The Real Macaw: A Meg Langslow Mystery

as soon as they saw we were hard at work, they went into a brief huddle and then told us they were going to move on to the next building.
    The chief and I lifted and shoved for a few minutes in silence. Then a thought occurred to me. I straightened up and looked around to make sure no one else was hovering nearby before sharing it with the chief.
    “I’m not trying to interfere with your investigation,” I said. “But I was wondering—”
    And then I stopped. Technically, the chief wasn’t the chief anymore. What happened to the investigation?
    “Don’t worry,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s still my investigation.”
    “In spite of your resignation?”
    “I’m still deputy sheriff, remember?” he said.
    “But this crime’s in town,” I said. “What if the mayor appoints a new police chief? Not that I’m paranoid, but the mayor’s a suspect. Do we really trust anyone he appoints to investigate properly?”
    “No,” he said. “And since I knew things might come to a head between me and the mayor before too long, I went out to the sheriff’s farm last night, and we had a good long talk. He tells me that in the event the town doesn’t have a police chief, he has the authority to assume jurisdiction over the case.”
    And since the sheriff, who was in his mid-nineties, was more or less an elected figurehead these days, delegating everything to his deputy, that meant the chief would still be in charge.
    “If he’s correct—” I said.
    “It occurred to me to wonder about that,” he said. “Sounds more like the sort of thing they used to do back in his heyday, twenty years ago.”
    “I think his heyday was more like forty years ago,” I said. “And that’s probably how they did things. Of course, maybe it was legal back then.”
    “I like to know where things stand,” he said. “So this morning I ran the whole problem by the county DA. And she assures me that the sheriff is right. As long as there’s no police chief, the sheriff’s department has jurisdiction. No police chief, and for that matter, no police.”
    “Your officers are all resigning, too?”
    “Most of them don’t have to,” he said. “Most are already on the county payroll, and the rest will be by Monday morning.”
    “You were planning to resign, then?”
    He sighed.
    “Not so much planning to resign as resigned to the fact that sooner or later, the mayor would force me to. So we came up with a plan, just in case. And the DA’s plotting out all the legal strategies she can use if the mayor tries to appoint a puppet.”
    I nodded. I had every confidence that the DA could find a lot of ways to delay things. Still—the sooner the chief could solve the case, the better.
    “Getting back to the case,” I said. “Did you ever manage to track down Louise? The mayor’s secretary?”
    “The one you suspect of helping Mr. Blair get his hands on that copy of the contract?” He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead. I wasn’t sure if he found my question interesting, or if he just welcomed the excuse to take a break.
    “I’m not sure I really suspect her,” I said. “She sounded sincere when she said that no matter how much she hated her boss, she wouldn’t do that to him. But maybe she fooled me, and even if it wasn’t her, she might have a good idea who else would have had access.”
    He nodded.
    “That thought had occurred to me as well,” he said. “And I have been trying to reach Ms. Dietz all day. Without success.”
    My stomach did a somersault at hearing that.
    “Maybe she’s making a run for it,” I suggested. “Or—what if she knows too much and someone decided they needed to get rid of her, too.”
    “Annoying as it is not to be able to reach her, I think it’s a little early to jump to that conclusion,” the chief said. He put his handkerchief away and squatted to pick up another plant. “Maybe she just likes to spend her Sundays doing something other than sitting indoors by her telephone.”
    “Yes, but don’t you think it’s a little odd that she apparently cleared off her desk and turned in her keys?”
    He put the plant down again and turned to me with a frown.
    “You’re sure of that?”
    “That’s her desk in the mayor’s anteroom,” I said. “He was complaining before you arrived that he’d left her a message to come in and she hadn’t shown up. I think he assumes she’s in on the evacuation, and maybe she is. But according to