The Penguin Who Knew Too Much

by Donna Andrews

  “Glad to see you!” Dad exclaimed, reaching to shake the chief's hand as he stepped out of the patrol car. “Though I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

  “Just what are the circumstances?” the chief asked. His normally cheerful brown face wore a faint frown. “Debbie Anne had some fool story about you finding a body in the basement.”

  “Yes—extraordinary, isn’t it?” Dad said. “Let me show you.”

  He made a dash toward the side yard, where the battered metal cellar doors were located. The chief and I followed more slowly, and saw Dad's head disappear into the opening just as we turned the corner of the house. The chief looked at me.

  “You’ve seen this body?” he asked.

  “Yes. Part of it anyway—the hand. The rest's still buried.”

  “Lord,” the chief said. “And here I was hoping for a quiet Memorial Day weekend.”

  He walked over to the basement doors and frowned at them for a few moments. Since the doors weren’t doing anything to merit disapproval, I suspected that he wasn’t really all that keen on going inside. I glanced down through the doors myself and could see why. Now that my eyes were used to the bright sunlight outside, I could see little more than a few steep steps disappearing into the gloom.

  “Chief?” Dad called. “Are you coming?”

  “Coming,” the chief called. “I don’t see what he's in such an all-fired hurry about,” he grumbled to me. “Body's not going anywhere, is it?”

  “You know how excited he gets about murders.”

  The chief only rolled his eyes. Then he put one foot carefully on the first step, and I watched his head drop lower with each step until it vanished into the basement.

  Should I follow, or stay outside to keep an eye on the penguins?

  Chapter 3

  Before I could decide whether to test the chief's patience by following him, Sammy, the gangling young deputy who’d driven out with the chief, ambled over to my side.

  “I guess the family's all over here today to help you move in,” he said.

  “A few of them. We’re just making a start today—most of them are coming tomorrow.”

  By which time I hoped to have most of the breakable objects locked up safely somewhere. At least the ones that survived Rob's efforts.

  Of course, I knew Sammy couldn’t care less about how many of my family were here. He was really wondering about the presence or absence of my twenty-something cousin Rosemary Keenan—or Rose Noire, as she preferred to call herself these days. I took pity on him.

  “Let me know if you and the other officers will still be around at lunchtime,” I said. “Mother and Rose Noire are planning lunch for the movers, and I’m sure it would be no trouble to feed a few more people.”

  “Thanks!” Sammy said, smiling happily. “I should go see if the chief needs anything. Could you show anyone else who arrives the way?”

  “Will do,” I said. Not that the other officers needed directions from me. They all knew perfectly well how to find their way into the basement of what they still called the old Sprocket house. Michael and I were just the city folks who’d spent a pile of money buying the place and fixing it up. Neither of us had actually grown up in a city, but we weren’t born in Caerphilly, so we’d probably always be city folks to the locals.

  Gloomy thoughts. I wondered how soon Michael would return from his trip to our storage bin. Even a body in the basement wouldn’t dim his enthusiasm for our half-renovated Victorian hulk and our future life in it. Right now I could use a little of that enthusiasm.

  I was pulling out my cell phone to call him when I saw Dad trudging up the cellar steps, dragging his heels like a grade-school kid on the way to the principal's office. As he stepped out onto the lawn, someone banged the cellar doors shut behind him. Dad looked back reproachfully.

  “What's wrong?” I asked.

  “He asked me to leave,” Dad said, his voice plaintive. “Said he couldn’t have civilians at the scene. Civilians!”

  “He was being polite, of course. What he really meant is that he can’t allow any of his suspects to stay at the scene.”

  “Oh,” Dad said, brightening. “That's true. I suppose he can’t. After all, the person who reports finding the body does often turn out to be the killer.”

  “And someone has to tell the rest of the family that we probably have to halt the move temporarily,” I said. “The chief's not going to want us dragging more stuff into what's suddenly become a possible crime scene. Why don’t you go inside and break the news to Mother and the others?”

  “An excellent plan!” he said. And with his good humor restored, he trotted into the house.

  I strolled around to the front yard, nodding good morning to several other officers on their way to the cellar, and sat on the porch, where I could keep a lookout for more new arrivals. I reached into my pocket for the notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I called my humongous to-do list. When faced with a crisis, I clung to the notebook the way a toddler clutches a security blanket. And while finding the body at any time would be a horrible thing, finding it on moving day counted as a real crisis, didn’t it?

  Especially when Chief Burke started trying to figure out who had buried the body, focusing on the most logical suspects—me and the ever-growing crew of family members showing up to help with the move.

  I used the paper clip that served as a place mark to open the notebook to my list of priorities for the day. I hadn’t yet crossed off many things—after all, it was barely noon—but already the neat clarity of the list I’d made last night had been sullied with half a dozen scribbled additions and annotations. I was used to that happening when real life and one of my lists collided. Especially real life involving my family. But odds were that Dad's discovery would derail the day's agenda entirely. I turned the page to begin an entirely new list.

  But before I even started that, I pulled out my cell phone and hit the first speed-dial button. I felt better the moment Michael answered.

  “We’re still at the storage bin, loading the truck,” he said. “You were right; I really underestimated how long it would take.”

  He didn’t mention the reasons it was taking longer, probably because they were still within earshot—the several cousins and uncles who’d gone with him to help load the pickup and were probably still squabbling amicably about what to load next or how to balance the load. He didn’t sound annoyed, either. Amazing.

  Of course, Michael uncritically adored my family, probably because he’d always felt deprived growing up as an only child, with a widowed mother and two unmarried aunts as his sole relatives. So far prolonged exposure to the Hollingworths, my mother's clan, hadn’t dimmed his enthusiasm for the prospect of marrying into a large, noisy, eccentric extended family. I’d recently realized that was one of my reasons for dragging my heels about marrying the tall, dark, and handsome Michael—the fear that after a year or two with my family as in-laws, he’d suddenly come to his senses and go looking for someone less genealogically encumbered.

  I’d finally become convinced that Michael really did enjoy my family—just as Dad, who’d been a foundling, had been overjoyed when, by marrying Mother, he’d gained not only a wife but several hundred aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins. Buoyed by this knowledge, I’d agreed to Michael's plan for eloping in the middle of one of my family's legendary outdoor parties. Specifically, the over-the-top housewarming party we were throwing on Monday, Memorial Day, once our move back into the house was complete. Anyone who didn’t come to the party couldn’t complain about not being invited. We knew that neither of our mothers would be happy that we’d preempted the overe-laborate wedding and reception plans they’d begun to cook up, but at least by eloping now we could prevent either mother from doing anything rash, like making large, nonrefundable deposits on any wedding paraphernalia. And maybe they’d both be so relieved to hear we’d finally tied the knot that they’d forgive us.

  Just in case, we were takin
g off immediately on a two-week honeymoon. Probably not enough time for either my mother or Mrs. Waterston to get over her disappointment at the lack of a big wedding, but enough time for them to calm down and refo-cus their energies on nagging us about when we were going to provide them with grandchildren. At thirty-six, I wasn’t sure if my own biological clock was prodding me, but I knew Michael's mother soon would be.

  Maybe two weeks wasn’t enough. Maybe Michael should ask the college for a sabbatical so we could take a slow cruise around the world. Though for all I knew, that could be what Michael had planned. He’d made all the arrangements for the honeymoon, and refused to tell me anything. The theory was that I’d have one less thing to worry about on top of the move.

  If he thought not knowing where I was going would stop me from worrying—

  Anyway, that was The Plan. And it was working—so far. As far as I could tell, my premove and preparty nerves camouflaged any prenuptial jitters, and anyone who noticed Michael's good spirits would simply chalk it up to his eagerness at finally moving into our recently—and expensively—renovated house. I doubted anything my eager relatives could do while trying to help would annoy him. Dad's discovery, on the other hand—

  “There's nothing wrong, is there?” Michael asked.

  “Well, you might want to put loading the truck on hold for now and come back to the house. There's a slight hitch in our plans. Dad's found a body buried in the basement.”

  I waited for a few anxious seconds.

  “How exciting for your father,” he said, finally. “Unless, of course—dare I hope it's something an archaeologist would find more interesting than a doctor? A body left over from the Civil War, perhaps? Or something the Sprockets left behind?”

  “I said body, not bones,” I said. “Dad says our body, whoever it is, hasn’t been dead more than a day or so.”

  “Damn,” Michael said. “Do we know who it is?” “Not yet.”

  “That's unsettling,” he said.

  I knew what he meant. Until we found out who the victim was, we didn’t know quite how to react. The somber feeling induced by hearing of someone's death might swell into grief if we knew the victim. Unless it was someone we really didn’t like, in which case we might feel a hint of guilty relief. For now, we were in limbo.

  “And not to sound too selfish,” he added, “but I bet this is going to throw a monkey wrench into things.” Into The Plan, he meant.

  “Too early to tell,” I said. “Why don’t you postpone any additional loading for now and come back?” “Roger. I’ll bring Horace.”

  “Good idea.” My cousin Horace was a crime-scene technician back in Yorktown, my hometown, and since the Caerphilly Police Department was too small to have many forensic capabilities, the chief sometimes enlisted Horace's help when a major crime occurred. If Horace was in town, that is; though these days he was almost always in town, since, like young Sammy, he’d also developed a crush on our distant cousin Rose Noire.

  “It might take us a while to make sure everything's either securely loaded on the truck or safely locked back in the storage unit,” Michael said. “But we’ll be back as soon as we can.”

  “Great.”

  I put the phone away and was lifting the pen to make some notes when I heard a car door slam. I looked up and saw a woman striding purposefully down our front walk, leading a llama.

  Chapter 4

  “Hello,” I said, while frantically racking my brain to see if she was a relative I should recognize. Not that my family had a monopoly on eccentricity, but calling on people with a llama in tow was the sort of thing many of them would do. And an alarmingly large number of relatives seemed to be arriving early to help with the move, instead of waiting until Monday's giant house-warming picnic.

  My latest visitor was short and plump, probably in her forties, with cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a face that would look pleasant if she stopped frowning. It was not a face that rang a bell, though, nor could I remember hearing that any of the family had taken an interest in llamas. I knew I’d never seen the brown-and-white llama before.

  The woman didn’t answer my greeting until she had reached the porch and had climbed the first two steps. Then she handed me her end of the llama's rope. The llama, fortunately, remained on solid ground.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It's just not working anymore.”

  I studied the llama for a few moments. Admittedly, I was no llama expert, but it seemed to be working fine to me. It stared back at me with calm, sleepy-eyed reassurance. It looked quite friendly, even warm. I had to remind myself that was just the way all llamas look, and not a valid reason to take the llama's side over the woman's in whatever dispute they were having.

  “I’ve been trying to talk to Patrick for a week and a half now and haven’t gotten an answer,” the woman said.

  I glanced back at the llama. Was Patrick its name, then? Did she really expect the llama to answer? I resisted the urge to inch a little farther away from her.

  “And no one's seen him for days,” she added.

  Ah. Not the llama then. It was quite clearly visible, standing calmly in the middle of our front walk. I repressed the urge to pet its long, soft coat. It wasn’t a stuffed animal, and I had no idea whether llamas bit people.

  “And when I talked to your father last night, he said that he might be able to help us out. We’re already two days late taking off to see our new granddaughter. We can’t stay here llama-sitting forever.”

  Light dawned.

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “The llama's from the Caerphilly Zoo.”

  “Patrick said a few days, and it's been two weeks.”

  Of course. Patrick Lanahan, the zoo's financially inept owner. The one who’d saddled Dad with the penguins. And, apparently, stuck this woman with a llama. If you asked me, she’d gotten the better of the bargain.

  “Your father said he had some pastureland that would be perfectly suitable, and if I hadn’t found Patrick by this morning, I should bring them over.”

  Them?

  A man appeared at the other end of the walk, shortly followed by second llama. Then a third. Llamas kept popping one by one through the opening in the high hedge that screened our yard from the street until I saw that the man was leading six llamas, roped together like a pack train. As I watched, the third llama in line reached down with his nose and goosed the llama in front of him, which squealed with outrage and leaped into the air. Perhaps I only imagined the look of amusement on the faces of the remaining llamas. Or perhaps these were not merely llamas, but prank-playing juvenile-delinquent llamas.

  “Where do you want me to put these?” the man asked.

  I thought of several rude and improbable answers, but I suppressed them. I got up and led my charge to the backyard. My visitors and the rest of the llamas followed. I quickly got the idea that leading more than one llama at a time was a bad idea. Even the short walk to the backyard gave them plenty of time for goosing, biting, and kicking each other. At least they weren’t spitting, which I’d heard llamas were fond of doing.

  “You can put them in here for now,” I said, opening the gate to the pen outside the barn. It was a little small for seven llamas, but at least it was in good repair, since we used it for a dog run. I made sure the dog door between the pen and the barn was closed, since I didn’t know how Spike, our dog, would react to the llamas when he returned. Well, okay, I knew how Spike would react; he’d try to kill one of them, and at eight and a half pounds, he’d be fighting way out of his weight class. Locked in the barn, he could only bark himself hoarse.

  Neither of the llamas’ temporary caretakers expressed the slightest concern over the small size of the pen.

  “I’ll get someone to take them over to the pasture as soon as possible,” I added. “We’re a little busy right now.”

  “Yes, I understand you’re finally moving in today,” the woman said. “Your father said that was why I should drop them off here, instead of at his farm.”
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br />   Just drop them off with Meg. Yes, that sounded like Dad. The couple turned to go, without expressing any further concern over the llamas’ well-being, which struck me as rather callous. It wasn’t as if the llamas had deliberately outstayed their welcome.

  “Is there any message I should give Dad?” I shouted at the couple's departing backs. “About the llamas?”

  Like maybe “Thanks for taking them off our hands”?

  The man turned.

  “No,” he shouted. “But if Patrick ever turns up, you can tell the no-good son of a—”

  “George!” the woman hissed.

  The man turned away again and they left.

  I looked back at the llamas. They were standing clustered by the fence. They didn’t look at all upset at seeing their former guardians depart.

  I was pondering whether to take them over to the pasture now or wait until someone else was free to do it, when two tall, lean figures came around the corner of the house. Randall Shif-fley, the foreman of the construction crew that had been working on our house, and one of his brothers or cousins—Vern, I thought, though I wasn’t sure.

  I greeted them, a little warily. Had I asked them to come by to do some project? Not that I recalled. We still had dozens of projects inside and out, and we’d probably be hiring the Shiffleys to do the work, but not yet. The place was livable, though far from perfect, and we were looking forward to a few weeks or even months of peace and quiet. Not to mention a few months of not handing the Shiffleys every bit of cash we could scrape up.

  Fortunately, Randall got straight to the point.

  “We came to talk to your father,” he said. “About the rights to the land.”

  Rights? Dad had bought the farm adjacent to our lot from Fred Shiffley, Randall's uncle. Was there some problem with the purchase?

  My face must have revealed my puzzlement.