a suitcase, “but it’s a little loud for a tea. I wonder if Jac’s got anything I could borrow from her
closet?” He gave his friend a sly look.
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t even consider it! Didn’t you notice the mood she was in? She’d stuff you down the throat of one of your cats.” Eric was feeling irritable, for Muffin had already attacked his feet twice. Fortunately, he had changed into his hiking boots before entering Bradley’s room.
The other cat, Purrball, was sprawled inside a suitcase, batting at a shirt that was spread over her. Everything inside the suitcases was covered with cat hair, but Bradley didn’t mind. Cats had a perfect right to lie on clothes, he felt. But this meant he always had to use a lint roller over everything he planned to wear. He’d been de-catifying all his jackets for the last half-hour.
“I’m kidding you,” Smith replied, exasperated. “I’m not that stupid.”
“I hope not. Are you done? We need to go downstairs some month or other.”
“If you used the lint roller while I held up jackets, this would go faster.”
“There is no way I’m going to clean your clothes off for you. Why don’t you use that roller on those cats? They’d shed less.”
“Barbarian. That would hurt them.”
“As if I’d care. They’re trying to hurt me.” Eric gave Muffin a warning scowl, for the kitten was crouching half-hidden under a skirt of bedspread, wild-eyed and ready to assault another boot. “I’m glad we’re leaving tomorrow. Have you told the family yet?”
“No.”
“You’d better do it soon. By the way, what do you think about that ostrich? Natural death or not?”
“Could be.” Armagnac had told them how Woofie had died while delivering the invitation.
“Still, the timing’s strange. Right after the will reading.”
Bradley shrugged. “It’s possible that Lance and Colette killed Woofie themselves for the insurance money, but I don’t think the ostrich was insured. At least that was what Lance was saying. But who would gain from killing Woofie? Katherine’s the only one who would benefit, though it would only add twenty thousand a year onto her income, and she’s already getting the entire estate. Why would she kill Woofie? Besides, she seems fond of the Wileys.”
A Will To Murder Page 13