“Giles!” I exclaimed.
“Your lawyer will probably be happier
if you don’t go around saying things like that,” Michael
suggested.
“I don’t condone it,” Giles said,
sounding uncharacteristically melancholy. “It’s abhorrent to
consider taking a human life for any reason, but for a mere
material object? Unspeakable. But unimaginable? No. I can imagine
it. A great deal more easily with a book than with some other
object. Isn’t that strange?”
“Not really,” Michael said. “You value
books. I’m not sure you care about any other material
objects.”
“But not that book,” Giles said, in
something closer to his normal precise manner. “For one thing, I
already have a copy of The Uttermost
Farthing, thank you very much. The copy Gordon found isn’t
even in particularly good condition. You can see that just by
looking at it.”
“Not anymore,” I said.
“True,” Giles said, looking pained. “I
wonder if there’s enough left to judge the condition. For all I
know, they only have my word on its poor condition before he tried
to burn it. Stupid thing to do. It was badly worn and discolored,
but it would have done for a reading copy. Though not at the price
he was asking for it.”
“What was he asking?” Michael
said.
“Eight hundred dollars,” Giles said,
with some heat. “Outrageous, even if it were in mint condition.
He’d have been overcharging to ask fifty for it, the
blackguard.”
He blinked suddenly, as if he’d
surprised himself with the strength of his emotion. He’d certainly
surprised me. Normally Giles didn’t go much beyond mild
indignation.
He shook his head and sipped his
sherry.
“I don’t know why the poor blighter
annoys—annoyed me so much,” he said, in something closer to his
normal dry tone of voice.
“I do,” I said. “I heard him say he’d
found a book you wanted on someone’s dollar table.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Giles said.
“That’s his business. Buying books cheaply and selling them for as
much as he can get. He has a right to make a living. Why should I
resent the fact that he has the time and energy to go book hunting
and the expertise to recognize a valuable book when he finds
one?”
“Annoying that you didn’t get to the
dollar table first,” Michael said.
“But that’s not his fault,” Giles
said.
“Says you,” I put in. “You didn’t see
him shoving his way to the head of the line.”
“He happened to get to that table
first,” Giles said. “And however annoying it would be to pay full
price when he’d paid a dollar, I could afford it. If I’d wanted the
book in the first place, and I didn’t. So I feel bad about
resenting him so much.”
“Don’t,” I said. “He didn’t have to
gloat.”
“Gloat?” Michael said.
“If Gordon had been a decent salesman,
he would have
glossed over the fact that he only paid a dollar for the book. But
he didn’t. He was gloating. Hell, if Gordon had been a really good
salesman, he’d have hidden the fact that he got it at a yard sale
at all.”
“How could he, when we were at the yard
sale?” Giles asked.
“He could have just bought it and taken
it to his shop. What if he’d told you that he found it in another
bookstore, and paid more than he should have, but he knew it was
one you wanted for your collection? You’d feel differently then,
wouldn’t you?”
“If you ever open a used book store, I
shall be very skeptical of every word you utter,” Giles said, with
a pained look.
“There’s a reason she does so well at
craft shows,” Michael said.
Giles nodded. I noticed that his face
wore the forced smile that generally meant he was trying to ignore
some ghastly and peculiar bit of American barbarism. I felt a
fleeting twinge of irritation and realized, in one of those painful
moments of self-knowledge, that I was intent on rescuing him less
for his sake, or even for Michael’s, but for my own satisfaction.
Once I cleared him, he’d damn well have to be grateful to me. Not
that I planned to gloat or anything.
“Getting back to the murder,” I said.
“Have you remembered seeing anyone in the barn apart from the
Hummel lady?”
Giles shook his head.
“Well, I’ll start with her tomorrow,” I
said.
“She seems an unlikely suspect,”
Michael said. “Would someone really kill another human being for a
Hummel figurine? Or even a whole box of them?”
“Beats me,” I said. “Of course, I don’t
even know why people would pay any money for them.”
“You dislike Hummel?” Giles
asked.
“I don’t have anything in particular
against Hummel,” I said. “Or Fiesta Ware. Or Depression glass. Or
old books or seventy-eight RPM records or mint nineteen-fifties-era
Barbie dolls or any of the other material possessions people
collect. I just don’t get it. Sorting through Edwina’s Sprocket’s
stuff for the last two and a half months makes me want to get rid
of the things I have, not go out and buy more.”
“The sense of profound estrangement
from the material world,” Giles said, nodding. “In the Middle Ages,
people who experienced it would give away all they had to join a
convent.”
“Or, in the nineteen-sixties, a
commune,” Michael added. “Having a yard sale’s the
twenty-first-century equivalent. Much less extreme.”
“But much less satisfactory,” I said.
“At least when the police interrupt it less than halfway through,
before even a fraction of what we need to get rid of has been
sold.”
“If only I’d stayed home,” Giles
muttered.
“And miss all those bargains?” Michael
exclaimed.
Giles laughed ruefully, and I looked at
Michael with a frown. I wasn’t sure he was kidding. I’d heard of
sane people who developed gambling fever after a trip to Vegas.
What if Michael developed an unhealthy obsession with yard sales as
a result of ours? I had a sudden vision of him coming home weekend
after weekend, covered with dust and smelling of book mold, bearing
random objects that had caught his wandering eye. Faded plaster
garden ornaments. Ramshackle bits of furniture that he would
announce needed only a bit of work to make them good as new. Quaint
vintage grocery tins and bottles, still reeking pungently of their
original contents.
No. I was thinking of Dad. Not
Michael.
Though I’d long since deduced that one
thing I loved
about Michael was that he shared some of Dad’s more charming
enthusiasms and eccentricities, without going overboard on
them.
Yet. Was he going to age into Dad-hood?
I suddenly felt a rare surge of sympathy for Mother.
I shook myself and returned to the
conversation. Or the lack of conversation. Giles and Michael were
both staring into their sherry.
“Poor blighter,” Giles
muttered.
He sounded rather melancholy. Perhaps
even sad. How ironic that the only person who seemed the least bit
sad over Gordon’s murder was the one Chief Burke had arrested for
it.
But then, underneath Giles’s irritation
with Gordon, I sensed that they shared a deep love of books. That
was one of the reasons I’d kept trying to work with Gordon when I
was selling the valuable books to dealers. Every so often
something—maybe just the way he’d touch an old, rare volume—would
remind me that the man really did love books.
Of course, the next second he’d do
something that proved his love of books took second place to his
lust for money, so I’d eventually given up trying.
For that matter, the love of books was
one of the reasons I kept trying to get to know Giles better—that
and the fact that Michael liked him. So, despite my impatience, I
followed their example, and sipped my sherry in silence for a few
moments.
Giles was looking around his study, as
if memorizing it.
“I shall miss all this,” he said,
finally.
“What do you mean, miss all this?”
Michael asked.
“They won’t want me around,” Giles
said, taking a rather large sip of sherry—more like a gulp. “You
know how they are about any kind of notoriety.”
“Tell me about it,” Michael said,
gulping his sherry as
well. Michael’s brand of notoriety was to appear on national
television every week, wearing tight black leather pants and a
black velvet robe in his role as Mephisto, the lecherous sorcerer
on a cheesy television show. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it paid a
lot better than being an assistant professor. I suspected the
administration might almost prefer a nice respectable
murderer.
At least now I could feel reasonably
sure that worry over tenure, not anything I’d done, was causing
Michael’s down mood.
“But Giles, you’re tenured,” I said
aloud.
“They’ll find a way,” Giles said,
staring into his sherry. “Put me on administrative leave. Assign me
all the eight A.M. freshman survey classes. Force me into
retirement.”
“No, they won’t,” Michael said,
reaching over and clapping Giles on the shoulder. “We’ll find some
way to prevent it.”
“Chief Burke’s the one who could
prevent it,” I said. “If he’d just hurry up and find the real
killer, instead of wasting time on Giles.”
“So we’ll find the killer instead,”
Michael said.
“How?” Giles asked.
“I’m sure Meg will think of something,”
he said.
From we to me, I thought. I was tempted
to say something sarcastic, but Giles reached over and grasped my
hand.
“Thank you,” he said. “If you knew how
much … I mean, I can’t possibly explain … I mean.”
“Please, you don’t have to thank me,” I
said. And I wished he’d stop trying. Much as I’d wanted to break
through his dry exterior, I found I didn’t enjoy seeing normally
taciturn Giles struggling with the unfamiliar task of expressing an
emotion. What should have been moving only felt horribly
embarrassing for both of us.
Besides, I hadn’t actually done
anything yet.
Giles fell back into his chair and
stared into his sherry again.
“We should be going,” I said. “After
all, we have a long day of sleuthing ahead of us.”
“Right,” Giles said.
“She’s right,” Michael said. “To say
nothing of the yard sale.”
He and Giles stood up and headed for
the front door.
Before following them into the foyer, I
hung back long enough to do a bit of quick redecorating, changing
ACNE ELOPE to ENLACE POE, something I’d been itching to do the
whole time I’d been here. I wondered how long it would take Giles
to notice.
“Sorry you have to do all this,”
Michael said, as we pulled out of Giles’s driveway.
“All this yard sale stuff or all this
proving Giles innocent stuff?” I asked.
“Both.”
I nodded. I was sorry, too, but
anything I said would only sound like complaining. I leaned back
against the headrest and closed my eyes.
“I wonder how many divorces this yard
sale will cause,” I said, and then wondered if it was wise to drop
something quite that ominous into the conversation. So, I told him
about Morris and Ginnie.
“Good grief,” Michael said. “When I saw
the booth, I assumed she had one of those home selling franchises.
Like Tupperware, only with lingerie.”
“No, it’s all from her own wardrobe,” I
said. “I can’t imagine selling that stuff.”
“So you side with Morris,
then?”
“No,” I said. “I understand why she
wants to declutter, but I wouldn’t set up a booth at a yard sale to
do it. And I can’t imagine anyone buying the stuff.”
“Why not?” Michael asked.
“Secondhand lingerie?”
“It all looked brand-new to me,”
Michael said. “After all, they’re not the sort of garments you’d
keep on for long, and given how large a collection she has, I doubt
if she wears any one piece very often.”
“Still, it’s the idea. Who could
possibly be buying it all?”
“Just look for the lavender bags with
silver trim,” Michael said. “You can’t miss them.”
“And you know this because …
?”
“I’m highly observant,” Michael said.
“I would never think of insulting you with secondhand
lingerie.”
“That’s good,” I said. “But I’m worried
about Morris.”
“If you like, I could talk to him,”
Michael offered. “Try to get him to see it as a positive thing.
That what matters is the whole experience—buying the presents,
opening them, putting them on, and taking them off. Not the actual
garments.”
“Precisely,” I said. “That would be
great.”
He nodded.
“Wonder if Ginnie takes returns,” he
said, after a few moments.
I smiled faintly at the joke. At least
I hoped it was a joke. We rode for a couple of minutes in silence,
and I was close to falling asleep when he spoke up
again.
“I was really hoping you could come
with your mother and me tomorrow,” he said. “But I suppose it will
have to wait for a while.”
A long while.
“Your mother really does have some
interesting ideas for the house.”
Had I ever mentioned to Michael that
“interesting” was what Mother had taught us to say instead of nasty
words like “ugly” or “hideous?”
“I think if you took a look at what she
has in mind—”
“Could we talk about it later,” I said.
“I’m pretty tired.”
“Sure,” he said. But I sensed something
off in his tone. I felt a sudden flash of anger—not at him, though.
And not really at Mother. At life, which keeps throwing stuff at us
at the wrong moment. I took a couple of breaths and swallowed the
impulse to snap at him.
“Sorry,” I said aloud. “I know it’s
important. Too important to talk about when I’m so tired I’m not
really coherent. Not to mention so cranky I wouldn’t blame you if
you let me walk home.”
“I understand,” he said. “I just
thought, while she’s up here, that this might be a good chance for
you and your mother to do some bonding.”
“Bonding?” I echoed. “Mother and I
don’t need bonding. Mediation, occasionally, or possibly therapy.
Have you been spending too much time in the psych
department?”
“Just a thought,” he said.
But he meant well, I knew. He just
hadn’t figured out yet that Mother and I could squabble noisily
over everything under the sun without being really mad at each
other. He and his mother hardly ever raised their voices, but when
they did—look out. Mother and I rarely saw eye to eye, but we
understood each other.
“Maybe we could do something nice for
Mother when the yard sale is over,” I said aloud. “Like that
antiquing trip she’s been talking about.”
“Good idea,” he said. And this time I
could hear the hint of a smile in his voice. More like the normal
Michael. A few seconds later he reached out and took my hand. A
nice gesture, however transient, since his car had a standard
transmission, and he’d probably have to downshift in a minute or
two. Still—another quarrel averted. Or was it only
postponed?
Part of the problem was our difference
of opinion on how to handle my parents when they came up with the
sort of peculiar ideas my family specialized in, particularly
when it came to how other people should run their lives. Michael
favored humoring them as long as possible, while I thought it
worked better if you set them straight immediately. Humoring them
only hurt their feelings more in the end, not to mention creating a
very real danger that they’d go out and do whatever strange thing
you were trying to talk them out of.
And the house caused more of these
conflicts every week.
Damn the whole house project anyway. I
wondered how we could possibly get safely through the next few
months, or even, God help us, years of repairs and
renovations.
Of course, looking on the bright side,
next to surviving the house with our relationship intact, proving
Giles innocent of murder looked remarkably easy.
Despite the late hour, as we approached
the house we could see lights blazing on every floor. And when we
got closer, I heard shrieking from somewhere in the house.
Barrymore Sprocket stood on the front step, smoking a
cigarette.
“There you are,” he said, as I ran
toward him. “They’ve all been looking for you.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He shrugged, and just then another
chorus of shrieks rose up, so I raced past him into the house, and
then up to the third floor, where the shrieking came
from.