“A great time.” I echoed, when the noise of Eric’s descent had subsided.
“Kids are pretty resilient at that age,” Rob remarked, eyes still glued to the tiny snow-filled screen.
“And you call this watching them.”
“I told them not to leave the house.”
“And you think that will stop them?” I said. “Would it have stopped you at their age?”
“I told them we’d have Popsicles at one,” Rob said. “They won’t go far. They show up every ten minutes or so to ask how much longer till one.”
“Clever,” I said. Of course, no one had ever accused Rob of being stupid. An underachiever with no common sense, perhaps, but definitely not stupid. “What happens after one?”
“I’ll figure something out,” Rob said. “Maybe I’ll shove a watermelon in the refrigerator and tell them it’ll be ready to cut at two.”
“You don’t have to keep them in the house, you know,” I said. “Just out of trouble.”
“In the house is better,” Rob said. “Did you know those two were running a protection racket?”
“Eric and Frankie?”
“Demanding a quarter to keep an eye out and prevent Everett from picking up the portable toilets while people were inside.”
“Those rascals!” I said. “They were there when I told Everett he was banned from the yard sale if he even tried to pick up another toilet.”
“Little thieves,” Rob muttered. “No Popsicles for them until I get my quarter back.”
“Just keep them out of the dining room,” I said, heading back out into the hall. “Chief Burke’s using it for his interrogations.”
“Roger,” Rob said.
I deposited the chairs and went outside to liberate a reasonably empty table. One of the card tables from the picnic area would do, I decided.
“You do realize that costume is a slur on devout Paganism,” I heard a voice say at my elbow. I turned to see a small, plump woman dressed in flowing pastel tie-dyed robes and wearing several pounds of ankhs, peace symbols, pentagrams, yin-yang signs, and other assorted amulets around her neck.
I was about to ask her what devout Pagans had against Groucho, until I realized she wasn’t talking to me but to Aunt Josephine, in her traditional witch costume. A bit stereotypical but effective, since even in ordinary dress Aunt Josephine bore a strong resemblance to the movie version of the Wicked Witch of the West.
“I beg your pardon,” Aunt Josephine said, looking down her long, pointed nose at the woman. “Were you casting aspersions on my personal appearance?”
I left them to it. Aunt Josephine was quite capable of defending herself verbally, and for all I knew, equally capable of turning her attacker into a toad.
I made my way to the far end of the fenced-in area, past the line of people waiting to check out. I nodded with satisfaction to see that many of them were still avidly perusing the tables at a distance—some of them were even taking notes. Or were they watching the police? Probably both. I collided with one woman dressed as a pregnant angel, who had inched forward a good six feet from her assigned place in line to stare avidly at one of the tables of books.
“Sorry,” she said, straightening her halo, which had been knocked askew. “My fault. Any idea when they’ll let us get on with it?”
“I wish I knew,” I said.
“Damned shame if they arrest that professor,” she said. “Doesn’t look like the type who would hurt a fly. Of course, it’s a damned shame they have to arrest anyone. Ought to give whoever did it a medal for performing a public service.”
“I take it you weren’t fond of Gordon-you-thief,” I said.
“Gordon-you-thief!” she exclaimed. “That’s perfect.”
“You’ve bought books from him, too?”
“Competed with him, actually,” she said. “I’m a bookseller. Used to go on the occasional booking expedition with him, until I found out what he was like. Do you know what he did to me?”
She stopped peering at the books and turned to me.
“We were visiting a couple of used bookstores—the kind where they don’t really know what’s valuable, and you can pick up something for a few bucks that’s worth much more. In the first one, he told me the parking meter was about to run out, but he could use some more time—so how about if he fed the meter another hour’s worth of quarters, and then after that hour we could go on to the next store, a mile or two away. But the minute we walked into the second store, the owner said, ‘Gordon, what’s wrong—did you forget something? You just left a couple of minutes ago.’”