Owls Well That Ends Well (25 page)

“Okay,” I said. “If I can prove Endicott’s the murderer, maybe the police won’t have to find out what you did. At least not the part about Mrs. Pruitt’s books.”

“Thank you,” Schmidt said. “You can’t imagine how grateful I’d be.”

I decided not to point out that my statement contained a very large “if” with a great big “maybe” attached. And it occurred to me that before I let Schmidt completely off the hook, it might be a good idea to find out if he had any influence with any of the Great Stone Faces. If so, maybe I could pressure him into using it to our benefit.

Did that thought make me as despicable a blackmailer as Gordon?

I’d think that through later.

“Stay away from Gordon’s shop,” I said. “If I hear anything more about a break-in, I’ll tell the police everything.”

“Of course,” he said, hastily. “I was just about to go home. I realize what a mistake it was, thinking of breaking in.”

“That’s a load of owl pellets,” I said, in lieu of a ruder word. He looked puzzled, and I decided to leave him that way. He walked off quickly, as if in a hurry to get away from me.

I was turning toward the alley when I suddenly decided that I was tired. Why go the long way round? Why not just march right past the front of Gordon’s shop? If the chief saw me and wondered what I was up to, maybe it was time to tell him everything. I’d found proof that Gordon was already dead when Giles went into the barn. Let the police decide which of the other suspects was guilty.

I wouldn’t even have to tell them about Schmidt. All I had to do was sic them on the Hummel lady, and they’d follow the same trail I did.

Of course, by the time I realized that, the police cruisers were gone and Gordon’s shop locked up tight. So much for good resolutions.

Still, I could do something. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the non-emergency number for the police station. The chief wasn’t in, of course, but Debbie Anne, the dispatcher, apologized very nicely and said she’d give him a message if I liked.

“Tell him the Hummel lady lied,” I said. “And he should talk to her again.”

“The who?”

“Hummel lady,” I said, and spelled it. “I don’t know her name, but the chief will know who I mean. Or he can call me if he likes.”

I felt much more cheerful. My conscience was clear. The chief couldn’t accuse me of sneaking around behind his back—well, not as easily, anyway. And, meanwhile, maybe I could get even closer to the truth if I could find Ralph Endicott, the ex-partner. I had a feeling I knew where to look. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been lurking near the fence around the yard sale, scanning the merchandise with his binoculars and scribbling notes in a leather-bound notebook. I needed to get back to the yard sale.

Easier said than done, though. As I was making my way out of town, I thought I spotted Mother, disappearing into a shop. I circled the block again and cruised past the shop at five miles per hour, but I couldn’t see anything, and I drove on, hoping I’d been seeing things. Even the thought of Mother entering that particular shop made me nervous. Not only was it a bastion of chintz and gilding, but there wasn’t a single price tag in the shop, on the theory that if you cared about the price, you couldn’t afford it and they couldn’t be bothered with you.

And then I hit a giant traffic jam that blocked the road leading toward our house for most of the ten miles I had to travel. I thought I was home free when I finally inched past the spot where a replacement funnel cake truck had broken down on its way out to set up operations at our house, but, instead, the traffic got even worse. Not many people were leaving, but the few that did had to fight their way out. Enough cars had parked along the shoulders on either side that the already narrow road was down to a single lane for much of the last two miles, and the arriving cars gave no mercy. Here and there, arguments and even the occasional fistfight broke out. The fields on either side of the road were festooned with stranded SUVs and jeeps whose owners thought they could bypass the traffic by taking to the countryside, only to find they’d misjudged either their vehicles’ ability to traverse deep mud or their own driving skills. Cousin Sidney and his tow truck would be tired but happy by the end of the day.

I finally made it in on the heels of an arriving state police cruiser and scared away a woman who tried to take my parking space when I removed the orange cones. Not bad considering that she was driving a Chevy TrailBlazer that could have eaten my little Toyota for breakfast. But she wasn’t very good at what I called slow motion chicken. Her tank was new and spotless, and my heap showed definite signs of past close encounters with other vehicles, so when I kept moving forward into the space, slowly but inexorably, she eventually wimped out and backed away.

“I was here first!” she shrieked, as I was walking away from my car.

“I live here!” I shouted back.

“And that makes you special?” I heard her mutter.

The whole day was getting out of hand. Some of Michael’s drama students had shown up and were presenting scenes from various plays by Shakespeare, using our front porch as a makeshift stage. The college chamber music ensemble was impatiently awaiting their turn, and from the noises emerging from the house, either someone had held a séance and offended the ghost of John Philip Sousa or the college marching band needed a lot more rehearsal before we let them onto the porch.

Apparently Rose Noir had finished smudging the circumference of the yard sale, and was now putting the finishing touches to her cleansing ceremony from on high, thanks to Everett’s boom lift. I wasn’t sure it was wise to supplement the herbal smoke with scattering dried herbs, but anyone who had stuck it out this long at the yard sale wasn’t about to be put off by showers of potpourri. At most, a few people looked mildly annoyed as they brushed it off their shoulders like fragrant dandruff.

The volunteer vendors now completely filled the front yard and had begun to expand into the field across the road from us. Normally our front yard had a restful view of the field sloping at first gently, and then more and more steeply, up to a tree-crowned ridge. Now we had a ringside view of more ad hoc yard sale participants.

I found Michael observing this phenomenon with alarm.

“Mr. Early won’t like this,” he said. Mr. Early, the farmer who owned the field across the way, was a noted local curmudgeon.

“Maybe he’s out of town,” I said.

“Isn’t October supposed to be a busy time for farmers?” Michael said. “Harvest time, and all that.”

“I think it depends on what you’re growing.”

“What does Mr. Early grow?” Michael asked.

We both squinted at the field for a few moments.

“Beats me,” he said. “Just looks like grass to me.”

“Maybe it is just grass,” I said. “I think I’ve seen sheep there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Not really,” I said. “I suppose that shows what complete city slickers we are. I’ll ask Dad.”

“You think he’ll know?”

“Maybe, and if he doesn’t, he’ll have a great time finding out. Maybe he’ll even befriend Mr. Early.”

“That would be nice,” Michael said. “Though from what I’ve seen of Mr. Early, it would probably be a first. Meanwhile, I think I’ll go over and tell those people that they’re trespassing on Mr. Early’s land.”

“You really think they’ll listen?”

“No, but at least I can tell Mr. Early that we told them to leave,” he said, as he strode off.

That might help. Though I thought managing not to be around when Mr. Early discovered the interlopers was an even better plan.

Chapter 32

The bad thing about the chaos currently infesting our yard, and now spilling over onto the neighbors’ property, was that no one was in charge. Though there were still a few people around—mostly my relatives—who held on to the delusion that I was in charge, and could fix their problems and answer their questions.

The good thing was that these misguided souls were far outnumbered by people who didn’t know me from Adam and didn’t expect a damn thing of me. That was a comforting thought.

Probably a good idea to make myself scarce till things quieted down. And maybe when Chief Burke returned from his burglary investigation I could get him to clear out the squatters.

On the other hand, if we could just get him to open up the yard sale again, we’d have more customers than we’d ever dreamed of.

Michael reappeared, with Dad at his side.

“I ran into your Dad,” he said. “You were right—sheep. Some special kind that grows expensive Yuppie wool.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Dad said, beaming.

“The sheep?” I asked. “What’s so wonderful about them? I bet they’re just as clueless as ordinary sheep.”

“No, this!” Dad exclaimed, flinging his arms out with enthusiasm.

“Your dad is enjoying the yard sale,” Michael explained.

“It’s certainly surpassed my expectations,” I said.

“Meg, do you suppose it would work if we have a modest admission fee next year?” Dad asked. “If we charge even as little as a dollar, we could probably fund our SPOOR operations for an entire year.”

“You can charge as much as you like the next time we have a yard sale,” I said.

“Excellent!” Dad said, and walked off beaming.

“We’re having another yard sale next year?” Michael asked.

“I’d sooner reenact Lady Godiva’s ride,” I said. “Down fraternity row. You’ll notice I said ‘next time,’ not ‘next year.’”

“Ah,” Michael said, nodding. “That sounds more like it. Though we may need to have another sale if we decide to use your mother’s designs for the house.”

“No,” I said. “We are not selling off all our stuff to buy chintz or Louis Quatorze or whatever crazy stuff Mother’s excited about this week.”

“Well, wait till you see her drawings,” Michael said. “I think she’s finally trying to listen to what we want.”

“Listening to what we want is nice, but designing something we can live with is quite another thing,” I said. “Besides, what if what we want is to be left alone to muddle through decorating on our own?”

“Then we’ll tell her thanks, but no thanks,” he said, with a laugh. “After all, she can’t bully us into redecorating. I’ll go see what I can do about the trespassers.”

With that, he headed off again in the direction of Mr. Early’s field. I shook my head. Obviously, he still didn’t know Mother well enough.

I could worry about Mother later. Right now, I wanted to talk to Ralph Endicott. I even spotted him, standing across the yard. But as I was walking toward him, I saw Chief Burke coming toward me, a stern scowl on his face. I tried to look innocent, helpful, and glad to see him, while my brain raced to figure out what I could have done that would bring him all the way out here in such a bad mood. If he’d talked to the Hummel lady already, he should be pleased at what I’d found, not mad at me.

And why not simply tell him what I’d learned from Schmidt, sic him on Endicott, and be done with it?

I was opening my mouth to spill the beans but the chief spoke first.

“My people tell me they’re finished in there,” he said, nodding his head toward the fenced-in yard sale area. “So I thought I’d come out and tell you that if you want to reopen your yard sale, it’s fine with us.”

Before he even finished speaking a murmur went through the crowd. Half of the people stampeded toward the gate to the yard sale while the other half began shoving to get closer to where the chief and I were standing. And I suspected they didn’t have too many questions to ask him.

“You didn’t have to come all the way out here to tell us,” I said. “You could have just called.” I didn’t add that it would have been a lot easier for me if he’d told me over the phone, where no one else could overhear him. Now we had to gather everyone and everything we needed to reopen with several hundred people underfoot asking why it was taking so long.

“Had to bring Minerva out, didn’t I?” the chief said, glancing at the plump figure following him down the walk. “God forbid that the fool thing could open even five minutes before she got here,” he added, raising his voice. “Someone else might beat her to another confounded piece of Depression glass.”

“You hush up and let the poor girl go take care of everything she has to do to open up again,” Minerva Burke said. “And you might round up some of your men to help with crowd control, now that you’ve just blurted out your news in public and riled everyone up.”

Chief Burke’s frown deepened as he stomped off and issued orders to the various officers still on the scene.

“Men,” Mrs. Burke said to me, shaking her head. “Makes you wonder where they all were the day the good Lord handed out common sense, doesn’t it?”

I decided I liked Mrs. Burke.

“Of course, there’s some of them better than others,” she went on. “Don’t you shilly-shally around too long over that young man of yours, now. He’s a keeper, and if you don’t do something about it, someone else will.”

Of course, I might like Mrs. Burke better from a slight distance.

“Would you like to have some lemonade while you wait?” I asked, pointing to an area near the back door where Mother and several of her cronies had set up lawn chairs and folding umbrellas and were sipping lemonade and iced tea while observing the crowd’s antics.

“Thank you, sugar,” she said. “I believe I would.”

It didn’t occur to me until a few minutes too late that introducing the formidable Mrs. Burke to Mother might be a mistake. Not that they wouldn’t hit it off. When I glanced over a few minutes later, I saw unmistakable signs that they were hitting it off far too well. And possibly plotting together. One of the things I liked most about Caerphilly was its location—close enough to Yorktown that I could see my parents as often as I liked, but far enough that they wouldn’t be underfoot quite all the time. The last thing I wanted was Mother establishing a satellite office in my backyard, and I began to fear that she’d found just the ally to run it.

Not something I could worry about right now. It was eleven-forty. We needed to get this thing rolling.

I fled inside the fence to organize things, leaving Officer Sammy and Cousin Horace to guard the gate.