The Real Macaw: A Meg Langslow Mystery

snapping at me made me realize that my own temper was rather frayed. Getting into an argument with him wouldn’t do anyone any good. I took a deep breath and reminded myself to count to ten before replying.
    And then a vision of the chief with the kittens crawling up his trousers sprang into my mind. At any other time I’d probably have burst into laughter, which would really have set him off. It didn’t quite have that effect now, but it did take the edge off my anger.
    “No.” I had no trouble keeping my voice calm. “I was just having a conversation with Mother, and she said something that seemed significant. I thought I’d come and report it instead of using it to go out snooping. If you want to hear it. Clearly you’re busy and—”
    “Come into my office.” He turned on his heel and began stomping down the box-lined hallway. “What’s left of my office,” he said over his shoulder. “While I still have an office at all.”
    “Henry,” Minerva called after him, in a warning tone. “Be gracious. She’s trying to help.”
    The chief’s desk was still there, but most of the contents of his shelves were gone. As were his chair and the two worn but comfortable chairs in which he normally seated his visitors.
    “The book boxes aren’t too uncomfortable.” Under the circumstances, his tone almost counted as gracious. I sat down on a book box. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, visibly schooling himself to be patient.
    “I think I may know why someone broke into our house and attacked Grandfather. They were trying to steal the macaw.”
    “And he prevented them?” the chief said. “At too high a cost, if you ask me.”
    “No, he failed to prevent the theft,” I said. “The thief took the macaw that came from the shelter, and left behind a substitute macaw.”
    “Now that is—” He broke off, closed his mouth and frowned at me. I wondered if, like me, he counted to ten to avoid saying something he’d regret. It felt more like twenty by the time he finished, unless he’d trained himself to count very slowly. Then he started again.
    “And you know this because…?”
    “Mother noticed they were slightly different colors.” I repeated much of our conversation about the Prussian blue and turquoise macaws.
    He pondered for a minute or so. The fact that he hadn’t chewed me out was encouraging.
    “No offense,” he said finally. “But is there any chance your mother could be mistaken?”
    “About as much chance as you being mistaken about a question of Baltimore geography.” The chief, who had grown up in Baltimore and spent several decades on its police force, nodded in acknowledgment.
    “But apart from knowing that Mother’s absolutely reliable on color, I asked Clarence,” I said. “He’d been so busy with the other animals that he hadn’t noticed, but he confirmed that the macaw now in our living room is a common blue-and-yellow macaw. The one they took from the animal shelter was a rare, expensive, hyacinth macaw—”
    “Are you trying to tell me that someone broke into your house and swapped macaws because the bird from a shelter was some kind of priceless rare parrot?”
    “No—” I began.
    “Because that makes even less sense than most of what’s been going on around here the last few days. They could simply show up and volunteer to adopt the bird for free.”
    “Whoever did it wasn’t stealing the macaw because it was valuable,” I said. “It was, but that’s irrelevant. They were stealing it because it belonged to Parker Blair.”
    Now I had his attention.
    “What was it doing in the shelter, then?”
    “Someone pretended to have found it in their yard and turned it in at the shelter as a ruse for doing some preburglary reconnoitering.”
    He closed his eyes and growled slightly.
    “I have no idea if the reconnoitering was essential,” I said. “Maybe the Corsicans just liked the drama of it all. The plan was that Parker would just take back his bird when they turned the other animals over to him.”
    “It’s starting to make a little sense,” he said. “But why would the killer—assuming it was the killer—want to steal the bird? You’re not suggesting the killer was after the bird all the time? And struck too soon, before Parker had regained possession of it?”
    “No, stealing the bird didn’t become essential until after the murder,” I said. “The macaw talks, remember?”
    “I remember,” he said. “All too well.