Owls Well That Ends Well (7 page)

She drifted off, beaming cheerfully at everyone she passed. I wonder if it would eventually occur to her that the sellers couldn’t get rid of their cosmically blighted stuff unless some other poor soul bought it. Did the buyers get the seller’s negative energy along with the stuff, or did being sold reset an item’s karma count to zero?

But she had helped me realize why the sellers were so happy: they were removing unwanted burdens from their lives. Okay, some of them thought it was more about making money than dry cleaning their chi, but surely even they were starting to feel not just richer but lighter and freer.

I had a harder time understanding why the buyers were so happy, but as Mother frequently remarked, I hadn’t inherited her shopping gene. I decided to assume that everything the customers were carrying around would meet some long-felt want. Better yet, some dire need that their perilous finances would never have allowed them to meet if not for our yard sale. That would solve the karma count problem, too.

Of course, I kept spotting the occasional person who threatened to overturn my newly created illusion—what long-felt want or dire need could my elderly aunt Catriona have for a fully functional crossbow and a video on firming her buns? I pushed the thought out of my mind.

And I also saw a few people who seemed genuinely upset by something. I tried to suppress the urge to go and ask them what was wrong. No matter how much I wanted everyone to have a lovely time at the yard sale it wasn’t my responsibility to make it happen. I couldn’t fix everyone’s problems. I shouldn’t even try.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Cousin Morris a few minutes later.

“I think it’s over,” he said, his words slightly muffled because his head was buried in his hands. “The passion has gone out of our marriage.”

Too much information, I thought, and scrambled for the right thing to say. Cousin Morris was a pleasant, mild-mannered man with gently receding hair and a gently growing tummy. Cousin Ginnie, his wife, was responsible for the tummy. She was a plump, cheerful woman whose life revolved around cooking, thanks to her career as the dessert chef for an upscale Williamsburg restaurant. They were older than I was—in their fifties—but I was fond of Morris and Ginnie, and never passed up their dinner invitations. Still, I didn’t think of them as close friends. Why was Morris confiding in me? Or was he going around saying the same thing to everyone he met? That didn’t sound like Morris.

And I had to admit that if I had to pick a word to describe their marriage, “passion” wouldn’t be the first thing that came to mind. It wouldn’t come to mind at all. “Comfortable, though slightly boring” would have been my diagnosis—the sort of relationship so many married people fall into after a while. Did this have anything to do with my inexplicable reluctance to take the plunge with Michael? The fear that we’d eventually settle into comfortable-but-boring?

Cousin Morris didn’t seem either comfortable or bored at the moment. He looked miserable. He had raised his head to stare at something.

I followed his glance, and my jaw dropped. I knew Cousin Ginnie had taken a table for the yard sale but, until now, I hadn’t inspected her wares—the most incredible collection of racy lingerie I’d ever seen outside of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. As I watched, she took a pouf of black and fuchsia lace from a shopper half her age, demonstrated that the young woman had been holding it upside down, and gestured, with the same sweet smile she used when urging you to have another scoop of freshly whipped cream on your chocolate soufflé, toward the small tent that served as a dressing room.

“Oh, my,” I said.

“You see,” Morris said, shaking his head. “It’s as if she’s auctioning off our marriage, one romantic moment at a time. I thought she loved my little presents.”

“Oh, they’re all presents from you?” I said.

“So many wonderful Christmases, birthdays, anniversaries,” he intoned.

“That’s very sweet,” I said.

“Mother’s Days, Valentines Days, Easters, Halloweens, Thankgivings, Fourth of Julys, May Days, April Fool’s Days, summer and winter solistices …”

I had to admire Cousin Morris’s romanticism, though if I were Ginnie, I’d have tried to channel him into a more diverse range of gift ideas. Still, his heart was in the right place, I thought, as he progressed from holidays to special occasions.

“ … and graduations, and back-to-school weeks. Promotions, and awards, and of course as a welcome home whenever I return from a trip …”

Every trip? Morris spent about half his work life on the road.

“I think it’s wonderful,” I said. “But don’t you think that perhaps she might have decided she has too much … um …”

“How can you have too much love?” Cousin Morris asked, sounding slightly shocked. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose vigorously.

I wanted to suggest that even if you couldn’t have too much love, you could definitely have too many black lace negligees trimmed with marabou feathers. But before I could figure out how to say it tactfully, he wandered off, still shaking his head and muttering softly.

I should do something, I thought, but nothing came to mind, so I made a mental note to worry about it later. Considering what a hard time I had remembering mental notes just now, this amounted to the same thing as deciding not to worry about it, only with less guilt.

As I turned to leave, I noticed a nun shopping at Cousin Ginnie’s booth. Of course, given the costume discount, she probably wasn’t a real nun, but it was still disconcerting to see her perched on the counter, her habit hiked up well over her knees as she tried on a pair of fishnet stockings.

“Everything going okay?” I asked Michael, when I arrived back at the checkout counter.

“Just dandy,” Michael said. “Your out-of-town relations will never grow bored while I’m around. In the past hour alone they’ve asked if I’ve ever been married before, was I breast-fed, and what were my College Board scores.”

“Good grief,” I said. “Just tell them to mind their own business.”

“I just say ‘not recently’ or ‘I don’t remember,’ whichever fits my mood,” he said. “That keeps them happy.”

“Apart from that, how’s everything going?”

Mrs. Fenniman shook the cash box at me. I took this to mean it was filling up. Michael, who had a much better sense of my priorities, pointed to a man staggering away from the checkout counter with three large boxes of stuff. I smiled. Yes, stuff was leaving. Lots of stuff.

I took a deep breath. Maybe everything would turn out fine after all.

“Meg?”

I turned to find Dad and a man I didn’t recognize, carrying a large trunk toward the cashier’s table. I noticed several customers already in line glaring at them, and heard a few mutinous comments about people waiting their turns. In fact, the whole crowd was beginning to mutter.

I decided to avert trouble by meeting the trunk procession before it reached the checkout table.

“There’s a line, you know,” I said to the man.

“This lady wants to buy the trunk,” Dad said.

“But only if you can find the key,” said a short, blonde woman, appearing from behind the trunk. “It’s no use to me if I can’t even get it open.”

The mutinous comments from the line were growing louder.

“It had a key when we put it out,” I said, frowning. “Did you look around where you found the trunk?”

“Someone had dragged it into the barn,” Dad said.

“Gordon-you-thief,” I said, nodding. “Put it down while we look for the key. No, don’t block the cashier’s line—it could take us some time to find the key.”

Following my gestures, Dad and the other man maneuvered the trunk down behind the cashiers’ tables, into the small roped-off area we’d set aside so we’d have a place to put our own stuff and hide from the customers.

Pacified, the customers in line grew quiet again. For now.

The man dropped his end before Dad did, and I heard something thump inside the trunk.

“We definitely need the key before I can sell you the trunk,” I said. “It was empty when we put it out; the price doesn’t include the contents, whatever they are.”

“I don’t want the contents,” the woman said, with a sniff. “I didn’t put them there. I just want the trunk. In working order. With a key.”

She’s a customer, I told myself. I tried to smile, and then decided not to bother; the Groucho mustache hid my mouth anyway, and the smile wasn’t likely to reach my eyes.

“Dad, could you go and see if you can find Gordon McCoy,” I said. “The jerk probably locked some stuff he wanted into the trunk and took away the key.”

The woman remained, tapping her foot and looking pointedly at her watch while Dad and Rob went up and down the aisles, looking for Gordon. I began to worry. What was Gordon trying to pull? I didn’t think there was any way he could get out of the yard sale area without our seeing him—certainly not with anything valuable. Anyway, despite the nickname, literal larceny wasn’t really Gordon’s style, only sharp business practices.

“Maybe he went to lunch,” Dad suggested, returning after his third or fourth sweep through the grounds. “But I got these from your cousin Fred’s table. I suspect those trunk keys don’t have too many variations—see if any of these fit.”

He handed me a shoebox full of keys—probably several hundred of them, in a variety of sizes—and dashed off again.

Cursing Gordon-you-thief under my breath, I sat down beside the trunk with the shoebox in my lap and began trying keys. The metal plate around the keyhole was slightly scratched. It hadn’t been when I’d put it out, which meant that she’d probably tried to pick or force the lock before bringing the trunk to me. A fact I’d bring up if, as I anticipated, she tried using the scratches to dicker over the price when I finally got the damned thing open.

To my complete astonishment, the seventeenth key I tried actually fit.

“Victory!” I exclaimed.

“It’s about time,” the woman who wanted to buy the trunk exclaimed.

I heaved the lid up and looked inside.

“It’s Gordon,” I said.

“Yes, he’s probably the one who locked the trunk,” Michael said, over his shoulder. “What did he put inside?”

“No, I don’t think he locked the trunk,” I said. “I mean, it’s Gordon inside the trunk.”

Chapter 8

“Gordon?” Michael exclaimed, leaping up from his chair. “In the trunk? Is he—?”

“Definitely,” I said. “I think his head’s bashed in.”

I hoped I sounded calm. I’d seen dead bodies before, and as a doctor’s daughter, I like to think I have a pretty strong stomach. But there’s a difference between hearing your father prattle on at the dinner table about dead bodies, real or on the pages of the mystery books he loves, and finding one in your own backyard. I inhaled deeply, as my yoga teacher always recommended in moments of stress, and then decided to postpone further deep breathing until later. Even through the reek of Gordon’s aftershave, I could smell the unmistakable odor of blood.

Gordon’s red pirate bandanna was askew, revealing his thinning, straw-colored hair, and both bandanna and hair were clotted with clumps of darker red.

“Someone probably hit him with that bookend,” Michael said, pointing to an object lying at the other end of the trunk, by Gordon’s feet.

“Oh, damn,” I muttered. The last time I’d seen that owl-shaped bookend, Giles had been carrying it.

The woman who wanted to buy the trunk looked in, shrieked, and fainted. I looked around. The people in line hadn’t been paying much attention to what I was doing before, but now, thanks to the unconscious woman, they were starting to gawk.

“Shut the trunk,” I said, and then followed my own orders. “Mrs. Fenniman, can you take care of her? We need to keep people behind the ropes—maybe if they don’t see what’s happened we won’t have a panic. And can someone go tell Dad not to let anyone in the barn?”

“We should call the police,” Michael said.

“No need to call,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “I saw Chief Burke a few minutes ago, looking over some fishing gear at Professor Hutson’s table. Shall I get him?”

“I’ll do it, and then enlist Meg’s dad,” Michael said, shoving back his Groucho mask as he turned. “You make sure no one leaves the scene of the crime.”

“Will do,” I said.

Not hard, since the only people planning to leave were the dozen standing in the checkout line, and at least for the moment, most of them seemed enthralled at having a front row view of what would doubtless be the most exciting thing to happen in Caerphilly in months.

Though they didn’t know about the murder just yet. At the moment, they were watching Mrs. Fenniman minister to the fallen customer. Some of them looked puzzled—probably the ones who knew that the Heimlich maneuver wasn’t necessary or even useful in cases of fainting. Of course, Mrs. Fenniman knew that, too, but she’d been dying to practice the technique ever since Dad had taught her how a few weeks ago. Thank goodness he hadn’t yet taught her how to perform a tracheotomy.

I scanned the crowd, looking for Giles. I couldn’t imagine him killing anyone, and I suspected he’d absentmindedly set the owl bookend down someplace. If he could remember where, that might help us—correction, help Chief Burke—identify the killer.

“I’m off duty, you know,” said a mellow baritone voice at my elbow.

“Chief Burke, thank—” I began, and then my mouth fell open. Apparently the chief had decided to take advantage of the costume discount—if not for the familiar voice, I’d never have recognized him. He wore a black leather coat, wraparound shades, and at least a foot of glossy Afro. Was he supposed to be Shaft, I wondered. I thought Shaft was bald, though, so I wasn’t sure who Chief Burke was impersonating, but he dwarfed the miniature Darth Vader who stood beside him, tugging on his hand.

“If you have a shoplifting problem, I can have one of the duty officers cruise by,” he said.

“It’s not a shoplifting problem,” I said. “It’s a murder problem. I thought you’d want to be the first to know.”

I’d spoken too loudly. I could hear gasps and whispers from the people in line, and several of them ran off, presumably to tell their friends.