Murder With Peacocks (21 page)

  I followed him down the driveway. I began  to suspect where he was taking me.

  "Jake's house, right?" I asked. 

  "Right. You already knew about this?"

  "I only found out last night. How bad is  it?"

  He rolled his eyes. I winced inwardly.  When we got to Jake's house, Michael  stopped, and bent down as if to tie his shoe.

  "Up there in the dogwood."

  I pretended that I was idly looking around the  neighborhood while waiting for Michael. Dad  wasn't quite as obvious as I'd feared. If you  knew what to look for, you could rather quickly spot the  lump of slightly wilted dogwood leaves and  wisteria vines that was Dad. But it actually  wasn't all that noticeable. I thought.

  "He's been there all morning," Michael  said, standing up and pretending to inspect the other shoe  to see if it needed tying. Both of us were carefully  avoiding looking at Dad.

  "As a matter of fact, he's been there on and  off for ten days," I said.

  "Really!" Michael said, barely stopping himself  from turning around to stare at Dad in surprise.  "I had no idea. I only noticed this  morning. Spike thought he'd treed him."

  "In case anyone does see him and mentions  it, mutter something about a rare migratory bird  that he wants to scoop Aunt Phoebe with."

  "Rare migratory bird," Michael  repeated. "Aunt Phoebe. Right. Just for  curiosity, is he investigating Jake or  guarding him?"

  "He's not sure himself."

    "I see," Michael said, as we  began walking on past Jake's house. "Tell  him to let me know if he needs any help. Not  necessarily with the actual stakeout," he said,  quickly, noticing the sharp look I gave him.  Right. I could see it now: two suspicious  lumps in the dogwood tree, one short and round,  the other long and lean. And Michael and Dad  getting so caught up in conversation that they forgot  to keep their voices down. Just what we needed.

  "By the way, I have a costume for you,"  Michael said. "The ladies helped me pull it  together. Do you want to go in and try it on now, or  shall I just come by a little early for the party and bring it?"

  "Just bring it. Right now, I want to get the  yard ready for the party while Dad's out of the way."

  "I thought the yard was your Dad's territory.  I offered to help him out by mowing the lawn, and he  wouldn't hear of it."

  "Dad adores riding the lawn mower," I  said. "Usually the yard's all his, but if I  get out this afternoon and festoon all the trees with little  twinkly electric lights, it might keep  Dad from trying to fill the yard with torches and  candles. He nearly burns the house down every time  we let him decorate for a party."

  "I can come over and help if you like," Michael  offered.

  "It'll be hard work," I warned.

  "Yes, but in such delightful company," he  said.

  No accounting for taste, I suppose. By now,  I was actively looking to avoid spending too  much time in my family's company. Although as it  turned out, Pam and Eric were the only other  family members I succeeded in recruiting. The  four of us spent the whole afternoon climbing trees and  perching on ladders.

  "Once we've got these up, I think we should  just leave them up till Mother's wedding," I said,  as we surveyed our handiwork. "One less thing to do  that week."

  Of course Dad insisted on putting out a few  dozen candles, but not nearly the number he would have  otherwise.

  And Michael brought over my costume. He  called it a lady pirate costume.

  "You can be either Anne Bonney or Mary  Read. Both famous lady pirates. Piracy  was an equal opportunity career."

    I examined it. A tight corset,  topped by a skimpy bodice and finished off  (barely) with a short skirt. All ragged, with  picturesque fake bloodstains and strategic  tears. I'd have turned it down, except that his  concept of a lady pirate included a cutlass  and a dozen daggers of assorted sizes.

  "I don't think much of the dress," I said.  "But I like the cutlery. If things keep going as  they have been, you may not get the weapons back  till I leave town. And I want your  eyepatch."

  Even after I divested him of his eyepatch,  Michael made a very picturesque pirate.  With the three or four days' growth of beard he'd  cultivated, he ought to have looked scruffy, but he  only looked more gorgeous than usual. Rather like the    cover of a romance book. It wasn't fair.

  Dad came dressed as Sherlock Holmes.  Fortunately he felt inspired to act the part as  well. Since Mrs. Grover's murder and the  other unfortunate events of the summer were a  century out of his period, he feigned complete  ignorance of them.

  Mother outshone everyone. She came as  Cleopatra, with Barry and one of her burlier  nephews to carry her litter. I suspected that  Barry had built the litter as well. Perhaps that  was the excuse he'd used to con Professor  Donleavy into letting him set up the carpentry  shop. I sighed. I hadn't realized he'd  started buttering up Mother as well as Dad.  Barry and the cousin were standing around in their skimpy  Egyptian slave costumes, flexing their  muscles, looking as if they, too, were posing for the  cover of a romance. To me, they looked more like  low-rent professional wrestlers. Or extras  from a Conan flick.

  About the only person with a mediocre costume was  Jake, who wore a tuxedo and carried a cane  and periodically performed a few clumsy dance  steps to show that he was Fred Astaire.

  Even Cousin Horace, though predictably  attired in the usual gorilla suit, had  apparently gotten himself a brand new gorilla  suit. I approved. The old one had become  loathsome, its fur frayed and matted and covered with  wine and salsa stains. Perhaps he was feeling  self-conscious about the new suit, though; I  noticed him slipping around the corner of the house in a manner that was remarkably furtive,  even for Horace.

  Being armed to the teeth was an excellent idea for  future neighborhood parties. The cutlass  wasn't sharp, but waving it at anyone who  misbehaved tended to get my point across. Some  of the daggers actually were sharp, which I used  to advantage when Barry, having too much  to drink, foolishly grabbed me by the waist. And the  weaponry made me feel irrationally safer whenever  I remembered the fact that one of the cheerful party  guests gamboling on the lawn might well be a  killer.

  Everyone was having a good time. Well, Barry  was off somewhere sulking and nursing his cut. It  wasn't much of a cut, and I was sure he  didn't really need the elastic bandage on his  wrist, either. I hadn't twisted his arm that badly  the other day; he was blowing these things out of  proportion. Jake was off somewhere sulking, too;  someone had mistaken his Fred Astaire  impersonation for a penguin. And Samantha had  proclaimed herself mortally embarrassed and gone  home in a huff after seeing Rob dressed in  what he called his legal briefs--a pair of  swim trunks with pages from a law dictionary  stapled all over them. But everybody else was  having a great time.

  "Hello, Meg," came a muffled voice.

I turned to see Cousin Horace. Who  appeared to have changed back into his old gorilla  suit. He was waving a paw at me. I could  see a familiar set of blueberry stains on his  left palm. How tiresome; if he had to wear the  suit, why couldn't he have stayed with the new,  improved model?

  "What happened to your new suit?" I asked. 

  "New suit?" he asked, puzzled. He was  eating watermelon through the gorilla mask; an  amazing feat, but one I would really rather not have  watched.

  "Didn't I see you earlier in a new  gorilla suit?" I asked, irritably.

Well, perhaps to give him credit he preferred not  to stain his new suit. Perhaps we could get him  to change back when he'd finished eating.

  "I don't have a new suit."

  "Are you sure?" Dumb question; of course he'd  know if he had a new gorilla suit. But if  it wasn't him ...

  "Who was it?" Cousin Horace  asked, suspiciously. I gave him an exasperated look.

  "How should I know? I thought it was you."  Who, indeed. I left Cousin Horace  muttering threats against the imposter and moved through the  party, scanning the crowd for another squat,  furry figure.

  "Looking for someone?" Michael asked, coming up  beside me.

  "Yes; someone in a gorilla suit," I  said, standing on tiptoes to look over the crowd.

  "Your cousin Horace is back there, by the  buffet."

  "Not him," I said, shortly.

  "You mean there's someone else wearing a  gorilla suit? Is it contagious?"

  "I have a bad feeling about this," I said. 

  "About what?" asked Dad, who had just appeared  on my other side.

  "Someone is sneaking around in a gorilla  suit," I said. "Someone other than Horace."

  "Well, it's not as though he has exclusive  rights to it," Dad said. "Although I'm sure  Horace finds it upsetting."

  "You don't understand," I said. "I saw whoever  it was sneaking around the corner of the house. With  everything that's going on, I don't like the idea of  someone sneaking around."

  "Someone dressed in a costume that hides its  wearer's identity," Michael added.

  "Sneaking in or out?" Dad asked.

  "Out, I think. Unless I scared him away." 

  "Let's check the house," Michael  suggested.

  We did, though it didn't seem too useful  to me, since we had no idea what we were looking  for. We didn't even know if we were looking for  something missing or something added. Nothing seemed  amiss downstairs, other than the normal chaos  that comes from preparing for a large party and then having  several hundred people tramping in and out to use the  bathroom. I sighed at the thought of the cleanup  we'd be doing tomorrow. The few people currently in the  house remembered seeing the gorilla suit, but  thought it was Horace. Was I the only one who  noticed the new suit? Then again, presumably  Horace could have gone inside to use the bathroom.  We scrutinized the fuse box, but none of us  knew what a booby-trapped one looked like, and anyway the lights were working.

  It was upstairs that we found it. In my room.  "Dad! Michael!" I hissed. They came  running, and I pointed to the object lying on my  bed.

  A small wooden box, like a shoebox  propped up on one end. Made of some highly  polished wood, with delicate asymmetric  carving on two sides. Leaning against one side was  a card that said, in large, bold letters: For Meg.

  "Looks like Steven's and Barry's work," I  said.

  "Really?" Michael said. "It's quite  impressive."

  "Could you have mistaken Barry for Horace?"  Dad asked.

  "Doesn't seem likely," I said. "It was  a new gorilla suit, but it still didn't seem  that large a gorilla. Then again, I didn't  get a really good look, and I assumed it was  Horace."

  We were circling the bed, peering at the box from  all sides. I finally reached out to take the  card--

  Lifting the card triggered some hidden  mechanism. The lid flew open, and something leaped  out like a jack-in-the-box. I didn't see  what, at first; we all hit the floor. After a  few seconds, when nothing happened, we peeked  over the side of the bed. A large bouquet of  silk flowers had popped out of the box and was still  swaying slightly. A card that said Love,  Barry was twined in the foliage.

  "That's certainly very ingenious," Dad said,  peering at the box with interest.

  "And rather romantic in a way, I suppose,"  Michael remarked, frowning.

  "Of all the idiotic things," I began. My  heart was still pounding at twice the usual rate.  And then I noticed something about the box.

  "Gangway," I yelled, grabbing it and  running. I scrambled through my window onto the  flat porch roof outside, and hurled the box as  far as I could toward the river. I have a good,  strong throwing arm; it actually ended up in the  bushes at the edge of the bluff.

  "Meg, that was uncalled for," Dad said,  following me out onto the roof. "I don't like  Barry any more than you do, but--"

  Whatever else he was saying was drowned out by the loud explosion at the edge of the bluff.  Part of the bluff flew up into the air,  disintegrating as it went, and began raining down in  small chunks on the guests in the backyard. A  small tree wobbled and disappeared over the edge.

  "It was ticking," I said. "I see no  reason for jack-in-the-boxes to tick. And someone  had ripped open the lining and put something under it and  sewed it back up, clumsily. Of course he  could have decided at the last minute to put in a  music box, and done it in a hurry, but I  didn't think that was too likely, and I'm glad  I didn't stop to find out. What kind of an  idiot would leave something like that where anyone could find  it, Mother or Eric or--"

  "Sit down, Meg, you're babbling," Dad  said. I sat. "Michael, fetch her a glass  of water. And then--"

  "Yes, I know," Michael said. "Find the  sheriff."

  "And Barry," Dad said. "I think I see  them there in the crowd."

  I looked up. People were swarming near the edge of the  bluff. Much too near the edge. I leaped up.

  "Get away from the bluff!" I shrieked.  "Everybody away from the bluff! Now!"

  They paid attention. Clowns, hoboes,  gypsies, and furry animals of all kinds  scattered madly and dived for cover. No doubt  they thought I'd finally lost it and was planning to lob  more grenades.

  "Good," Dad said approvingly. "We need  to preserve these crime scenes better."

  "I'll fetch the sheriff now," Michael said.  He brought them right out onto the roof. The  sheriff didn't mind; he could keep an eye on  his deputies--several of whom conveniently, were also  relatives and thus already here to begin the  investigation.

  "What is going on here?" the sheriff began. 

"Barry," I said. "Did you leave me a  present? Carved wooden box with a pop-up  bouquet?"

  "Yes," Barry said, his face brightening.  "Did you like it? When you didn't say anything before  I thought you didn't like it."

  "Before? I only just found it a few minutes  ago."

  "But I left it on your porch last night."

  "And I only found it a few minutes ago, here on my bed."