The Penguin Who Knew Too Much(6)

Maybe two weeks wasn’t enough. Maybe Michael should ask the college for a sabbatical so we could take a slow cruise around the world. Though for all I knew, that could be what Michael had planned. He’d made all the arrangements for the honeymoon, and refused to tell me anything. The theory was that I’d have one less thing to worry about on top of the move.

If he thought not knowing where I was going would stop me from worrying—

Anyway, that was The Plan. And it was working—so far. As far as I could tell, my premove and preparty nerves camouflaged any prenuptial jitters, and anyone who noticed Michael's good spirits would simply chalk it up to his eagerness at finally moving into our recently—and expensively—renovated house. I doubted anything my eager relatives could do while trying to help would annoy him. Dad's discovery, on the other hand—

“There's nothing wrong, is there?” Michael asked.

“Well, you might want to put loading the truck on hold for now and come back to the house. There's a slight hitch in our plans. Dad's found a body buried in the basement.”

I waited for a few anxious seconds.

“How exciting for your father,” he said, finally. “Unless, of course—dare I hope it's something an archaeologist would find more interesting than a doctor? A body left over from the Civil War, perhaps? Or something the Sprockets left behind?”

“I said body, not bones,” I said. “Dad says our body, whoever it is, hasn’t been dead more than a day or so.”

“Damn,” Michael said. “Do we know who it is?” “Not yet.”

“That's unsettling,” he said.

I knew what he meant. Until we found out who the victim was, we didn’t know quite how to react. The somber feeling induced by hearing of someone's death might swell into grief if we knew the victim. Unless it was someone we really didn’t like, in which case we might feel a hint of guilty relief. For now, we were in limbo.

“And not to sound too selfish,” he added, “but I bet this is going to throw a monkey wrench into things.” Into The Plan, he meant.

“Too early to tell,” I said. “Why don’t you postpone any additional loading for now and come back?” “Roger. I’ll bring Horace.”

“Good idea.” My cousin Horace was a crime-scene technician back in Yorktown, my hometown, and since the Caerphilly Police Department was too small to have many forensic capabilities, the chief sometimes enlisted Horace's help when a major crime occurred. If Horace was in town, that is; though these days he was almost always in town, since, like young Sammy, he’d also developed a crush on our distant cousin Rose Noire.

“It might take us a while to make sure everything's either securely loaded on the truck or safely locked back in the storage unit,” Michael said. “But we’ll be back as soon as we can.”

“Great.”

I put the phone away and was lifting the pen to make some notes when I heard a car door slam. I looked up and saw a woman striding purposefully down our front walk, leading a llama.





Chapter 4

“Hello,” I said, while frantically racking my brain to see if she was a relative I should recognize. Not that my family had a monopoly on eccentricity, but calling on people with a llama in tow was the sort of thing many of them would do. And an alarmingly large number of relatives seemed to be arriving early to help with the move, instead of waiting until Monday's giant house-warming picnic.

My latest visitor was short and plump, probably in her forties, with cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a face that would look pleasant if she stopped frowning. It was not a face that rang a bell, though, nor could I remember hearing that any of the family had taken an interest in llamas. I knew I’d never seen the brown-and-white llama before.

The woman didn’t answer my greeting until she had reached the porch and had climbed the first two steps. Then she handed me her end of the llama's rope. The llama, fortunately, remained on solid ground.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It's just not working anymore.”

I studied the llama for a few moments. Admittedly, I was no llama expert, but it seemed to be working fine to me. It stared back at me with calm, sleepy-eyed reassurance. It looked quite friendly, even warm. I had to remind myself that was just the way all llamas look, and not a valid reason to take the llama's side over the woman's in whatever dispute they were having.

“I’ve been trying to talk to Patrick for a week and a half now and haven’t gotten an answer,” the woman said.

I glanced back at the llama. Was Patrick its name, then? Did she really expect the llama to answer? I resisted the urge to inch a little farther away from her.