An Owl Too Many (14 page)

“After what happened to Ottermole and Dorkin, who knows? He could have gone disguised as a Boy Scout. My primary concern is why Emmerick was there in the first place. Unless the FBI or the CIA had got a notion that the college is planning to use the television station for broadcasting subversive propaganda about getting down to cleaning up the environment instead of just talking about it, as in fact we are.”

“But why would they send somebody pretending to be a site engineer before the station is even being built, let alone ready to broadcast anything to anybody?” Helen argued. “I’ve heard of getting in on the ground floor, but that’s carrying things a bit far. Unless Emmerick was planning to plant bombs in the concrete so that the place could be blown up at some later date.”

“Or hidden microphones so the anti-environmentalists could broadcast their own propaganda on Winifred’s juice? Maybe it wasn’t the FBI, maybe he was a foreign spy.”

“Where from?”

“Who knows? Upper Volta, perhaps? Or Amalgamated Industries?”

“You know, Peter, I’ve had another thought. You don’t think Emmerick could possibly have been sent as some kind of bodyguard?”

“By whom?”

“How should I know? But Winifred does have such scads of money and apparently that kooky grandfather of hers was into all sorts of deals she may know nothing about. Take Golden Apples, for instance. She’s in a position to make or break the Compotes and she wasn’t even aware she had any connection with them until yesterday. She could be just as important to other companies, couldn’t she? Why hasn’t that lawyer of hers explained? You don’t think he’s grinding some ax of his own?”

“Don’t ask me. Debenham seems like a decent chap. We have to realize, Helen, that Winifred’s had an awful lot of information dumped on her within the past few months. She’s not used to dealing with business matters. She may not have absorbed everything she’s heard, or she may simply have refused to listen until she’d got her house built and the station under construction. Now that she’s out of the woods and getting the bit between her teeth, it’s a whole new ball game.”

“And the hand that rocked the cradle kicked the bucket. You do have a rather cavalier way with metaphors, Peter. But I see what you’re saying; what it boils down to is that she’d better go into a huddle with her lawyers pretty darned soon and find out which wheels are within which.”

“Not to worry, pet, it’s all arranged. The president himself is meeting with Debenham, the trust officer, and a gaggle of accountants one day this week. They’ll be going through Winifred’s affairs from stem to gudgeon, leaving her free to leach acorns with the Boy Scouts.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Where was I? This must be an R. Rich—Richard who, I wonder?”

“Richardson’s, I expect. This next would be ‘long-eared.’ Screech, barn—that’s Emmerick’s briefing for the owl walk. He jotted down a few names in an attempt to appear knowledgeable but had no idea how to apply them, so he made a jackass of himself instead.”

“Yes, dear. What’s a stick path?”

“Stick to the paths, I expect. That’s one rule we hammer into everybody. We don’t want people straying away and getting lost, mainly because they start blethering for help and scare away the owls. At least Emmerick managed to get that through his skull. So did whoever killed him, obviously. They knew the poor fish would be along there sooner or later, so they spread their confounded net and waited. Drat it, Helen, the more things happen, the less sense they make. Are you saving that fudge for anything special?”

“Just letting it harden.” Helen picked up a kitchen knife and made an exploratory incision. “Here you are, love, take a piece in to Tim. I’ll finish these notes and let you know if anything exciting turns up.”

Nothing did. The remaining sheets were only a jumble of what Helen took to be engineering terms, no doubt selected to lend authenticity to Emmerick’s role as a site engineer. She’d get somebody from the college’s engineering faculty to sort them out for her tomorrow. They didn’t look to be important, but one never knew. She cut a small plateful of fudge and took it into the living room. She was reading the paper at about five o’clock when Tim’s daughter-in-law phoned.

“Is Dad coming home for supper any time soon? It’s so awful out that Roy wants to walk him home. Don’t tell him I said so.”

“Then why don’t you two come and have supper with us? You can go home together afterward so he won’t feel overprotected. It’s not going to be anything special.”

There was enough pot roast left to warm over. She could eke it out with a package of frozen peas, warm up those pancakes she’d forgotten to serve for tea, and call it crepes à la Shandy. Dessert could be what was left of the fudge.

Laurie said did Helen really want them and what could they bring? Helen said certainly she wanted them and how about a salad? Laurie said no problem. Evidently it wasn’t, she and Tim’s son Royall blew in about half an hour later, quite literally, since the wind was by now blowing almost at gale force. Roy carried a big bowl covered in aluminum foil and had a bottle tucked under his arm. Laurie had a well-wrapped plate.

“It’s cookies,” she explained as Helen took the goodies and Peter the streaming rain gear. “I felt like baking this afternoon. It’s been that kind of day.”

“I know,” said Helen. “I made fudge.”

“Oh yum! With nuts?”

“Of course. We’ll have it with the cookies. Or right now, if you’d rather, only I was thinking about offering everyone a drink. What can I give you?”

“We brought some wine.” Roy peeled a soggy paper bag off the bottle he’d been carrying. “An amusing little vintage they were running a special sale on over at the Hoddersville Hoochery. God knows what it tastes like.”

“There’s only one way to find out. Come and work the corkscrew. Would you like to set the dining-room table, Laurie? Five people would be an awful squash in our dinky kitchen, we may as well eat in style.”

Nobody was hungry yet, so they lazed around the fire cracking hickory nuts and sipping at Roy’s bargain wine. If not distinguished, at least it was drinkable.

Tim was in one of the easy chairs, Roy and Laurie on the floor at his feet. The Ameses made an interesting picture, Peter was thinking. As far as size was concerned, Tim would have been right at home in Bilbo Baggins’s Hobbit hole. He had no beard and not much hair on his head, let alone his feet, but his eyebrows were bushy enough to make up the difference. The old man had put on a little weight since Laurie learned to cook, but he was still lean, brown, and gnarled as an oaken root; and almost as tough. But not quite. Thank God, Roy had brought home a good-hearted wife.

Roy was a lot like his dad in personality and character but not in looks, which was probably just as well. He was fairly tall and big-boned. Took after his mother’s side of the family; that had been the winning side as long as Jemima was alive. She’d been dead now for several years; Peter had come upon her body in this very room. It was Jemima’s dying that had brought Helen to him, but he didn’t regret having got rid of the sofa behind which he’d found Jemima lying.

Laurie leaned forward to poke the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. She was a sparkler herself, little and dark and quick to react, though she had the gift of stillness between times that Jemima had always lacked. Laurie was no fashion plate, she’d dressed for the occasion in a blue sweatshirt with a polar bear on the front, a baggy denim skirt still damp around the hem, and white sweat socks. She’d left her rubber boots by the door, out of consideration for the Shandy floors. Jemima would have kept them on.

Laurie and Roy had led one of the student groups on the owl watch. They’d bagged more sightings than any of the rest, though they were quite willing to concede that Peter’s team of experts would have beaten everybody else if it hadn’t been for Emmerick’s getting netted. They’d known the bogus site engineer; he’d insisted on giving them advice about programming that they hadn’t wanted and weren’t about to take. As biologists, they were already working with Professor Binks at the field station developing formats for various broadcasts they’d be handling once the television station was ready for use.

One miniseries Laurie and Roy had in mind would be hosted by Captain Amos Flackley, who’d performed their marriage ceremony on his ship in the middle of the Ross Sea. They’d all three retired to Balaclava, the Ameses to teach at the college and ride herd on Tim, the captain to snatch up a fallen torch as Flackley the Farrier; but the spell of the nethermost continent was still upon them. Their show ought to be superb; Roy had lots of wonderful filming to draw on, Laurie was a splendid scriptwriter, and Captain Flackley knew a zoologist who was willing to lend them some live penguins.

They were also planning a series on the care and feeding of sled dogs. This was expected to attract a considerable response from malamute fanciers, of whom there were a surprising number in Balaclava County, including Captain Flackley himself. So there was plenty to talk about, but it was inevitable that the conversation would work its way around to the
Fane and Pennon’
s reportage of the recent bizarre happenings. Tim was the one who started the ball rolling.

“What the hell’s all this foofaraw about trees, Peter? First that jackass who was supposed to be the station site engineer got dumped out of one wrapped up in a fishnet, then that hired girl of Winifred Binks’s gets herself kidnapped and tied to another. What kind of trees were they?”

“Gad, Tim, that’s one question nobody else has thought to ask. Emmerick’s was an oak and Miss Buddley’s a box elder.”

“That so? We’ve got lots of oaks on the station property but I don’t remember seeing any box elder. Nor white ash. I was thinking about that the other day. Pete, I think we ought to plant a stand of white ash out there. To hell with the elder, nobody makes collar boxes nowadays anyhow.”

“Good thought, Tim. White ash is a damn fine tree and too much of it’s been lumbered out. The trouble is, where to put it? A lot of the Binks land’s low and on the boggy side once you get away from Woeful Ridge. White ash likes high ground.”

“Hey, you guys,” yelped Roy, “could we scrub the forestry a moment and get back to the grue? How come Emmerick was hauled up in that net, then dropped like a hot potato? Did they bag the wrong guy or did the rope break?”

“I’m guessing it was cut. As to why, I’m not even guessing,” Peter answered.

“But aren’t there any clues at all?”

Peter glanced over at Helen. “Shall we?”

“Why not? The sheets are still on the kitchen table. I suggest you turn on the gas under the pot roast while you’re getting them. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m beginning to feel a mite peckish.”

“Me too,” said Roy. “Hickory nuts are hard work. Anything we can do to help?”

“Open another bottle of wine if anybody wants it, since we appear to have finished the one you brought. There’s some burgundy in the pantry. Cider in the fridge, if you’d rather.”

Everyone opted for cider except Tim. He said cider gave him the gripes and he’d settle for plain water. Helen went to put on the finishing touches and Peter showed the Ameses the toothpick code. Roy was able to sort out most of the technical terms, also to certify that they were bona fide technical terms and nothing more, as far as he could see. Laurie didn’t believe for one second that Knapweed Calthrop could be either a radical or a menace, except possibly to himself. He was so wrapped up in the bedstraws that he never noticed anything else unless he happened to trip over it.

“Even me,” she pouted.

“But not the shrinking Viola,” Roy insisted. “I’ve seen Knapweed giving her the old oogle-eye often enough.”

“That brings up an interesting point.” Peter told them the episode of the squirrel feeder. “So which of the two do you think was lying?”

The voting ran along purely sexist lines. Roy opted for Knapweed, Laurie said Viola. Tim abstained. Helen said they’d better come and eat while it was hot. So they did.

T
HEY SAT LONGER OVER
their potluck supper than they’d meant to, which turned out to have been just as well. By the time the Ameses were ready to go home, the storm had blown itself out. Peter saw them to the door, then stayed out on the stoop to watch Tim safely across and catch a few lungfuls of well-washed air. There were branches down on the mall that ran down the middle of the Crescent, and puddles everywhere, but no real damage that he could see. He went back to Helen.

“I think we ought to phone Winifred.”

“It’s rather late, dear,” Helen objected. “She’s most likely in bed by now.”

“I suppose so. But, drat it, I can’t help feeling edgy. I don’t like what happened to Miss Buddley, I don’t like it one bit.”

“I don’t suppose Miss Buddley liked it much, either. Go ahead and call, then; you’ll lie awake fussing half the night if you don’t. Winifred has an extension in her bedroom, she understands well enough the difference between self-sufficiency and stupidity.”

The number for the house was the same as for the field station, and Miss Binks was at home. “Oh no, Peter, you didn’t wake me,” she assured him. “President Svenson called about fifteen minutes ago, which made the third time today. So thoughtful of him. And I was on the phone with Iduna Stott for quite a while before that. Early this afternoon, Cronkite Swope and Budge Dorkin braved the storm, gallant souls that they are. Cronkite took some pictures of that car Mr. Fanshaw left here, and Budge drove it away. Then they both called me to assure me they’d got back safely. I told Budge about the notebook, Peter; it didn’t seem quite the thing not to. Was that all right?”

“That’s fine. You’ll be interested to know Helen cracked the code.”

“Oh good. I’ve barely had time to glance at it myself, I’ve been so busy on the telephone. What’s it about?”

Peter explained how Helen had figured out it wasn’t really a code at all, and what they’d got out of it. Winifred was not much impressed.

“I have no doubt you’ve drawn the right conclusions, but I can’t say I’m overwhelmed by the result. That notebook strikes me as the sort of theatrical nonsense to which I found Mr. Emmerick during our brief acquaintance to be all too prone. What I can’t help wondering, Peter, is whether his death could have been the result of an over-elaborate practical joke that went wrong.”