before they had destroyed what little resemblance it had to a grassy lawn.
“Ah, well,” Michael said, when he saw me staring at the impressive new ruts. “We probably needed to rototill that part of the lawn anyway. By the way, is that one of the uncles who shouldn’t be wandering around by himself?”
“Uncle Ned? Not that I know of,” I said, looking over at the uncle in question. “Why, what’s he been doing?”
“Coming up and spouting gibberish at me,” Michael said.
“Oh, that’s not gibberish,” I said. “Farsi, Arabic, and I think I heard he’d taken up Mandarin. He’s testing to see if you react. Always on the lookout for foreign spies, Uncle Ned.”
“Probably not a good time to practice my French or Vietnamese, then,” he said.
“No, and probably just as well to keep him away from Giles,” I said. “Uncle Ned still hasn’t forgiven the British for burning the White House in the War of 1812.”
“Right,” he said, nodding. “Should those people be climbing on the fence?”
Dozens of people were spread-eagled against the deer fencing, like bugs on a windshield, as if pressing every square inch of their bodies as close as possible to the barrier would get them inside faster. We’d had a cat once who did that with screen doors when she wanted to come inside. She’d even leap up to plaster herself as high on the door as possible, the better to be seen, which hadn’t done a whole lot for the condition of our screen door. Sure enough, one of the onlookers started to do much the same thing, but the deer fencing began to collapse under his weight, and Michael went over to help the uniformed officers remove him from the fence.
Cousin Everett was doing a brisk business with the boom lift, sending small groups of people up on the platform and then waving them gently over the yard sale area. Hard to tell, at this distance, whether they were reporters, avid bargain hunters scoping out the merchandise, or just thrill-seekers, but he had dozens of people waiting in line for their turns.
Everett had apparently found time, before he began giving rides, to deposit a party of volunteer roofers on top of the house. As I watched, several of my uncles rolled back one of the tarps, ready for another attempt to patch the last of the roof leaks. I suspected we’d eventually have to break down and replace the entire roof. But the longer we postponed that, the better we would be able to afford it. In the meantime, the uncles were having fun; they’d found a productive use for all the leftover shingles everyone had in their garages and sheds, and I had decided that the random mixture of shingle colors gave the house a festive patchwork look.
But none of this chaos was bringing us any closer to getting rid of our mountains of stuff, I thought, with a sigh.
“Meg?”
I turned to see Cousin Horace and a uniformed officer standing behind me.
Chapter 12
“Horace,” I said. “How’s the forensic examination going?”
“Now, Meg,” he said. “You know I can’t reveal confidential information.”
“I wasn’t asking for confidential information,” I said. Not yet, anyway. “I just asked how it was going. If you want to cheer me up, tell me you’re almost finished and we can restart the yard sale soon.”
“You don’t want me to lie to you, do you?”
I sighed.
“We’re supposed to get some reinforcements from Richmond,” he said. “More technicians to help us process the crime scene. But even when they get here, it’ll go a lot faster if we aren’t interrupted by all those people hanging on the fence and knocking it down. Not to mention trying to sneak under it.”
“Fat chance doing that,” I said. “Did you see the length of the pegs Dad used to tack the bottom down? We’ll be lucky if we ever get some of them up; we’ll probably have to cut the damned fence away.”
“Yeah, we expect when they figure out they can’t pull it up, they’ll start trying to cut it,”
“Ah, well,” Michael said, when he saw me staring at the impressive new ruts. “We probably needed to rototill that part of the lawn anyway. By the way, is that one of the uncles who shouldn’t be wandering around by himself?”
“Uncle Ned? Not that I know of,” I said, looking over at the uncle in question. “Why, what’s he been doing?”
“Coming up and spouting gibberish at me,” Michael said.
“Oh, that’s not gibberish,” I said. “Farsi, Arabic, and I think I heard he’d taken up Mandarin. He’s testing to see if you react. Always on the lookout for foreign spies, Uncle Ned.”
“Probably not a good time to practice my French or Vietnamese, then,” he said.
“No, and probably just as well to keep him away from Giles,” I said. “Uncle Ned still hasn’t forgiven the British for burning the White House in the War of 1812.”
“Right,” he said, nodding. “Should those people be climbing on the fence?”
Dozens of people were spread-eagled against the deer fencing, like bugs on a windshield, as if pressing every square inch of their bodies as close as possible to the barrier would get them inside faster. We’d had a cat once who did that with screen doors when she wanted to come inside. She’d even leap up to plaster herself as high on the door as possible, the better to be seen, which hadn’t done a whole lot for the condition of our screen door. Sure enough, one of the onlookers started to do much the same thing, but the deer fencing began to collapse under his weight, and Michael went over to help the uniformed officers remove him from the fence.
Cousin Everett was doing a brisk business with the boom lift, sending small groups of people up on the platform and then waving them gently over the yard sale area. Hard to tell, at this distance, whether they were reporters, avid bargain hunters scoping out the merchandise, or just thrill-seekers, but he had dozens of people waiting in line for their turns.
Everett had apparently found time, before he began giving rides, to deposit a party of volunteer roofers on top of the house. As I watched, several of my uncles rolled back one of the tarps, ready for another attempt to patch the last of the roof leaks. I suspected we’d eventually have to break down and replace the entire roof. But the longer we postponed that, the better we would be able to afford it. In the meantime, the uncles were having fun; they’d found a productive use for all the leftover shingles everyone had in their garages and sheds, and I had decided that the random mixture of shingle colors gave the house a festive patchwork look.
But none of this chaos was bringing us any closer to getting rid of our mountains of stuff, I thought, with a sigh.
“Meg?”
I turned to see Cousin Horace and a uniformed officer standing behind me.
Chapter 12
“Horace,” I said. “How’s the forensic examination going?”
“Now, Meg,” he said. “You know I can’t reveal confidential information.”
“I wasn’t asking for confidential information,” I said. Not yet, anyway. “I just asked how it was going. If you want to cheer me up, tell me you’re almost finished and we can restart the yard sale soon.”
“You don’t want me to lie to you, do you?”
I sighed.
“We’re supposed to get some reinforcements from Richmond,” he said. “More technicians to help us process the crime scene. But even when they get here, it’ll go a lot faster if we aren’t interrupted by all those people hanging on the fence and knocking it down. Not to mention trying to sneak under it.”
“Fat chance doing that,” I said. “Did you see the length of the pegs Dad used to tack the bottom down? We’ll be lucky if we ever get some of them up; we’ll probably have to cut the damned fence away.”
“Yeah, we expect when they figure out they can’t pull it up, they’ll start trying to cut it,”
Similar Books
