Owls Well That Ends Well Part 24

That might help. Though I thought managing not to be around when Mr. Early discovered the interlopers was an even better plan.

Chapter 32.

The bad thing about the chaos currently infesting our yard, and now spilling over onto the neighbors' property, was that no one was in charge. Though there were still a few people around-mostly my relatives-who held on to the delusion that I was in charge, and could fix their problems and answer their questions.

The good thing was that these misguided souls were far outnumbered by people who didn't know me from Adam and didn't expect a d.a.m.n thing of me. That was a comforting thought.

Probably a good idea to make myself scarce till things quieted down. And maybe when Chief Burke returned from his burglary investigation I could get him to clear out the squatters.

On the other hand, if we could just get him to open up the yard sale again, we'd have more customers than we'd ever dreamed of.

Michael reappeared, with Dad at his side.

"I ran into your Dad," he said. "You were right-sheep. Some special kind that grows expensive Yuppie wool."

"Isn't it wonderful?" Dad said, beaming.

"The sheep?" I asked. "What's so wonderful about them? I bet they're just as clueless as ordinary sheep."

"No, this!" Dad exclaimed, flinging his arms out with enthusiasm.

"Your dad is enjoying the yard sale," Michael explained.

"It's certainly surpa.s.sed my expectations," I said.

"Meg, do you suppose it would work if we have a modest admission fee next year?" Dad asked. "If we charge even as little as a dollar, we could probably fund our SPOOR operations for an entire year."

"You can charge as much as you like the next time we have a yard sale," I said.

"Excellent!" Dad said, and walked off beaming.

"We're having another yard sale next year?" Michael asked.

"I'd sooner reenact Lady G.o.diva's ride," I said. "Down fraternity row. You'll notice I said 'next time,' not 'next year.'"

"Ah," Michael said, nodding. "That sounds more like it. Though we may need to have another sale if we decide to use your mother's designs for the house."

"No," I said. "We are not selling off all our stuff to buy chintz or Louis Quatorze or whatever crazy stuff Mother's excited about this week."

"Well, wait till you see her drawings," Michael said. "I think she's finally trying to listen to what we want."

"Listening to what we want is nice, but designing something we can live with is quite another thing," I said. "Besides, what if what we want is to be left alone to muddle through decorating on our own?"

"Then we'll tell her thanks, but no thanks," he said, with a laugh. "After all, she can't bully us into redecorating. I'll go see what I can do about the trespa.s.sers."

With that, he headed off again in the direction of Mr. Early's field. I shook my head. Obviously, he still didn't know Mother well enough.

I could worry about Mother later. Right now, I wanted to talk to Ralph Endicott. I even spotted him, standing across the yard. But as I was walking toward him, I saw Chief Burke coming toward me, a stern scowl on his face. I tried to look innocent, helpful, and glad to see him, while my brain raced to figure out what I could have done that would bring him all the way out here in such a bad mood. If he'd talked to the Hummel lady already, he should be pleased at what I'd found, not mad at me.

And why not simply tell him what I'd learned from Schmidt, sic him on Endicott, and be done with it?

I was opening my mouth to spill the beans but the chief spoke first.

"My people tell me they're finished in there," he said, nodding his head toward the fenced-in yard sale area. "So I thought I'd come out and tell you that if you want to reopen your yard sale, it's fine with us."

Before he even finished speaking a murmur went through the crowd. Half of the people stampeded toward the gate to the yard sale while the other half began shoving to get closer to where the chief and I were standing. And I suspected they didn't have too many questions to ask him.

"You didn't have to come all the way out here to tell us," I said. "You could have just called." I didn't add that it would have been a lot easier for me if he'd told me over the phone, where no one else could overhear him. Now we had to gather everyone and everything we needed to reopen with several hundred people underfoot asking why it was taking so long.

"Had to bring Minerva out, didn't I?" the chief said, glancing at the plump figure following him down the walk. "G.o.d forbid that the fool thing could open even five minutes before she got here," he added, raising his voice. "Someone else might beat her to another confounded piece of Depression gla.s.s."

"You hush up and let the poor girl go take care of everything she has to do to open up again," Minerva Burke said. "And you might round up some of your men to help with crowd control, now that you've just blurted out your news in public and riled everyone up."

Chief Burke's frown deepened as he stomped off and issued orders to the various officers still on the scene.

"Men," Mrs. Burke said to me, shaking her head. "Makes you wonder where they all were the day the good Lord handed out common sense, doesn't it?"

I decided I liked Mrs. Burke.

"Of course, there's some of them better than others," she went on. "Don't you shilly-shally around too long over that young man of yours, now. He's a keeper, and if you don't do something about it, someone else will."

Of course, I might like Mrs. Burke better from a slight distance.

"Would you like to have some lemonade while you wait?" I asked, pointing to an area near the back door where Mother and several of her cronies had set up lawn chairs and folding umbrellas and were sipping lemonade and iced tea while observing the crowd's antics.

"Thank you, sugar," she said. "I believe I would."

It didn't occur to me until a few minutes too late that introducing the formidable Mrs. Burke to Mother might be a mistake. Not that they wouldn't hit it off. When I glanced over a few minutes later, I saw unmistakable signs that they were hitting it off far too well. And possibly plotting together. One of the things I liked most about Caerphilly was its location-close enough to Yorktown that I could see my parents as often as I liked, but far enough that they wouldn't be underfoot quite all the time. The last thing I wanted was Mother establishing a satellite office in my backyard, and I began to fear that she'd found just the ally to run it.

Not something I could worry about right now. It was eleven-forty. We needed to get this thing rolling.

I fled inside the fence to organize things, leaving Officer Sammy and Cousin Horace to guard the gate.

"Rob!" I called. "Get Sammy to give you the bullhorn and walk around announcing that we're opening at noon."

"Roger," he said, looking quite cheerful, as he usually did when he drew a job that required no strenuous exertion.

"And tell everyone who has a table to get in here ASAP, and everyone else to stay the h.e.l.l away from the gate until noon," I added.

"Though not necessarily in those precise words," Michael suggested. "Any jobs for me?"

"Could you secure the barn?" I asked. "We don't want hundreds of people tramping through and trying to take pictures of the murder scene."

"Can do," he said.

With most of the friends and family on site helping and the rest quickly learning to make themselves scarce, we staffed the tables and set up the checkout by noon. I gave Sammy a nod and he and Cousin Horace opened the gates.

My last thought, as the shopping hordes descended, was that perhaps by the time I could think again, the chief would have solved the murder, and poor Giles would be free.

I thought, with a twinge of guilt, he might have an easier time of it if I'd had the chance to tell him about Schmidt and Endicott.

The next two hours lasted at least ten years. Each. But eventually Michael and Dad convinced everyone that nothing they could say or do would gain them admission to the barn. After that, the mere sightseers left in a huff; the media retreated to various corners of the yard, trying to look inconspicuous, in the hope that we'd forget they were there and leave the barn unguarded; and the rest of the crowd settled in to do what they were there for: to shop till they dropped. Only a few of them did it literally, due to overexertion in the sun, and Dad was there to revive them. But many more were staggering under the sheer weight of their purchases, and my teenaged nephews and their friends found a lucrative new business opportunity: carrying boxes to people's cars and trucks.

I could see all sorts of small family dramas shaping up. Did Aunt Cleo's sons know she was selling their paintball guns? And did Mother know that Dad was buying them for Eric and his brothers?

Why was Aunt Verbena, who lived in a high-rise condominium with her seven cats, buying several birdhouses and bird feeders? Was this some scheme to cut her cat food bill and, if so, should I report her to the Audubon Society?

And why was Michael spending so much time in Cousin Ginnie's booth? I knew he'd volunteered to talk to Morris, and I could see that he might need to talk to Ginnie as well in the process of patching things up between them, but why would talking to Ginnie involve so much inspection of her merchandise? That looked like shopping. Had I failed to make my feelings about secondhand lingerie clear?

I tried to push these worries out of my mind and think positive thoughts. Stuff was leaving. Someone actually bought Edwina's entire wire coat hanger crop, the results of nearly a century of uncontrolled breeding. And the same person walked off with the wallpaper collection-full and partial rolls of every wallpaper ever used in the house, any one of which would be a strong contender in a "world's ugliest wallpaper" contest. If only unloading the unused wallpaper would be my last sight of them-I had a feeling some of those ghastly patterns would haunt my dreams for weeks once we began stripping down the walls. But-positive thoughts. The rolls were leaving.

And the clock hands were moving, however slowly. Though the end of the yard sale didn't mean I could rest. There was still the murder. I heard people talking about it, but none of them mentioned any exciting new information on the case. So, since Chief Burke wasn't using the information I'd given him, I was impatient to use it myself.

"You should take a break," Michael said to me, not for the first time.

"I will in a few minutes," I said.

"I'm serious," he said. "You look beat."

"I am, and I'm going to rest. Just not yet. Not until I check three more people out."

Michael glanced down the line.

"Is the third guy someone particular?" he asked, in an undertone.

"Gordon-you-thief's ex-partner," I murmured back. "I want to talk to him."

"Gotcha," he said. "I'll shuffle about getting ready to take your place until you're finished with him."

The next two people took forever, but then Ralph Endicott stepped in front of me.

Checking him out took quite some time, too. Which surprised me. I didn't remember that he'd been carrying around all that much stuff before the murder, but now he had two full boxes.

Had Gordon's death freed him from the worries and problems that had kept him from opening his new shop? And if so, was that a sufficient motive for murder?

Still, checking him out gave me time to study him before I tried to talk to him.

"Let me help you carry that to your car," I said, when he'd paid for his purchases and Michael had taken my seat.

"Oh," he said, surprised. "If you're leaving anyway."

"Taking a much-needed break," I said.

We walked along for a few minutes without speaking, though not exactly in silence, since the entire choir of the New Life Baptist Church, more than a hundred voices strong, was belting out "There Is a Balm in Gilead" from on and around the front porch stage.

We pa.s.sed my cousins Basil and Cyril, who were blocking one lane of the road as they tried to load a small truck's worth of stuff into the trunk and nearly nonexistent back seat of a Miata. At least one twin was loading stuff, while the other tried to prevent Cousin Deirdre from splashing their twin moose heads with paint.

We walked nearly a quarter of a mile toward Endicott's car before I felt our surroundings were quiet enough for him to hear me and private enough for me to say what I wanted to say.

Of course, there was still plenty of time. No wonder he'd accepted my offer of help-he'd parked more than half a mile from our house. I spent a few moments trying to devise a subtle, diplomatic way to open up the subject, but I finally decided that I was too tired and hungry to be subtle, not to mention cranky because he had stuck me with the heavier of the two boxes, so I just dived right in.

"Look," I said. "I know what you did in the barn."

His head whipped around to look at me, and he dropped the box he was carrying. It landed with a rich and varied medley of crashing and tinkling noises that went on for several seconds after impact.

Endicott didn't even notice.

Chapter 33.

"I beg your pardon," Endicott said, in a shaky voice.

"I said I know what you did in the barn. Not everything, of course," I added. "But enough to know that you lied to the cops."

I felt a twinge of guilt as I said this, since my conscience reminded me that I hadn't exactly told the cops everything either. But, at least, I was only committing sins of omission. Not even omission, really-delay. I hadn't told the chief any bald-faced whoppers under direct questioning.

Endicott finally appeared to notice the fallen box, and squatted down beside it.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, his eyes fixed on the box flaps and his hands poised over them, as if he were trying to get up enough nerve to open the box and view the damage within.

"Come on," I said. "I know what you told the chief-you were snooping in the stuff Gordon had dragged into the barn-his stash, I think you called it. And he caught you, and had a good laugh at your expense, and you left. Only we both know that's not exactly how it went."

"I didn't kill him," he said. "If you saw what I did, you'd know that."

"Then what the h.e.l.l were you doing?"

"I was just hiding the body," he said. He abandoned the idea of examining the breakage, picked up the box, and began walking, briskly. But not so briskly that I couldn't keep up, despite the weight of my box.

"Hiding the body?" I repeated.

"He was already dead when I found him," he said, over his shoulder. "I walked in and found him lying there, dead, in the middle of the barn floor, and I knew if anyone else walked in and saw us there, they'd think I killed him. Everyone knew how much I hated him. So I thought if I could only hide the body-to make sure it wasn't found right after I left the barn ..."

"So you hid it," I said. "Where?"