Owls Well That Ends Well Part 5

On my way back to the checkout counter, I ran into my cousin Basil. Or possibly Basil's identical twin, Cyril. No one in the family could tell them apart and I'd given up trying after I figured out that no matter what you called one of them, he'd claim to be the other twin anyway. At any rate, he was trying to shove an enormous box of stuff along in front of him by kicking it, while carrying a moose head in each arm.

"Let me help you with that," I said.

"Thanks," he said, as I divested him of the moose heads. "That's my pile over there."

He indicated a huge pile of stuff over by the fence. Enough stuff to fill a two-bedroom apartment, which was what Basil and Cyril had. But their lair was already crammed to the ceiling with books, computer equipment, war-gaming paraphernalia, and a.s.sorted junk. Where could they possibly put all this stuff? Not to mention that every item he'd collected was either broken, perfectly hideous, or both.

"What in the world are you doing with all this stuff?" I asked.

I tried to keep my dismay from showing, but apparently I failed.

"Oh, don't worry," he said. "We're getting rid of it all really soon."

"Getting rid of it?" I echoed. "Then why buy it in the first place?"

"You know that TV show that comes to your house and organizes it?"

"Yes," I said. Actually, I knew of several such shows, and watched them all religiously, a guilty secret I hid from everyone but Michael. I hoped it was a phase I'd grow out of once we unloaded Mrs. Sprocket's clutter.

"We want to get on that show," he said. "But the first thing they do is make you get rid of half of your stuff. And we don't want to get rid of anything; we just want them to organize us."

"I see," I said. "So you're trying to put enough extra stuff in your house that they won't touch yours."

"Exactly," he said, beaming.

While I wanted to ask, what if they didn't get on the show, I hated to spoil his fun.

"Good luck with it," I said instead, and left him with his loot.

Back at the checkout area I found to my relief that Mrs. Fenniman and Michael had taken over as cashiers. Michael would remain calm and genial no matter what the customers said or did, Mrs. Fenniman took no guff from anyone, and both of them could do a halfway decent Groucho voice to go with their masks. Things were looking up.

In fact, I suddenly realized that I was feeling cheerful again. Dad would take care of Gordon-you-thief, and in the meantime, I was surrounded by people made very, very happy by the yard sale.

"Meg, this is wonderful!"

I turned and saw my twenty-something cousin Rosemary, from the Keenan branch of the family. I had a quick moment of panic, because I couldn't immediately remember what I was supposed to call her these days. Morgana? Ecstasy? Ca.s.sandra? She'd been through all of those, but I didn't think any of them were current. Rob had taken to calling her simply "Not-Rosemary." She had changed her name five or six times in the last decade, usually to symbolize some new breakthrough she felt she'd achieved in her path to wisdom or enlightenment or however she currently defined her goal. Not-Rosemary had never met an Eastern religion or a new age fad she didn't like, and she always dressed to enhance her already uncanny resemblance to the Woodstock-era Joni Mitch.e.l.l.

I reminded myself that I didn't actually have to call her anything at the moment. And even if someone she didn't know joined us, a free spirit like Not-Rosemary wouldn't expect a formal introduction.

"Wonderful?" I repeated. "I'm not sure how wonderful it will be, but I hope it's productive."

"Oh, it will be," she said. "Look at the blessing you're giving all these people."

"Blessing?" I echoed, distracted by a pa.s.sing shopper. I wasn't quite sure how much of a blessing it was to tempt anyone into buying a surplus milking machine and a dozen vintage 1960s troll dolls.

"Are you familiar with feng shui?" she said. "It's the ancient Chinese art of placement. The literal translation is 'the way of wind and water,' and-"

"Yes, you gave Mother a book about it for Christmas, remember," I said. Although considering the effect the book had had on Mother, I would have guessed the literal translation of feng shui was "Come, let us drop everything and rearrange the furniture another seventeen or eighteen times before dinner."

"Clutter is very significant in feng shui," she said. "At least in dealing with Western homes. If you want to feng shui your house, the first thing you should do is get rid of clutter."

"Really?" I said, with genuine interest. Had Not-Rosemary finally taken up a fad that I could relate to?

"Yes," she said. "Clutter is bad. Blocks the house's chi-the energy flow-and can also hold negative energy from past residents, or past owners of the clutter. If you ask me, clutter is probably the root cause of half the problems in our culture."

"I see," I said. I was glad to see that she'd finally stopped blaming television and refined sugar, since I rather liked both of those.

"So look at what your yard sale will accomplish," she said. "What a wonderful energy clearing! Imagine all the bad karma and negative energy everyone's getting rid of!"

She drifted off, beaming cheerfully at everyone she pa.s.sed. 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 a.s.sume 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 m.u.f.fled because his head was buried in his hands. "The pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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, "pa.s.sion" 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 souffle, 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 s...o...b..x 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 s...o...b..x 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 antic.i.p.ated, she tried using the scratches to d.i.c.ker over the price when I finally got the d.a.m.ned 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.