Owls Well That Ends Well Read online

  Apparently Rob and Dad had been working at cross purposes. Without Dad’s involvement, Rob finally heaved the door off Cousin Bernie. Bernie popped up, saw Dad, closed his eyes, and lay down again.

  “Concussion,” he muttered. “I must have a concussion.”

  “Oh, dear,” Dad said. “I hope not. Open your eyes and let me see your pupils.”

  “Are you going straight from the sale to an early Halloween party?” I asked, as Dad fished a small light out of his bag.

  “Meg!” Dad exclaimed. “The yard sale. Remember how we decided, with Halloween coming up so soon, to make it more fun by offering a discount to anyone in costume?”

  “She forgot,” Rob said, as Dad shone the light in Bernie’s eyes.

  “It’s on all the posters,” Dad said. “The pupils look fine. How many feathers am I holding up?”

  Bernie shut his eyes again and moaned.

  “Here,” Rob said. He reached into a grocery bag at his side and handed me a Groucho mask.

  I remembered Dad suggesting the costume discount, but I didn’t recall agreeing to it. But what would be the point of complaining? It was on all the posters. Dad would know—he’d made and distributed the posters; one of the few yard sale chores I’d successfully delegated. I put on the mask. The day was bound to bring moments when I failed to keep a polite, friendly expression on my face. Maybe the mask wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  “Where’s the nearest working bathroom?” Cousin Bernie said, popping his eyes open and scrambling to his feet.

  “Second floor,” I said. “That way!” I said, throwing myself in front of the door to the unsafe back stairs. Cousin Bernie whirled and ran out toward the front hall.

  “Good luck,” I muttered. I glanced over to see that Rob had plopped a slouch hat and a blond fright wig on his head and was beaming happily.

  “You do realize that Harpo never speaks,” I said.

  He beeped his bicycle horn at me and batted his eyes. Okay, not a bad resemblance, which was pretty odd, since my tall, blond Adonis brother was always considered the best looking in the family and Harpo was—well, Harpo.

  “All the SPOOR members will be in costume, each as a different kind of owl,” Dad said. SPOOR—Stop Poisoning Our Owls and Raptors, a local conservation group—was Dad’s new ruling passion.

  “So we’ll have a whole gaggle of owls,” Rob said.

  “A parliament of owls,” Dad corrected. “You only use gaggle for geese.”

  “It’s too dark to see much yet,” Groucho Emma exclaimed, returning to the kitchen. “But it’s going to be simply marvelous.”

  Groucho Claude, who followed her in, looked less enchanted. Groucho Meg knew just how he felt.

  “A parliament of owls … a murmuration of starlings,” Dad went on. Collective nouns were one of his many hobbies. “A muster of storks …”

  “Morning,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see the man who had beaten me to the upstairs bathroom earlier, now clad in jeans and a dark sweater. He strolled over to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup. Then he looked at Rob and Dad, sitting on the floor beside the doughnuts. Rob beeped his horn.

  “An exaltation of larks,” Dad recited. “An unkindness of ravens …”

  The man frowned slightly, and strolled back out.

  “And, of course, a murder of crows,” Dad said. “I’ve always liked that one.”

  “You would,” I said. “Who was that man, anyway?”

  “I have no idea,” Dad said. The feathers rustled slightly as he shook his head. “Not one of your friends from up here?”

  “I’ve never seen him before,” I said. “I thought he was a relative I’d never met.”

  “He’s not family,” Emma put in. “His eyes are too close together.”

  “He’s a Sprocket,” Rob said, through a mouthful of doughnut.

  “Oh, God; not another one,” I said.

  Chapter 3

  “Another what?” Emma asked.

  “Another Sprocket,” I said, sitting down and helping myself to a doughnut. “The family who used to own the house.”

  “But they sold it, right?” Emma said.

  “They get a piece of the action,” Dad said.

  “Ten percent of whatever we make from selling the contents,” I elaborated. “I’ve spent the past two months hauling stuff out of the house and barn, calling in appraisers, and negotiating to sell things at the best price possible, and all the time, I’ve had Sprockets underfoot.”

  “A plague of Sprockets,” Rob said.

  “Lacks alliteration,” I said. “How about a surfeit of Sprockets?”

  “Actually, that’s used for skunks,” Dad said. “A surfeit of skunks.”

  “It fits, then,” I said, nodding.

  “I’ m sure they just wanted to help,” Dad said, glancing at the door through which the latest Sprocket had disappeared.

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “It’s no wonder the sales contract took so long. The only thing they ever agree on is their paranoid suspicion that Michael and I are stealing some priceless Sprocket family treasure. The best thing about this yard sale won’t be getting rid of so much junk but seeing the last of the whole annoying family.”

  “Hear, hear,” Rob said, beeping his horn vigorously.

  “There now,” Dad said, patting me on the arm. “It helps to get it out of your system, doesn’t it?”

  “Have another doughnut,” Emma suggested.

  “Why is he staying here, anyway?” I said. “Plenty of motels in town; I usually make the Sprockets stay in one.”

  “He got in late last night, and all the motels were full,” Rob said. “He was pretty stressed out, so I told him he could stay here.”

  “Where he can cause even more trouble,” I said, with a sigh. “That’s the reason there’s no furniture here,” I added, to Emma and Claude. “If we bring anything into the house they assume it belonged to their Great-Aunt Edwina and start accusing us of trying to cheat them by leaving it out of the inventory. So we don’t move anything in until all her stuff is gone.”

  “You’re not keeping anything from the house,” Emma said, rather plaintively.

  “What we’re keeping is locked up in an off-site storage bin,” I said. “After we inventoried it, photographed it, and paid the Sprockets ten percent of whatever inflated price they thought it was worth.”

  “Goodness,” Emma said. “They sound very trying.”

  “You have no idea how glad I’ll be to see the last of the Sprockets,” I said.

  Just then, frenzied barking and snarling erupted from the backyard.

  “What’s that?” Emma exclaimed.

  “Not again,” I muttered.

  “Our security system,” Dad said, rubbing the tips of his wings together. “Works just as I planned.”

  “Looks as if the last of the Sprockets was trying to get inside the fence,” Rob said, peering out the kitchen window.

  “Oh, I see,” Claude said, joining Rob at the window. “The pit bull and the Doberman are the security system.”

  “No, they’re just for show,” I said. “Spike, the little fur ball, is the security system.”

  “That would be the black-and-white dust mop thing dangling from Mr. Sprocket’s ankle?” Claude asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Rob said, ambling toward the door. “I’ll rescue him.”

  “Poor little puppy,” Emma said, shaking her head.

  “I think he meant Sprocket,” I said.

  I peered out. Dad had shown up several days ago with enough eight-foot black plastic deer-proof fencing to enclose the entire two-acre yard sale area, as well as a collection of tents and multicolored fluttering banners—all of it borrowed, or so he claimed. I suspected the tents and banners had come from two of Mother’s cousins who ran car dealerships, but the fencing worried me. Dad’s definition of “borrowing” was questionable at times, and I kept expecting some neighboring farmer to show up irate, waving a bill for his deer-razed c
rops.

  But the crowning touch was the short chicken wire fence that ran outside the main fence, leaving a small area where we’d turned loose as many dogs as we could round up on short notice. The pit bull had turned out to be a devout coward, the geriatric Doberman slept most of the time, but Spike, Michael’s mother’s dog, more than made up for their shortcomings.

  I nodded with approval as Rob used a piece of doughnut to bribe Spike into detaching himself from Mr. Sprocket’s left ankle.

  “Meg, I have the signs for the barn,” Dad said.

  “Signs?” I echoed. “Why, what are you doing with the barn?”

  “Making it off-limits,” Dad said. “So no one will disturb the owls.”

  “Fine, Dad,” I said. I’d have plenty of time later to explain that the barn would be my blacksmithing workshop, not a sanctuary for his beloved endangered barn owls. If the owls couldn’t tolerate a reasonable amount of hammering, they could relocate to any of the other run-down outbuildings on the property.

  “Oops; there’s the doorbell again,” I said.

  I strolled toward the front door, followed by Dad, still chattering about the owls. By now, it was light enough that I could see our caller. He was peering through the glass sidelight to the left of the front door. I deduced from a half-dozen greasy triangular nose marks that he’d already exhausted the possibilities for snooping through the right side.

  “Oh, great,” I said. “It’s Gordon-you-thief.”

  “Who’s that?” Dad asked.

  “Gordon McCoy. He runs the Antique and Junque Emporium on Main Street.”

  “Why do you call him Gordon-you-thief?”

  “Everyone does,” I said, opening the door. “No, Gordon, you can’t go in early; you’ll have to wait until nine like everyone else.”

  Gordon straightened up and smirked at me. You couldn’t call it a smile when his beady eyes weren’t involved at all, and he had an awkward way of trying to open his mouth as little as possible to hide his front teeth, which were oversized and underbrushed. His appearance would improve enormously if you could swap his nearly nonexistent chin with his exaggerated Adam’s apple, and he’d be much more pleasant to have around if he’d stop using aftershave by the quart. I deduced from the red bandanna knotted over his head, the red sash around his waist, the painted-on handlebar mustache, and the single gold clip-on hoop earring that he’d typecast himself as a pirate.

  “Shiver me timbers and call off the dogs,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I’ll come clean.”

  “Very funny, Gordon,” I said, and started to close the door.

  Gordon’s foot got in the way.

  “I’m here for the yard sale,” he said, in an injured tone. “And you’ve got all these dogs running around loose.”

  “They’re not loose,” I said. “They’re inside a fence, with a BEWARE OF THE DOGS sign.”

  “Well, how am I supposed to get in with all those dogs running around?”

  “We’ll be removing the dogs when the yard sale starts,” I said. “At nine.”

  “But that’s two hours from now,” Gordon complained. “What am I supposed to do for two hours?”

  “Go have breakfast somewhere,” I suggested.

  “Aw, come on,” he said. “After all I did for you when you were getting ready for this? What’s the harm?”

  “See you at nine, Gordon,” I said. I raised my foot and took deliberate aim, as if about to stomp on the foot he still had stuck in the door. He jerked his leg back and I shut the door.

  Good riddance.

  Chapter 4

  “After all he did for you?” Dad repeated. I turned around to find that he had his back to me and was attempting to peer over his left shoulder at me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Owls can rotate their heads a full 270 degrees,” he said.

  “I expect their necks are built rather differently from yours,” I said. “You’ll pull something if you keep trying that.”

  “Yes, they have several extra vertebrae,” Dad said, rotating his head and trying to peer over the right shoulder. “Exactly what did Gordon do for you?”

  “Beats me,” I said. “He gave us estimates on some of the books and antiques, but since everyone else’s estimates were at least twice what he offered, we didn’t sell him anything.”

  “That doesn’t sound helpful,” Dad said.

  “What’s more, he missed every appointment he made with us,” I added over my shoulder as I headed back to the kitchen. “And then he’d show up at some maximally inconvenient time and get huffy when we refused to leave him alone in the house. I’m surprised he waited until seven to show up.”

  “If you mean the weasel in the pirate costume, he was skulking around the yard earlier,” Rob said.

  “How can you say something like that about a perfectly nice animal like the weasel?” I asked.

  “The sewer rat in the pirate costume, then,” Rob said. “He was the one who set off the dogs in the first place, but somehow he managed not to get bitten.”

  “That’s Gordon,” I said. “How is Mr. Sprocket?”

  “Please; Barrymore,” the man in question said, offering me his hand to shake.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Mr. Barrymore, of course.”

  “No,” he said. “Just Barrymore. Barrymore Sprocket.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, with more enthusiasm than I felt. “Have some doughnuts; I hear the doorbell again.”

  As soon as I was out of sight, I dried my now-damp hand on my jeans leg and made a mental note to introduce Barrymore to my cousin Leo, the mad inventor, who might still be looking for guinea pigs to test his revolutionary new antiperspirant hand cream.

  “Has this been going on all morning?” Dad said, as I appeared in the hall again. He had perched on the newel post at the bottom of the banister, the better to practice his head-swiveling.

  “Only since five-thirty,” Rob called from the kitchen.

  “Five-thirty isn’t this morning, it’s last night,” I muttered, on my way to the door. “If it’s Gordon-you-thief again, I’ll kill him.”

  A pleasant-looking woman in her fifties, wearing a flowered dress and a flower-decked hat, stood on the doorstep. Overdressed for a yard sale—she even held a pair of white kid gloves in her left hand. If this was a costume, it was too subtle for me. But there was no mistaking her purpose. She had that now-familiar acquisitive gleam in her eye and she clutched a copy of the Caerphilly Clarion, open at the classifieds.

  “Excuse me,” she said, with an ingratiating smile. “Is this where the yard sale is being held today?”

  I pointedly looked past her to the road. Yes, the half-dozen yard sale signs Dad had tacked up several days earlier were still there, and even though it wasn’t quite fully daylight, they were clearly readable even from here. For that matter, while driving up to the house, she could probably have spotted the fenced-in sale area. The multicolored tents and awnings were hard to miss.

  I focused on her face.

  “Yes, we’re having a yard sale, but it doesn’t open till nine a.m.,” I said.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I did so want to come, but you see, we’re having a luncheon at church today, and I have to be there at nine.”

  “For a luncheon?”

  “I’m in charge of preparations,” she said. “Anyway, I just wanted to see if you had any little bits of china.”

  “Little bits of china,” I repeated.

  “Yes,” she said. “I just love little china figurines. But I can’t afford to buy many of them in stores—fixed income, you know. And between church events, and Scout meetings, I just never seem to have a Saturday free for yard sales. So I was wondering—if you had anything like that, maybe I could just slip in and take a peek. I won’t take much of your time, really. And I’d be so grateful.”

  By this time, I realized I’d encountered another well-known fixture of local yard sales—the Hummel lady, who’d built her enormo
us collection for peanuts by using her sharp eye and sharper bargaining skills at flea markets and yard sales. And, of course, by conning her way into yard sales before anyone else.

  “Oh, no, I don’t really think we have anything like that,” I said. “Not anymore, anyway. Well, we did find a box of figurines my great-aunt picked up when her husband was stationed in Germany in the fifties, but they weren’t anything fancy. Just these cutesy little kids with lambs and puppies and things.”

  Her expression had grown strangely fierce and the fingers holding the newspaper twitched slightly.

  “But I sold the whole box for a dollar to a guy who showed up a few minutes ago,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “But- but-,” she sputtered.

  I had a hard time not laughing at the look of astonishment on her face. Okay, I suppose it was mean of me, but I was running on too little sleep, thanks to the likes of her.

  Suddenly I saw her expression change to one of cold rage. She pursed her lips and her eyes narrowed. I stepped back involuntarily, but then I realized she wasn’t looking at me.

  She’d spotted Gordon-you-thief, lurking about the yard, craning his neck to see something inside the fence that surrounded the yard sale.

  “I see,” she said, in clipped tones, already turning away. “Thanks anyway.”

  I stayed to watch for a few moments. Seeing how quick she’d been to jump to conclusions about him, I suspected that she’d encountered Gordon before and that it might be fun to watch her accost him. But, instead, she marched over to the outer edge of the yard and stood there, close to the bushes that separated the yard from the road, staring at him.

  I shrugged. Perhaps there would be interesting fireworks later.

  “How does this sound?” Dad asked, and then demonstrated an owl’s hoot.

  “Fabulous,” I said. “If I were a vole, I’d be terrified.”

  “I don’t think it’s resonant enough,” Dad fretted.

  When I returned to the kitchen, I found that several more relatives had joined the crowd—out-of-town ones who’d never met Michael before, and were inspecting him as frankly as if he were going on sale along with the eight-track tapes and Ronco gadgets outside. I considered asking Dad for the best group noun for an excessively large collection of family members—a chattering of cousins, or an unkindness of relations? But I stifled the impulse. After all, Mother would probably hear about it if I said anything insulting about her family.