Swan for the Money Read online

  Still, while I doubted the chief would be interested, maybe I could turn the bottle over for analysis to my cousin Horace, who was a crime scene technician back in our home town of Yorktown. Not that he could necessarily find anything useful by analyzing it, but at least it would be out of my hands, not to mention my tote bag. And Horace was one of the volunteers who’d promised to come out and help me set up for the rose show, so I could rid myself of the vile vial in an hour or so.

  “Thanks,” I said to Michael.

  “My plea sure,” he said. “And now I really should be hitting the road.”

  He folded his napkin and stood, pushing his chair back.

  “You’re going to miss the great rose show?” Rob exclaimed.

  “He’s going up to New York with several other drama department faculty members,” I said. “One of their former gradstudents is in an off-Broadway play—”

  “Way off Broadway,” Michael corrected. “Somewhere in the Bronx, I think. But it’s legit, and he’s not just in it, he wrote it, and we all promised to come up and see it.”

  “But does it have to be this weekend?” Mother said, with a long-suffering sigh.

  “Meg and I were originally going next weekend, after the rose show was over,” Michael said. “But the inside scoop is that the play won’t last till next weekend. In fact, there’s an even chance we’ll get there and find out that last night was the last performance, but we have to try.”

  “As long as you’re back by Sunday,” Mother said. “Remember, I’m having the family tea then.” And as I knew, she fully expected to have several trophies to show off by tea-time.

  “Don’t worry,” Michael said. “It’s just an overnight trip. We’re driving up today, seeing the play to night, and we’ll probably be up late, letting the kid cry on our shoulders and rebuilding his confidence. But we’re heading back tomorrow morning.”

  “Unless they all give in to the temptation to see a few more plays while they’re up there,” I said, just to tease Mother a little. “Important to keep up with trends in the field they’re teaching about.”

  “If the others decide to stay over, I’ll catch a shuttle back,” Michael said, seeing the stricken look on Mother’s face.

  I followed him outside to say a more private good-bye. I’d come over to Mother and Dad’s long before he got up, to get a start on my rose show-related tasks, so we hadn’t had a chance to talk yet today and wouldn’t again until tomorrow evening. Okay, it was only thirty-six hours, but I wasn’t looking forward to coping with the rose show without Michael.

  Outside it was raining. Barely more than a drizzle at the moment, but since it had been either drizzling or flat-out raining almost continuously for the past five days, thanks to an unseasonably early tropical storm stalled off the Carolina coast, the whole yard was a sea of mud. We stopped on the front porch where it was merely damp and clammy.

  “More rain,” I said. “I hate to think of you driving all the way in that.”

  “Good for the roses, though.”

  “Actually, right now it’s not,” I said. “The rain can cause spotting on the blooms, and if we get more high wind it will blow all the best blossoms to bits, and if this damp weather keeps on much longer I think there’s some kind of fungus that could take hold. This close to a show, all a rain does is cause the growers extra work and heartache.”

  I gestured toward a nearby rose garden, which might have been beautiful if every single bush hadn’t had a trash can or plastic bag over it, to protect the blooms from last night’s wind.

  I noticed that Michael’s face was twitching, as if he was fighting the urge to laugh.

  “Good grief,” I said. “I’m starting to sound just like them, aren’t I?”

  “I think it’s quite commendable that you’ve become something of an expert in such a short time,” he said, with a chuckle.

  “I’m not an expert,” I said. “I’ve just had to learn a few things, in self defense. I was so relieved when they both got involved in this rose hobby. It’s taken Mother’s attention away from the whole idea of opening a decorating business, for one thing.”

  “I still don’t quite get why you’re so worried about that,” Michael said. He leaned against the porch railing at my side, and I had the comforting thought that it wasn’t just the rain making him delay setting out to meet his fellow faculty members.

  “Because you know if she starts the decorating business we’ll be the guinea pigs,” I said. “She’ll want to come over and do rooms in our house as show pieces, probably in styles neither of us can stand, like French Provincial or Louis Quatorze, and then she’ll expect us to keep them in perfect order so she can drop in at a moment’s notice with prospective clients.”

  “Potentially annoying,” he said, but I could tell he didn’t really believe me. He’d see, if Mother ever did launch her decorating career.

  “I think she’d already have opened that shop if she hadn’t been bitten by the rose show bug. And it’s something she and Dad can share. Frankly, I’ve been a bit worried about how much time and energy Dad has been spending on Dr. Blake’s projects.”

  “Worthwhile projects, all of them.”

  “Yes, but I’m getting tired of having to bail them out of jails all over the East Coast when their protests tick off local law enforcement,” I said. “Not to mention how dangerous some of their schemes can be. Did you hear Dr. Blake’s plan for infiltrating a dogfighting ring?”

  “Considering how familiar his face is from all those Animal Planet shows and National Geographic specials, I doubt if even he can pull that off.”

  “And even he realizes it. That’s why he wants Dad to do the actual infiltrating, while he stands by with a camera crew.”

  “Ouch,” Michael said. “I can see why you’re worried.”

  I didn’t mention the fact that my grandfather had been planning to recruit Michael as his undercover agent until I convinced him that Michael’s face was almost as well known as his, thanks to reruns of the various TV shows and movies Michael appeared in before he’d abandoned his acting career to take up the less precarious life of a drama professor at Caerphilly College. I was exaggerating a bit. Most of Michael’s leading roles had been in soaps, which didn’t do reruns. Fortunately Dr. Blake despised television in principle and only turned his set on to watch himself, so my scheme had worked— and then backfired, when he recruited Dad instead.

  “That’s the great thing about this new rose obsession,” Michael was saying. “It may be a little annoying for the rest of us, but it’s harmless.”

  “You haven’t met the other competitors,” I said. “I’ve been to a couple of the rose society meetings, remember, since Mother stuck me with this project. I’ve met most of them. They’re all very nice, but they make Mother and Dad seem positively sane on the subject of roses. But yes, at least rose growing isn’t dangerous or strenuous. A suitable hobby for people who have reached maturity.”

  “Maturity?” Michael echoed. “Is that the new euphemism for people well over sixty-five?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Ever since several cousins began snickering when Mother referred to herself as ‘in late middle age.’ Though if they show up for the rose show, the cousins will laugh just as hard at ‘maturity.’ ”

  “Then I’m even sorrier to have abandoned you to the mercies of the parents who have managed to reach maturity without becoming at all sedate,” Michael said. “Sounds as if today and tomorrow will be tough.”

  “They’ll be hellacious, but you’ll be back to help with the cleanup on Saturday afternoon, and I can survive till then.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to pretend to go all Neanderthal and insist that you accompany me to New York?”

  “Tempting, but no,” I said. “Mother would forgive you, but she’d never forgive me. But there is something you can do. Could you pick up—”

  Just then Rob popped out onto the porch where we were standing.

  “You’re really com
ing back tomorrow?” he asked Michael. “Don’t be a masochist. Stay the weekend. Come back when the town’s sane again.”

  “I enjoy a bit of madness now and again,” Michael said.

  “Then don’t you need someone to go along with you? Would your student’s play make a good computer game? Maybe I need to check that out.”

  As founder and president of a Caerphilly-based computer gaming company, Rob did need to keep an eye out for promising game ideas, but lately he’d developed an annoying habit of going off on game scouting expeditions whenever there was useful work to be done at home.

  “It’s a four-hour play in blank verse about the political downfall of Millard Fillmore,” Michael said. “Not my idea of a hot game property, but—”

  “The rose show is sounding better and better,” Rob said.

  “What was it you were going to ask me to pick up?” Michael asked, turning back to me.

  Damn. I had been about to ask him to drop into a drugstore and pick up a pregnancy test. Not that the Caerphilly Pharmacy didn’t carry them, but a few months ago, when I’d bought one there, I’d been spotted by several of the most incorrigible gossips in town. By the end of the day, I’d received seven congratulatory phone calls and a dozen e-mails full of pregnancy jokes. Not to mention the three hand-knitted baby sweaters that arrived in the mail at the end of the week. I still wasn’t sure whether the elderly aunt who sent all three had heard a rumor that we were having triplets or if she was just clearing out a surplus of knitted goods.

  Then there was the outpouring of sympathy we’d received when word got out that no, there was no pregnancy, just a false alarm. We’d only been married a little over a year, so I thought it was early for people to start feeling pessimistic about our chances of having a family, but in the weeks since the false alarm, I’d heard about every couple who had ever experienced fertility problems not only in my family but also in the whole of Caerphilly County. I wasn’t eager to start all that again. And much as I loved my brother, I knew better than to trust his discretion.

  But what could I pretend to want Michael to bring me from New York? My imagination didn’t usually wake up this early, even after a good breakfast. And I’d been too anxious to eat much.

  Breakfast.

  “Bagels,” I said. “Bring back a bag of bagels.”

  “Bagels?” Michael echoed. He sounded puzzled.

  “You can’t get really good bagels here,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t think anyone knew you were such a big bagel eater,” Rob said.

  “I’m not, mainly because you can’t get decent ones here,” I said. “I’ve been thinking how much I’d like to have some bagels. Authentic ones.”

  “Bagels it is,” Michael said.

  “Not a bad idea,” Rob said. “Bring me some, too. And maybe some lox and cream cheese and—”

  “I don’t think the lox and cream cheese would survive the trip all that well,” Michael said. “But I’ll bring back authentic New York bagels for everybody.”

  I’d find a moment later in the day to call him and tell him my real request. For now, I settled for kissing him good-bye, handing him his umbrella, and waving as his convertible jounced slowly away on my parents’ muddy unpaved driveway.

  “Lucky dog,” Rob muttered.

  “You think the tragedy of Milliard Fillmore is preferable to the rose show?” I asked.

  He tilted his head as if thinking.

  “Well, no,” he said finally. “But he did say there was a good chance the play would die before they got there, and I can’t think of anything that could derail the rose show.”

  “I can,” I said, with a sigh. “A lot of things. And it’s my job to see that none of them happen.”

  Chapter 3

  As I turned to go back into the house, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I called my trusty spiral-bound to-do list. I briefly considered adding an exciting new action item that would read “resign post as rose show coordinator.” Tempting, but again, Mother would never forgive me. Instead, I jotted down a more practical item, to be done when the show was over: “brainstorm list of potential victims/volunteers to chair next year’s rose show.”

  I’d agreed to organize this year’s show before I knew what a big deal it would be, back when I’d thought roses were a sweet, harmless hobby. But I was determined not to get roped into next year’s event. Even if I had to—

  “Hey, Meg,”

  The voice seemed to come from directly above me. I leaned out into the rain and looked up to see the familiar figure of Randall Shiffley, one of our neighbors, standing on the porch roof, leaning against the side of the main house, a crossbow in his hand. The weapon wasn’t pointed at me, but it still gave me the willies. One of Randall’s many cousins was perched on the chimney, peering down into the front yard and he, too, appeared to be holding a crossbow. They were both wearing blaze orange rain ponchos over blaze orange overalls. That might have made them hard for the deer to spot, since supposedly the deer don’t see orange as well as we do, but they stood out quite distinctly as festive splashes of color against the house’s freshly painted white wood siding— the one bright spot in a drab, rain-smeared landscape.

  “Hey, Randall.” I waved back as nonchalantly as possible.

  “Any more news about Mrs. Winkleson’s missing dog?” Randall asked.

  “I didn’t even know she had a dog,” I said. “Much less that she was missing one. Though if I were Mrs. Winkleson’s dog, I’d try to be missing as much as possible.”

  “Missing as in dognapped, according to my cousin Epp,” Randall said. Since Epp was a Caerphilly County deputy, odds were Randall was passing along real information, not a wild rumor. “She had the cops out there about 4 a.m. this morning when one of the maids found the ransom note.”

  “How did the maid know it was a ransom note?” I asked. “I’ve been out there a dozen times in the last few months, and I haven’t met a single maid who speaks English.”

  “Dunno,” Randall said. “That’s all Epp told me. Maybe the butler read it. But you’re going over there, right? Keep your eyes open.”

  “I will. What kind of dog was it, anyway?”

  “Expensive pedigreed dog, according to her,” Randall said. “Maltese, I think she said. Some kind of little furball, anyway. Sounds a lot like your Spike from the description, except that I think Epp said it was all white instead of black and white.”

  To my astonishment, his words brought tears to my eyes. Completely ridiculous. I didn’t feel particularly sentimental about the Small Evil One, as Michael and I both called our dog. Technically he wasn’t even our dog. He belonged to my mother-in-law. I still resented the underhanded way she’d foisted Spike off on us several years ago, by pretending her allergist wanted to see if dog-free living improved her health. But today, for some reason, the thought of someone else pining for a beloved missing pet affected me deeply.

  Get a grip, I told myself. I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Winkleson pining for anything. Having a temper tantrum that someone had stolen her property, yes. I felt a twinge of anxiety at the thought. Mrs. Winkleson in a tantrum could easily decide to rescind her invitation to the Garden Club to hold the rose show on the grounds of her farm.

  “Thanks for warning me,” I said as I headed back inside.

  “Has Michael already taken off, dear?” Mother looked up as I reentered the dining room.

  “Yes,” I said. I decided not to mention the dognapping, or my private worry that it would derail the rose show. “Dad, why are there armed Shiffleys on your roof?”

  “Armed?” Dad said. “Oh, no. It’s not rifle hunting season yet. They’re only using bows and arrows.”

  “I think that still counts as armed,” I said. “It’s a weapon. What are they doing up there?”

  “Protecting the roses, dear,” Mother said.

  “Protecting the roses?” I echoed. “I thought you were against letting the Shiffleys h
unt on your land.”

  “They’re not hunting, dear,” Mother said, with a touch of annoyance in her voice. “They’re not going to do anything unless they see a deer attacking our roses. Didn’t you hear your father say that he thought deer could be responsible?”

  “Eating roses isn’t exactly attacking them,” I said. “It’s just what deer do. And I could have sworn I also heard Dad say that it was the Pruitts who were responsible.”

  “I think they’re the ones who discarded that disgusting little bottle,” Mother said. “After sprinkling its loathsome contents over our poor roses. Deliberately.”

  “It could be,” Dad said. “You never know.”

  He was using what Rob and I called the “humor your mother” voice.

  “So the woman who gave me a hard time for buying a deerskin leather jacket is now allowing the Shiffleys to slaughter deer just because they’re eating her roses?”

  “They’re not going to shoot the deer,” Mother said. “Just scare them off. Along with any conniving Pruitts who try to lure them to our roses.”

  Behind his back, Dad put his finger to his lips and shook his head.

  “Randall’s going to send a few of his cousins over to do the same at your house,” he said aloud.

  “No way,” I said. “I can live with your using our yard to expand your rose-growing area, at least as long as someone other than me does all the pruning and spraying and mulching and whatever else they need. I like roses as well as anyone else. But I draw the line at giving them their own private army. What if the Shiffleys shoot the llamas?”

  “I think the Shiffleys know the difference between a deer and a llama,” Dad said.

  “After dark, which is when the damned deer tend to show up for dinner? I’m not betting Ernest’s and Thor’s lives on it. Not to mention all of Seth Early’s sheep, who spend at least half their time lolling around in our yard with the llamas.”