The Real Macaw(28)

“Poor guy,” I said aloud.

And then I, too, forgot about him for the next several hours. By the time I reached the grocery store it was jammed with shoppers. When I finally got home, I grabbed provisions from Rose Noire’s sandwich mountain and retreated to the nursery to spend some time with the twins. Downstairs, I could hear people coming and going, calling for Dad, Clarence, Grandfather, Rose Noire. Calling for me, occasionally, and I hope being told that I had a few other things on my plate.

I kept track of what was going on out in the barn through the nursery windows. I’m not really good at staying uninvolved, but I was trying.

Over the course of the afternoon, the border collie escorted ninety-seven sheep from Seth Early’s pasture into our barn before they figured out how to secure the barn door and the pasture gate so he couldn’t open them. Probably not ninety-seven unique sheep. The Corsicans took them back in batches when they had a chance, and as the day wore on the newly arriving sheep began looking distinctly cross and footsore. On the positive side, Seth was so impressed with the dog’s skill and initiative that he put in a bid to adopt him when the chief’s embargo was lifted. I made use of the chief’s permission to deputize, and sent a very tired but happy border collie across the road to his new permanent home.

By bedtime things were remarkably quiet.

“In fact, it’s too quiet,” I told Michael as we were feeding the twins at about 8:00 P.M. In what had become a regular Friday night ritual, we had brought the boys to our room and were playing Mozart as we fed them. Rose Noire assured us that this would stimulate their intelligence and creativity. If it did that, fine; for now all I cared about was that it seemed to make them calmer and happier, though I was more than half convinced that their good humor during the weekly concert was a direct result of our more relaxed mood.

“Too quiet—you mean the Mozart? I can turn the volume up a bit if you like. Or are you suggesting we shouldn’t have sent Spike off to your parents’ house while the animals are here?”

“I think giving Spike a break from the animals was a brilliant idea, and talking Mother and Father into taking him in was a masterful stroke of diplomacy,” I said. “I meant everything’s too quiet. The animals. The Corsicans. Dad hasn’t dropped by for hours to share his latest theory of the crime and nag me into helping him solve it.”

“Maybe the chief has solved it.”

“We’d have heard.”

“Well, then it looks as if Mommy’s going to have to help the chief crack the case,” Michael said to Jamie. He followed this up by blowing a gentle raspberry on Jamie’s stomach, a trick both boys adored. Jamie crowed, and waved his hands and legs furiously.

“See?” Michael said. “Jamie approves.”

“He probably doesn’t realize that by trying to solve the murder, Mommy would be making herself a target for a killer who might still have possession of the murder weapon,” I said.

Michael’s face fell.

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “You shouldn’t do anything that might put you in harm’s way.”

Now if I could just get Dad to see it that way.

Around midnight, when I was up feeding Josh, I heard a noise from the backyard. Or maybe from the barn. I couldn’t see anything from the side windows, so I hefted Josh to one shoulder and ventured downstairs.

My first thought was to go out and check on the barn myself. But by the time I got downstairs, I’d remembered what I’d said to Michael a few hours before. Someone had shot Parker, with a gun that had yet to be recovered. I hadn’t known Parker well and hadn’t seen the crime scene, but my imagination was perfectly able to invent a gruesome image of the blood-spattered windshield Dad had mentioned. As I stood there in the kitchen, with the sleeping baby on my shoulder, that image kept flashing into my mind and made me draw my hand back from the doorknob.

So I flipped on all the outdoor lights instead. We’d had them installed as a security measure, a series of floodlights mounted all around the house and the barn. With them on, the yard might be brighter at high noon, but only a little. I stood in the darkened kitchen, peering out at the barn, trying to catch a glimpse of a prowler, two- or four-legged.

After about five minutes, the barn door opened and Clarence peered out, shading his eyes against the glare from the spotlights.

“Hello?” he called. “Anyone there?”

I moved to the back door and opened it, still staying in the shadows.

“It’s me,” I called, as softly as I could and still be heard across the barnyard.