"I must be going," Samantha said, stepping around me on her way down the steps. When she got close to him, Spike suddenly put his tail between his legs and began whining and trying to hide behind me.
"Nasty little beast," Samantha hissed, glowering at the cringing Spike.
"Spike's suddenly showing incredibly good taste," Michael murmured to me as he gave the dog an encouraging pat.
Good taste or good sense, I thought. The only other time I'd ever seen Spike act scared was the previous night, when he was trapped on the ledge. What if Spike was acting the same way because he'd suddenly caught sight of the very person who'd tethered him by the booby trap? There wasn't a whole lot of time to worry about it.
The house was beginning to fill up with elderly relatives from out of town and Pam's husband and kids had arrived back from their trip to Australia. One of the few benefits of my poison ivy was that no one was particularly eager to bunk with me, so Mother sent the elderly aunt who had been destined to share my room off to sleep at Mrs. Fenniman's. Definitely a good thing; I was going to need peace and quiet and privacy to keep from losing my mind. And while the extra guests created a lot more work, that had the advantage of distracting me from my itching for whole minutes at a time.
But at the end of the day, despite a cool baking soda bath, the itching kept me awake for quite a while. I was finally drifting off to sleep when I heard an unearthly shriek.
I started upright in panic before realizing that it was the same damned unearthly shriek we'd been hearing repeatedly for the past several days.
"Damn those peacocks," I muttered.
Several more of the birds joined in. I hoped the visiting relatives were all either too deaf to hear them or too tired from traveling to wake. The peacock chorus was definitely building to a crescendo.
"I thought they weren't supposed to be nocturnal," I said to the kitten, who was standing with her back arched, spitting.
And then I suddenly remembered something Mr. Dibbit the peacock farmer had said. About not worrying about trespassers with the peacocks around.
I jumped out of bed, pulled on my clothes, and crept downstairs without turning on any lights. The peacock shrieks were coming from the back door. I would creep to the back door and turn on all the floodlights in the yard and then--
"Yourroowrrr!" I tripped over the kitten, who leaped out of the way with a surprisingly loud screech. I fell flat on my face on the kitchen floor, knocking the glass recycling bin into the aluminum can recycling bin.
I think I heard footsteps. Soft, quick footsteps disappearing down the driveway, and maybe an occasional crunch of gravel. But perhaps it was my imagination. It would have been hard to hear, anyway, over the clinking glass, clattering cans, and howling livestock. By the time I got the floodlights on, the yard was empty. I turned them out again so the peacocks would settle down.
"What on earth is going on?" Mother had appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"Something scared the peacocks," I replied, as I began to gather up the spilled cans and bottles. "I came to see what."
"I really think we should send those creatures over to the Brewsters'," Mother said.
"I'd rather keep them here. I think what scared them was a prowler."
Mother closed her eyes, and leaned against the doorway. She looked very unlike herself--almost haggard. And scared.
"What is going on here?" she asked, faintly. "What on earth is going on here?"
"I wish I knew. I'm going to have some tea to calm down. Want some?"
"The caffeine will only keep us up," she said, sitting down at the table.
"You can have Eileen's herbal muck if you prefer."
"I'll have Earl Grey, thank you," she said, more like her usual self.
We sat together, quietly sipping our tea. I was kicking myself for not having caught the prowler, desperately curious to find out what the prowler wanted, and generally distracted. I noticed that Mother, too, seemed preoccupied. I wondered what was bothering her--the possibility of a prowler, or something else?
You'll probably never know, I told myself. I could sometimes predict what Mother would do, but I'd given up trying to figure out what she was thinking. Unless, of course ...
"Mother," I began, "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course, dear? What did you want to know?"
What did I want to know? The answer to about a million questions. What do you think's happening around here? With all your sources of gossip and information, do you know anything that might help solve the murders? And why did you divorce Dad, anyway, and why are you marrying Jake? What do you see in him? What do you know about him? Do you really approve of Rob marrying Samantha? Do you trust her?