The Gift of the Magpie

by Donna Andrews

  And worst case, the police would be checking on the store periodically, right? They weren’t just going to rely on the dogs.

  “Just what were you looking for?” I asked. “Because believe me, if we’d found anything valuable, we wouldn’t have brought it here—we’d have turned it over to the police.”

  Mr. Brimley set his jaw, as if to suggest that even siccing Tink on him wouldn’t make him talk. I couldn’t see Mrs. Gudgeon’s expression, but she certainly wasn’t speaking up.

  Suddenly Tink glanced over at the front door and growled. Spike strutted over toward it, stiff-legged and growling.

  The door swung open a foot or so.

  “Call off your dogs or I’ll shoot them,” came a voice. “I mean it. I hate dogs anyway.”

  Tabitha.

  I reached down to scoop up Spike and grabbed Tink’s collar.

  “Now put them in their crates.”

  “I can put the small one in his crate,” I said. “They don’t make crates big enough for Irish Wolfhounds.”

  “Put the small one in his crate, then. And control the big one. It’s your fault if I have to shoot him.”

  I didn’t like the idea of trapping Spike. She could shoot him just as easily in the crate, and I wouldn’t put it past her. So I did what I could. I shoved him in and pulled the door to, but instead of latching it I shoved the whole crate close to the nearest wall. He could work his way out over time if he tried, but he couldn’t come barreling out in the middle of whatever was about to happen. But I could also grab the crate and unleash him. Options.

  Tabitha stepped into the room. Her gun was pointed at me and Tink, but she also had an easy shot at Mr. Brimley.

  “Hands up!” she snapped.

  Mr. Brimley complied. I glanced down at my hands, both of them holding Tink’s collar.

  “You can lock the big dog in the bathroom,” she said.

  “Mrs. Gudgeon is already locked in the bathroom,” I pointed out.

  “Come out of the bathroom now!” Tabitha shouted.

  The door remained closed.

  Tabitha stared at me for a few seconds, then flicked her gaze over to the door and fired a shot through the top half of it. I heard glass breaking.

  Mrs. Gudgeon shrieked. In fear or pain? I had no clue.

  “Come out of the bathroom, now,” Tabitha said. “I’ve got lots more bullets.”

  The bathroom door flew open and Mrs. Gudgeon stepped out with her hands in the air.

  “In with the dog,” Tabitha said.

  I led Tink to the bathroom door and stopped at the sill.

  “There’s broken glass all over the floor,” I said.

  “Broken mirror,” Mrs. Gudgeon muttered. “Seven years of bad luck for someone.”

  “I don’t care,” Tabitha said. “Do it.”

  I used my foot to shove as much of the glass as possible aside before leading Tink in.

  “Sit,” I said. “Stay.”

  Tink looked unhappy, but she obeyed. I closed the door.

  “So where is it?” Tabitha demanded.

  “Where is what?” I asked.

  “The money,” Tabitha said. “Harvey’s money.”

  Mr. Brimley and Mrs. Gudgeon seemed just as eager as Tabitha to hear my answer.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “If he had any money—which I doubt—we haven’t found it yet.”

  “But it has to be here somewhere!”

  “What makes you think he had money?” I asked.

  “He told me!”

  She must have seen the look of disbelief on my face. I’d pretty much decided her friendship with Harvey was as fake as the will she’d tried to pawn off on the chief.

  “He did.” She stuck her chin out as if defying me to doubt her. “I was texting with him one day, and he was upset because he’d found out the local historical society had run this article about how his family had stolen all the money from people and kept it.”

  “Did he also tell you that the article was a big fat lie?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t believe him.” Tabitha tossed her head for emphasis. “He was really upset—and why would he be that upset unless he was afraid someone would try to steal his money?”

  “Maybe he was upset because whoever wrote the article was telling lies about his family,” I suggested. “Ruining their reputation in the town.”

  “Yeah, right.” She was shooting glances over at the rows of boxes. “Get that roll of tape,” she ordered, jerking her head toward one batch of boxes.

  Mr. Brimley, Mrs. Gudgeon, and I all three glanced and saw a roll of packing tape lying on top of one of the boxes.

  “Only one of you. You.” She waved the gun at Mrs. Gudgeon.

  Drat. If, as I suspected, she was going to use the packing tape to immobilize some or all of us, I wanted to be the one wielding it. Mrs. Gudgeon scowled, then walked over and picked up the tape.

  “Tie him up,” Tabitha said.

  “It’s tape, not rope,” Mrs. Gudgeon said.

  “Don’t argue with me,” Tabitha said. “You.”

  She pointed at me. I went over, relieved Mrs. Gudgeon of the roll of tape, and walked over to Mr. Brimley.

  If I’d thought there was a decent chance Mr. Brimley would fight on my side if push came to shove, I’d have tried to figure out how to tape him up loosely enough that he could escape. But I suspected he was more likely to turn on me if he could get hold of the gun for himself, so I trussed him up nicely.

  “Now start opening those boxes,” Tabitha said. “I want to see what’s in them.”

  Mrs. Gudgeon shuffled slowly toward the stack of boxes Tabitha was indicating, a surly look on her face, and began picking at the strip of tape that held one of the boxes closed. I followed suit, though I worked at the picking a little more energetically, in the hope that one of the boxes would contain something I could use to turn the tables on Tabitha. Or, if I was lucky, I might find one of the half-dozen box knives that had disappeared over the course of yesterday’s packing. I could have sworn I’d seen one earlier, when I opened a box of Harvey’s papers.

  Unfortunately, the first box I opened contained only Harvey’s grandmother’s good china. I unwrapped plate after plate, holding each one up for Tabitha’s inspection, and shaking the packing paper to prove that there was nothing valuable hidden in it. By the time I got to the bottom of the box, the floor was covered with dishes and crumpled sheets of paper.

  “Shove the paper back in the box,” Tabitha ordered. “And stack the plates on those shelves.”

  I did as I was told. The shelves were farther from Tabitha and the gun. Surely Mrs. Gudgeon and I could somehow use that to our advantage. Get the drop on Tabitha when we were as far apart as possible and it was harder for her to cover us both.

  Of course, that would require getting Mrs. Gudgeon to work with me. At the moment, she seemed to be ignoring me entirely. She had finally succeeded in pulling the tape off her box and was lifting out assorted kitchen items—a saucepan, a cookie jar, glass pie plate, several vintage Texas Ware mixing bowls. Following Tabitha’s orders, she was carrying the items over to the shelves in batches. I’d found one of the boxes I’d seen Joyce Grossman packing, and was filling the space around me with the set of pink china elephants.

  Suddenly Mrs. Gudgeon uttered an unearthly shriek and began running toward Tabitha with a box knife in her outstretched hand. Of course, idiotically, she started her run from the shelves, where she had apparently found the knife, instead of waiting until she was back at the boxes, so she had about twice as far to run.

  “Stop that!” Tabitha shouted. And when Mrs. Gudgeon paid no attention, Tabitha fired at her.

  She’d have had a hard time missing at that range, except that just then Mrs. Gudgeon slipped on some of the fallen packing paper. She yelped, went sprawling, and then began scrambling away on her hands and knees.

  When Mrs. Gudgeon had started her attack I had been unwrapping the hideous knob-covered china vase,
so while Tabitha was distracted I lobbed it in her direction and managed to hit her gun hand with it. She shouted “ow!” and dropped the gun, which landed somewhere in the litter of the wrapping paper and china fragments that now covered the floor. I lobbed pink elephants at Tabitha to keep her off balance while inching closer in the hope that I could grab the gun before she found it.

  “Ow!” she shouted again, and I could see that while searching for the gun—or possibly reaching for it—she had sliced her hand open. And then she screamed even more loudly as a furry missile aimed itself at her face. Apparently in scuttling away Mrs. Gudgeon had knocked Spike’s crate away from the wall and set him free.

  Tabitha jerked away and Spike’s lunge fell short of her face, but he fastened his sharp little teeth on her right arm and began growling as loudly as he could with his mouth full.

  I heard a crashing noise behind me and glanced over to see that a ragged wolfhound-sized hole had just appeared in the flimsy wall between the bathroom and the main part of the store. Tink herself was now looming over Tabitha, adding her deep bass growl to Spike’s soprano one. Tabitha froze, staring into Tink’s eyes with such intensity that she almost seemed oblivious to Spike’s grip on her forearm.

  I carefully poked through the crumpled paper and shards of pink and white china until I found both the knife and the gun. Then I grabbed the packing tape and strolled over to where Mrs. Gudgeon was crouching. I showed her the gun—not really pointing at her, just hinting that it could come to that if need be.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  She obeyed, and I taped her arms behind her back. After that, I did Tabitha, and pried Spike off her arm.

  Then I sat back to wait for one of the deputies to show up. Tabitha, Mr. Brimley, and Mrs. Gudgeon weren’t very good at following my orders to shut up, but about the time it occurred to me that the packing tape would work on mouths as well as wrists, Vern Shiffley came through the doorway.

  “Well,” he said as he surveyed the chaos inside the store. “Y’all have been having quite a time here this evening.”

  Chapter 29

  Vern was soon followed by the chief, then Aida, and eventually Horace, at which point the chief dispatched one prisoner with each officer and stayed behind himself to finish getting my story.

  He sat, frowning into space when I’d finished.

  “A penny for them,” I said.

  “I was thinking, what a pity it is that none of those wretched people said anything that enables me to wrap up the murder investigation.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It would have been so much more helpful if one of them had said something like ‘dammit, here I go to all the trouble of killing Harvey and so far I haven’t gotten any loot out of it. This just isn’t my week!’”

  “Something like that.” He smiled.

  “Doesn’t it help that you have the chance to hold them for other crimes?” I asked.

  “Not a lot,” he said. “I doubt if I could hold Mrs. Gudgeon and Mr. Brimley for anything other than trespassing, and that won’t keep them long. There’s a satisfyingly broad range of things I can charge Ms. Fillmore with, but still—none of it proves anything about Mr. Dunlop’s murder. The only positive note is that tonight’s events should make it a lot easier to get any warrants I need to investigate them, and the truth will turn up in time. I should go.” He stood, looking rather weary.

  “You have a long night ahead of you.”

  “Probably not,” he said. “They’ll probably all refuse to talk until they get lawyers, and that could take till morning. But what with all the red tape involved in booking them, I probably won’t get home all that early, and I’ll have a long day ahead of me. You headed home?”

  “Back to Trinity for the middle-school sleepover,” I said.

  “Sleep as well as you can, then.” He chuckled at the thought. “I’ll see you safely out.”

  I made sure the dogs had food and water, gave them each another well-deserved treat, and locked up. The chief walked me out to my car and drove off in his sedan.

  I locked the car doors and sat for a few minutes, taking deep breaths. I picked up my phone, thinking I’d call Michael. No. It was past midnight now. With luck, he was asleep. If he wasn’t asleep, he’d have his hands full, wrangling restless middle schoolers who ought to be asleep. I could fill him in when I got back. Or in the morning.

  In the morning would be better. If I wanted anyone at the overnight to get any sleep, I should probably wait till morning to tell the boys that not only were the dogs just fine, they were heroes. They’d caught two burglars and a killer. At least if Mrs. Gudgeon and Mr. Brimley were telling the truth. If Tabitha was telling the truth, did that mean the dogs had caught two killers and a burglar? Time would tell. Either way, good for the dogs. The chief would probably have it sorted out by morning.

  I was about to head back to Trinity when I suddenly remembered something: Harvey’s feral kitten. I’d promised Clarence to check his trap as often as I could, and I hadn’t been there since early afternoon. And the weather was getting worse—what if the kitten was in the trap, prevented from taking refuge in whatever warm spots she’d found to survive the cold?

  So I headed for Harvey’s house. It wouldn’t take long just to check the trap and haul it into the car if the kitten was in it. Harvey’s house was on the other side of town, but at this time of night—and in this weather—I could go straight through the center of town, the area that would be so choked with tourists as to be impassible in the daytime or early evening.

  Definitely not a night for man or beast to be out. The wind howled ceaselessly. There wasn’t that much rain at the moment, but what there was traveled horizontally. After parking in front of Harvey’s house, I stayed in the car long enough to zip up my coat and don my gloves and hat.

  Hunched over to stay warm, I half ran to the right side of the house. The little door that gave access to the crawl space was open and I bent down to peer inside. Blackness. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. I could see the trap, baited with something. The smell hit me—canned tuna. But no cat.

  At least not in the cage. As I stood up, I heard a noise, like something being knocked over. Was that the noise the trap made when it snapped shut? I bent down again. No, the trap was still sitting empty.

  Had the noise come from inside the house? I played the flashlight beam around and saw, a little to my right, splintered wood sticking down into the crawl space. Of course—it must be the place where Horace’s foot had gone through the floorboards. I remembered Randall shouting through the hole into the crawl space.

  Was the hole large enough for a cat to slip inside? Yes. Especially a small cat, a kitten still young enough to be socialized.

  I quietly pulled the little door to the crawl space closed, so the kitten couldn’t easily escape if it ran out through the hole again.

  Then I hurried around to the front door, tiptoed up the front steps, and unlocked the front door, making as little noise as possible.

  I swung the door open, stepped in, and shut it behind me as quickly as possible, to keep the cat from running out.

  Then I moved my flashlight around and—yikes!

  Something had done a number on the living room. Great holes had been gouged in the walls. We’d only left one piece of furniture—a sofa so decrepit that we’d have no trouble convincing Harvey it needed replacing. The sofa’s guts were ripped out and lying on the floor.

  “It’s you.”

  Morris Haverhill stepped out of the kitchen. He was holding a long-handled sledgehammer in his right hand and a chunk of cinder block in the other. The look in his face wasn’t particularly friendly. I tried to reassure myself that he couldn’t be the bad guy. He had an alibi for Harvey’s murder, didn’t he? Or had he faked it somehow? I had a bad feeling about this. Probably wiser to hide that and pretend everything was normal.

  “Damn, I thought you were the kitten,” I said. “You haven’t seen it, have you?”

 
“Kitten?”

  “A stray kitten Harvey was feeding. I gather you haven’t seen it. Ah, well. There’s a trap in the crawl space—if you notice the kitten going into it, call the shelter and they’ll come take it off your hands. Merry Christmas.”

  I turned and reached for the knob. The chunk of cinder block crashed into the door, barely missing my hand. I leaped back—tactical mistake. Morris darted forward and was now between me and the door.

  When in doubt, keep talking, I told myself. Pretend you don’t suddenly suspect that the chief has all the wrong suspects locked up.

  “No need to take your frustration out on me,” I said. “It’s not my fault the chief hasn’t let you into your cousin’s house. But there’s good news. Chief Burke has arrested Tabitha Fillmore for Harvey’s murder. And proven that the will she’s been waving around is a fake. So once the paperwork is finished, the place will be yours.”

  “Nice try,” he said. “But you don’t really think I’m buying that crap about rescuing a kitten, do you? You came here for the same reason I did—to find the gold.”

  “Gold?”

  “The gold coins our great-grandfather hid away when the Feds tried to seize them,” he said. “Thousands of dollars’ worth. Hell, the way the price of gold has grown, maybe millions by now. Harvey claimed there wasn’t any gold, but I knew he was lying. His grandfather kept it all. He was supposed to give half to my grandmother, but he was a cheapskate and a crook and he never gave her a penny. I want it, and you’re going to tell me where it is.”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Do you think if Harvey had a bunch of gold coins he’d be living like this?” I gestured at the house—which actually looked a lot worse than it had before, thanks to him and his sledgehammer. Evidently he’d been searching the walls.

  “Tell me where it is.”

  He took a step toward me, raising the sledgehammer.