I awoke to find myself gazing into the glassy eyes of a moth-eaten taxidermied moose.
“Meg! Answer me!” it pleaded in a small, hollow voice.
“Yes?” I said.
Apparently the moose didn’t hear me.
“I’ll keep her on the line,” it said, in the same oddly distant voice. “See if you can get a number for the Caerphilly police department…. What?… C-A-E-R - “
The police department? There was something about the police department that I ought to remember. If my head would stop hurting, I might remember.
I glanced around and saw my cell phone lying in the grass beside the moose’s cheek.
“Michael,” I said, grabbing the cell phone. “I’m fine. Don’t call the police. Chief Burke would be really angry.”
“Meg! Are you all right? What happened?”
“I’m fine. It was only a moose.”
A brief pause.
“Keep trying to get the Caerphilly police,” Michael said. Apparently to someone else. “I think she’s going to need an ambulance.”
“Michael, I told you, I’m fine,” I said. “It was only a stuffed moose head.”
“Only a stuffed moose head?” he repeated. And then, to whoever else was on the other end. “Get the number but don’t call yet. Meg,” he said, more loudly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Was I okay? What if our deranged killer was following some land of punning weapons motif, I wondered, as I patted the top of my skull. First strangling Ted with a mouse cord, and now assaulting me with a stuffed moose? I winced - by probing my scalp, I had confirmed that, yes, I had a remarkably large lump on the top of my head, and while it didn’t appear to be bleeding, touching it made my headache temporarily worse.
I looked around and realized that the killer probably wasn’t responsible for my predicament. I was lying at the edge of a small delta of objects that had erupted out of the barn when I opened the door. In addition to the moose, I spotted a crab pot, a rope hammock, several bicycle tires, a badminton net, a headless garden gnome, half a dozen flowerpots, several croquet mallets, a broken toilet, a large wasp’s nest - fortunately, unoccupied - and several dozen other less recognizable bits of junk.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I was opening the door to the barn, remember? A stuffed moose head fell out and beaned me. I have a lump on my head, but I’m fine.”
“Don’t go in the barn,” Michael said. “It could be dangerous to go into the barn.”
“I’m sure it would be dangerous, and I’m not going in there,” I said. “I’d need a forklift to clear a path before I could even think of going in there. I’ll be lucky if I can put back everything that fell out when I opened the door.”
“That’s good,” Michael said. “Don’t try to put things back, just get out of there; obviously it’s not safe.”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
“And get your father to look at your head.”
“Okay, I will,” I said.
I was lying, of course. I stayed long enough to put back the stuff that had fallen out of the barn, which with only one and a half working hands seemed to take forever. But did Michael really expect me to leave it all spread across the lawn, advertising my snooping in case anyone like Chief Burke came back? I was tempted to just stow it all in the basement, on the theory that the police would be so overwhelmed by the magnitude of Mrs. Sprocket’s clutter that they’d overlook the fact that some of it was sneaking around when their backs were turned, but decided it was a bad idea. They might have taken photos.
When I got back to the Cave, I tried to settle down and study Ted’s collection of artifacts, but then I just put them aside in favor of half an hour with an ice pack and some aspirin.
I did put the portable black light in my purse. Depending on what time the pizza fest broke up, I might come back here afterward, or I might want to go straight from Luigi’s to the office. I changed into jeans and a T-shirt that was presentable enough to wear to the restaurant, yet old enough that I wouldn’t mind dirtying it up if my snooping led me into something messy, like the Dumpster.
When my head started feeling better, I realized I still had a little time to kill - I didn’t want to be the first one there. On a whim, I turned on my laptop and logged on to the Internet. I searched for information on Anna Floyd, the romance writer, but apart from learning, on Amazon.com, that she had written two more books besides the ones I’d found in Ted’s house, I couldn’t find anything about her. One of Anna’s book covers featured a handsome one-eyed pirate holding the buxom, swooning blond heroine. The pirate looked a -little like Michael, I thought with a sigh. I fingered the cell phone. Should I call Michael? Change my mind about a virtual date? No, I checked my watch - he would probably still be filming, so I decided not to interrupt him. Besides, I was definitely going to go to Luigi’s to interrogate the guys, and I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about a virtual office party.