The Real MacAw (12 page)

“Interesting,” I said. “But what does it have to do with you not having a complete alibi?”

“Clarence sent me back to his office to get more crates,” Rob said. “It took a while to find them and load them. I didn’t get back till a quarter of eleven, just before Dad and Grandpa got there. So for the first hour or so that Grandpa said we were all together, actually we weren’t. He and Dad were, and he probably thinks Clarence and I were, too. But we weren’t, so I don’t have an alibi for all of that time.”

“And neither does Clarence,” I pointed out. “And I expect nine thirty to ten thirty won’t be the critical part of the alibi. After all, Parker was supposed to meet you at midnight, maybe a quarter hour’s drive away. Why would he go to his truck before eleven thirty or so?”

“You’re right!” Relief washed over Rob’s face. “So I don’t have to tell the chief!”

“No, you should still tell the chief,” I said. “He’s unlikely to suspect you, but the more he knows about what happened the night of the murder, the better his chance of solving it. While we’re on the subject of what happened that night, why the melodramatic midnight rendezvous at the graveyard?”

“Parker said he couldn’t meet us any earlier,” Rob said. “And of course once we set the meeting for midnight, Dad insisted on the graveyard.”

“Of course,” I said. “What I meant was, why the rendezvous in the first place? Why not just drive Parker’s truck up to the shelter and load the animals directly? Wouldn’t that have saved a lot of fuss and bother?”

“Beats me,” Rob said, with his characteristic shrug. “Maybe everyone was afraid people would start to wonder if they saw that big furniture store truck backed up to the shelter loading dock.”

“No, not a lot of fine furniture deliveries to the shelter,” I said. “Of course, there were a bunch of smaller trucks there.”

“Two pickups and a van,” Rob said. “I bet every other vehicle in the county’s either a pickup or a van. Maybe Parker wanted a buffer between him and the actual burglary.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Still—meeting at midnight to load the truck. Maybe you and Clarence are night owls, but it’s hard on Dad and Grandfather. Did he give a reason why he couldn’t meet you earlier?”

“No.” Rob snickered slightly. “He was a little secretive about it. We all figured he had a date or something.”

“A pity he was secretive,” I said. “If he’d boasted a bit, maybe you’d know who killed him.”

Rob nodded.

“So tell the chief,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “First chance I get.”

He began loping off, half following Tinkerbell and half pulled by her.

Should I tell the chief myself?

Probably best to give Rob a few more hours.

And what if I was wrong about when Parker went to his truck? What if the time of death fell within the window of time when neither Rob nor Clarence was alibied?

No matter how unlikely I found the idea of either of them killing Parker, if their alibis failed, the chief would have to consider them suspects. The chief would know that Rob had been interested in a woman romantically involved with the victim—he’d have to wonder if the murder was the result of a lethal love triangle. And I had no idea what Clarence’s relationship with Parker had been.

Damn.

I looked around to see if I could spot any of the bison. No such luck. And even if I had spotted any, I wasn’t sure they’d work their usual magic on my mood.

Though I did rejoice to see that the llamas had clustered by the fence and were spitting vigorously, using the surveyor’s SUV as their target. I made a mental note to reward them each with an apple or two for an evening snack.

I called Cousin Festus’s cell phone number and left a message on his voice mail. Then I turned and strode back toward the house.

Chapter 10

I was still fuming as I threaded my way through the sheds and the shrubbery that cluttered our yard.

Chill, I told myself. I needed to find something to distract me until Cousin Festus called back. I made a quick stab at seeing the place through the surveyors’ eyes. The house, I decided, didn’t look bad. It was all the sheds, plus the general lack of anything even beginning to approach landscaping. All the more irritating that Randall Shiffley and his two workmen were busily making repairs on one of the largest and most ramshackle of the sheds. We were already having a hard time deciding if that particular shed should go or stay. Now we’d probably feel obliged to renovate it to go with the new roof. Far better to tear it down altogether. It blocked the best view. If it were out of the way I might occasionally catch a glimpse of the bison from the kitchen window. It was time to thin the shed herd.

I spent the next hour cleaning as if spit and polish alone could save the house. By the time I had the nursery and several of the bedrooms tidy and gleaming again, I felt much calmer. Especially after Cousin Festus called and promised he wouldn’t wait for Monday to start finding out exactly who had designs on our property.

“As it happens, I’m down in Yorktown right now, visiting Mom and Dad. Would you like me to run up to Caerphilly tomorrow to strategize about this?”

“That would be excellent,” I said.

I strode downstairs feeling reinvigorated and determined. Mother was sitting at the kitchen table, looking poised and elegant as usual. She was supervising as Rose Noire and one of the other Corsicans made more sandwiches.

“But the barn is so … dirty,” Mother was saying. “Should the boys really be spending so much time out there?”

“It’s all right,” Rose Noire said over one shoulder. “Studies have shown that children raised in an environment with at least one animal have better immune systems and a lower incidence of asthma.”

“Great,” I said. “The boys will grow up healthy as horses with this menagerie around. Even in the short term,” I added, lest anyone think I was volunteering our barn for long-term animal shelter duty.

“What’s wrong, dear?” Mother asked. “You look pale. Do you need an aspirin?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Hungry, but fine.”

Rose Noire took the hint and handed me a ham sandwich.

“Thanks.” I took an enormous bite and closed my eyes to savor it.

“You still look stressed,” Mother said.

Luckily chewing allowed me time to think about my answer. Should I tell her about the surveyors? Perhaps better to wait until I heard what Cousin Festus could learn. Ask her if she thought the place looked blighted? She’d probably use my question as an excuse to foist off some new furniture on us.

But then an idea struck me.

“Mother,” I said. “I have a decorating project for you.”

She blinked slightly and peered at me as if suddenly unsure who I was.

“You’re not interested?” I asked.

“Of course I’m interested, dear,” she said. “I’m just rather surprised. Normally I have to nag you to take an interest in your home.”

“Well, I’m taking an interest now. Let me show you.”

I led her out onto the back porch. It was large for a back porch, six feet by twelve feet, and largely empty.

“Yes,” she said, recovering enough to look around with something more resembling her usual critical eye. “Yes, there’s a lot we need to—er, could do here. You want me to tackle the deck?”

I glanced around. I wouldn’t have called it a deck. It was a plain slab of concrete. I’d just have said stoop instead of porch if it hadn’t been so large. But if Mother thought “deck” a more elegant term, who was I to argue?

“Yes, the deck to start with,” I said. “But why stop there? We need to do something about the whole yard.”

I spread my arms wide as if embracing the space, then strode toward the side yard.

“The yard? But that’s really landscaping.”

“Outdoor decorating,” I said, as I rounded the corner of the house and headed for the front yard. I was trying to see my surroundings through unfriendly eyes and finding more and more to wince at. “You’re always saying how important the foyer is, that it gives your guests their first view of the house. Well, that’s not quite accurate. Before they get to the foyer, they have to walk down the front walk, through the yard. And look at it!”

I was striding through the front yard by now, with Mother close behind. I stopped to survey my surroundings. So did she. She was still a little taken aback.

“When you come down to it, it’s the largest space of all,” I said. “And it’s virtually untouched. We need to deal with those overgrown hedges in the front yard. Plant something along the front walk. Maybe replace the front walk with something nicer. And don’t forget the backyard. All these sheds and outbuildings look so junky. We need to spruce them up or get rid of them! Move some of them to better locations so they don’t block the view.”

“We could do that.” She still sounded dubious.

“We need an outdoor foyer in the front yard! An outdoor dining room there!” I gestured toward the side yard. “An outdoor living room … somewhere! An outdoor playroom for the boys! And the pool—it needs to be an outdoor party space. A safe, kid-friendly outdoor party space.”

“Yes,” she said. The word “room” seemed to revive her spirits. “Yes. This should be interesting. My first real venture into outdoor decorating!”

“And Dad can help with the plants,” I said. “What he doesn’t know about plants isn’t worth knowing.”

Mother nodded, absently.

“So you’ll draw up some plans?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded absent. Clearly she was already hard at work. She turned and went back inside.

Maybe it didn’t make sense, revving Mother up to decorate something we might be in grave danger of losing. But it made sense to me. By the time Mother finished with it, there was no way anyone could possibly call our yard blighted. Over the top, maybe, but not blighted. I felt a surge of power, as if I’d just put a stake in the ground to tell the encircling forces of development, “Not here!”

“Hey, Meg!”

It was Randall, waving at me from atop the macaw shed. I strolled over to see what he wanted. As I did, it occurred to me that maybe I should have him give me an estimate on painting the house. Better yet, I should ask him what repairs he thought we needed to make the house look first rate.

And I also remembered that half the county board was made up of Randall’s family, and the rest was mostly people whose grandparents had gone to school with his. Surely if the developers wanted to seize our land through eminent domain, they’d have to go to the county board, not the town council. And the county board wouldn’t do that—would they?

By the time I reached the shed, Randall had climbed down from the roof and was standing with crossed arms, supervising a cousin who was continuing the work.

“You still working on figuring out how Parker was murdered?” he asked.

Okay, I hadn’t been, but if that was what Randall wanted to talk about, I didn’t mind. I was curious, and maybe it would give me an opening to work the conversation around to see what Randall knew about the surveyors and which way he thought his relatives on the board would jump.

“I’m not trying to do the chief’s job,” I said aloud.

“’Course not.” He sounded amused, as if he didn’t really believe me.

“But I am curious,” I said. “Someone suggested Parker was killed by one of his former girlfriends. Or possibly one of their husbands or boyfriends.”

Randall chuckled softly.

“It’s possible,” he said. “More than possible. The man got around, I’ll give him that. But I’m wondering if maybe they want us to think that.”

“They? You mean whoever did it?”

“I mean the powers that be in town,” he said. “I have a feeling maybe someone doesn’t want the chief to look past Parker’s love life.”

“I think the chief’s smart enough and stubborn enough to keep looking till he finds the truth,” I said. “And what do you think he’s going to find?”

“I think Parker was about to be a whistle-blower.”

“A whistle-blower about what?”

“Remember that whole town beautification project?” he said. “The one that was supposed to turn Caerphilly into a major tourist destination?”

“The one where they went around putting down cobblestones in streets that weren’t built until long after cobblestones went out of style?”

“The cobblestones, the gas streetlights, the miles of split-rail fence.” He snorted and shook his head. “Maybe if they’d picked one historical era and tried to stay authentic to it.”

“I didn’t realize they were trying for historical authenticity,” I said. “I thought they were just trying to pretty everything up. A lot of that work was done over in the ritzy part of town, and it’s pretty hard to make the houses over there look like anything but McMansions with pools and tennis courts.”

“They wanted to go for historical accuracy,” he said. “But that plan ran aground on the fact that up until the late eighteen hundreds, there wasn’t really anything here. Maybe twelve houses surrounded by a few thousand acres of cow pasture. So they went in for prettifying the town center. And I guess they succeeded.”

“Succeeded in prettifying all the character out of it,” I said. “Looks like hundreds of gentrified town centers all across the country.”

“Maybe that’s why the tourist traffic they were expecting never materialized.”

“Yes, we Virginians are reasonably picky about our history,” I said. “We’ve got too much of the real thing to be fooled by some developer’s plastic imitation. But fascinating as this all is, what does it have to do with Parker’s murder?”

“We tried to raise a red flag when that project went through,” Randall said. “Me and some of my cousins. But no one wanted to believe us. Mayor Pruitt made it look like sour grapes because they brought in an outside firm for the construction work instead of hiring us. Nothing came of it. No one believed us. Then Parker started poking around.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is he a Shiffley relative?”

Randall shook his head.

“Parker’s people are all gone now,” he said. “They came here and opened that furniture store right after the war.”

“The Civil War?” I asked.

“World War II,” Randall said, giving me an odd look.

“You never know around here,” I said. “So if he’s not a Shiffley, what was his interest in the beautification project?”