Owls Well That Ends Well (27 page)

Which meant they’d split up about the same time Endicott and Gordon had stopped being partners. Was that only a coincidence?”

“Was it an amicable separation?” I asked, even though I thought I knew the answer.

“Amicable,” Endicott snapped. “Hell, no. You’ve never seen anything so vicious. He fought her over everything—the house, the shop, the bank accounts. And she kept trying to convince the judge that he was hiding assets from her.”

Now that he’d made up his mind to talk, I wasn’t sure I could stop him if I wanted to. Not that I did, of course.

“And was he?” I said. “Hiding assets?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Endicott said. “He tried to pull a few stunts like that when we broke up the partnership. And I wasn’t going after every penny I could get, the way Carol was. I just wanted to get clear of him as fast as possible. She was really holding his feet to the fire. Not that I blame her. The things that woman put up with! He started fooling around on her before the honeymoon was over—can you believe that?”

“Only with difficulty,” I said. “Most women would have better taste than to fool around with Gordon. And most men, too.”

“But you see why she’d want the keys,” Endicott said, eagerly. “She’d been trying everything to find out what he’d hidden, and where, and with the keys, she could go into the divorce court fully armed, so to speak.”

“Though she’ll be going into probate court, not divorce,” I said.

“True,” Endicott said, as if this were a new idea.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Wouldn’t he have changed the keys when Carol filed for divorce? How can you be so sure your key still fits?”

“We changed them the first time she filed for divorce, five years ago,” Endicott said. “I was the one who arranged it. As far as I know, he never gave her a copy of the new one. The reconciliation never went that well.”

Which could mean that Gordon had been working on hiding his assets from Carol for five years. No wonder Carol was so upset.

“Could she have killed him?” I asked.

He fell silent. I suspected that he wasn’t agonizing over how to answer my question, only how he could avoid answering it. For whatever reason—friendship, shared suffering, perhaps a hint of romantic attraction—Endicott didn’t want to point the finger at Carol. But the longer he paused, the more loudly I could hear the answer he wasn’t giving. Yes, she could have killed Gordon.

“I’ll talk to her,” I said. “See what she says.”

“Don’t—” he began.

“Mention that you ratted on her,” I said. “I won’t. As it happens, I was already planning to talk to her. It wasn’t exactly a surprise when you mentioned her name. I saw her going in and out of the barn, too, you know.”

Though until I’d talked to Endicott, I had no idea when she’d gone into the barn and thus no idea if she was a valid suspect.

We put the boxes in the back of the SUV and Endicott drove off, a little too fast, as if he was glad to get away from me. I thought for a while, and then pulled out my cell phone to call Chief Burke.

“I’m busy,” he said, when I got him on the phone. “This had better be important.”

“Did you get—”

“I got your message, yes. Was there anything else?”

Got it, and from the stubborn sound of his voice, wasn’t doing a thing about it. I’d been waffling about whether to tell him about Schmidt and Endicott, but if he was going to be mulish …

“I was just wondering if it had occurred to you that whoever has Gordon’s keys might try to use them again,” I said.

“Come again?”

“How do you know that whoever burgled the shop last night wasn’t interrupted before they found what they were looking for or did what they were trying to do?” I said. “And whoever did it still has his other keys—house, car, who knows what.”

“If you’re worried that someone will break in somewhere and steal evidence, you can stop worrying,” the chief said. “We’ve taken measures to secure the premises he owned or rented, and I don’t just mean stringing up a lot of pretty yellow crime scene tape. And if you’re the one who has the keys and you’re angling to find out if it’s safe to use them, it’s not, so do me a favor and snoop someplace else. I hate arresting well-meaning amateurs for interfering in my investigations.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t have Gordon’s keys, and I have no intention of breaking in anywhere. Scout’s honor.”

“Were you ever actually a Girl Scout?” he asked.

“Briefly,” I said. “And it was Dad’s fault I got kicked out.”

“That I can believe,” he said. “Behave yourself.”

With that he hung up.

I felt better. I wasn’t sure whether the chief was telling me the truth, or just what he thought would scare me off, but if Professor Schmidt really was running around with a working key to Gordon’s shop, my conscience was clean. I’d warned the chief. If Endicott was telling the truth, it was probably Carol who’d tried to burgle the shop last night.

I got Carol’s number from directory assistance and tried to call it. No answer. She might be back at the yard sale. And even if she wasn’t, I had a feeling I knew where she’d strike next. And when. Odds were she wouldn’t strike until after dark. And right now, dark felt a long way off. I could hear several voices calling my name, back at the yard sale.

In fact, long before I got back to the yard sale, I heard gunfire from the direction of the house. Cursing Endicott for making me use up so much energy already, I started running back.

Chapter 34

I made it back a lot faster than I’d come, but even so, I heard several more gunshots before I reached the house and could see what was happening.

I was reasonably sure they were gunshots rather than, say, car backfires or more bursting balloons, because each sharp sound was followed by a short burst of hysterical screams. At least I hoped they were only hysterical. Surely people would be screaming longer and louder if anyone had been injured, wouldn’t they? And fleeing in far larger numbers.

So far, traffic heading away from the house was light—I’d only had to dodge two cars, twelve pedestrians, and a sheep. Though the sheep did puzzle me, until I remembered the trespassers in Mr. Early’s field. I sped up a little. I’d have sped up a lot, but running with Endicott’s heavy box earlier had taken a lot out of me.

I arrived to find that the crowd had completely blocked the road for several hundred yards, and the police were trying to clear a path for the patrol car that was inching its way through. I spotted someone in the back of the car— our neighbor, Mr. Early. He was shaking his fist at the crowd and shouting. The closed car window and the clamor from the crowd drowned out what he was saying, but I could guess what he was unhappy about.

The crowd milling about in front of our house contained a rather large number of sheep. Dad would probably insist on calling them a flock of sheep, but I would argue that they needed to be a lot more cohesive to qualify as a flock. Not to mention better behaved—could these really be the same sedate sheep I remembered dotting the pasture across the road and waddling slowly up and down the hillside? These sheep appeared enraged, or perhaps possessed. Okay, perhaps they were merely spooked at finding themselves in the midst of a large, noisy, unruly crowd of humans. But I had never imagined sheep capable of charging into people and knocking them down. And they were larger than I thought sheep were supposed to be. Giant economy-sized sheep. Did I have the wrong idea about sheep, or was Farmer Early breeding some kind of mutant fighting sheep?

The New Life Baptist choir was belting out an enthusiastic version of “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow.” Easy for them to take this philosophically; they were up on the porch, where only the most demented of sheep was apt to venture.

I panicked briefly when I saw red splotches on several of the sheep, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t blood. Apparently Cousin Deirdre had found a new supply of paint and was running about happily spattering the fleeing sheep.

I spotted Michael at the edge of the chaos, looking tired, and possibly in need of rescue, since he was talking to one of my uncles.

“No,” I heard him say as I drew near. “I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere that had a 4H Club I could have joined.”

“No experience with sheep, then?” the uncle said.

“I’ve eaten quite a few,” Michael said. His tiredness probably made his voice sound a bit more savage than he intended.

“I don’t really think that’s going to be helpful here,” the uncle said, sidling away.

Michael nodded to me and stood staring at the passing sheep.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I warned them that they were trespassing,” Michael said. He was panting slightly, as if he’d been running around after the sheep. “Did they listen?”

“Of course not,” I said. “They’re idiots.”

“Some of them started taking down the fence, to make it easier to get to their booths and tables,” he said. “You should have seen how surprised they were when the first few sheep came trotting down the hill. And then when Early showed up with his shotgun and started firing over their heads and yelling about trespassing …”

He fell silent and rubbed his face with his hand, as if exhausted. I put an arm around his waist and we stood together for a few moments watching the crowd.

Both sheep and humans were dispersing. The music dissolved into shrieks when a particularly bold sheep trotted up onto the porch, sending the choir members fleeing in all directions.

On the plus side, by evicting the unauthorized bazaar from his field, Mr. Early had convinced many people that the fun was over for the day. Except for the customers lined up at the yard sale checkout, people were mostly heading for their cars.

On the minus side, once they got to their cars, they weren’t having much luck departing. Every few yards, you could see a sheep standing on the road, gazing thoughtfully into the distance, seemingly unaware that half-a-dozen cars were lined up behind it, honking their horns and shouting at it. No sooner would one sheep amble off the road than another would saunter out.

But there were really only a small number of sheep playing in traffic. Where had the rest of them gone?

“What are we supposed to do about all this?” Michael said. He wasn’t puffing anymore, but he still sounded tired. “They’re incredibly stupid, and trying to get them all to go where you want them to go is nearly impossible, but the minute one of them does something destructive, dangerous, or just annoying, every single one of them goes and does the same damned thing.”

“All true,” I said. “But we can’t do anything about the people, so let’s talk about the sheep.”

“I was talking about the sheep,” he said, with a faint ghost of a smile.

“They’re a problem, too,” I agreed.

I spotted several of my relatives in the crowd. And, unfortunately, they had spotted me. They were pointing at me and waving, and heading this way. Probably to ask me what I planned to do about the sheep.

“Come on,” I said to Michael. “I have an idea.”

I strolled over to where Officer Sammy was standing, with Michael in my wake.

“Hey, Sammy,” I said. “Could you help me with something.”

“I’ll sure try,” he said, with his eager, 250-watt smile.

“I figure by now they have Mr. Early down at the station, being arrested or arraigned or whatever.”

“And we need to get our sheep together,” Michael put in.

I winced. Sammy frowned.

“Your sheep?” he said.

“Mr. Early’s sheep,” I said, pointing to one of the woolly fugitives that happened to be passing by. “His sheep have escaped their pasture, and we’re trying to round them up and put them back.”

“That’s good,” Sammy said, nodding.

“Only we have no idea how many of them he has,” I said. “We can’t very well know when we’ve found them all if we have no idea how many we’re looking for.”

“No problem,” Sammy said. “I’ll call down to the station and get a count.”

While Sammy made his way through the throng to his patrol car, I greeted any relatives who came looking for me with orders that they each go and catch a sheep. Preferably several sheep. As I expected, most of them hurried to comply, and the rest, when they realized that I was asking them to work, made themselves scarce.

Fifteen minutes later, Sammy showed up leading a sheep and bearing the news that Mr. Early had two hundred and twenty-one head of sheep.

“And I suppose each of those heads is attached to a separate sheep body,” I said, letting myself slouch against the fence. “And every blessed one of them is rapidly trotting away in a completely different direction from every other sheep in the flock.”

“On their eight hundred and eighty-four beastly sharp little hooves,” Michael said, rubbing the shin one of the sheep had kicked.

“Only eight hundred and twenty-eight beastly sharp little hooves,” I corrected.

“Did I multiply that wrong?” Michael said, frowning. “It’s been a long day.”

“Your multiplication’s fine, but you forgot to subtract the ones we’ve already caught.”

“That’s right,” he said. We both turned to look behind us at the pasture. So far, the combined efforts of our amateur shepherds had only corralled thirteen sheep. Fourteen, with Sammy’s contribution. And from what I could see, those fourteen were the fattest, slowest, most sedentary of the flock. Most of their more nimble comrades had already disappeared over various horizons, with or without panting humans in hot pursuit. All except for a small cadre of guerilla sheep who remained lurking near the road, ready to take their turns blocking traffic.

“Fifteen,” Michael said, as Dad and Rob arrived with another sheep to add to the collection.

“Dad,” Rob said, when they’d shoved their catch through the gate. “My arms itch.”

I glanced over and saw that not only was Rob scratching his arms rather obsessively, but his face had begun to swell.

“Oh, damn,” I said.

“Do you suppose Farmer Early sprays some kind of dangerous chemical on his sheep?” Rob asked.

“No,” I said. “He didn’t have to; nature already did.”

“What do you mean?” Dad asked.

“Lanolin,” I said. “The wool is full of lanolin. Remember how careful Mother had to be when he was a kid? He got hives from even a trace of lanolin.”