Stork Raving Mad: A Meg Langslow Mystery (A Meg Lanslow Mystery)

only the rising wind that made it seem that way. Halfway back to the kitchen steps we had to stop and turn our backs to the wind to ride out one particularly strong gust. I was relieved when we reached the garbage bag gauntlet, since it would partially shield us from the next gust.
    And then I realized that the top of one bag was flapping open in the wind, sending bits of trash skittering across the frozen ground.
    “Damn!” Michael gave chase to the flying garbage. “I’ll have to tell everyone to be more careful.”
    I’d have said that everyone was already being rather careful. None of the other bags was flapping open, and I didn’t remember this one doing so when I’d walked by it earlier. Perhaps someone had opened it to add more garbage and forgotten to tie it up again.
    But why choose this one, which was already full and in the middle of the lineup to boot?
    I stepped closer to the bag, peered in, and sneezed several times.
    “Let me do that,” Michael called from across the yard.
    But I was already reaching into the bag. My hand slid through several squishy things that I tried not to think about. I burrowed a little deeper and my hand encountered the butter-softtexture of expensive leather. I grabbed the leather object and pried it out of the surrounding goop.
    “What’s that?” Michael strode up with his arms full of trash.
    I held the object up so we could see it in the light from the kitchen windows. It was a rectangular black leather clutch purse. It was large for a clutch purse—perhaps six by eleven inches. Even considering its size it had a remarkable number of nonfunctional buckles, straps, zippers, and other bits of metal. And it was too flat to be very practical. It wouldn’t even have held my wallet, much less all the gear I toted every day. The sort of purse you could afford to carry if you spent most of your day in your office and had a briefcase to carry any larger items when you left it.
    “I think it’s Dr. Wright’s purse,” I said. “We need to take this to the chief.”

Chapter 20
     
    “Are you sure it’s Dr. Wright’s purse?” Chief Burke asked. He had set the purse on our kitchen table and he, Horace, and Dad were peering at it.
    “Not a hundred percent sure,” I said. I was sitting a few feet away, where I could see but not smell the purse. “I’m not much of a fashion expert. It’s a pity Mother didn’t see Dr. Wright arrive. She’d not only know whether it was Dr. Wright’s purse or not, she could tell you the brand, the model, how much it cost, and whether you could possibly buy one like it in any of the local stores.”
    “Just knowing it’s hers would be sufficient,” the chief said.
    “It’s not mine, and I can’t imagine any of the women students throwing away a perfectly good purse like that. See—it’s a designer brand.”
    I pointed to the word “Coach” embossed onto a leather patch on one side—probably one of the few designer purse brands I’d have recognized.
    “But what convinces me that it’s hers is the smell,” I went on.
    “I assumed it picked up that rotten, garlicky smell in the garbage,” Horace said.
    “Never mind the garlic,” I said. “The thing reeks of Dr.Wright’s perfume. That damned scent made me sneeze every time I got near her, and it permeates that bag.”
    “Did you look inside?” the chief asked.
    “I thought you’d rather do that,” I said.
    “Let’s take it to my—to Dr. Waterston’s office,” the chief said. Horace picked up the purse in gloved hands and carried it out. Dad followed. The chief glanced out the kitchen windows briefly, as if puzzled how it had gotten dark so quickly. I realized he’d spent much of the day in Michael’s office, where the heavy thermal curtains were tightly drawn to keep out drafts. Then he sighed and followed Dad and Horace.
    “I should get back to the rehearsal,” Michael said. “You should go up to rest soon.”
    “Soon,” I said. “I just want to see this through.”
    I followed Horace, Dad, and the chief, bringing up the rear of the procession, keeping far enough back to prevent the chief from getting annoyed.
    Back in Michael’s office, Horace spread out a large sheet of paper on the desk and set the purse carefully on it. I sat down on a book box and tried to fade into the shadows.
    No such luck.
    “Did you touch the purse?” the chief asked me.
    “Only with my gloves on,” I said.
    “Leave your wraps here,” Horace said over his