The Real Macaw: A Meg Langslow Mystery

around and spotted someone I knew from the pediatrician’s office.
    “Could you keep an eye on my twins for a second?” I asked her.
    She nodded, and I strode over to the bench and grabbed the end of the other kid’s bat just as he was about to pound Timmy’s helmet.
    “Stop that,” I said.
    “We’re wearing helmets,” the other kid said. “It’s not going to hurt anything.”
    He pulled at the bat, trying free it.
    “Bats against the fence unless you’re actually batting.” I was quoting one of the few T-Ball rules I’d learned so far. I pulled a little harder and gained possession of the bat. “You, too,” I said, holding out my hand to Timmy, who promptly surrendered his blunt instrument. He wasn’t a bad child, just a little easily misled.
    I hooked the bats into the chain-link fence behind home plate and returned to my seat by the baby carriage.
    “Thanks,” I said to my temporary babysitter.
    “You’re welcome,” she said. “You saved me the trouble of walking over there. That was one of my monsters trying to bludgeon your kid.”
    I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but fortunately I didn’t have to. She was soon immersed in a conversation with two other mothers about logistics for a birthday party. A birthday party to which Timmy hadn’t been invited. Maybe I should start working to improve his social life.
    The Caerphilly Red Sox took the field. Timmy was playing the pitcher’s position. Of course since in T-Ball the kids whacked a stationary ball set atop an overgrown golf tee, “pitcher” was a purely honorary title for an additional infielder. I smiled and waved, in case he was watching. The Clay County Yankees’ coach hauled out the tee, placed a ball on it, and began coaxing the first batter to take his place at the plate.
    “Hello, Meg.”
    I turned and smiled.
    “Hello, Francine,” I said. I tried to make my smile warmer than usual, since I was looking at the one parent on the bleachers who probably felt even more out of it than I did. Francine Mann, wife of our new and unloved county manager, was so shy and self-effacing that she hadn’t had much luck making friends in her six months in Caerphilly. It didn’t help that she had a New England accent so strong it sounded like someone trying to parody one of the Kennedy clan. Many locals had a hard time accepting anyone whose southern accent revealed that they came from a different corner of Dixie. A strong Yankee accent could be the kiss of death with them. And Francine’s husband’s decision on the animal shelter was probably the last nail in the coffin of her social aspirations. I could bet she wasn’t getting a lot of friendly looks from the locals these days.
    I’d been on the receiving end of “not from around here” myself when I’d first moved to Caerphilly, even though I’d grown up only an hour’s drive away. I felt a sort of kinship with her. Or was it just pity?
    “Nice to see you,” I said. “How have you been?”
    “Fine.” She didn’t look fine. Her shoulders were hunched as if she expected a blow from somewhere. Then again, she was tall—almost a match for my five feet ten. Perhaps she merely had an extreme case of the bad posture many tall women adopt in a vain attempt to minimize their size.
    “How are the babies?” she asked.
    I reported their latest stats and accomplishments, and she oohed and aahed. Thank goodness for the twins, who provided a neutral topic of conversation. I liked Francine well enough. She’d been very kind to me when I was in the hospital, where she held some sort of administrative job. But I had no idea what her interests were and I suspected we had little in common.
    Except babies. Clearly they were an interest. Quite possibly an obsession. I’d heard enough town gossip to know that she and her husband had no children of their own, and that the six-year-old she chauffeured to practices and games was her husband’s son by a brief first marriage.
    As she cooed over the twins, I found myself suspecting the lack of additional children wasn’t her choice. Her husband’s maybe, or Mother Nature’s, but not hers.
    “They’re dahling.” Her accent was, as usual, particularly pronounced on the ar and er sounds.
    I heard some muttering behind me. Did I detect the word “Yankee”? I focused on Francine.
    “And you’re so lucky,” she was saying. “Didn’t I hear you’ve found a live-in nanny?”
    “No,” I said. “We do have one of my cousins living