While the chief read Giles his Miranda rights, I slipped back out into the hall. I went up to a short section of wall we were planning to demolish anyway and gave it several swift kicks.

"Idiot!" I snarled, and then added a few choice words. Only a few, and fortunately I didn't specify who I was talking about. I heard smothered t.i.tters from overhead and glanced up to see Eric and Frankie peering down at me.

"Don't either of you dare tell your grandparents what I just said," I warned them.

The dining room door opened, and Giles walked out. The police weren't precisely leading him away in handcuffs, but two burly officers escorted him out the front door, down the steps, and along the path to the waiting police cruiser. Though perhaps the burly officers were there not to prevent his escape, but to keep him from accidentally killing himself. He stumbled several times over the cracked concrete of the walk, and I mentally moved "new front walk" much higher on the list of repair and remodeling projects that already occupied seventeen pages in my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe.

Giles looked miserable as he ran the gauntlet of curious onlookers and eager reporters. Not that being arrested is a picnic for most people, but I suspected it was pure h.e.l.l for someone as self-effacing as Giles. If only he'd stand up straight and look calm and professorial. Unfortunately, cameras on either side were taking pictures so rapidly that their flashes blurred into the almost constant glare you see at celebrity press conferences, and the barrage of light made him squint and hunch his shoulders in a way that looked furtive and guilty. He may not have been tried in a court of law, or even in the court of public opinion, but in the camera's eye he'd already been found guilty, guilty, guilty.

"Wow! Would you look at that?" Rob said, at my elbow. "It's like watching the movie stars arrive at the Oscars."

"More like watching celebrities arrested on Court TV," I said.

"They didn't have this many reporters at my arrest," Rob said, sounding envious.

"I'm sure they would if you were arrested today," I said. I meant it sarcastically, but Rob took my words at face value.

"I suppose so," he said. "Lawyers from h.e.l.l II did significantly raise our public profile."

"Hey, if you want to put it to the test, why don't you confess?" I said. "You could always say you did it out of compa.s.sion for Giles, and in the meantime maybe it would be good publicity for your next game."

"Hmmm," he said, and walked away wearing what I'd come to think of as his serious, corporate look-the one that usually inspired Mother to take his temperature and Dad to lecture him on the importance of dietary fiber. Fortunately, he didn't remember to wear it often. For that matter, he often let whole weeks pa.s.s without remembering to show up at the offices of the company he ostensibly ran, to the great relief of his staff, who could get a lot more work done when he wasn't underfoot, and knew that they could always rely on me to hunt him down if they needed him to sign something or impress a client.

I turned back and watched as the officers guided the stunned-looking Giles into the backseat of their patrol car and drove off.

Chapter 19.

Most of the police vehicles drove off in the wake of the car carrying Giles. I hoped the media would follow suit, but unfortunately, only a few of them did. Which probably meant that the local reporters had all too good an idea of how little newsworthy material they'd get from Chief Burke and preferred to stay here and work the crowd. Since the crowd contained a fair number of my family, the odds were good that they'd eventually do something entertaining, though not necessarily related to the murder. My more exhibitionistic relatives were already jockeying for their chances.

Including Dad. He and half a dozen of his fellow SPOOR members, all dressed as various species of owls, had appropriated the front stoop and were giving a presentation on the importance of owls and other predators to the ecosystem. Dad was the only one enjoying his costume. The rest huddled together and hunched their shoulders with embarra.s.sment, which gave them an unfortunate resemblance to a flock of cartoon buzzards waiting for a new supply of carrion.

Should I tell Dad? No, I didn't want to spoil his fun; and besides, his exuberance more than made up for the lugubrious effect of his troops. Even in my current tired state, the sight of him pacing up and down his impromptu stage, waving his wings with excitement, made me smile.

That was about the only thing that did, though. What do you do when you throw a party and the guests refuse to leave? It was getting close to dark; surely they'd leave then. Or would they?

I went into the kitchen and rummaged through my supplies until I found the markers and large sheets of paper I'd brought for making any last minute signs. I printed two notices that read YARD SALE CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. As an afterthought, I added a smaller note at the bottom of each, advising readers that the reopening would be announced on the campus radio station.

"Won't work, you know," Rob said, looking over my shoulder.

"Worth trying," I said, handing him the signs and a roll of masking tape. "Would you do me a favor and stick one of these on the gate to the fenced-in area and the other on the mailbox?"

He nodded and sauntered out. I poured myself a gla.s.s of iced tea, sat down in a corner of the kitchen, closed my eyes, and did my yoga breathing exercises. Breathe in on four counts. Breathe out on eight. In on four counts and out on eight. As usual, the breathing helped me tune out the surrounding chaos, and as usual, I nearly jumped out of my skin when a person whose arrival I'd tuned out suddenly spoke to me.

"Meg, dear," Mother said. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to startle you."

"I was resting," I said.

"That's nice," she said. "You just stay there and rest. I only wanted to ask you a couple of questions."

"Ask away," I said. "Though my brain's pretty fried right now."

"Michael has been so nice about taking me places and helping me with my designs for your house."

I winced, suspecting from her tone that she was finding me annoyingly uncooperative.

"But it's hard to work in a vacuum, dear," Mother went on, with a slight edge to her voice. "If you'd just give me some idea what kind of decor you want, I could work a lot more effectively. Without any guidance, I'm left to guess what you'd like, so it's no wonder you're not happy with my suggestions."

"At the moment, I don't know what we want," I said. "I'm waiting for the house to tell us."

"The house?" Mother said, after a pause. "You're waiting for it to talk to you?"

"Not literally," I said. "I mean, I don't expect a voice to emerge from the mantel chanting 'Art Deco' or 'lime green' or anything. But I think you have to live with a place for a while before you can figure out what kind of decor would suit it."

"Living with it's going to be uncomfortable without furniture," she said. "Are you sure you're not beginning to get some idea what's on the house's mind?"

"At the moment, it's very focused on all the repairs and renovations it needs," I said. "And it's been so full of so much clutter for so long that I think it finds emptiness very restful." Also silence, but I decided I'd better not go that far.

"I see." Mother said. Her expression bore a strong resemblance to the look she used to get when one of her children-usually Rob, of course-claimed to have a stomachache on a school day.

"I suspect if we force it to give us design ideas right now, it would want something very spare and minimalist," I said. "Like those elegant j.a.panese rooms with nothing in them but a tatami mat and a single flower in a simple vase. Or Shaker decor. Did you know that after every meal they'd pick up the kitchen chairs and hang them from hooks on the wall, so they'd have as few things as possible to interfere with sweeping the floor? Doesn't that sound nice?"

"If you say so, dear," Mother said. "You'll let me know when the house comes up with any less extreme decorating ideas?"

"Of course," I said, but she was already sailing off. Was she admitting defeat, or just regrouping for another attack?

Regrouping, definitely. I squeezed my eyes shut again.

The next interruption to my breathing was more welcome. A pair of strong hands began ma.s.saging precisely the area between my shoulders where the muscles had knotted up from tension.

"You can relax," Michael said. "Rob's putting up your signs."

"Thanks," I said, leaning into the back rub. "Of course, that doesn't mean anyone's paying the slightest attention to them."

"No, but people do seem to be leaving, now that it's getting dark and there's not a lot to see."

"Good," I said.

"I broke up another fistfight. None of your family were involved this time."

"You sound surprised."

"I was," he said. "Not about your family. I just didn't expect two very dignified faculty members to come to blows over ownership of a Weed Whacker. And a nonworking Weed Whacker at that."

Rose Noir could probably have said something eloquent on the insidious effects of clutter and materialism on the human character, but all I could muster was a tired head shake.

"I was thinking maybe we could go pick up Giles when they release him," Michael said after a moment. "They have to release him before long, right? We could be there to bring him back to his car."

"Okay," I said. "Ready when you are."

"Hang on while I pack a few things we'll need," Michael said.

The hands disappeared, alas, but I had to admit that my shoulders already felt better.

I wondered if the police really would release Giles soon or if he'd have trouble getting bail on a weekend. But I didn't want to depress Michael. Especially since he was packing a picnic supper to take with us. Even if he was thinking of Giles's missed meal more than ours, he was definitely packing enough for all three of us, and then some.

"Signs up," Rob said, wandering back in. "Maybe we should threaten to turn Spike loose on anyone who isn't gone by six."

"Where is Spike, anyway?" I asked.

"Um ... the cops had me put him in his pen when the crowds started dying down," Rob said. "I guess he's still out there."

"Rob! You know he's supposed to come in before dark!"

I hurried outside.

We'd had to placate Michael's mother, Spike's absentee owner, when she'd first heard about the pen, and explain that no, Spike wasn't living in the barn. But since I'd spent so much time there getting ready for the yard sale and would spend just as much after we moved in, working in my forge, Dad and Michael thought it would be a good idea to have Spike there with me.

"You can keep each other company," Dad had said.

"Some company," I'd said, frowning at Spike, and from the expression on his face, I suspected Spike felt the same. A pity he couldn't talk, or he'd set them straight by explaining that he could care less about human company as long as his food bowl was full.

"Besides, he can warn you of trespa.s.sers," Michael had said. "It's pretty isolated out here."

So far, the one time we'd had a trespa.s.ser-a rather shabby character who tried to enter the house through an unlocked window-Spike slept through the whole thing, including my chasing the would-be thief away with a large (though unsharpened) broadsword. But even if Spike had barked when the guy began trying doors and windows, I'd probably have ignored the noise, since I'd long since gotten used to him barking at every legitimate visitor who turned into our driveway, every car or truck that pa.s.sed by on the road, every mouse or squirrel that showed its nose in the barn, the owls every time they came or went, and the occasional shadow of a cloud or hawk pa.s.sing overhead.

Still, I had to admit that Spike enjoyed his pen. A Spikesized doggie door let him go at will from the large, outside area, which we'd nicknamed the barking lot, to a small inside enclosure along one wall of the barn, where we kept his spare bed and a set of bowls. The main problem was that we couldn't leave him out at night, to howl at the moon or mourn its absence, for fear of owls getting him.

"The barn owls probably wouldn't try it," Dad had said, eyeing Spike judiciously. "Unless they were really starving, and clearly they aren't, if they've had a second brood. But a great horned owl wouldn't hesitate to attack Spike."

"It would if it knew him the way we do," I'd said, out of loyalty. But I had to admit, Dad had a point. Spike's craving for outdoor nightlife would have to remain unfulfilled.

I only hoped the police on duty would let me in to whisk him away before the owls did.

Chapter 20.

Outside, I spotted Dad and Eric talking to Sammy, the young uniformed officer, at the gate of the yard sale area.

"Meg!" Dad called. "Do you want to come with us?"

"That depends on where you're going," I said. "I need to get to the barn to fetch Spike."

"Then come along," Dad said. "We're checking on Sophie."

"Sophie?" I spent a few minutes racking my brain to remember who Sophie was and how she fit into the murder investigation or the family tree. Or had someone once again made the mistake of thinking that Spike needed feminine companionship? If so, this time I'd send the vet bills to the idiot responsible.

"I give up," I said, finally. "Who's Sophie?"

"One of your owls," Dad said, in a reproachful tone. "The female of the nesting pair in the barn."

"Oh," I said. "I don't think we were ever formally introduced. But isn't the barn still off-limits?"

"Not as long as Sammy's escorting us. I thought you might like to see the barn. Since Sophie's there," he added, with a look of such perfect innocence that I knew he was up to something.

"Ah," I said. "Yes, just for a minute."

"Come with me," Sammy said. "But remember, don't touch anything."

I started guiltily when he said that. He'd probably noticed me scrutinizing the various boxes and piles lined along the fence. I decided it wouldn't be a good idea to explain that I was only wishing for someone to steal the hideous orange and purple lamp shade from Mother's stash, not actually planning to do it myself.

"Have you heard anything more about that great horned owl sighting?" Dad asked Sammy.

"No, but I've asked the night shift to keep their eyes open," Sammy said.

"For an owl?" I asked.

"Night time is when you find them out, owls," Sammy said.

"Not just an owl," Dad added. "A great horned owl!"

"Cool!" Eric said.

"Is this a good thing or a bad thing?" I asked.

"Depends on your point of view," Dad said. "It's a fascinating species, of course, and like the barn owl, endangered, so in theory it's a good thing, spotting one. But not so close to the barn."

"It could eat Sophie's fledglings," Sammy said.

"It could eat Sophie!" Dad exclaimed. "They're two to four times the size of full-grown barn owls."

"Can someone take Spike inside now?" I asked.

"Poor Sophie!" Eric exclaimed, looking very worried. "We have to do something!"