The ceilings were ten feet high, so I had to drag a chair in from the kitchen to reach the cord. But neither a gentle tug nor a couple of sharp ones worked. I could see that there was a latch holding the door closed.

Strange. Unless he was afraid of monsters creeping down from the attic, the latch would seem to serve no purpose.

Slightly irritated, I pulled the chair back into the kitchen and looked around until I found a four-foot stepping stool.

And when I flipped the latch, the pull-down stairs lurched down a foot or so, almost hitting me on the head.

Okay, so that explained the latch.

I felt strangely triumphant. My files might not be as perfect as Parker's, but in my world, as soon as the stairs malfunctioned, I'd have made an entry in my notebook: "Have attic stairs repaired/replaced." And, at least prechildren, the booby trap would have been fixed long before anyone got beaned by it. No way it would have been broken long enough to warrant the latch.

I pulled the stairs the rest of the way down, tucked my purse in my tote so I'd only have the one thing to carry, and marched up feeling much less intimidated by Parker.

The attic wasn't overcrowded, thank goodness. A modest number of boxes, bins, and bits of furniture, arranged in neat, orderly rows on plain pine floorboards. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling probably wouldn't have given much light, but I didn't bother to turn it on. Enough rich, golden, afternoon sunshine made it past the ivy around the two dormer windows to let me see quite well.

For an attic, it was downright charming. If I'd owned the bungalow, I'd have given serious thought to turning the attic into living space.

I spotted two garment bags at the far end of the attic and strolled toward them.

The first garment bag held a tuxedo. Mother, who was a connoisseur of formalwear, could probably have pinpointed its age within a year or two. Judging from the waist size, I suspected that Parker had been a beanpole when he wore it, probably to his high school prom.

The other bag held three reasonably presentable suits and two starched, laundered white dress shirts, all sized much more like the clothes in Parker's closet downstairs. The suit pants would probably be a little snug in the waist, but Parker was past minding, and doubtless Maudie could cope. I picked out the most subdued of the suits, a dark gray wool, and added both of the shirts.

Holding the hangers high, so the pants wouldn't trail on the floor-although it seemed commendably dust-free for an attic-I turned and headed for the stairs, stopping along the way to read the detailed labels on some of the boxes.

I paused by two boxes marked "Family Memorabilia." Should I peek in to see what I could learn about his family? I found a nail for the hangers and was kneeling beside the boxes when I heard a noise downstairs.

"Who's there?" I called. "Clarence?"

No answer. Odd.

I stood up and headed for the stairs. I couldn't remember if I'd left the front door open. If I had, perhaps some curiosity seeker had come by and was poking about downstairs.

Before I could reach the stairs, they slammed up into the ceiling with a bang. I raced over to them and tried to push them down again, without any luck. Clearly whoever had closed the stairs had also turned the latch.

I was trapped.

Chapter 13.

"Hey! I'm still up here!" I called.

I could hear someone moving about downstairs. They had to have heard me.

I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. Debbie Anne answered almost immediately.

"I need help," I said, softly but distinctly. "Someone locked me in the attic of Parker Blair's house, and they're downstairs."

"Doing what?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Rummaging around. Stealing something. How should I know-I'm locked up here. Just send someone, quick."

"Already on their way. Stay on the phone till someone gets there."

"Roger."

Still holding the phone, I lay down and put my ear to the floorboards. I heard a faint squeak, like a door opening, but I couldn't quite tell if it was coming from the office or the bedroom.

I suddenly found myself wondering if the intruder was planning more than just theft. If they set the house on fire, for example, I'd be in real trouble.

No, I wouldn't. I got up and walked, as silently as I could, to one of the dormer windows. If it opened, I could crawl out onto the roof. I could hang from the edge and let myself drop and one of the overgrown azaleas or boxwoods would break my fall. Even better, I could crawl down the ivy that was growing so thickly up the walls. I slipped the latch so I could try opening the window.

"Meg? Are you all right?" Debbie Anne.

"I'm fine," I said.

"Sammy's about two minutes away, and the chief's a minute or two behind him. They're coming without sirens, so they can catch the intruder if possible."

The window slid up easily. No danger of being trapped in the attic.

Through the open window I heard a familiar squeak.

"I think they're going to be too late," I said, picking up the phone again. "I just heard the screen door open."

A car started outside, and roared off almost immediately.

"They're leaving," I said.

"They? Are there more than one?"

"How do I know?" I said. "I can't even see the car for all the shrubbery. He, she, or they just drove off in a hurry."

"I'll tell the chief."

I returned to the stairway and occupied myself trying to see if I could stick something through the opening of the trapdoor and dislodge the latch. It didn't take long to realize that if I hadn't had my cell phone I'd have been stuck with crawling down the ivy.

And I was definitely stuck for the time being, I took out my camera and the pages I'd copied from Parker's files. It only took a few minutes to photograph the pages of the contract and the article and e-mail them off to Cousin Festus.

I was pondering whether to call Michael or wait until I could report that I'd been safely rescued when I heard footsteps downstairs.

"It's us, Meg," Sammy called. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I said.

"We're searching the house first," he said.

"Okay."

I was sitting cross-legged beside the trapdoor, crossing off a few completed items in my notebook when the trapdoor lurched open slightly.

"Blast!" the chief exclaimed.

"Did it hit you?" I asked. I peered down. He was frowning at the stairway, but he didn't appear to be nursing any wounds.

"It would have if I didn't have good reflexes," he said. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Annoyed, but fine."

He pulled the ladder the rest of the way down and came marching up. I collected the suit and shirts from the nail where I'd parked them.

"And just what were you doing up here?" he asked, when he reached the top of the stairs.

"Finding some burial clothes for Parker." I held up the hangers. "For some reason, Maudie objects to having one of her clients in a Hawaiian shirt at the viewing."

"I haven't even released the body yet," he said. "I probably won't for days."

"You know Maudie. So Clarence asked me to come over and see if I could find something more suitable."

"In the attic?"

"That's where I found these." I held up the clothes again. "He only had more Hawaiian shirts in the closet. But his household inventory showed that he stored his old business clothes in the attic. I was about to bring these down when someone closed and latched the door."

"You have no idea who?"

I shook my head and pointed to the dormers. He picked his way through the boxes to stare out of each one.

"Drat," he said, after the second. "No, you can't see a thing from up here. And you heard nothing?"

"Random noises." I shook my head. "Nothing that gave me a clue to who was down here."

"Did you snoop through the whole house before coming up here?" he asked.

He'd probably have Horace fingerprinting the place before long. Honesty was probably the best policy.

"Yes," I said. "I asked Clarence, and he gave his okay. Though I didn't search the cellar, assuming there is one. I figured it was the last place to look for clothes."

"Good," he said. "Come down and tell me if you see anything missing or rearranged."

"Can you give me a minute?" I said. "I need to let Michael know I'll be late."

Michael probably wouldn't worry for hours yet, but I wanted to hear his voice. And look, just for a few seconds, at the picture of the boys that appeared whenever I turned on my cell phone.

Michael's phone went to voice mail immediately, so I left a brief message and hung up. Then I spent the next forty-five minutes inspecting all the rooms but to the chief's disappointment I couldn't identify any major changes. In fact, the only change I found at all was one that I'm not sure the chief even believed, much less saw as significant.

"Someone moved this," I said, pointing to a small wooden tray about four inches square that was one of the half-dozen items neatly arranged atop Parker's dresser.

"It wasn't on the dresser when you first came in?"

"It was on the dresser, but square with the edges," I said. "This is askew."

He looked up from his notebook and peered over his glasses at me.

"I'm serious," I said. "Everything is organized. The books are alphabetical. The Hawaiian shirts are arranged by color. The beers and sodas in the refrigerators are lined up by brand like soldiers on parade. The few prints on the wall are framed identically and they're all precisely the same size and the same distance from the ceiling. By the time I peeked in here, I was expecting patterns. So I noticed that the book on his nightstand, and that little square wooden thing were both perfectly aligned with the edges of the furniture they were on. He was maybe a little OCD. I could relate."

He nodded.

"And I could have sworn it had more earrings in it when I came in."

He paused and looked up from his notebook with a wary look on his face.

"Earrings?"

"He wore an earring, you know," I said. "And I guess he dropped them in that little tray when he wasn't wearing them. I have something similar on my dresser. Mine's an antique satin glass box Rose Noire gave me a few birthdays ago, but it serves the same purpose."

"His earrings." The chief's voice was flat, and he was staring at me. "Been talking to your father lately?"

"I talk to him often," I said, but I could tell right away that my innocent act wasn't fooling him. "I figured out from something he let slip that Parker's earring is a clue of some sort, if that's what you mean, but I haven't told anyone."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "One of the ambulance crew who took the body to the hospital spilled the beans before I could warn him off. Apparently the Clarion has picked up that tidbit, so the twelve or thirteen people in the county who haven't already heard about it will know by Monday."

"I'm sorry," I said. "It could have been useful. Speaking of useful-I took a copy of this for the Corsicans."

I handed him the second copy of the list of people who were to have received the animals.

"Ah," he said. "Thank you. Mr. Blair had a folded document in his pocket that's rather too stained to be easily readable. But this appears to be a clean copy."

"I figured it could be useful," I said. "Of course, I suppose it's a long shot that any of them are strong suspects."

"Yes," the chief said, as he studied the document. "If they didn't want to be saddled with a litter of puppies, they could just say no."

"I found something else that might have something to do with the murder," I said.

I led him to Parker's office, opened up the file cabinet, and handed him the file containing the contract and the article.

He began reading, or at least skimming. After a minute or so, he looked up at me.

"So Randall wasn't just having another attack of anti-Pruitt paranoia? There really is something to this mortgaging the town thing?"

"It looks that way,"

"Lord help us," he muttered. "I was hoping it was all a mix-up. Judge Shiffley's family are all downtown emptying the courthouse and hauling everything out to her farm, while she's up in the mayor's office, yelling to beat the band. I'm starting to wonder if I should send a swat team up there to pull him out before she hauls off and kills him."