Someone had put Spike out to resume his security duty, and half a dozen teenage boys had invented a new sport—climbing over the fence, running along as Spike literally nipped at their heels, and then leaping back to safety at the last minute. Caerphilly’s answer to running with the bulls at Pamplona, and not a whole lot safer, if you asked me. Though the crowd enjoyed it, and for lack of anything interesting on the murder front, several of the news teams were busy filming it.
“Well, let’s look on the bright side,” I said. “I’m sure we can think of one.”
“If the chief lets us reopen the yard sale today, we’ll have an overflow crowd all ready to dash in and buy souvenirs,” Michael suggested.
“And if he doesn’t let us reopen for days?”
“The crowds will be even bigger when it hits the National Enquirer.”
“Oh, and the college will love that,” I said. “Professor Turned TV Star Hosts Murder.”
He winced.
“Maybe I should stay out of sight until the reporters leave,” he said.
“Good idea,” I said. “Or wear your mask again, anyhow. But at least the circus out there has one bright side.”
“And that is?”
“The only way I can think of to help Giles is to create reasonable doubt of his guilt,” I said.
“Well, there’s always fingering the real culprit.”
“Yes, that would be nice, but creating reasonable doubt will be hard enough,” I said. “So we need to poke a few holes in the stories of the other people who went into the barn. What Dad calls our skulk of suspects. And I’ve already spotted one of them in the crowd. Make that two. Chances are the whole skulk is here.”
“And if some of them aren’t?”
“I would find that highly suspicious and would try to find out why they are avoiding us, when I do catch up with them—which shouldn’t be all that hard in a small town like Caerphilly.”
“So who will you start with?” he asked.
“Depends on who is here,” I said. “But I think I see the person I’d like to start with. Over there by the Sno-Cone truck—the woman who was trying to buy the trunk. See you later.”
I dashed downstairs and out into the yard.
Dad occupied our front porch-turned-stage, giving his spiel on the importance of owls in the ecosystem. Not that you could hear much of what he was saying over the boombox, which was playing The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ version of “Who Do You Love?” while a chorus line of assorted owl-costumed SPOOR members performed a ragged but enthusiastic imitation of the Rockettes. Either Dad’s fellow SPOOR members had shed their reticence overnight or Dad had recruited some more uninhibited owls, probably from the ranks of my family.
Nearby, having removed the offending branch, my lumberjack uncles had moved on to boarding up the broken window and shaking their heads over the remains of the funnel cake truck. The boom lift was once more swaying gently overhead, its four-person cargo equally divided between people busily snapping photos of the forensic crew at work and people staring greedily down at the piles of unbought stuff. Though apparently Chief Burke had forbidden Cousin Everett to take his customers directly over the crime scene today, because the platform was only wobbling along the edges of the fence. The ride would probably still offer some excitement, since Everett had delegated running the boom lift to Rob, whose ineptness with mechanical objects was legendary.
I saw Michael, on his way to join the crowd around the funnel cake truck, waylaid by Cousin Bernie, the most obsessive of the family’s genealogists, who never really felt he knew someone until he had inspected at least half a dozen generations of his family tree. Cousin Bernie still regarded my father with profound suspicion because, through no apparent fault of his own, Dad had been orphaned as an infant. After a glass or two of wine at family gatherings, Bernie was often found staring balefully at Dad and muttering, “The man could be anyone.”
I wondered how Bernie would react when he learned that Michael had spent nearly forty years on the planet without ever feeling the need to track down all sixteen of his great-great-grandparents.
I left them to it and looked around for the would-be owner of the trunk. As luck would have it, not only was she still loitering by the Sno-Cone truck, she came running over when she saw me.
“There you are!” she exclaimed. “There’s no one else around here who can answer my question.”
“I’d be happy to try,” I said. “If you’d tell me what your question is?”
“Where can I pick up my trunk?” she said.