Owls Well That Ends Well(65)

I pondered. Okay, I wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t seen Gordon—I knew he had to be already dead and locked in the trunk when Giles entered the barn for the second time. But I was surprised that she’d admitted it so readily.

Unless she found admitting a lie easier than confessing to murder. For all I knew, she’d killed Gordon before searching the barn, and was barely restraining her panic until she could find out exactly how much I’d seen.

She didn’t look as if she was barely restraining panic. An urge to climb the deer-proof fence and scour the yard sale for Hummel, perhaps, but not panic.

“So if you didn’t do him in and stuff him in the trunk, who did?” I asked.

“I have no idea!”

“Did you see anyone else in the barn?”

“Well—not in the barn.”

“Then where?”

“I did see someone leaving just before I went in. But I have no idea who.”

“Can you describe the person?” I asked, trying to keep my tone patient.

“No, not at all.”

“Was it a man or a woman?”

“All I saw was this huge Mexican hat.”

“Aha!” I said. “Professor Schmidt with the sombrero in the barn!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Thanks.”

“So?” she said. “What about my reward?”

“Reward?”

“My Hummel!”

“The yard sale’s still a crime scene,” I said, slowly and carefully. “But as soon as they release it, you can have every bit of Hummel on the place.”

“For a dollar?”

“For a dollar,” I said. “In fact—what the hell—gratis. On me.”

“Excellent,” she said, positively beaming at me. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask her, so I didn’t object when she strolled off to study the stuff inside the fence from another angle.

I felt better already. As long as I could get her to repeat her story for the chief, it would create reasonable doubt of Giles’s guilt. Gordon was already dead and locked in the trunk when Giles came in. Of course, finding the real murderer would be more satisfactory than creating reasonable doubt, but still, I’d already made progress.

Of course, now I had to scour the yard sale for Hummel. And it wouldn’t be pretty if it turned out we had no Hummel at all. Perhaps I should scrounge up a Hummel or two to placate her, if it turned out no one at the yard sale was selling any. Make sure I had something to hold out as a reward for good behavior. Or would that look like a bribe?

I’d worry about it later.

I pulled out my cell phone and was about to dial Chief Burke when it occurred to me that so far I only had the Hummel lady’s word. And she’d already lied once. Should I tell the chief now, or look for some corroboration first?

I shoved my cell phone back in my pocket.

First I had to find Professor Schmidt.





Chapter 27

I prowled through the crowd looking for Arnold Schmidt. It wasn’t easy finding anyone, since both the crowd and the number and variety of vendors catering to them had grown exponentially. I saw people hawking vacuum cleaners, scarves, purses, home-grown vegetables, patented tear-free onion slicing machines, essential oils and incense, souvenir Caerphilly t-shirts and key chains, and bad imitation Rolexes. Someone was even trying to sell a litter of baby ferrets, which I hoped Dad, Michael, and Eric didn’t see.

My relatives were still selling hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, and potato salad as fast as they could dish them out, but now the discriminating outdoor diner could also find homemade fried chicken, barbecued ribs, kebabs, tacos, gyros, sushi, crab cakes, and at least a dozen different varieties of sandwich, along with popcorn, ice cream, and Sno-Cones for dessert. No more funnel cake, alas, thanks to our volunteer tree surgeons.

I even spotted Cousin Sidney cruising up and down the road in his tow truck, dragging a float on which one of the dark horse candidates in the upcoming Caerphilly mayor’s election was perched, wearing an Uncle Sam costume and haranguing the crowd through a megaphone. None of which exactly enhanced Sidney’s effectiveness as a deterrent to the parking scofflaws, though it did add to the day’s festiveness.

At one point, I heard several loud reports—they couldn’t be gunshots, could they? Not loud enough, I thought, as I ran toward them. No, not gunshots. A cousin dressed as a bunch of grapes, with about a hundred purple balloons fastened to his clothes, had given too enthusiastic a hug to another cousin in a porcupine costume.

Sammy, the young police officer, who stood nearby guarding the gate to the original yard sale, hadn’t been fooled. Or maybe, unlike me, Sammy had more sense than to run toward something that sounded like gunshots.