The Real Macaw: A Meg Langslow Mystery

I wasn’t sure whether this was intended as the usual call-and-response the reverend’s words would inspire in church, or whether some audience members were trying to hint that he’d already covered the topic sufficiently.
    “There has been a great wickedness done in this town,” he went on. More amens. “And we ask your assistance in smiting the doers of that wickedness. Amen!”
    He sat down amid a frenzy of amens and applause. Surely one of the shortest blessings he’d given within living memory. I suspected the reverend was as eager as most of the audience to get on with the meeting.
    Caroline retook the microphone.
    “I don’t know how many of you are up to speed on developments here in the county. Bear with me while I repeat a few things that might be old news to some of you. Early Friday morning, the police found Parker Blair murdered in the cab of his furniture store’s truck. I’m sure most people assumed that Parker’s demise had something to do with his … active social life.”
    Snickers erupted in various parts of the audience, and the snickerers were hushed back into silence.
    “But this morning Meg Langslow and Randall Shiffley uncovered information that indicates Parker was about to blow the whistle on a serious scandal here in Caerphilly. We’ll leave it to Chief Burke to determine whether Parker’s findings had anything to do with his death.”
    She bowed to the chief, who was sitting along one side of the stage, and he bowed back with reasonably good grace.
    “Parker learned that the town beautification project was not paid for with federal funds and private donations, as Mayor Pruitt claimed, but with loans.”
    “But that was a town project,” someone called out. “What does that have to do with the county?”
    “Town didn’t have anything worth using as collateral,” Randall Shiffley called back. “So they hornswoggled the county board into letting them use all the county buildings as collateral.”
    I’d have expected the crowd to erupt at hearing that, but after a few moments of low murmuring—and more than a few angry or reproachful glances at the county board members who’d been brave enough to attend—the crowd settled down. Evidently most of them had already heard the news. Or perhaps they were cynical enough about their local government that it came as no surprise.
    “Doubtless the mayor had a plan for repaying the borrowing.” This generated a few sardonic laughs. “But even if his plan was a good one, it apparently failed, no doubt due to the present adverse economic conditions. We’ve now learned that the lender has been demanding payment for months—and is preparing to foreclose on the collateral.”
    A slightly angrier buzz greeted that statement, and died down when Caroline raised her hand to indicate that she had more to say.
    Suddenly the tortoiseshell cat, which had been lying languidly on her shoulder the whole time, launched itself toward the audience with a howl, and began scrabbling around the base of the stage. Several people in the front rows leaped back and a few startled shrieks rang out.
    The cat then leaped nimbly back onto the stage and marched back over to Caroline.
    “Mrowr!” it said, its voice a little muffled by the field mouse in its mouth.
    “What a good mouser you are!” Caroline exclaimed. She picked up the cat, mouse and all, and held him out as if displaying a trophy. The audience—many of them farm people who understand the value of a good mouser—broke into applause.
    “And he’s available for adoption, if anyone’s interested,” Caroline said. She gestured to Clarence, who relieved her of the cat and took him off to enjoy his prey in one of the cat carriers in the adoption area.
    “As I was saying,” Caroline said. “The lender plans to seize our county government buildings. And now Meg Langslow has discovered that the mayor apparently intends to solve the debt crisis he created by asking the county to seize the property of several local landowners and turn it over to an outside developer!”
    All hell broke loose at that hated word, “developer”—and “outside developer” at that. Not that there was anyone living in the county who would publicly own up to being a developer, given the local mind-set on the issue. The county might be divided in many ways over many topics, but nothing would bring the residents together better than the threat of unwanted development.
    Caroline let the shouting go on for a