Owls Well That Ends Well Read Online Free PDF

Groucho, he only had Richard Nixon and Dracula. I suspected he’d bought the masks in bulk and was selling them at a steep markup. At least he wasn’t charging immediate family, but still, I wasn’t sure I liked the new entrepreneur Rob who’d emerged since his computer-game company had become successful. I’d actually begun to miss the old feckless Rob who couldn’t be bothered with boring practical details like money.
    Someone should talk to Rob, I thought, with a sigh. Preferably someone other than me. I’d recently overheard two aunts praising my willingness to tackle the unpleasant, thankless jobs that no one else would, and realized that no matter how happy it made my aunts, this wasn’t entirely a positive character trait. Neither was being considered the most efficient and organized person in the family. And when you combined the two, you got things like this giant yard sale. Maybe when the yard sale was over, I would work on expanding my vocabulary to include the word “no.”
    I’d worry about that later. After the yard sale. For the moment, I made a mental note to keep an especially sharp eye on the several women in hoop skirts that seemed like a shoplifter’s dream.
    At nine sharp, Rob, Dad, and Michael ceremonially led the dogs away and we opened the gates.
    Gordon-you-thief was among the first half dozen to enter—even Mother couldn’t work miracles.
    I stood inside the gate, trying to make sure no one got knocked down and trampled, and nodding greetings to anyone I recognized—which included most of the local antique and junk dealers. But unfamiliar faces outnumbered the familiar ones. I wondered how many were ordinary customers, lured from all over the adjacent dozen counties by our 30-FAMILY YARD SALE ads, and how many were antiques dealers and pickers.
    No matter. Amateurs or professionals, they could come from Timbuktu if they liked, as long as they all left with their arms full of stuff. And they all seemed intent on doing so. By the end of the first hour I could see major traffic congestion up and down the aisles, as the people in bulky costumes encountered the even larger numbers of people dragging boxes or baskets of stuff along with them.
    At the far end of the fenced-in area we’d placed a dozen ramshackle card tables and several of Mother’s relatives had set up a concession stand. Cousin Bernie and Cousin Horace—the latter in the well-worn gorilla suit that his new girlfriend didn’t often let him wear to parties these days—were already lighting fires in half a dozen grills and checking their supplies of hamburger patties and hot dogs, while Aunt Millicent and Cousin Emily set out plates of sandwiches and cookies and bowls of fruit and salad. We didn’t want anything as mundane as hunger to make people check out early. Cadres of Grouchos and Draculas were already lining up for chow. We’d even arranged to rent two portable toilets, which were tucked discreetly behind the shrubbery in another corner of the yard sale area.
    So far, not a lot of people were checking out at all. That’s where things would get sticky. Most of the sellers had organized an elaborate, color-coded system of price stickers so customers could go through a single checkout at the exit. We’d be weeks coming up with an accurate tally of everyone’s sales, and even then half the sellers would still think they’d been shorted. The sellers who collected money themselves were supposed to issue receipts that their customers could show at checkout, but I already knew they’d forget, and I’d spend way too much time straightening out the resulting problems. And the ballerina and the white rabbit who were currently serving as cashiers were proving unfortunate choices. Harvey seemed terrified of the cash register, and Pavlova of the customers. It was going to be a long day.
    “What’s wrong?” Michael asked, when he returned from his dog delivery mission.
    “Oh, dear,” I said. “Do I look as if something