The Real Macaw: A Meg Langslow Mystery

heard of Cousin Festus Hollingsworth.
    “And just who shall I say will be calling him?” I asked.
    White Hat fished in several pockets before finding a battered business card, and he had to borrow my pen to cross out his own name and add that of his boss.
    “I guess we’ll be going now,” he said.
    Rob, Tinkerbell, and I watched as the two surveyors trooped back to an SUV parked far enough down the road that I’d never have seen it from our house. Maybe there wasn’t anything sinister in that. Maybe it was simply the most convenient spot to where they wanted to survey.
    Then again …
    Tinkerbell whined slightly as they went and strained a little at the leash, causing the surveyors to glance back nervously over their shoulders. The llamas were following them, and to my great delight, just before they reached the fence, Groucho, the largest of the llamas, nailed White Hat with a gob of smelly green llama spit. Maybe they weren’t such bad watch animals after all.
    “Tinkerbell wouldn’t really have attacked them, you know,” Rob said when they were out of earshot.
    “I didn’t say she would,” I said. “I said I’d sic my dog on them. You know Spike would jump at the chance.”
    “Yeah.” He sighed, then patted Tinkerbell as if appreciating her more mellow temperament. I winced. I was resigned to the possibility that Rob might emerge from this whole adventure with a dog of his own, but did he have to pick the largest one possible?
    “I think in Virginia these days you have to have blight,” he said.
    I waited for some explanation that would make this remark comprehensible. Rob just beamed at me.
    “What do you mean, ‘you have to have blight’?” I asked finally. “Because I’d really rather not if it’s all the same.”
    “For eminent domain. I think the new law says that you can’t seize property for economic development unless it’s blighted.”
    “Well, we should be fine, then,” I said. “Does our property look blighted?”
    “No, no,” he said, a little too hastily. “It’s looking better all the time.”
    Great. My own brother thought our house looked blighted. Who knew what someone with real standards would think?
    I’d worry about that later.
    “Did you need me for something?” I asked.
    “Not really,” he said. I sighed. I knew Rob well enough to translate. “Not really,” probably meant, “Yes, but I don’t want to admit it, so I’m going to make you drag it out of me with pliers.”
    “Just spit it out,” I said. “You made points, helping with the surveyors. You’re in my good books right now. As long as you don’t make me play twenty questions.”
    He visibly braced himself.
    “Should I tell the chief that I’m not completely alibied for all of Thursday night?” he asked.
    I closed my eyes and said nothing for a few moments, mainly because the only words that sprang to mind were ones I was trying to expunge from my vocabulary long before the boys began talking.
    “Meg?”
    “Yes.” I opened my eyes. “You should definitely tell the chief. Better for you to tell him than for him to find out from someone else. Just how did you happen not to have an alibi? I thought you were all together for hours.”
    “We were,” he said. “Most of the time. But Clarence and I went to the shelter early, around nine thirty, so he could get the animals crated before Dad and Grandpa got there. And pretty soon we realized we didn’t have enough crates. There were like a dozen or so more animals than there were the day before. Clarence thinks maybe someone tipped off the Clay County Animal Shelter and they dumped most of their animals on us at the last minute.”
    I winced. Neighboring Clay County’s budget crisis was even worse than ours, so it made sense, both that the animal lovers would leak news of the planned burglary and that Clay County would seize the chance to find new homes for their unwanted animals. But it would further expand the chief’s list of people who knew Parker might be in his truck Thursday night.
    “Interesting,” I said. “But what does it have to do with you not having a complete alibi?”
    “Clarence sent me back to his office to get more crates,” Rob said. “It took a while to find them and load them. I didn’t get back till a quarter of eleven, just before Dad and Grandpa got there. So for the first hour or so that Grandpa said we were all together, actually we weren’t. He and Dad were, and he probably thinks Clarence and I