“She was talking about paint colors,” he said. “I don’t think that’s apt to involve much clutter.”
“Paint’s fine,” I said. “I like paint. We could decorate entirely with paint. If we painted the various rooms with really beautiful colors, we wouldn’t even need all that much furniture. Just elegant, uninterrupted expanses of color.”
“Uh … right,” Michael said. “I’ll tell her to suggest some nice self-sufficient colors. If you’re not interested in going, maybe I can just drop her off and pick her up later.”
“She should be used to that,” I said. “It’s what Dad always does. And I really think someone should stay here to keep an eye on things.”
“And snoop,” Michael said, nodding.
“I’m not snooping,” I said, in as dignified a manner as I could manage.
“Well, maybe you should start,” he said. “I like Chief Burke, but I have this sinking feeling he’ll take the path of least resistance and arrest Giles, and even if the attorney gets him off, it won’t help his career any.”
“Or yours,” I said.
“True,” Michael said. “Though my career’s not as important as clearing Giles.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But it all amounts to the same thing, so I plan to provide the police with whatever unofficial assistance I can.”
“Good,” he said. “Happy snooping. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
With that, he returned to inventorying the departing customers’ junk collections and I headed back to the house.
I found Barrymore Sprocket and several of my relatives sitting around the makeshift kitchen table, eating hamburgers and mountains of potato salad while Rob doled out Popsicles to Superman and Darth Vader.
“This interruption won’t help the yard sale,” Barrymore said, through a mouthful of burger. “Weeks of preparation and advertising, all at great expense, and now this!”
“Yes, I’m so sorry,” I said. “If I’d been thinking, I would have scheduled the murder for some other weekend.”
“Rescheduling the yard sale will double the expenses,” Sprocket grumbled. And diminish the Sprocket pirates’ haul, since they took their ten percent of the net profits.
“Actually, this will probably help the yard sale,” Rob said, as he unwrapped a grape Popsicle for himself. “No amount of advertising could possibly match the publicity value of a really juicy murder.”
He’d been saying that a lot recently—repeating something I’d said to him, some months before, when a murder had occurred on the premises of his computer game company. He’d become convinced that the notoriety of the murder had contributed significantly to the success of Lawyers from Hell II, the game they’d released shortly thereafter. I made a mental note to drop by his office and see if his muttering about the publicity value of homicide was making any of his employees nervous.
For now, I let Barrymore Sprocket ponder Rob’s words while I headed for the stairs. With all those people sitting around the kitchen, I’d probably need to snag the dumbwaiter at the top of its route, in the master bedroom. Even my family might start asking questions if I disappeared into the basement for several hours.
As I passed the dining room, I could hear the chief talking to someone, but the old plaster walls were thick and reasonably sound-resistant. In the living room I saw a random collection of witnesses and suspects, some in costume and others in civilian clothes. About half of them were sprawled on the floor, while the other half stood, leaned, or paced up and down the room, all under the watchful eye of a police officer.
Upstairs, I slipped into the master bedroom, closed the door, and tiptoed over to open the dumbwaiter door. I’d hoped that the sound would travel up the shaft. It did, but not well enough for me to hear more than one word in ten. The intermittent hammering from the roof didn’t help, either. Ah, well—I hadn’t expected it to be that easy.
When we’d found the dumbwaiter, during one of our tours of the house before buying, I’d considered it a useless though harmless toy. But Michael had been enchanted, and now I was glad he’d spent an entire afternoon replacing its frayed ropes—one of the few actual repairs the house had received so far.
When I tried tugging the rope, I did find myself wishing Michael had oiled the pulley at the top while he was at it. But the pulley was way up in the attic, and I hoped if Chief Burke heard its squeak, he’d just mistake it for part of the hubbub outside. Or, more likely, assume we had bats in our belfry literally as well as figuratively.