Owls Well That Ends Well (14 page)

“Any time,” Everett said.

I stepped off into chaos.

“Meg!” Sammy exclaimed. “There you are! We need your fingerprints!”

“Meg!” Mrs. Fenniman called. “Where’s the key to the cash box. We need to lock up.”

“Meg!” Dad shouted. “What channel is CBS on up here? And when do they have the local news? We have to watch it tonight; they just interviewed me about SPOOR!”

“Hey, Meg,” Rob said, appearing at my side. “I’ve got the lawyer on the phone. He’s having trouble finding his way here—can you come and talk to him?”

“Meg, dear,” Mother said, on my other side. “Are you sure you don’t want to come shopping with me? It’s for the house.”

“Aunt Meg! Come look what I found in my owl pellet!” Eric called.

For a moment, I seriously considered running back inside, crawling down the dumbwaiter shaft, and dumping myself out at Chief Burke’s feet. Maybe he’d arrest me for interfering with his investigation and I could spend the rest of the day in a nice, quiet jail cell.

Chapter 17

By the time I’d turned over the cash box key, sent Dad to guide the lawyer, given Mother my regrets, admired a small rodent skull that Eric had found, and allowed Sammy to ink and print my fingers, another dozen small crises had piled up, and I thought I’d never have a chance to continue what Michael called my snooping. Then I noticed a particular face appear in the circle surrounding me. Professor Schmidt. Just the person I wanted to talk to, although it looked as if I might have to solve a dozen other people’s problems before I got the chance.

“Dad,” I said, when he reappeared from his conversation with the lawyer. See if you can help some of these people. I’ll see what I can do for Professor Schmidt; he’s been waiting a long time.”

Schmidt didn’t even thank me for letting him jump ahead of the others who had, technically, been waiting longer than he had.

“Someone has blocked my car in!” he exclaimed.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you have the make and model and license plate number?”

He frowned.

“It’s an SUV,” he said. “Black. Or maybe dark blue.”

“Show me.”

He turned and headed toward the road, and I followed. I resisted the urge to say how idiotic it was, coming to complain about the SUV blocking him in without bringing full information. After all, it gave me a chance to get him away from the crowd and extract some information.

“So, the police finally let you go?” I said, with deliberate casualness.

“Finally let me go?” he said, starting. “What do you mean by that?”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said. I tried to look innocent, though I knew that wasn’t my forte. “I just assumed they’d question you pretty closely.”

“Me?” he said, looking even more alarmed. “Why?”

“I thought you were Giles’s competitor for the rare book Gordon found. Isn’t that why you were in the barn, talking to him?”

“Good heavens no,” he said, with an exaggerated wince. “From what I heard, it was a
mystery
book. I’m a professor of
literature
!”

His tone reminded me of my great-aunt Hester, whose complete lack of firsthand knowledge about pornography hadn’t diminished her passion for condemning it. As far as the family could tell, a
Wonder Woman
comic and a few mildly titillating historical romances were the closest things she’d ever seen to an obscene book. I wondered if Professor Schmidt’s knowledge of mysteries was equally sparse.

“That’s odd,” I said. “I overheard that you were trying to buy a book from Gordon.”

“Papers, not books,” he said.

“Papers, then,” I said. “And they had nothing to do with Giles’s mysteries?”

“It was about Mrs. Pruitt,” he said, with injured dignity.

“Mrs. Pruitt,” I repeated, trying to sound both encouraging and noncommittal while racking my brain to think who Mrs. Pruitt might be.

“Mrs. Ginevra Brakenridge Pruitt,” he said, in a withering tone.

“Oh, that Mrs. Pruitt,” I said. “I thought you meant someone living.”

“I am the world’s leading scholar of Mrs. Pruitt’s oeuvre,” he said, sounding slightly offended.

Ginevra Brakenridge Pruitt was a late-nineteenth-century poet whose name had been largely (and justifiably) forgotten outside her hometown of Caerphilly. She’d probably have been forgotten here as well if she hadn’t inherited a whacking great fortune from her robber baron father and doled out large portions of it to the college over the years in return for naming buildings after her and various members of her family.

“I heard a rumor that Gordon had acquired a cache of Mrs. Pruitt’s papers,” Schmidt went on. “I wanted to find out if it was true.”

“And was it?”

“I still don’t know for sure,” he said. “I went into the barn to talk to him privately, but it was a waste of time. He was noncommittal. I suspect if he had the papers, he was probably putting out feelers to find out where he could get top dollar for them.”

“Didn’t that make you mad?” I asked.

“Irritated, perhaps,” he said. “But, of course, I knew he’d have to come back to me eventually.”

“When he figured out there was nowhere else he could sell them,” I said, nodding. “Not if he wanted to get top dollar for them,” I added, hastily, seeing the offended look on his face. “I mean, he should have known that no one could possibly match your dedication and commitment to Mrs. Pruitt’s legacy.”

“Yes,” Schmidt said. “We did some verbal sparring—he refused to admit he had any papers, and at the same time, kept asking me to estimate what they’d be worth if he did have them. As if I could put a value on something I’d never seen. I lost patience and left. Not a very good atmosphere for a negotiation anyway. He was clearly itching to get back to the yard sale. I thought I’d talk to him later.”

“Too bad,” I said. “Guess you’ll have quite a wait now.”

“Why?” he asked, frowning.

“The police won’t release anything of Gordon’s until they’ve solved his murder, will they?” I said. “It could be weeks, even months. To say nothing of the delay until the estate goes through probate and you can start dealing with whoever inherits.”

Schmidt smiled.

“Mrs. Pruitt has been dead nearly a century,” he said, in a lofty tone. “I think I can wait a few more months to find out about these papers. If there are any papers to begin with. That’s just the sort of rumor Gordon would have loved starting.”

“And the murderer’s done you a favor, too, hasn’t he?” I said.

Schmidt looked startled again.

“Favor?” he said.

“Hard to think of anyone who wouldn’t be easier to deal with than Gordon, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Quite,” he said, with a dry chuckle. “Now, about my car …”

I took down the SUV’s license plate—as it happened it was neither black nor blue, but a dark green Ford Expedition—and returned to make a few announcements to the crowd. I offered Schmidt a glass of lemonade, on the house, while he waited, but he declined. He seemed relieved to see me walk away.

He was anxious about something. Or hiding something. I’d made him visibly nervous a couple of times, but he’d recovered, which probably meant I wasn’t asking the right questions. I made a mental note to see what Michael knew about him. Could there be some juicy departmental scandal involving Arnold Schmidt that would crack the whole case wide open?

Chapter 18

I borrowed the police bullhorn and strolled around announcing the SUV’s license plate number and politely asking the owner to move it. At first, I didn’t mind the excuse to wander around and see what everyone was up to. But about halfway through my second circumnavigation of the fence, my stomach growled, and I realized I was starving. My mellow attitude abruptly changed to annoyance at the inconsiderate SUV owner. So I reworded my announcement. Instead of “Will you please return to your vehicle and move it so others can leave,” I began saying. “This is your last chance to move your vehicle before the tow truck arrives.” Almost immediately, a stout, red-faced man sprinted toward the road. I deduced that I had accomplished my mission, so I headed for the grills to pick up a burger for lunch—although it was getting closer to dinner time, so I made it two burgers.

“Meg?”

I turned, still chewing my first mouthful of burger, to find Cousin Sidney standing before me with a reproachful look on his face.

“You called another towing service? When you knew I was here?”

Fortunately, with my mouth full, I couldn’t easily utter my first response—that even if I had the slightest idea which of Mother’s hundreds of relatives were here, I wouldn’t necessarily have remembered that one of them currently ran a towing service. By the time I finished chewing and swallowing, tact had returned.

“There you are!” I exclaimed. “No, I didn’t call another towing service, because I knew you were around here someplace, and I figured I’d run into you before too long. There’s such a crowd here that people who want to leave are starting to get blocked in by the new arrivals.”

“I can take care of that,” Sidney said, beaming.

Of course, I was wary of just towing cars without any posted signs warning of the possibility—just my luck that we’d tow a newly fledged lawyer who wanted practical experience in litigation—but Cousin Sidney happily agreed to tow a few of the family cars back and forth at random intervals, and after his first few passes, I saw people heading for the road, so I figured our tactic was working. I also noticed fewer Grouchos, Nixons, and Draculas in the crowd—apparently people were realizing that the yard sale wasn’t starting up again soon and shedding their unneeded costumes.

“Meg, can I have some money for a funnel cake?”

I looked down to see Eric gazing up at me plaintively, as if the prospect of a funnel cake was the only thing that gave him the strength to continue.

“I’d give you the money, but where on earth are you going to buy a funnel cake?” I asked. “This isn’t the county fair, you know.”

“The funnel cake truck is out front,” he said. “And the Sno-Cone stand, too. Come and see!”

I followed him around to the other side of the house where, indeed, a brightly painted funnel cake truck and a mobile Sno-Cone stand had set up and were dispensing their wares to a long line of customers.

“Can I have one? Please?”

I handed over the money for a funnel cake. Eric looked at it dubiously.

“What about Frankie?” he asked. “Can’t he have one, too?”

“He can’t share yours?”

“He’s our guest!” Eric said. “Wouldn’t it be more polite to let him have his own funnel cake?”

“Okay,” I said. “But you’ll have to hit up someone else for Sno-Cones.”

“Oh, Frankie’s grandma is getting us those,” Eric said. “Thanks, Meg!”

Nice to know I wasn’t the only soft touch in town.

“That was a good idea,” said Dad, who happened to be standing nearby.

“Giving the boys another sugar high?” I said. “Since it’s Rob watching them, not me, I suppose so.”

“No, I meant having the food vendors come out,” Dad said.

“And compete with the family run concession?”

“I don’t think it will hurt,” Dad said. “Your cousins already have more customers than they can keep up with.”

“Maybe I’ll have a funnel cake, then, if it won’t look disloyal,” I said. “I wish I could take credit, but the funnel cake and Sno-Cone people appeared on their own.”

“Probably similar to the way flies and carrion beetles appear on a dead body,” Dad said, nodding. “It only takes minutes for the faint odor of beginning decay to attract scavenger insects.”

“I would have said the way ants find a picnic,” I said. “Maybe I’ll wait on the funnel cake.”

“I think I’ll indulge,” Dad said, and joined the funnel cake line.

You’d think I’d have gotten used to Dad’s metaphors by now, I thought, with a sigh.

I spotted Cousin Rosemary. She’d been one of the people I’d had to turn down when they asked to join the yard sale at the last minute. Apparently she’d brought her stuff anyway, and now that the real yard sale was unavailable, had set up a booth in our front yard, near the Sno-Cones and the funnel-cake, between an aunt selling quilts and Horace’s ex-girlfriend Darlene, who crocheted afghans in remarkably loud colors. I glanced around, and saw that several other card tables had appeared, like mushrooms after a rain. A black market yard sale and craft fair was growing up outside the gates of the one still held captive by the police.

Well, like the food, it would be something else to keep people entertained until we could let them back into the yard sale. And maybe Not-Rosemary was still selling the bath oils and bath salts she’d started making when she discovered aromatherapy. I actually liked some of her bath concoctions. And I realized that she’d hung a sign at the front of her booth with her new name conveniently blazoned across it: ROSE NOIR.

Unless that was the name of her business. I stopped in front of her table.

“Rose Noir,” I said. I figured if that was her new name, she’d think I was greeting her, and if it wasn’t, she’d just assume I was reading her sign.

“Yes—do you like it?” she asked.

“Very nice,” I said, while reaching into my pocket for the notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe.

“I think I’ve finally found a name that really captures the true essence of my nature,” she said.

“Yes, it certainly does,” I said, while scribbling a memorandum to myself: “Note: Rosemary = Rose Noir” and today’s date. “You’re still selling the bath oils, I see.”

I picked up a jar of her lavender-scented bath oil.

“How much for these?”

She frowned.

“Here,” she said. “Try this instead.”

She tried to hand me something called “Scheherazade.” I could tell from the name, without even reading the label, that it would be dripping with musk.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’d rather have the lavender. Lavender’s good for dealing with stress, remember? And that’s certainly something I have plenty of today. Stress, I mean, not lavender. I’m all out of lavender.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t sell you that. I just don’t see you as a person who should be using lavender.”