Murder With Peacocks (31 page)

  "It's all packed."

  "By the way," he said, "have you seen Spike?  He never came home yesterday."

  "No, not since we lost him chasing the  peacocks."

  "Maybe I should ask someone to keep an eye  out for him," Michael said. "Feed him when he  shows up."

  "I'm sure Dad would do it; we'll ask  him." Just then I saw Dad's car turn into the  driveway.

  To my surprise, instead of slowing down as he  approached the house, Dad began blowing his horn  at us. We jumped aside as he whizzed by at  nearly forty miles per hour and, instead of  following the curve of the driveway back out to the  street, plunged full steam ahead across the yard,  sending the peacocks running for their lives in all  directions. He lost some speed going through the  grape arbor, then plowed through the hedge that  separated our yard from the one next door and came  to a halt when he ran into a stack of  half-rotten hay bales left over from when the  neighbors used to have a pony.

  "Something must have happened to him," I said,  dropping my carryall to run to the scene.

  "Grandpa!" Eric shouted. "You wrecked your  car!"

  The car was, indeed, something of a mess, but  once we'd gotten him out from under the hay, Dad  was unharmed. In fact, he was positively  beaming with exhilaration.

  "Grandpa, why did you wreck your car?" Eric  asked as we hauled Dad out. Good question. The  approaching next-door neighbors would soon be  asking similar questions about their hedge and haystack.  The peacocks had disappeared but were shrieking with such  gusto that I was sure the entire neighborhood would be showing up soon to complain.

  "Call the sheriff," were Dad's first words.  "I think someone's tampered with my brakes."

  Pam, who had come running out when she heard the  commotion, ran back in to call. Eric and his friends  looked solemn.

  "Grandpa, what's tampered?" Eric asked.  His grandpa, however, was crawling under the car. As was  Michael. I didn't know about Michael, but I  knew perfectly well Dad was incapable of doing  anything underneath a car but cover himself with grease.  Fascinating the way even the most mechanically  inept males feel obliged to involve themselves with  any malfunctioning machine in their immediate vicinity.  And usually, at least in Dad's case, making  things worse. The small boys were crouching down and  preparing to join their elders.

  "Tampered means Grandpa thinks somebody  messed around with the car to make it crash," I said.  "So all of you stay away from that car until  Grandpa and Michael are sure it's safe."  They were ignoring me. The lure of male bonding  beneath an automobile was too strong. Then  Michael's voice emerged sepulchrally from beneath the  car.

  "Anyone who does come under here will be left  behind!"

  The herd backed up to a respectful distance.  About then the sheriff turned up. Dad and  Michael emerged from beneath the car for a conference with him.  The sheriff crawled under the car, popped out long enough  to ask Pam to call a tow truck, and then  disappeared again, followed by Dad. And then one or  two deputies.

  "You seem very calm about this," Michael  remarked, as we watched the growing number of feet  sticking out from under various parts of the car.

  "I'll postpone my hysterics until  later," I said, feeling a little shakier than  I'd like to admit. "I think it's important that  we stay calm and avoid traumatizing the children."

  "Are we going soon, Aunt Meg?" Eric  asked. The children didn't seem particularly  traumatized. The excitement of the car wreck was  evidently fading. There was a growing herd of  small boys swarming over the haybales and  getting in the deputies' way. I made a  mental note to make sure only four of them  came with us to the amusement park.

  "Yes, let's maintain a facade of normality," Michael said. "I'll  get Mom's station wagon. They'd kill each  other stuffed in the back of your Toyota, and my  car's a two-seater."

  By the time we got the boys loaded into the station  wagon and drove off, Dad was recounting his wild  ride through the yard for the third time, to a spellbound  audience of deputies. The sheriff was down at  my sister Pam's house, interviewing any  neighbors who might have seen someone tampering with the  car. The cousin who ran the local plant  nursery and gardening service was working up an  estimate for replacing the damaged portions of the  hedge for the neighbors' insurance agent, who  happened to be another cousin. A wonderful day in  the neighborhood.

  Although I'm sure Eric and his little friends would  disagree, I found our trip to ride the roller  coasters blissfully uneventful--at least compared  to how the day began. Oh, I was exhausted by the end  of it, of course, and was trying hard to hide a  tendency to jump at loud noises. But no new  bodies were discovered. Apart from the sort of  mayhem that small boys routinely inflict on  each other, no one tried to murder anyone.  Only one of the kids threw up. And the only new  item added to my list of things to do was "Hit Dad  up for reimbursement."

  "Where do they get the energy?" I asked, as we  watched them careening around in the bumper cars for the  fifth or sixth time. "I don't want to sound like  a stick in the mud, but I just can't keep up with  them."

  "Oh, don't worry," Michael said. "They  don't think of you as a stick in the mud. I  overheard A.j. telling Eric how great it was that  his aunt Meg wasn't scared to go on the big  rides like most girls."

  "I'm flattered. Even if A.j. is a  little male chauvinist pig."

  "And Eric told A.j. that his aunt Meg  wasn't scared of anything."

  "I wish that was true." I sighed.

  "You're worrying about your Dad," Michael  observed.

  Eric and the horde bounded up demanding food just  then, cutting off my answer. Which would have been that  I was worried about all of us. If someone was  trying to kill my Dad, he--or she--might  already have killed at least one innocent bystander in the process by tampering with Dad's lawn  mower. Michael and the four little boys and I might  have just missed becoming victims ourselves.

  Michael brought up the subject again on the  way home, after a glance to make sure that Eric  and his friends were curled up asleep in the back of the  station wagon.

  "Wonder if they've had time to find out anything  about your dad's car?" he said quietly.  "Brake line cut, or brake fluid drained,  or whatever."

  "Did it look suspicious to you?" I asked. 

  "I'm not exactly a master mechanic," he  admitted. "Your dad seemed to find something of  interest."

  "Dad's no master mechanic either. In fact,  anything he might possibly know about how car  brakes work would pretty much have to have come from a  detective story. But I'd be willing to bet that  either they find the brakes had been tampered with or  at least that they can't rule out sabotage."

  Michael nodded.

  "I'm going to have to give Mom a hard time when  this summer is all over," he said. "I  distinctly remember her telling me this was a  quiet, peaceful little town where nothing ever  happened."

  "Until we got our own serial killer." 

  "If that's the right name for it."

  "True. Serial killer does seem  to imply some sort of random, sick,  purposelessness, and I get the feeling there is a  very rational purpose to everything that's gone on this  summer, if only we knew what it was."

  "So what do we know?" Michael asked. "I  mean really know--"

  "As opposed to Dad's highly imaginative  speculations?" I asked.

  "Right."

  "Not much," I admitted. "On the day after  Memorial Day, a visitor from out of town either  was killed or died in a freak accident. And  while she managed to alienate a significant  portion of the county before her death, the only person  who would seem to have known her well enough to want to do  her in has a cast-iron alibi."

  "Is it so cast-iron?" Michael asked.  "I mean, apart from the alibi, Jake's so  perfect for it."

  "If it were just Mother giving him his alibi, I'd say no. Not because I think she'd lie,  but because she's too spacey."

  "What a thing to say about your own mother,"  Michael said.

  "Do you disagree?"

  He shrugged.

  "But anyway," I continued, "Since they  spent the entire day billing and cooing in front of  half a dozen waiters and salesclerks, the  sheriff can say with complete confidence that Jake  couldn't have been within twenty miles of the  neighborhood for hours before or after the time Mrs.  Grover died."

  "Hard to argue with that." Michael sighed.  "Pity. There's something about Jake that gets on  my nerves. He's so aggressively banal.  I'd love to see it turn out to be him."

  "You and me both."

  "Not to mention your dad."

  "Right. Though for different reasons." 

  "Like disqualifying Jake as a suitor for your  mother."

  "Exactly. But unless he's sitting on some  really dynamite evidence, I think he'll have  to find some other way of breaking up the match. As  a murderer, I'm afraid Jake's a  nonstarter."

  "Sad but true."

  "Getting back to what we know: two weeks  after Mrs. Grover's suspicious death, an  electrician is nearly killed in a freak  electrical accident that may have been a booby  trap. And if it was a booby trap, the most  logical person for it to be aimed at was Dad,  who would have fixed the fuse box if he hadn't  been AWOL."

  "And a little more than two weeks after that, we're  all nearly blown up by a bomb, just before you and a  dozen other women are made severely ill by what  appears to have been poison that may have been  deliberately placed in a bowl of one of your  dad's favorite foods."

  "Thank God for the bomb. All the rest could  possibly be accidents, although the number of  accidents is beginning to make even the sheriff  suspicious. But there's no way to argue with that  bomb."

  "True; I think about it whenever I'm tempted  to doubt your dad."

  "And shortly afterward, a harmless neighborhood layabout is killed in what again may have  been sabotage, and again the more logical target  would have been Dad."

  "And now today your father has a car wreck that he  thinks may have been due to sabotage. So maybe  the big question is, who is trying to kill your father, and  why?"

  "Either he knows something or the killer is  afraid he'll find something out," I said.  "Dad's the one who kept the sheriff and the coroner  from declaring Mrs. Grover's death an accident.  Dad's the one who points out the suspicious  side of all these so-called accidents. Dad  keeps turning over stones, and maybe the killer  is afraid he'll eventually find something."

  "If that's the case, it all goes back  to Mrs. Grover. If we figure out who  killed her, we know who's trying to kill your  dad."

  "Or, conversely, if we figure out who's  trying to kill Dad, we'll know who did in  Mrs. Grover." We rode a while in  silence, no doubt both trying to come up with a  plausible suspect.

  "Maybe I'm too close to this," I said with a  sigh. "I can think of dozens of people who would have been  capable of doing all this, but I can't for the life of  me see why any of them would want to kill Mrs.  Grover. And I have a hard time seeing most of them  as cold-blooded murderers."

  "Is there anyone you can see as a murderer?"  Michael asked.

  "Samantha," I said, only half joking.  "I can see her killing anyone who seriously  inconvenienced her. I certainly go out of my way  to avoid crossing her."

  "I can see that. But what could Samantha have  against Mrs. Grover? Granted, Mrs.  Grover was a supremely irritating person, but  that's hardly grounds for murder."

  "They had some kind of small run-in at the  Donleavys' picnic. But then who didn't? I  know I did."

  "So did I," Michael said.

  "Maybe she knew something damaging about  Samantha. Although I can't imagine what. She  was here less than a week before she died. Even  Mother would have difficulty unearthing any juicy  skeletons after only five days in a strange  city."

  "Maybe it was something she knew about  Samantha before she came here," Michael said.  "I seem to recall being an object of mild  suspicion myself because she knew my mother from Fort  Lauderdale. Was Samantha originally from  Florida?"

  "No, but her fiance was. The one before  Rob."

  "The bank robber?"

  "Embezzler. But that was Miami, not Fort  Lauderdale."

  "It's the same thing," Michael said. "All  part of the same metropolitan area. Like  Manhattan and Brooklyn."

  "Is it?" I said. "Geography was never my  strong point. So they both had ties to the  Miami/Fort Lauderdale area."

  "Samantha through her shady former fiance,"  Michael expanded. "This is much more promising."

  "If I remember correctly, the fiance  claimed his partner had gotten all the money, and the  partner claimed that the fiance had gotten the  lion's share."

  "Wouldn't it be funny if Samantha'd somehow  gotten her claws into most of the loot? Played  both of them against each other and made off with the loot  under their greedy noses?"

  "It's probably beastly of me, but I can  definitely imagine Samantha doing it. Or  killing, for enough money," I said. "And the estimates  of how much they milked out of their clients range  between ten and fifteen million dollars."

  Michael whistled. "There's a motive to be reckoned with. But do  you really think she'd try to kill her future  father-in-law to keep it quiet?"

  "She's never much liked Dad," I said. "And  besides, I can also see her disposing of anyone who  tried to get in her way about the wedding."

  "What, has your dad tried to butt in on the  wedding? Insisted on a nonpoisonous wedding  bouquet, perhaps?"

  "She's probably overheard him trying  to talk Rob out of marrying her. I know I have.  And come to think of it, even if she didn't hear  him talking to Rob, I know for a fact that at the  picnic she overheard him tell me he thought the  marriage was a bad idea and he was going to keep  trying to talk Rob out of it."

  "Oh," Michael said.

  "You can see how she might resent  that."