Lord of the Wings by Donna Andrews

when the stock market crashed.”
    â€œThen maybe they’re not the best people to ask for money,” Michael pointed out.
    â€œOh, but then they moved out to California in the 1930s and made millions in real estate,” Dr. Smoot explained. “Josiah Brimfield, the current head of the family, pops up sometimes on the lower reaches of that Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the country. He can definitely afford it. He just doesn’t seem interested.”
    Considering that Josiah’s family had left Caerphilly some eighty years ago and probably remembered it as the scene of a less-than-joyous phase of their family history, I could understand his lack of interest.
    â€œAnd he was downright rude when I asked if he’d be willing to donate or at least lend any family artifacts,” Dr. Smoot went on. “In fact, he tried to bully me into taking some of the artifacts I have off display. The nerve!”
    â€œWas this where you had the burglar?” Michael asked, gently distracting Dr. Smoot from his diatribe against the Brimfields.
    â€œNo,” Dr. Smoot said. “He—or they—were at the other end. In fact, most of the suspicious circumstances have occurred down there.”
    I’d more or less gotten used to Dr. Smoot’s faint lisp by now, but I noted, in case I should ever find occasion to dress up as a vampire, that no one wearing fangs should ever attempt to utter the phrase “suspicious circumstances.”
    Dr. Smoot led the way back out of the non-wax museum into the main exhibit area. Michael and I followed slowly, examining some of the exhibits along the way.
    Along one wall was a familiar-looking trunk. On the wall above it was a framed front page from the Caerphilly Clarion, with the headline “Body Found in Antique Trunk at First Annual Countywide Yard Sale.” A small glass case held a small heap of black-and-white feathers, with a sign proclaiming that they were authentic feathers from the actual bantam Russian Orloff chickens stolen in the course of the “Grisly Midway Murder Case.” In fact, I could spot half a dozen bizarre exhibits commemorating events I had played a part in. And odds were a black-clad murderer waving an assortment of fake body parts was in the museum’s future.
    I was relieved to see that as we progressed down the room we moved away from recent history. One stretch of wall contained a series of photographs of soldiers and sailors in uniforms ranging from the Civil War to the Gulf War. The signs beside the photographs revealed that most of these were from the archives of the Caerphilly Clarion, our local weekly newspaper.
    A couple of mannequins had strayed over from the faux wax end to model gowns. One was a black silk mourning dress from the 1890s, complete with intricate jet beading and enormous leg o’mutton sleeves, purportedly worn by Sophronia Pruitt to William McKinley’s presidential inauguration. The other was a drop-waisted flapper dress, covered with silver beads and matching fringe, in mint condition except for the bullet hole and bloodstain near the left shoulder.
    â€œThat’s the dress Arabella Shiffley was wearing when the G-men shot her,” Dr. Smoot explained.
    â€œWhat had Arabella done to upset the Feds?” I asked. Randall had never mentioned this particular black sheep.
    â€œThey weren’t aiming at her,” Dr. Smoot said. “William Pratherton, her boyfriend, was the county’s biggest bootlegger. They went down in a hail of bullets, just like Bonnie and Clyde.”
    â€œHere in Caerphilly?”
    He nodded.
    â€œWhy isn’t this better known?”
    â€œWell, there probably weren’t quite as many bullets as with Bonnie and Clyde,” he said, looking at the single bullet hole in the dress. “And they didn’t actually die in the attack. They eventually got married and lived to a ripe old age. Billy Pratherton died in the sixties,