wouldn't hear of it.'
'Dad adores riding the lawn mower,' I said. 'Usually the yard's all his, but if I get out this afternoon and festoon all the trees with little twinkly electric lights, it might keep Dad from trying to fill the yard with torches and candles. He nearly burns the house down every time we let him decorate for a party.'
'I can come over and help if you like,' Michael offered.
'It'll be hard work,' I warned.
'Yes, but in such delightful company,' he said.
No accounting for taste, I suppose. By now, I was actively looking to avoid spending too much time in my family's company. Although as it turned out, Pam and Eric were the only other family members I succeeded in recruiting. The four of us spent the whole afternoon climbing trees and perching on ladders.
'Once we've got these up, I think we should just leave them up till Mother's wedding,' I said, as we surveyed our handiwork. 'One less thing to do that week.'
Of course Dad insisted on putting out a few dozen candles, but not nearly the number he would have otherwise.
And Michael brought over my costume. He called it a lady pirate costume.
'You can be either Anne Bonney or Mary Read. Both famous lady pirates. Piracy was an equal opportunity career.'
I examined it. A tight corset, topped by a skimpy bodice and finished off (barely) with a short skirt. All ragged, with picturesque fake bloodstains and strategic tears. I'd have turned it down, except that his concept of a lady pirate included a cutlass and a dozen daggers of assorted sizes.
'I don't think much of the dress,' I said. 'But I like the cutlery. If things keep going as they have been, you may not get the weapons back till I leave town. And I want your eyepatch.'
Even after I divested him of his eyepatch, Michael made a very picturesque pirate. With the three or four days' growth of beard he'd cultivated, he ought to have looked scruffy, but he only looked more gorgeous than usual. Rather like the cover of a romance book. It wasn't fair.
Dad came dressed as Sherlock Holmes. Fortunately he felt inspired to act the part as well. Since Mrs. Grover's murder and the other unfortunate events of the summer were a century out of his period, he feigned complete ignorance of them.
Mother outshone everyone. She came as Cleopatra, with Barry and one of her burlier nephews to carry her litter. I suspected that Barry had built the litter as well. Perhaps that was the excuse he'd used to con Professor Donleavy into letting him set up the carpentry shop. I sighed. I hadn't realized he'd started buttering up Mother as well as Dad. Barry and the cousin were standing around in their skimpy Egyptian slave costumes, flexing their muscles, looking as if they, too, were posing for the cover of a romance. To me, they looked more like low-rent professional wrestlers. Or extras from a Conan flick.
About the only person with a mediocre costume was Jake, who wore a tuxedo and carried a cane and periodically performed a few clumsy dance steps to show that he was Fred Astaire.
Even Cousin Horace, though predictably attired in the usual gorilla suit, had apparently gotten himself a brand new gorilla suit. I approved. The old one had become loathsome, its fur frayed and matted and covered with wine and salsa stains. Perhaps he was feeling self-conscious about the new suit, though; I noticed him slipping around the corner of the house in a manner that was remarkably furtive, even for Horace.
Being armed to the teeth was an excellent idea for future neighborhood parties. The cutlass wasn't sharp, but waving it at anyone who misbehaved tended to get my point across. Some of the daggers actually were sharp, which I used to advantage when Barry, having too much to drink, foolishly grabbed me by the waist. And the weaponry made me feel irrationally safer whenever I remembered the fact that one of the cheerful party guests gamboling on the lawn might well be a killer.
Everyone was having a good time. Well, Barry was off somewhere sulking and nursing his cut. It wasn't much of a cut, and I was sure he didn't really need the elastic bandage on his wrist, either. I hadn't twisted his arm that badly the other day; he was blowing these things out of proportion. Jake was off somewhere sulking, too; someone had mistaken his Fred Astaire impersonation for a penguin. And Samantha had proclaimed herself mortally embarrassed and gone home in a huff after seeing Rob dressed in what he called his legal briefs--a pair of swim trunks with pages from a law dictionary stapled all over them. But everybody else was having a great time.
'Hello, Meg,' came a muffled voice.
I turned to see Cousin Horace. Who appeared to have changed back into his old gorilla suit. He was waving a paw at me. I could see a familiar set of blueberry stains on his left palm. How tiresome; if he had to wear the suit, why couldn't he have stayed with the new, improved model?
'What happened to your new suit?' I asked.
'New suit?' he asked, puzzled. He was eating watermelon through the gorilla mask; an amazing feat, but one I would really rather not have watched.
'Didn't I see you earlier in a new gorilla suit?' I asked, irritably.
Well, perhaps to give him credit he preferred not to stain his new suit. Perhaps we could get him to change back when he'd finished eating.
'I don't have a new suit.'
'Are you sure?' Dumb question; of course he'd know if he had a new gorilla suit. But if it wasn't him ...
'Who was it?' Cousin Horace asked, suspiciously. I gave him an exasperated look.
'How should I know? I thought it was you.' Who, indeed. I left Cousin Horace muttering threats against the imposter and moved through the party, scanning the crowd for another squat, furry figure.
'Looking for someone?' Michael asked, coming up beside me.
'Yes; someone in a gorilla suit,' I said, standing on tiptoes to look over the crowd.
'Your cousin Horace is back there, by the buffet.'
'Not him,' I said, shortly.
'You mean there's someone else wearing a gorilla suit? Is it contagious?'
'I have a bad feeling about this,' I said.
'About what?' asked Dad, who had just appeared on my other side.
'Someone is sneaking around in a gorilla suit,' I said. 'Someone other than Horace.'
'Well, it's not as though he has exclusive rights to it,' Dad said. 'Although I'm sure Horace finds it upsetting.'
'You don't understand,' I said. 'I saw whoever it was sneaking around the corner of the house. With everything that's going on, I don't like the idea of someone sneaking around.'
'Someone dressed in a costume that hides its wearer's identity,' Michael added.
'Sneaking in or out?' Dad asked.
'Out, I think. Unless I scared him away.'
'Let's check the house,' Michael suggested.
We did, though it didn't seem too useful to me, since we had no idea what we were looking for. We didn't even know if we were looking for something missing or something added. Nothing seemed amiss downstairs, other than the normal chaos that comes from preparing for a large party and then having several hundred people tramping in and out to use the bathroom. I sighed at the thought of the cleanup we'd be doing tomorrow. The few people currently in the house remembered seeing the gorilla suit, but thought it was Horace. Was I the only one who noticed the new suit? Then again, presumably Horace could have gone inside to use the bathroom. We scrutinized the fuse box, but none of us knew what a booby-trapped one looked like, and anyway the lights were working.
It was upstairs that we found it. In my room. 'Dad! Michael!' I hissed. They came running, and I pointed to the object lying on my bed.
A small wooden box, like a shoebox propped up on one end. Made of some highly polished wood, with delicate asymmetric carving on two sides. Leaning against one side was a card that said, in large, bold letters: For Meg.
'Looks like Steven's and Barry's work,' I said.
'Really?' Michael said. 'It's quite impressive.'
