Murder With Peacocks (22 page)

  "But I left it on the porch," Barry  insisted. "Last night."

  "I think it's obvious what happened," Dad  said. "Someone found the box Barry left, took  it away, and added their own little surprise."

  "Surprise?" Barry said.

  "The explosion. Someone put a bomb in your  box."

  Barry turned pale and gulped. He looked  at me, opened his mouth, then closed it and sat  down on the roof, his head in his hands.

  "I'm sorry," he moaned. "It's all my  fault."

  "Don't," I said, patting his shoulder. "It  was a very beautiful box. It's not your fault."  Unless, of course, he had put the bomb in it.

  "I'm so sorry," he repeated. "If I'd  had any idea ..."

  The party disintegrated, although many of the guests  hung around watching long after the sheriff's merry  men finished interrogating them. The sheriff  decorated the house with a lot of cheerful yellow  crime scene tape and kept us out until he could  arrange for a special bomb detection squad  to come down from Richmond to search the premises.  The team turned out to be a laid-back state  trooper with a hyperactive Doberman.

  "Shutting the barn door after the whole herd of  horses have been stolen," I muttered.

  "You'd feel differently if they'd found a  second bomb," Michael pointed out.

  "I'm so sorry," Barry said. Again.  Clearly it would be hours before the police and  firefighters left and we could get some peace and  quiet. Or what passed for peace and quiet these  days. Mother and Rob went off to Pam's. I thought  someone from the family ought to be around, so I  collapsed in the backyard hammock, out of the way  but within call. I was too tired to keep my eyes  open but too hyper to sleep. How had I  managed to attract the attention of the killer? Had  my sporadic attempts to help Dad with his  detective work made the killer nervous? Or were  Mrs. Grover's murder, the booby-trapped  fuse box, and now the bomb the work of a lunatic  who didn't care who he killed?

  I was not in the mood for company. Well, I  didn't mind having Michael around; he was making  entertaining conversation on a variety of subjects that had nothing to do with homicide and he  didn't mind if I just listened in silence.  Barry, on the other hand ...

  "It's all my fault," he said--not for the first  time--during a lull in the conversation.

  "It's alright, Barry," I said,  mechanically.

  "If only I had just given you the box." 

  "You had no way of knowing," I said, through  gritted teeth.

  "You could have been killed, and it would have been all  my fault. Well, partly my fault."

  "Barry," I said, "if you put the bomb in the  box, tell the sheriff. If you didn't, stop  apologizing and go away."

  He opened his mouth and stared at me for a few  moments, his mental gears almost audibly turning.  Then he closed his mouth and went away rather quickly.

  I settled back in my hammock. After a  few minutes, I opened one eye. Michael was  sitting, watching me with a worried look on his  face.

  "So?" I asked. "You were telling me how you  dealt with the soap opera queen who tried to upstage  you."

  He grinned, and went on with his story. I  closed my eyes. It was a funny story. I  could feel myself relaxing. And if I managed  to drift off before he got to the punchline, I could  ask him to tell it again tomorrow. Michael was  certainly good company; I was going to miss him when  the summer was over.

           Sunday, July 3

  It was nearly three when I tottered up to bed,  so I was hoping to sleep in the next morning. But  the thought of all the mess left over from the party and the  bomb wouldn't let me. About nine, I got up  and went down to survey the cleanup ahead of us.  Was hunting down a cleaning service that would work on  Sunday less trouble than doing it ourselves? Perhaps  we should relocate this afternoon's tea for the  bridesmaids to Pam's house. Fortunately  tomorrow's shower was at the Brewsters'.

  First, coffee and the Sunday paper. I padded out  to the front door and looked out to see if by chance the  paperboy had hit our porch for a change, instead  of the goldfish pond.

  And saw a small box sitting on the porch with a tag on the top that said For Meg.

  I ran back to the kitchen and called the  sheriff. Then Dad. Luckily, the trooper and  his bomb-sniffing Doberman had stayed over. The  sheriff was able to catch them before they took off for  Richmond and drag them back out to our  neighborhood. Also luckily, most of the  neighborhood were still either asleep or in church, so  we didn't have to contend with a large crowd. Just  Dad, Michael, Rob, me, and nine assorted  law enforcement officials. Ten if you counted the  Doberman.

  "Does this look like the other bomb?" the sheriff  asked.

  "No, the other was a wooden box about the size  of a shoebox," I explained. "And it seems like  a different handwriting. But the other one also had a  tag that said For Meg."

  The Doberman was going wild, barking madly  at the box. This seemed to alarm his handler and the  deputies. Did that mean it was a particularly  large and powerful bomb? For that matter, Spike  was going wild, too, but probably all that meant  was that he wanted to attack the Doberman.

  "We're going to put the box in a special  container and then take it out where we've got room  to detonate it without hurting anybody," the  sheriff said. "We're just waiting for the special  equipment."

  Waiting for the special equipment was getting on  my nerves. I found myself staring obsessively  at the box, as if I could figure out by looking  at it who had planted it there. I began  to realize that there was something familiar about the box.  It was a stationery box. A battered,  grease-stained box that had once held  envelopes. And there were holes punched in the  side. And where had I seen that neat, elegant  handwriting before? I suddenly realized what it  was.

  "Oh, for goodness' sakes," I said. I  strode over to the steps--the deputies were too  startled to stop me--and picked up the box.

  "No--don't--put it down--look out!"  came shouts from Dad, Michael, and the assembled  lawmen. I opened the box.

  "Mrrow?" A small white kitten was staring  back at me with wide green eyes.

  "Call off your dogs," I said.

  "Mrrow!" said the kitten, and extended a head to be scratched.

  "I knew I'd never seen him act like that  before," said the Doberman's handler, with disgust.

  "It's from Mrs. Thornhill," I told

Dad and Michael, who still looked shaken as they  approached.

  "Mrs. Thornhill?"

  "The tipsy calligrapher. I suddenly  recognized the handwriting."

  I explained about Mrs. Thornhill and the  invitations, to the great amusement of the deputies and  firefighters. We were all bursting with the nervous  laughter of people who have been badly scared. Some of the  deputies began suggesting names like Boomer and  Dynamite for the kitten. I refrained from telling  them that the kitten would be going home to Mrs.  Thornhill as soon as possible.

  We did, however, decide that from now on we  wouldn't open any wedding presents until we'd  had them tested. Except for Eileen's, of  course; no one would have any reason to harm her.  The sheriff went off to discuss the arrangements with the  Doberman's handler.

  "So who are these people, anyway?" I overheard  the trooper ask. "The local mob or something?"

  I let the sheriff defend the family honor.  I went off to intercept Mother and warn her that her  yard was once more filled with police and  firefighters. Warning her didn't seem to help  much; she was still decoratively distraught and her  recovery seemed to require that Jake take her  and several of the aunts out to an expensive  restaurant for Sunday dinner. On the bright  side, while the chaos was at its height, I  did manage to convince her to postpone her tea for the  bridesmaids until the following weekend. And  before I called all the bridesmaids to cancel,  while I was sure she and Jake were still out of the  way, I went down to Jake's house for another  spot of burglary.

  "Here," I said, sotto voce to Dad that  evening. "I've got the goods."

  "Great-Aunt Sophy?" he asked, looking  into the bag.

  "No, Emma Wendell. I pulled the  switch this afternoon."

  "That's splendid," he said, peering more intently  into the bag. "This will be a great help."

  "If it makes you happy," I said, as Dad  trotted off, bag in hand.

  We had a violent thunderstorm that  night. The power went out just as we were about to fix  dinner. The kitten, whom I hadn't gotten around  to returning, turned out to be terrified by lightning.  It was not a relaxing night.

           Monday, July 4

  Unfortunately, the thunderstorm that took out the  power Sunday night failed to cool down the air.  By nine o'clock Monday morning, the day of  Samantha's bridal shower, the power was still out. The  temperature was pushing ninety and still rising.  Tempers were wearing thin all over the  neighborhood, but particularly at the Brewster  house. Those of us trying to help out in the kitchen  spent most of the afternoon bickering over which foods were  going to be safe to eat by the time the guests arrived  and which contained ingredients like mayonnaise and were not  to be trusted. As time passed and the mercury soared,  the list got shorter, the trash cans got  fuller, and we began to wonder if canceling would be  a good idea.

  Then, by a stroke of luck--possibly a bad  stroke, although we didn't realize it at the time--the power came back on at five in the afternoon and  we didn't have to cancel after all. In the hour before  the first guests arrived, we ran the air conditioners  full blast and changed the atmosphere from an oven  to a mere steambath by the time things got underway. Mother  sent Rob and Jake to the store to bring back an  assortment of cheese, chips, crackers, and  luncheon meats to replace the foods lost to the  heatwave, and Pam, whose end of the neighborhood  got back power a little sooner than ours, endeared  herself to everybody by showing up with several huge bowls  of fresh onion dip and salsa. I suspected  that Dad must still be crouched in Jake's dogwood  tree; for it was nearly the first time all summer we  actually served party food that Dad hadn't  picked over in advance. Which meant, of course, that  there was so much food we'd probably end up  calling him in to help get rid of it afterwards.

  Once the shower got underway, I suppressed  my mutinous wish that we'd cancelled after all.  Watching Samantha unwrap and wave about frothy  bits of lingerie ranked very low on my list of  ways I'd like to spend one of the hottest days of the  summer. I envied Mother, who had pleaded a  headache and gone home already. Looking at

  Samantha's carefully matched set of  bridesmaids depressed me. They were all there:  Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer, Kimberly,  Tiffany, Heather, Melissa, and Blair.

I'd made a little rhyme of it to help me  remember all the names, and was working on matching them  to faces.

  I was in a lousy mood, but I was the only  one, and as far as I could see, the shower was going  fine until Samantha vomited into the onion  dip.

  One minute she was chatting and laughing with  Kimberly and Jennifer II, and then, suddenly,  she bent over and puked right onto the dip  platter. Conversation, naturally, screeched to a  halt.

  "Oh, dear," she said, faintly, putting her  hand to her mouth. And then she turned and fled  upstairs. I was still staring after her, wondering if  I should go and see if she was all right, when  suddenly I heard more retching. In stereo.  Kimberly on my right, and one of Samantha's  college friends on my left, were also throwing up.

  It was the beginning of a mass exodus as, one after  another, the guests either threw up and ran out or  turned pale and walked unsteadily to the door.  I considered going after them and rejected the idea.  I'm not much of a nurse. And my stomach was  beginning to feel a bit queasy. I hoped it was  my imagination. I went out to the kitchen, told the  housekeeper and Mrs. Brewster what was going  on. The housekeeper fainted. Mrs. Brewster  dialed 911. Good move. I began gathering  paper towels and spray cleaner to mop up the  living room as my penance for not going to the aid of the  patients.

  Just as I was beginning to think that perhaps luck--or my finicky eating habits--had been on my  side and that I wasn't going to be sick, I  felt the first faint tremors.

  You'd think that in a house with seven bathrooms  you could find a toilet to puke in when you wanted  one, but after trying the hall powder room door--locked, with audible retching sounds emerging--I  passed by the kitchen and saw three guests fighting  for room at the sink while another was lying on the  floor with her head propped over the dog's    waterbowl. That's it, I told myself. I'm going  home while I still can.

  It wasn't easy. My head was beginning to ache badly, and even though it was twilight, the  light hurt my eyes. I made it up the  Brewsters' driveway and almost to the end of the next  yard when the dizziness got so bad I had to stop  and clutch the fence to stay upright. A horrible  cramp went through my stomach, and I felt a  sudden, uncharacteristic urge to strangle whichever of the  Labs was barking just inside the fence.

  "Meg?" I opened one eye to see Michael,  with Spike in tow. Spike was trying to claw his  way through the fence to get at the Labs. Serve him  right if he succeeded, I thought.

  "Meg, are you all right?" I shook my head,  then wished I hadn't.

  "Samantha's poisoned us all," I  gasped. "At the shower. Food poisoning."

  "For God's sake, why didn't you stay there  if you're sick."

  "No place to be sick," I muttered.  "Can't even squeeze into a john. Everyone's  having hysterics. Going home to be sick in  peace." I began to lever myself off the fence and  toward home.

  "Hang on a minute, damn it! Let me  set Spike loose and I'll help you. He can  find his own way home." He caught up with me  before I'd gone two steps, and picked me up  remarkably easily, considering that I'm neither  short nor skinny.

  "What if I throw up on you?" I protested  feebly.

  "It'll wash out."