Read Online Owls Well That Ends Well by Donna Andrews - Free Book Online

but it was still disconcerting to see her perched on the counter, her habit hiked up well over her knees as she tried on a pair of fishnet stockings.
    “Everything going okay?” I asked Michael, when I arrived back at the checkout counter.
    “Just dandy,” Michael said. “Your out-of-town relations will never grow bored while I’m around. In the past hour alone they’ve asked if I’ve ever been married before, was I breast-fed, and what were my College Board scores.”
    “Good grief,” I said. “Just tell them to mind their own business.”
    “I just say ‘not recently’ or ‘I don’t remember,’ whichever fits my mood,” he said. “That keeps them happy.”
    “Apart from that, how’s everything going?”
    Mrs. Fenniman shook the cash box at me. I took this to mean it was filling up. Michael, who had a much better sense of my priorities, pointed to a man staggering away from the checkout counter with three large boxes of stuff. I smiled. Yes, stuff was leaving. Lots of stuff.
    I took a deep breath. Maybe everything would turn out fine after all.
    “Meg?”
    I turned to find Dad and a man I didn’t recognize, carrying a large trunk toward the cashier’s table. I noticed several customers already in line glaring at them, and heard a few mutinous comments about people waiting their turns. In fact, the whole crowd was beginning to mutter.
    I decided to avert trouble by meeting the trunk procession before it reached the checkout table.
    “There’s a line, you know,” I said to the man.
    “This lady wants to buy the trunk,” Dad said.
    “But only if you can find the key,” said a short, blonde woman, appearing from behind the trunk. “It’s no use to me if I can’t even get it open.”
    The mutinous comments from the line were growing louder.
    “It had a key when we put it out,” I said, frowning. “Did you look around where you found the trunk?”
    “Someone had dragged it into the barn,” Dad said.
    “Gordon-you-thief,” I said, nodding. “Put it down while we look for the key. No, don’t block the cashier’s line—it could take us some time to find the key.”
    Following my gestures, Dad and the other man maneuvered the trunk down behind the cashiers’ tables, into the small roped-off area we’d set aside so we’d have a place to put our own stuff and hide from the customers.
    Pacified, the customers in line grew quiet again. For now.
    The man dropped his end before Dad did, and I heard something thump inside the trunk.
    “We definitely need the key before I can sell you the trunk,” I said. “It was empty when we put it out; the price doesn’t include the contents, whatever they are.”
    “I don’t want the contents,” the woman said, with a sniff. “I didn’t put them there. I just want the trunk. In working order. With a key.”
    She’s a customer, I told myself. I tried to smile, and then decided not to bother; the Groucho mustache hid my mouth anyway, and the smile wasn’t likely to reach my eyes.
    “Dad, could you go and see if you can find Gordon McCoy,” I said. “The jerk probably locked some stuff he wanted into the trunk and took away the key.”
    The woman remained, tapping her foot and looking pointedly at her watch while Dad and Rob went up and down the aisles, looking for Gordon. I began to worry. What was Gordon trying to pull? I didn’t think there was any way he could get out of the yard sale area without our seeing him—certainly not with anything valuable. Anyway, despite the nickname, literal larceny wasn’t really Gordon’s style, only sharp business practices.
    “Maybe he went to lunch,” Dad suggested, returning after his third or fourth sweep through the grounds. “But I got these from your cousin Fred’s table. I suspect those trunk keys don’t have too many variations—see if any of these fit.”
    He handed me a shoebox full of keys—probably several hundred of them, in a variety of sizes—and dashed off again.
    Cursing