The Real MacAw (26 page)

He was standing in the doorway, glaring at me.

“Or is that your job?” he asked.

“No, I’m just here for the peace lily,” I said. “But if you like, I’ll see if I can find someone to take care of it for you.”

He turned and strode off. I had a little trouble getting the luggage carrier over the doorsill, and by the time I got it out into the hall, the elevator had already gone.

“Jerk,” I said to the closed doors. “You know how slow these elevators are. You could have held it.”

Then again, did I really want to endure a long, slow, awkward elevator ride with the man who had helped the mayor in his plot to seize our home?

A man who just might be a prime suspect in Parker Blair’s murder. The mayor wasn’t the only one with a motive to stop Parker’s investigation. After all, when his discoveries were made public, they had cost Terence Mann his job. What if he’d thought that killing Parker would keep them from coming to light? What if he was the one afraid the macaw’s prattle would implicate him? In my eagerness to see our dishonest and obnoxious mayor brought down, was I overlooking the real culprit?

I pulled out my cell phone and called the chief.

“What now?” he said. “A dognapping? Or perhaps a hamster heist?”

“Terence Mann just finished packing his personal effects and wants someone to come and verify that he’s only taking what belongs to him.”

“And this is your business because…?”

“It isn’t, but I was moving a county-owned plant out of his office and he decided to use me as the audience for his dramatic exit. He’s left his box of personal effects, and for that matter, his whole office, wide open. I have no idea if the county board really did demand some kind of inspection of what he took—”

“More likely he just wants to cause someone extra work,” the chief said.

“But just in case, I figure no one would complain if you did the inspection and made sure anything valuable or confidential was secure.”

“And snoop around while I’m there?”

“If you don’t want to, tell me who else I should call,” I said. “I suppose your lack of interest means he isn’t on your suspect list.”

There was a silence. I could hear something. Footsteps on a hard surface. Someone saying, “Hello, chief.” A truck engine roaring by. The chief was outdoors, apparently, and walking somewhere. It was probably a full thirty seconds before he spoke.

“Unfortunately for Mr. Mann, he doesn’t have an alibi for the night of the murder. His wife was working at the hospital and he claims, not surprisingly, that he was home asleep in his bed.”

“So he is a suspect.”

“He hasn’t been ruled out,” the chief said. “As it happens, I’m already on my way to the town hall, so I’ll drop in while I’m there. Are you still in the county manager’s office?”

“No, I’m right outside the door.”

“Stay put.”

With that he hung up.

What did he mean by “stay put”? Was he merely ordering me to keep guard over the unlocked door? Or warning me not to go back into the office to snoop around?

Probably both.

I rolled the plant to the side, so someone getting off the elevator wouldn’t run smack dab into it. I strolled over to the double doors and took a good long look. The first impression was that the office was suddenly empty. It wasn’t, of course—it was still filled with furniture, lamps, drapes, hideous Pruitt oil paintings, and stacks and boxes of paper. The peace lily had only left a small vacancy on the credenza, and there were only a few empty spaces on the bookshelves. There were even files on the desk and papers in the in- and out-boxes. But it contained no personal touches at all, and it was very clear, even to the casual observer, that Terence Mann wasn’t coming back.

Which probably meant that if he had any secrets, they weren’t here. Or they looked, to the casual observer, like things it would be perfectly normal to pack.

My fingers itched to rummage through the two moving boxes, sitting so casually on the floor, one beside the desk and one by the bookcase.

But I didn’t want the chief to catch me doing it. I felt as if I’d earned a measure of trust from him by not doing precisely that sort of thing.

I deliberately turned my back on the double doors and marched over to a nearby bench that gave me a good view of both the elevator door and the door to Terence Mann’s office. Former office.

While I was waiting, I could check on Grandfather’s condition. I pulled out my cell phone and hesitated. Should I call the hospital or Dad?

Probably less red tape if I called Dad. And his cell phone number was already on my speed dial list.

He answered in the middle of the second ring.

“Meg! You should see this!” he said.

“Hello to you, too,” I said. “See what?”

“Caerphilly’s new police station! Isn’t it wonderful that we weren’t doing anything else with our barn?”

Mother might not think it was so wonderful, since she had plans to convert the barn to a studio for her fledgling decorating business.

“Remember, it’s only temporary, Dad,” I said.

“We’ve got the chief’s office set up in the tack room, and Debbie Anne’s communications console in the first stall, and the fingerprint machine—”

“I’m looking forward to seeing it,” I said. “Later. I just called to ask how Grandfather was.”

He sighed.

“Stable,” he said.

“Stable isn’t good?”

“Stable isn’t bad,” he said. “All his signs are very good, actually. I’d just be a lot more comfortable if he regained consciousness. The longer he’s unconscious the more concerned I become.”

“Should I go over and visit him?” I asked. “On the theory that on some level unconscious patients can still hear what we say to them?”

“Yes, please do,” Dad said. “I’ve been running in every time I go to town to fetch another load from the police station, but it might help if more of us did that. Reassure him that everything’s going just fine.”

Just then the elevator dinged.

“Actually,” I said, “I thought I’d tell him to hurry up and get well so he can keep the mayor from seizing all the animals and exterminating them. If you ask me that’s a lot more likely to jump-start him than telling him everything’s fine.”

“But Meg—” he began.

“Gotta run,” I said, as the chief stepped off the elevator. “I’ll let you know later how my plan works.”

Horace followed the chief off the elevator. The two of them glanced at me. Horace waved. The chief nodded, as if to dismiss me. Horace stuck his hand into the doorway to hold the elevator.

I can take a hint. I shoved the cell phone back in my pocket, reclaimed the peace lily, and trundled it onto the elevator.

“Thanks,” I said as the elevator door slowly closed. “Have fun.”

Back on the sidewalk, the ladies treated me like a conquering hero, and fussed over the plant as if they suspected Terence Mann of dousing it with Roundup and boiling water.

“What took you so long?” the lady with the clipboard asked. “We were frantic with worry!”

“I was just having a little talk with our former county manager,” I said.

“Former!” several garden ladies exclaimed. Apparently this morning’s board action wasn’t yet widely known. The ladies began coagulating into small groups on the sidewalk, voicing their vehement approval, discussing the significance of Mann’s departure, and hotly debating what the county’s next move should be. A posse of overalls-clad Shiffleys lugging file cabinets put down their loads to join in the discussion. Participatory democracy at work. Good. The county needed more of that.

I folded up the luggage carrier and marched back into the town hall to confront the mayor.

Chapter 21

I stepped out of the elevator on the third floor. Same layout as on the second floor: mahogany double doors directly ahead, and the hallway stretching out on either side. The doors to room 301 were closed, but clearly the room wasn’t empty. I could hear the mayor’s voice ranting, slightly muffled by the intervening walls. I couldn’t understand everything he said, but I could catch enough to tell that he was probably voicing his opinion of the evacuation.

I could also tell that if we found the missing foulmouthed macaw, the mayor could teach it a thing or two.

I knocked on the double doors. And after about fifteen seconds, when no one came to greet me or sang out “Come in!” I cautiously opened one door and peered in.

The mayor did have an anteroom. The shouting was coming from a closed door to my right—apparently his private office.

I stepped inside and felt a muffled crunch beneath my feet. I looked down and saw that the carpet near the door was littered with bits of broken glass and china. From the larger pieces, I could tell that at least three breakables had met untimely ends here—a white china vase, a green glass vase, and a glass tumbler. Though from the amount of broken glass underfoot I suspected that another item or two had contributed to the debris without leaving any shards large enough to reveal their shape. There were a couple of new-looking dents on the walls on either side of the mahogany double doors and on the doors themselves.

Apart from the broken crockery, the room looked a lot like the county manager’s office. Not as many bookcases and file cabinets, and taking their place were several clusters of guest chairs flanked with end tables bearing neatly fanned selections of magazines. But the furniture, drapes, and carpets were in the same tasteful yet bland style. The desk was as impersonally empty as Terence Mann’s. The phone, the in- and out-baskets, and the computer monitor and keyboard suggested that someone could work there if needed, but clearly no one currently did—there were no personal touches, and no other supplies—no pens, pencils, stapler, paper clips, notebooks, while-you-were-out pads, or any of the things you’d usually find on the top of an occupied desk. Even Parker’s desk had had a few of the usual items, neatly arranged and squared with the edges of the desk. Clearly the mayor preferred to keep his support staff at a distance.

The hostage ficus was in front of one of the two windows that flanked the vacant secretary’s desk. The other window was filled with a large spider plant, almost the twin of the one I’d seen walking through the lobby downstairs.

Between them, spoiling an otherwise perfectly good wall, was another ghastly oil painting. This one showed a pudgy-faced Pruitt in a Continental Army uniform, standing in the prow of a boat being rowed across a vast expanse of turbulent, wintry water by a crew of some dozen burly underlings. General Pruitt crossing the Delaware?

Other, smaller paintings showed turtle-shaped Pruitts in various settings. Waddling through the wilderness in coonskin caps and buckskins. Peering through their goggles in front of battered World War I biplanes. In one particularly implausible scene, a pudgy Pruitt engineer presented the cotton gin to a grateful South.

A lot of the paintings were obvious imitations of better, more famous works. I had a sudden vision of myself writing an article on the Pruitt painter for the
Caerphilly Clarion,
ostensibly a serious study of the influences that had shaped the artist’s career—but of course anyone with half a brain would recognize it as a laundry list of which famous paintings he’d ripped off.

Why was I so focused on the paintings, anyway? I had more important things to think about.

Except that this was all part of the same problem. The Pruitts spending the taxpayers’ money on things that were useless, or benefited only them.

Randall had pegged it. Pruitt greed and Pruitt stupidity. Maybe I didn’t need to worry about making that article look like serious art criticism. Maybe I should just make it an outright attack and reveal exactly how much county money had been spent on these dubious works. I could call it “Pruitt Pride and Plagiarism.”

Then again, if Parker’s planned exposé had given one of the Pruitts a motive for murder, did I really want to write an article that would paint the next target on my back?

I tucked the problem away for later consideration. For now, I dragged over a side chair to stand on so I could lift down the enormous spider plant. Then I took the plant out to the hallway, dragging the chair with me so I’d have something to put it on. All the little shoots and baby plants spilled over the sides of the chair and onto the floor, but I smoothed them out and made sure they were as far as possible out of way of foot traffic in the hall. I couldn’t remember ever wrangling such a large spider plant before, and yet I had an odd sense of déjà vu—perhaps because it was almost the same challenge as arranging the kind of over-the-top veils several of my friends and relations had chosen for weddings in which I’d been drafted to serve as a bridesmaid.

Then I went back into the antechamber, unfolded the luggage carrier, and wheeled it into position beside the ficus.

As I did, I caught a glimpse of something. There were papers in the in-basket. And the top one had a sticky note on it saying, “Louise—can you get him to sign this? R.”

Was this Louise’s desk?

I flipped through the top few papers in the in-basket. All of them addressed to Louise or Ms. Dietz. There were even a couple of interoffice envelopes addressed to Louise Dietz, room 301.

The out-box contained only one thing—an envelope addressed to Mayor Pruitt. I picked it up. It was sealed but I could easily see that it contained four loose keys.

Yes, this was Louise’s desk. And it looked as abandoned as Terence Mann’s desk. She’d cleared out her desk and was turning in her keys. What did—

Just then the door to the inner office slammed open.

“Louise! Where the hell— You’re not Louise!”

“Haven’t seen her. It’s Sunday, remember?”

“I called to say I needed her to come in today. Where the hell is she?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe she’s not coming in today,” I said. “In fact, maybe she’s not coming in at all. Looks as if she’s cleared off her desk.”

He frowned, then shook his head vigorously.

“No, can’t be,” he said. “They didn’t start all that nonsense about moving out until this morning. Her desk was like that when I dropped by around eleven last night to pick up some papers.”