The Penguin Who Knew Too Much(5)

I was pulling out my cell phone to call him when I saw Dad trudging up the cellar steps, dragging his heels like a grade-school kid on the way to the principal's office. As he stepped out onto the lawn, someone banged the cellar doors shut behind him. Dad looked back reproachfully.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“He asked me to leave,” Dad said, his voice plaintive. “Said he couldn’t have civilians at the scene. Civilians!”

“He was being polite, of course. What he really meant is that he can’t allow any of his suspects to stay at the scene.”

“Oh,” Dad said, brightening. “That's true. I suppose he can’t. After all, the person who reports finding the body does often turn out to be the killer.”

“And someone has to tell the rest of the family that we probably have to halt the move temporarily,” I said. “The chief's not going to want us dragging more stuff into what's suddenly become a possible crime scene. Why don’t you go inside and break the news to Mother and the others?”

“An excellent plan!” he said. And with his good humor restored, he trotted into the house.

I strolled around to the front yard, nodding good morning to several other officers on their way to the cellar, and sat on the porch, where I could keep a lookout for more new arrivals. I reached into my pocket for the notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I called my humongous to-do list. When faced with a crisis, I clung to the notebook the way a toddler clutches a security blanket. And while finding the body at any time would be a horrible thing, finding it on moving day counted as a real crisis, didn’t it?

Especially when Chief Burke started trying to figure out who had buried the body, focusing on the most logical suspects—me and the ever-growing crew of family members showing up to help with the move.

I used the paper clip that served as a place mark to open the notebook to my list of priorities for the day. I hadn’t yet crossed off many things—after all, it was barely noon—but already the neat clarity of the list I’d made last night had been sullied with half a dozen scribbled additions and annotations. I was used to that happening when real life and one of my lists collided. Especially real life involving my family. But odds were that Dad's discovery would derail the day's agenda entirely. I turned the page to begin an entirely new list.

But before I even started that, I pulled out my cell phone and hit the first speed-dial button. I felt better the moment Michael answered.

“We’re still at the storage bin, loading the truck,” he said. “You were right; I really underestimated how long it would take.”

He didn’t mention the reasons it was taking longer, probably because they were still within earshot—the several cousins and uncles who’d gone with him to help load the pickup and were probably still squabbling amicably about what to load next or how to balance the load. He didn’t sound annoyed, either. Amazing.

Of course, Michael uncritically adored my family, probably because he’d always felt deprived growing up as an only child, with a widowed mother and two unmarried aunts as his sole relatives. So far prolonged exposure to the Hollingworths, my mother's clan, hadn’t dimmed his enthusiasm for the prospect of marrying into a large, noisy, eccentric extended family. I’d recently realized that was one of my reasons for dragging my heels about marrying the tall, dark, and handsome Michael—the fear that after a year or two with my family as in-laws, he’d suddenly come to his senses and go looking for someone less genealogically encumbered.

I’d finally become convinced that Michael really did enjoy my family—just as Dad, who’d been a foundling, had been overjoyed when, by marrying Mother, he’d gained not only a wife but several hundred aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins. Buoyed by this knowledge, I’d agreed to Michael's plan for eloping in the middle of one of my family's legendary outdoor parties. Specifically, the over-the-top housewarming party we were throwing on Monday, Memorial Day, once our move back into the house was complete. Anyone who didn’t come to the party couldn’t complain about not being invited. We knew that neither of our mothers would be happy that we’d preempted the overe-laborate wedding and reception plans they’d begun to cook up, but at least by eloping now we could prevent either mother from doing anything rash, like making large, nonrefundable deposits on any wedding paraphernalia. And maybe they’d both be so relieved to hear we’d finally tied the knot that they’d forgive us.

Just in case, we were taking off immediately on a two-week honeymoon. Probably not enough time for either my mother or Mrs. Waterston to get over her disappointment at the lack of a big wedding, but enough time for them to calm down and refo-cus their energies on nagging us about when we were going to provide them with grandchildren. At thirty-six, I wasn’t sure if my own biological clock was prodding me, but I knew Michael's mother soon would be.