The Gift of the Magpie Read online

  “Three times. If there really was a prowler, he’s lucky no one on this part of the street owns a gun.”

  “As far as we know,” I said. “Of course, it’s always possible Harvey did, but he’d never have found it in time to do any damage with it.”

  “Good point.” Horace shook his head sadly. “Poor sap. Why did someone have to bump him off just as we were going to help him turn his life around?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I should let you get back to whatever you’re doing.”

  Horace nodded. But instead of disappearing immediately into the garage, he stood for a few moments gazing back and forth between Mrs. Gudgeon’s house and Mr. Brimley’s.

  “If you ask me, we need to interview those two ASAP,” he said. “What are the odds that someone snuck in without either of them seeing?”

  “When you put it that way, wouldn’t one of them be the most likely killer?” I asked. “Mrs. Gudgeon would only have to elude Mr. Brimley’s observation, and vice versa. And as neighbors, they probably know the best way to do that. What time the other one’s likely to be out or sleeping. A third party would have to avoid them both.”

  “I like the way you think,” he said. “Of course, maybe that’s only because I know what total pains in the … neck both of them are. Well, that crime scene won’t work itself. Just yell if there’s any trouble.”

  With that, he went back into the garage. I stood by the open door for a few moments, listening. Before too long he began a sort of not-very-tuneless humming that I knew was a sign he was absorbed in his work.

  I stepped away from the door far enough that I could keep an eye on the rest of the yard and almost bumped into Mr. Brimley.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” Being startled probably made me sound more fierce than usual.

  “I hear he got beaned with some of his own junk.” Brimley had that tense, eager look people sometimes get when they’re gossiping about some choice bit of scandal.

  “I’ll have to ask you to stay on your side of the property line,” I said.

  “Nonsense. What’s the harm in—?”

  “This whole yard is a crime scene,” I said. “Leave now! You could be trampling critical evidence.”

  “I just want a peek.”

  He took a step forward, and so did I, making us toe to toe. I braced myself in case he tried to shove past me. He wasn’t quite as tall as I was, and his body was round-shouldered and pudgy, like the before picture for a diet and exercise program.

  “Dammit, what’s your problem?” he whined. “All I want—”

  “The little lady already told you to leave three times since I got here.”

  Mr. Brimley and I both started—we hadn’t heard Vern Shiffley arrive. He loomed over us, in the sort of relaxed yet alert pose that almost shouted “just try it!”

  “And I don’t intend to say it more than once,” Vern went on. “Move your sorry self back into your own yard and stop interfering with our investigation.”

  Mr. Brimley reluctantly backed away for a few steps before turning and walking rather quickly back to his own yard. In fact, all the way back to his own porch. I suspected if the weather had been fine he’d have sat down there and glared at us from the safety of his rocking chair, but the temperature had dropped into the thirties and it was starting to rain.

  “Just my luck to draw guard duty in this mess.” Vern looked up and sighed.

  “Unless you need my help, I’m going to head out,” I said. “With luck I can find an indoor Helping Hands project to join.”

  He laughed and waved as I dashed toward the Twinmobile. When I looked back, I saw that he’d settled on Harvey’s porch.

  I buckled myself in, but instead of starting the car I pulled out my notebook and looked at my list of Helping Hands projects. No way I was joining the manure project. In fact—I pulled out my phone to text Michael.

  “You still doing manure?” I asked.

  “Did one load. Heading over to help your grandfather with something.”

  Probably the magpie project.

  “Have fun,” I texted back.

  I’d drop by later to see if the wheelchair ramp crew were persevering in spite of the rain.

  “I should go help out with the quilting project,” I said aloud. With any luck I’d show up and find they had more quilters than they needed, and I could praise their efforts and move on to some other project.

  But as I was starting up the Twinmobile I realized what I really wanted to do: go home, boot up my laptop, and take a look at that hoarder website where Tabitha had met Harvey.

  Where Tabitha claimed to have met Harvey. I still wasn’t sure I trusted her.

  Then, on a sudden impulse, I turned right instead of left, and headed in the direction of the Caerphilly Public Library. Not only was it several miles closer than home—I wasn’t keen on doing any more driving than I had to in this rain—but I could be reasonably sure the library wasn’t currently infested with several dozen visiting relatives who might want to make claims on my time.

  But when I had squelched into the library, deposited my umbrella in the trash can that served as a makeshift umbrella stand, and strolled over to the line of public computers, I found that all three were occupied. I inched closer, pulled out my notebook, and pretended to be looking something up, which gave me the chance to observe the computer users and see if any of them looked close to finishing whatever they were doing. The first computer was occupied by an elderly man who I knew had recently discovered the joys of online genealogical research. Two middle-school kids were using the second, apparently to get a head start on a school science fair project involving cockroaches and earthworms. On the third, a high school student was reading Julius Caesar—and she was only in Act 1, scene 2.

  I sighed and closed my notebook. Should I go home to use my laptop? Or get back to checking on Helping Hands projects?

  “Merry Christmas, Meg.” I turned to see Ms. Ellie Draper, the head librarian. “Come on back to my office,” she added, in that soft yet penetrating voice librarians cultivate to set a good example to the patrons.

  I followed her through the STAFF ONLY door. Once it shut behind us, she turned and spoke in a normal tone.

  “I saw you coveting the computers,” she said. “And technically, at least two of those folks have already been there long enough that I could ask them to let someone else take a turn, but they’re none of them wasting time, so how about if I let you use my computer?”

  “I would love it,” I said.

  She led me into her office, cleared a stack of Library Journals off her desk chair, and left me to it.

  I called up a search engine and typed in “Perfectly Good Place.” And then, after a moment of thought, I added “Hoarding” and hit the enter key.

  Bingo! There it was. A cheerful red-and-blue graphic at the top of the page showed a cartoon person trying to peek over a towering pile of stuff. There were links to books about hoarding and decluttering, services to help you with your cleanup, and yes—message boards.

  My initial thought was that I would just poke around the message boards a bit until I found some of Harvey’s posts and could see what he was telling people about himself. Maybe he had a good idea who his prowlers were and just hadn’t told the police. For that matter, maybe something he’d said in the forum had inspired the prowlers. If he’d implied that there was something valuable beneath the clutter, for example, and been indiscreet enough to mention where he lived.

  But I soon realized it wasn’t going to be that easy. There were dozens of topics on the message boards and thousands of messages, and none of the users went by their full names. Some used first names, others had nicknames like “JunkLady” or “Lost in Clutter.” I tried to look for topics that would seem to relate to Harvey’s situation, but the more I searched, the more I realized how little I knew about his situation. And I found myself getting distracted by reading some of the stories people had posted about their problems. Heartbreaking stories a
bout people losing their houses to clutter. Broken marriages. Clutter-induced physical illnesses. Worse, clutter-causing mental illnesses.

  I looked up and realized half an hour had passed, and I was no closer to finding any traces of Harvey on the site. Was this even worth doing?

  Especially since the whole subject was making me impatient and antsy. The collected misery was depressing me, and although I was trying very hard to empathize with their struggles, I just didn’t get it. Part of me just wanted to swoop down and fix things for them. Organize them! Even though I knew that it was more complicated than that, and my organizing efforts would probably just make things worse.

  I glanced down at the long list of bulletin board topics again, and one caught my eye.

  “Do I need professional help?”

  I had no idea whether or not the forum-dwellers did, but I sure did.

  I pulled out my phone and called my nephew Kevin, the cyber wizard.

  “Don’t worry, I talked them out of it,” he said when he answered the phone.

  “And a Merry Christmas to you, too,” I said. “Who did you talk out of what?”

  “Just pretend you didn’t hear that, then,” Kevin said. “Michael had me talk Josh and Jamie out of a pretty crazy idea they had for a Christmas present for you. You’d have hated it.”

  “Then thank you,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what I’m not getting for Christmas.”

  “Nope. You’ll sleep better not knowing.”

  “Probably something involving reptiles. If you’re not going to spill, can I maybe talk you into doing a little cyber sleuthing for me?” I asked. “Because in case you haven’t heard, we had a murder in town?”

  “Awesome. Granddad must be over the moon. Who bought it this time?”

  I explained about Harvey the Hoarder and the arrival of Tabitha, who claimed to be his friend from A Perfectly Good Place.

  “So what do you want me to find out about this site?”

  “Anything you can.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “Okay—is Harvey Dunlop on the site? That’s D-U-N-L-O-P, although he probably uses a screen name and I want to know what it is. And the same for a Tabitha Fillmore. And did they interact on the site—either publicly or in private messages? And did he say anything on the site that would give anyone a motive for murdering him?”

  “You don’t want much, do you? I’m looking at the site now. Some of these people are whining about how hard it is to throw away orphaned Tupperware lids—what could he possibly say that would make someone want to kill him?”

  “What if he complained that if he could just clean up his house he could find that two million dollars he saved up from his youthful career as a bank robber?”

  “Okay, that’d work. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll probably need to hack in so I can match the message board names to their real emails. I’m assuming you’re okay with that. You know his email?”

  “Yes.” I pulled out my phone and opened up the contact app. “From when we did his yard cleanup. Although eventually I figured out he had a much harder time ignoring us if we just showed up on his doorstep.” I found the email and rattled it off to him. “And I don’t have Tabitha’s email, but I’ve got her snail mail address. I’ll text it to you.”

  “Cool. I’ll let you know when I find something.” With that, Kevin hung up.

  When, not if. I liked his confidence.

  I stopped by to thank Ms. Ellie on the way out.

  “Did you find out what you needed?” she asked.

  “I found out it was smarter to get my techie nephew Kevin to do my online searching,” I said. “So after a fashion, yes.”

  “Is this something for the Helping Hands program, or something you think Chief Burke needs to know to solve poor Harvey Dunlop’s murder?”

  “Maybe both.”

  “Harvey was a big reader, you know. At one time he used to come into the library regularly. Almost the only place he went after a while—I think he was an agoraphobe, on top of being a hoarder. Then once we started carrying ebooks, he mostly checked those out. I know it’s more convenient for some people, but in his case, I think they took away his last link to the outside world. Kind of sad.”

  She fell silent and looked thoughtful. I waited, because Ms. Ellie’s thoughts were usually worth hearing.

  “You know, I think his father was the real hoarder,” she said finally. “I think Harvey just inherited the hoard and didn’t really know any other way to live.”

  I thought back over the few hours I’d spent with him.

  “Makes sense,” I said. “Except for the paper, I didn’t see a whole lot of new stuff. Most everything I saw was old. And some of it’s nice, but most of it’s just … old.”

  “Like what you’d find if you cleared out some sweet little old lady’s overstuffed house and just took home everything that didn’t sell at the yard sale?” Ms. Ellie said. “Because I think that’s what happened after old Mrs. Dunlop died—Harvey’s grandmother. The way I heard it, his father thought he was going to make a mint selling the old lady’s things, but he didn’t like the prices any of the local antique dealers would give him, so he turned down their offers. I figure he just kept it all out of spite.”

  “That makes a lot of sense,” I said. “I confess, I was surprised how quickly Harvey got over his reluctance about the decluttering. Surprised and even a little worried that he’d have a reaction. But as the place started clearing out a little, he began getting really cheerful.”

  “And maybe he wasn’t even really agoraphobic,” she said. “Just painfully shy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We took him to the New Life Baptist concert and then had a little tree decorating party over at the furniture store. As far as I can tell, he had a blast. And then someone killed him, just as he was really starting to live.”

  “You made his last night happy, all of you,” Ms. Ellie said. “Take some comfort in that.”

  “I’ll take a whole lot more comfort if I can help the chief catch his killer and put them away for life.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” she said.

  “Will do.”

  It was still drizzling. I checked my phone’s weather app, hoping to find that the rain was nearly over, but I saw nothing but little rain clouds filling not only today but the rest of the week. Drat.

  But at least after tomorrow I could stop worrying about Helping Hands projects for a couple of days. I wasn’t about to send anyone out in the rain to do volunteer work on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

  But the chief’s murder investigation wouldn’t stop for the rain, and it was probably too much to hope that he’d find the killer in the next few days. Maybe working on Helping Hands projects would be a good distraction.

  I’d worry about that later. Time to check on some of today’s projects.

  Chapter 18

  I headed over to Trinity Episcopal and managed to dash inside just as the rain was revving up again. As I was shedding my raincoat and finding a place for my umbrella in one of the metal trash cans in the vestibule I ran into Robyn.

  She looked worried.

  “Meg, I heard about poor Harvey Dunlop. Have his relatives been contacted? Should I go over and call on them, in case they want us to handle the funeral?”

  “Was he a parishioner?” I asked. “Or even Episcopalian? Not that he would have to be, of course—”

  “No, of course he wouldn’t have to be, but actually he might be. I told you he has family buried here, didn’t I? So I assume they attended at some point.”

  Or perhaps had taken advantage of the welcoming policies of Robyn’s predecessors.

  “Yes, you mentioned it,” I said. “Where are they? We don’t know much about his family, and I’m curious.”

  “Over by the big camellia, on the west side of the graveyard,” she said. “Come down to the parish hall when you’re done—you should see this quilt.”


  With that she dashed toward the corridor that led to the parish hall. I retrieved my umbrella and trudged out into the graveyard.

  There were eight Dunlops buried by the big camellia, in what would be a pleasant, shady spot in the spring, when the surrounding oaks got their leaves back. And the burials probably covered four generations. From their birth and death dates I deduced that Wilberforce and Miriam Dunlop were probably Harvey’s great-grandparents, Aristede Senior and Jane his grandparents, Aristede Junior and Alice his parents. Sad—Alice had died young, at only twenty-eight, when Harvey was nine. Aristede Junior had outlived her by decades and died fifteen years ago. There were two small headstones for little girls who’d died young, at eighteen months and not quite two years—Aristede Junior’s younger sisters, the ones whose hair was in the mourning brooch. No other graves. I wondered if there were children or siblings who had been buried elsewhere or if this was all the Dunlops there ever had been.

  I took pictures of all of the tombstones, the oldest replete with carvings and biblical verses, the newest very plain, with nothing carved on them but names and dates. Maybe the maiden names of the women would lead us to other relatives. It would be nice if Harvey had mourners other than the Haverhills.

  I sloshed inside again, stashed my umbrella, and headed for the parish hall.

  It was a beehive of activity, though I couldn’t immediately figure out what some of it had to do with Mrs. Dinwiddie’s quilt. There were quilters in the end where I’d entered, yes. In the middle of the room, one of Randall Shiffley’s cousins appeared to be teaching a hands-on class in lamp repair. And the far end was filled with dogs. Puzzling. We’d had the annual blessing of the animals right on schedule, in October. And while I’d heard of places organizing canine nativities, I hadn’t heard that Robyn was planning one at Trinity. And I definitely would have heard if she was, because I’d almost certainly be recruited to wrangle the dogs.

  The quilting squad had pushed together four of the room’s large tables and laid out the hundreds of quilt pieces on them, in all their intricate splendor. And yes, splendor was the word. I’d been picturing a traditional quilt, made up of quaint old-fashioned prints and pastel colors. Mrs. Dinwiddie’s gran was clearly no traditionalist. The quilt’s dominant colors were black, purple, and metallic gold, with small accents in jewel tones of turquoise, fuchsia, and cobalt blue. And The Drunkard’s Path had just shot up there next to Tumbling Blocks in my list of cool favorite quilt patterns.