The Real Macaw: A Meg Langslow Mystery

Continental Army uniform, standing in the prow of a boat being rowed across a vast expanse of turbulent, wintry water by a crew of some dozen burly underlings. General Pruitt crossing the Delaware?
    Other, smaller paintings showed turtle-shaped Pruitts in various settings. Waddling through the wilderness in coonskin caps and buckskins. Peering through their goggles in front of battered World War I biplanes. In one particularly implausible scene, a pudgy Pruitt engineer presented the cotton gin to a grateful South.
    A lot of the paintings were obvious imitations of better, more famous works. I had a sudden vision of myself writing an article on the Pruitt painter for the Caerphilly Clarion, ostensibly a serious study of the influences that had shaped the artist’s career—but of course anyone with half a brain would recognize it as a laundry list of which famous paintings he’d ripped off.
    Why was I so focused on the paintings, anyway? I had more important things to think about.
    Except that this was all part of the same problem. The Pruitts spending the taxpayers’ money on things that were useless, or benefited only them.
    Randall had pegged it. Pruitt greed and Pruitt stupidity. Maybe I didn’t need to worry about making that article look like serious art criticism. Maybe I should just make it an outright attack and reveal exactly how much county money had been spent on these dubious works. I could call it “Pruitt Pride and Plagiarism.”
    Then again, if Parker’s planned exposé had given one of the Pruitts a motive for murder, did I really want to write an article that would paint the next target on my back?
    I tucked the problem away for later consideration. For now, I dragged over a side chair to stand on so I could lift down the enormous spider plant. Then I took the plant out to the hallway, dragging the chair with me so I’d have something to put it on. All the little shoots and baby plants spilled over the sides of the chair and onto the floor, but I smoothed them out and made sure they were as far as possible out of way of foot traffic in the hall. I couldn’t remember ever wrangling such a large spider plant before, and yet I had an odd sense of déjà vu—perhaps because it was almost the same challenge as arranging the kind of over-the-top veils several of my friends and relations had chosen for weddings in which I’d been drafted to serve as a bridesmaid.
    Then I went back into the antechamber, unfolded the luggage carrier, and wheeled it into position beside the ficus.
    As I did, I caught a glimpse of something. There were papers in the in-basket. And the top one had a sticky note on it saying, “Louise—can you get him to sign this? R.”
    Was this Louise’s desk?
    I flipped through the top few papers in the in-basket. All of them addressed to Louise or Ms. Dietz. There were even a couple of interoffice envelopes addressed to Louise Dietz, room 301.
    The out-box contained only one thing—an envelope addressed to Mayor Pruitt. I picked it up. It was sealed but I could easily see that it contained four loose keys.
    Yes, this was Louise’s desk. And it looked as abandoned as Terence Mann’s desk. She’d cleared out her desk and was turning in her keys. What did—
    Just then the door to the inner office slammed open.
    “Louise! Where the hell— You’re not Louise!”
    “Haven’t seen her. It’s Sunday, remember?”
    “I called to say I needed her to come in today. Where the hell is she?”
    I shrugged.
    “Maybe she’s not coming in today,” I said. “In fact, maybe she’s not coming in at all. Looks as if she’s cleared off her desk.”
    He frowned, then shook his head vigorously.
    “No, can’t be,” he said. “They didn’t start all that nonsense about moving out until this morning. Her desk was like that when I dropped by around eleven last night to pick up some papers.”
    Pick up some papers, my eye. Eleven o’clock would have been when he was debriefing his spies. I looked past him into his private office. I couldn’t see much, though I got an impression of ornate mahogany furniture in a space so large it echoed in spite of burgundy velvet upholstery. Was that the room where the macaw snatching and the assault on Grandfather were planned?
    And what about Louise? When I’d heard about the mayor’s spies, I’d assumed Louise might be one of them. Against her will, of course, but she was desperate to keep her job. But apparently she’d made it back here and