The Real Macaw(79)

I folded up the luggage carrier and marched back into the town hall to confront the mayor.





Chapter 21




I stepped out of the elevator on the third floor. Same layout as on the second floor: mahogany double doors directly ahead, and the hallway stretching out on either side. The doors to room 301 were closed, but clearly the room wasn’t empty. I could hear the mayor’s voice ranting, slightly muffled by the intervening walls. I couldn’t understand everything he said, but I could catch enough to tell that he was probably voicing his opinion of the evacuation.

I could also tell that if we found the missing foulmouthed macaw, the mayor could teach it a thing or two.

I knocked on the double doors. And after about fifteen seconds, when no one came to greet me or sang out “Come in!” I cautiously opened one door and peered in.

The mayor did have an anteroom. The shouting was coming from a closed door to my right—apparently his private office.

I stepped inside and felt a muffled crunch beneath my feet. I looked down and saw that the carpet near the door was littered with bits of broken glass and china. From the larger pieces, I could tell that at least three breakables had met untimely ends here—a white china vase, a green glass vase, and a glass tumbler. Though from the amount of broken glass underfoot I suspected that another item or two had contributed to the debris without leaving any shards large enough to reveal their shape. There were a couple of new-looking dents on the walls on either side of the mahogany double doors and on the doors themselves.

Apart from the broken crockery, the room looked a lot like the county manager’s office. Not as many bookcases and file cabinets, and taking their place were several clusters of guest chairs flanked with end tables bearing neatly fanned selections of magazines. But the furniture, drapes, and carpets were in the same tasteful yet bland style. The desk was as impersonally empty as Terence Mann’s. The phone, the in- and out-baskets, and the computer monitor and keyboard suggested that someone could work there if needed, but clearly no one currently did—there were no personal touches, and no other supplies—no pens, pencils, stapler, paper clips, notebooks, while-you-were-out pads, or any of the things you’d usually find on the top of an occupied desk. Even Parker’s desk had had a few of the usual items, neatly arranged and squared with the edges of the desk. Clearly the mayor preferred to keep his support staff at a distance.

The hostage ficus was in front of one of the two windows that flanked the vacant secretary’s desk. The other window was filled with a large spider plant, almost the twin of the one I’d seen walking through the lobby downstairs.

Between them, spoiling an otherwise perfectly good wall, was another ghastly oil painting. This one showed a pudgy-faced Pruitt in a Continental Army uniform, standing in the prow of a boat being rowed across a vast expanse of turbulent, wintry water by a crew of some dozen burly underlings. General Pruitt crossing the Delaware?

Other, smaller paintings showed turtle-shaped Pruitts in various settings. Waddling through the wilderness in coonskin caps and buckskins. Peering through their goggles in front of battered World War I biplanes. In one particularly implausible scene, a pudgy Pruitt engineer presented the cotton gin to a grateful South.

A lot of the paintings were obvious imitations of better, more famous works. I had a sudden vision of myself writing an article on the Pruitt painter for the Caerphilly Clarion, ostensibly a serious study of the influences that had shaped the artist’s career—but of course anyone with half a brain would recognize it as a laundry list of which famous paintings he’d ripped off.

Why was I so focused on the paintings, anyway? I had more important things to think about.

Except that this was all part of the same problem. The Pruitts spending the taxpayers’ money on things that were useless, or benefited only them.

Randall had pegged it. Pruitt greed and Pruitt stupidity. Maybe I didn’t need to worry about making that article look like serious art criticism. Maybe I should just make it an outright attack and reveal exactly how much county money had been spent on these dubious works. I could call it “Pruitt Pride and Plagiarism.”

Then again, if Parker’s planned exposé had given one of the Pruitts a motive for murder, did I really want to write an article that would paint the next target on my back?

I tucked the problem away for later consideration. For now, I dragged over a side chair to stand on so I could lift down the enormous spider plant. Then I took the plant out to the hallway, dragging the chair with me so I’d have something to put it on. All the little shoots and baby plants spilled over the sides of the chair and onto the floor, but I smoothed them out and made sure they were as far as possible out of way of foot traffic in the hall. I couldn’t remember ever wrangling such a large spider plant before, and yet I had an odd sense of déjà vu—perhaps because it was almost the same challenge as arranging the kind of over-the-top veils several of my friends and relations had chosen for weddings in which I’d been drafted to serve as a bridesmaid.