Owls Well That Ends Well by Donna Andrews Read Free Book Online Page A

years of National Geographic .”
    Just then I heard a loud altercation nearby. Not the first of the day, by any means, but the voices sounded familiar, so I waded through the crowd to see what was going on.
    “It’s mine!”
    “No, it’s not!”
    “Yes, it is!”
    “I saw it first!”
    “But I touched it first!”
    “Liar!”
    “Thief!”
    “Let go!”
    “Take that!”
    Typical. I’d heard so many quarrels already today that I’d given up intervening unless the participants came to blows, which these two seemed about to do.
    And to my dismay, I realized that the latest combatants were two of my aunts—elderly, respectable women who didn’t hesitate to rap my knuckles at Thanksgiving dinner to correct minor flaws in my table manners.
    They were playing tug-of-war over an antique purple cut-velvet piano shawl with foot-long fringe. Not tugging very hard, of course, since the material was fragile; but both of them were obviously determined not to let go. Aunt Gladys, her stout form encased in a vintage beaded opera gown, had both ring-encrusted fists clamped firmly around her end of the shawl and looked as if even the boom lift would have trouble dislodging her. In a fair fight, I’d have bet on her. But Aunt Josephine didn’t fight fair. Looking uncannily authentic in her wicked witch costume, complete with a pointed hat and a toy cat wired to her shoulder, she was only holding the shawl with one hand while with the other she whacked Aunt Gladys in the derriere with her broomstick, throwing in an occasional kick to the shins for good measure.
    I took a deep breath and was about to wade in on my one-woman peacekeeping mission when a streak of black-and-white fur appeared and launched itself at the shawl. Spike. He couldn’t quite leap high enough to reach the shawl, but he managed a good mouthful of the swaying fringe. My aunts watched in horror as he hung suspended from the shawl for a few seconds and then dropped when his weight ripped the fragile fabric in half.
    “Sorry,” Rob said, running up and clipping the leash back onto Spike’s collar—an easier task than usual, with Spike’s fangs muffled in fringe. “I was taking him over for his hamburger, but he got loose.”
    “A Solomon among dogs,” I said. “Does either of you want this?”
    I held out the remaining half of the shawl. Both aunts shook their heads. They gathered up their dignity along with the objects they’d apparently dropped in the fray and strode off without looking back.
    “Bring the other half back when Spike finishes with it,” I told Rob. “Maybe Aunt Minnie can use it for her quilting.”
    “And who’s paying for that?” said a woman at a nearby table. Presumably the wounded shawl’s owner.
    While I was settling up, my irritation surged again when I spotted someone else going into the barn. The latest in a long series of someone elses who’d been shuffling in and out of the barn.
    This one I even recognized—the Hummel lady. Apparently she’d decided to skip out on her church luncheon after all. I’d also seen a man I suspected I’d recognize when he no longer wore a cartoon-sized sombrero. And a tall man in a brown jacket and a Dracula mask. One of the Gypsies—we had about a dozen, since it was one of the easiest costumes for a woman to throw together at the last minute; this one was tall and slender and less gaudy than most. Even poor Giles. Perhaps he’d decided to talk to Gordon-you-thief about the Freeman book after all.
    “We have a problem you need to deal with,” Barrymore Sprocket announced, stepping into my path so I either had to notice him or kick him.
    I counted to ten before answering. And then I continued on to twenty. Sprocket had been reporting problems for me to deal with all morning, and creating more problems than he solved. He’d fingered two people as professional shoplifters casing the joint. By the time I’d drummed it into his head that his two suspicious characters were not only