“My people tell me they’re finished in there,” he said, nodding his head toward the fenced-in yard sale area. “So I thought I’d come out and tell you that if you want to reopen your yard sale, it’s fine with us.”
Before he even finished speaking a murmur went through the crowd. Half of the people stampeded toward the gate to the yard sale while the other half began shoving to get closer to where the chief and I were standing. And I suspected they didn’t have too many questions to ask him.
“You didn’t have to come all the way out here to tell us,” I said. “You could have just called.” I didn’t add that it would have been a lot easier for me if he’d told me over the phone, where no one else could overhear him. Now we had to gather everyone and everything we needed to reopen with several hundred people underfoot asking why it was taking so long.
“Had to bring Minerva out, didn’t I?” the chief said, glancing at the plump figure following him down the walk. “God forbid that the fool thing could open even five minutes before she got here,” he added, raising his voice. “Someone else might beat her to another confounded piece of Depression glass.”
“You hush up and let the poor girl go take care of everything she has to do to open up again,” Minerva Burke said. “And you might round up some of your men to help with crowd control, now that you’ve just blurted out your news in public and riled everyone up.”
Chief Burke’s frown deepened as he stomped off and issued orders to the various officers still on the scene.
“Men,” Mrs. Burke said to me, shaking her head. “Makes you wonder where they all were the day the good Lord handed out common sense, doesn’t it?”
I decided I liked Mrs. Burke.
“Of course, there’s some of them better than others,” she went on. “Don’t you shilly-shally around too long over that young man of yours, now. He’s a keeper, and if you don’t do something about it, someone else will.”
Of course, I might like Mrs. Burke better from a slight distance.
“Would you like to have some lemonade while you wait?” I asked, pointing to an area near the back door where Mother and several of her cronies had set up lawn chairs and folding umbrellas and were sipping lemonade and iced tea while observing the crowd’s antics.
“Thank you, sugar,” she said. “I believe I would.”
It didn’t occur to me until a few minutes too late that introducing the formidable Mrs. Burke to Mother might be a mistake. Not that they wouldn’t hit it off. When I glanced over a few minutes later, I saw unmistakable signs that they were hitting it off far too well. And possibly plotting together. One of the things I liked most about Caerphilly was its location—close enough to Yorktown that I could see my parents as often as I liked, but far enough that they wouldn’t be underfoot quite all the time. The last thing I wanted was Mother establishing a satellite office in my backyard, and I began to fear that she’d found just the ally to run it.
Not something I could worry about right now. It was eleven-forty. We needed to get this thing rolling.
I fled inside the fence to organize things, leaving Officer Sammy and Cousin Horace to guard the gate.
“Rob!” I called. “Get Sammy to give you the bullhorn and walk around announcing that we’re opening at noon.”
“Roger,” he said, looking quite cheerful, as he usually did when he drew a job that required no strenuous exertion.
“And tell everyone who has a table to get in here ASAP, and everyone else to stay the hell away from the gate until noon,” I added.
“Though not necessarily in those precise words,” Michael suggested. “Any jobs for me?”
“Could you secure the barn?” I asked. “We don’t want hundreds of people tramping through and trying to take pictures of the murder scene.”
“Can do,” he said.
With most of the friends and family on site helping and the rest quickly learning to make themselves scarce, we staffed the tables and set up the checkout by noon. I gave Sammy a nod and he and Cousin Horace opened the gates.
My last thought, as the shopping hordes descended, was that perhaps by the time I could think again, the chief would have solved the murder, and poor Giles would be free.
I thought, with a twinge of guilt, he might have an easier time of it if I’d had the chance to tell him about Schmidt and Endicott.
The next two hours lasted at least ten years. Each. But eventually Michael and Dad convinced everyone that nothing they could say or do would gain them admission to the barn. After that, the mere sightseers left in a huff; the media retreated to various corners of the yard, trying to look inconspicuous, in the hope that we’d forget they were there and leave the barn unguarded; and the rest of the crowd settled in to do what they were there for: to shop till they dropped. Only a few of them did it literally, due to overexertion in the sun, and Dad was there to revive them. But many more were staggering under the sheer weight of their purchases, and my teenaged nephews and their friends found a lucrative new business opportunity: carrying boxes to people’s cars and trucks.