Death and Honesty (15 page)
Authors: Cynthia Riggs
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Cozy
“Isn’t this exciting, Mrs. Trumbull?” Delilah joined Victoria at the top of the steps. She was wearing a bluish green down jacket that matched her eyes. “The driver of the van called from Vineyard Haven to get directions. I’ll have the first fainting goats on Martha’s Vineyard!”
“I look forward to meeting them,” said Victoria. “How many will you have?”
“Six. A buck and five nannies. Would you like to see my goat yard?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Victoria zipped up her sweater against the cool air and Delilah led the way down the marble stairs with the ornate pineapple balusters. At the foot of the steps they turned right past the guesthouse and the garage, to a large grassy area enclosed with a green chain-link fence and shaded by still bare oak trees. Delilah opened a gate, and they went through into the fenced-in area. There was a small barn off to one side.
Delilah swept her arms in an arc that took in the barn and the enclosure. “Lambert Willoughby built all this. Shall we go into the barn?” She added in a whisper, “Henry has no idea this is the start of my farm. I told him the chickens and goats are my pets.”
Victoria followed her up a ramp that led into the light airy building. She stopped to breathe in the scent of new wood and hay before looking around. Inside were six stalls, each with a chest-high door and a shiny brass nameplate.
“Do you like it?” asked Delilah.
“Wonderful,” Victoria said. “I gather you haven’t named the goats yet.”
“Not yet. I want to get to know them first.” She stopped with a squeal of delight. “Here he is now. You know Lambert, of course?”
“Not well,” said Victoria.
A huge man came out of one of the stalls, shoving a pencil behind one ear and holding a clipboard in his free hand. He was taller than Victoria, and not fat, exactly, but what she’d call hefty.
“Do you know Mrs. Trumbull, Lambert?”
“Sure. Everyone does. How you doing?” He offered a meaty hand and Victoria shook it, feeling fragile, although his handshake was gentle.
The front of his cutoff T-shirt depicted an eagle that seemed incongruously to be wearing a helmet. The bird held a pistol in one upraised talon. The other talon stood on what looked like a machine gun. An American flag waved in the background.
“You’ve built a lovely barn,” Victoria said.
“Thanks. You seen the stalls?”
“I showed them to Mrs. Trumbull,” said Delilah.
“They seem comfortable,” said Victoria.
“Goats are sociable. The chickens pretty much wander around. I’ll show you where they’ll stay when they’re laying. ‘Course, that’s not for a while.”
Victoria and Delilah followed him to the corner of the barn where a dozen boxes were stacked. Each was about twice the size of a shoe box and was filled with sweet-smelling hay. A burlap curtain was pulled to one side.
“How cozy,” said Victoria.
“Chickens like to be warm.” Willoughby lowered the curtain.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll watch for the goat van,” said Delilah, and tripped over to the barn door, leaving Victoria and Willoughby to tour the rest of the goats’ accommodations.
“Tillie was your sister, wasn’t she?” said Victoria softly. “I’m so sorry about her death.”
Willoughby wiped his arm across his mouth. “Five months, and we never knew she was right there all the time.”
“And what a terrible shock to lose your mother-in-law, too.”
“Yeah, well.”
“You work in Town Hall, don’t you?”
“Mostly out on the road, but, yeah. Have an office right below where …” He paused. “When I get my hands on the bastard who did that to Tillie—excuse me, ma’am …”
“Understandable,” said Victoria. “Were you close to your sister?”
“She was a wild one, but yeah. She had a room at our place where she stayed at.”
“Have the police talked to you?”
He lifted his T-shirt absently and scratched his belly. The muscles in his upper arms writhed and Victoria became aware of the faded tattoos of boa constrictors that covered his arms from shoulder to elbow. “Yeah. Sergeant Smalley was at my place.” He looked down at his feet and kicked at a wisp of hay “What can he do? It’s been five months, for God’s sake. Thought she’d run off with that guy, and all the time …”
“We’ll find whoever killed her,” Victoria said with assurance.
Willoughby looked up from his dusty boots and actually smiled. “Understand you’re a cop yourself.”
“A police deputy,” said Victoria, smoothing her hair.
“I’ll show you where the baby chicks are now,” Willoughby said, changing the subject. “She,” he jerked his head at Delilah, who stood at the barn door, a hand shading her forehead, “she got these poor little chicks, day-old chicks. They was dyed Easter-egg colors. Illegal. Like it should be.”
“The color will grow out, won’t it?”
“When they get their feathers. I don’t know what goes on in her mind. ‘Cute.’ ‘Darling.’ The poor goddamned animals don’t want to be cute. I put them in here.” He showed Victoria a large pen lined with hay with a heat lamp suspended at a safe height over it. The two dozen colorful chickens, looking much like Easter eggs, huddled under the lamp.
Lambert shook his head. “How would you like to be a day-old chick doused in a vat of dye? A wonder any of ’em survive.”
“Do you raise chickens?”
“Did. But it’s work. She,” another jerk of his head, “doesn’t know what work is.” He sighed. “Not my place to tell her. Up until yesterday my kids had a pet rooster. The neighbor’s Jack Russell got into the pen and tore him up.”
“Who’s your neighbor?” asked Victoria, afraid he meant Jordan.
“That slick weasel Oliver Ashpine.”
Victoria nodded agreement. “I’ve had some dealings with Mr. Ashpine. A difficult man.” She thought about the rooster Jordan Rivers had delivered to Delilah yesterday. Clearly, he had kidnapped the Willoughbys’ rooster.
“Did you see the dog?” she asked.
“The dog had bust the pen open and was lying there, chewing on a gizzard.”
“Really?” asked Victoria, appalled. “Feathers?”
He shrugged. “Everywhere.”
Delilah called out from the barn door, “Here they come now!”
A horse carrier pulled in through the enclosure’s open gate and stopped next to the barn. A boy, who must have been about ten, slid out of the passenger side, ran to the gate, and started to shut it, but at that moment, a full-grown rooster strutted in through the gate, pecking at some morsel that appealed to him. He lifted his magnificent head and crowed.
Willoughby started. “Goddamn!” He left the baby chicks’ pen and strode past Delilah, who was watching the driver of the horse carrier, a brawny man with auburn hair and a huge auburn mustache. He was in the driver’s seat, filling out paperwork.
Victoria looked around for a place to sit, and found an overturned galvanized bucket. She eased herself onto it.
The rooster spread his wings, lifted his head, and crowed again.
“Goddamn,” said Willoughby again. “If that ain’t Chickee I’ll eat my hat! How’d he get here?”
The horse van had pulled all the way into the yard, and the boy closed the gate. The driver looked down at Delilah with liquid brown eyes. “Where would you like us to leave your goats, ma’am?”
“How’d Chickee get here?” demanded Willoughby.
“Lambert,” said Delilah to Willoughby, “where shall we unload the goats?”
The driver got out of the van, adjusted his skintight jeans, and strode toward Delilah, who watched with fascination the movement of the muscles of his thighs. He wore a thick leather belt with a brass buckle that looked like the brand of a significant ranch out west someplace. And cowboy boots, of course, dusty,
with high heels worn down from rough riding on the range. He grinned at Delilah, showing large white teeth beneath his mustache.
with high heels worn down from rough riding on the range. He grinned at Delilah, showing large white teeth beneath his mustache.
Delilah gasped and clutched her hands together.
“Where’d you find Chickee, Miz Sampson?” asked Willoughby
Delilah didn’t hear.
Victoria thought quickly and rocked forward on her bucket seat. “I believe Jordan Rivers rescued your rooster.”
“Rivers … ?” said Willoughby. “Rivers?”
The driver’s voice was like velvet and steel and mahogany and silk. “Didn’t know if you had the right kind of feed, ma’am, so I brought along some alfalfa hay and a salt block.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” Delilah chirped.
“From that mutt?” asked Willoughby. “Rivers rescued my Chickee from that mutt?”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” said Victoria, avoiding his eyes.
“You want me to unload the goats for you, ma’am?”
“Would you! That would be so kind!” Delilah said, oblivious of the other conversation.
“Roy!” called out the driver.
“Sir!” said the boy, coming to attention.
“Sounds like I owe Rivers an apology,” said Willoughby.
The driver said, in his soft voice, “Lower the ramp. No noise, you hear? Gentle, now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Six little black and white goats trotted down the lowered ramp, one after the other. They were about two feet tall with bulging eyes and big floppy ears.
Delilah clapped her hands together and shrieked, “Darling! How darling!”
And the six little goats toppled over, one after another, their legs straight up in the air.
“Oooooh!” cried Delilah, clasping her hands under her chin.
Willoughby scratched his head. “Where’d the dog get that gizzard?”
After several seconds, the goats got to their feet and began to explore their new pen. Victoria, too, started to struggle to her own feet from her low bucket seat. She’d left her lilac wood stick at home and her heavy sweater weighed her down. Willoughby and the driver immediately rushed to her aid and helped her up.
“Thank you.” Victoria straightened her sweater.
“A pleasure, ma‘am.” The driver returned to his van and brought out a clipboard that he presented to Delilah. “Sign here, please, ma’am.”
Delilah looked from his boots to the worn places on his jeans where he’d kept something in his pocket, to his plaid shirt, open at the neck, exposing a white T-shirt and gold chain, and finally to that sensitive, cruel mouth with its crooked smile. Delilah swallowed and glanced up. “Do you plan to stay overnight on the Island?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. We need to get back to town to book a motel room for tonight.”
“I owe that boy an apology, Miz Trumbull,” said Willoughby. “Jordan Rivers, hey? I never would’ve expected Rivers to save my kids’ rooster. From a mad dog like that.”
“You never can tell about people,” said Victoria.
Delilah took a deep breath that expanded her chest. “You’re more than welcome to stay here. In my guesthouse, of course.” Pause. “Both of you.”
“Don’t want to trouble you, ma’am.” The driver lifted his cap with a knuckle.
“Oh, please!” Delilah clasped her hands under her chin. “You can help my little goats settle in.”
The driver looked at the boy, who shrugged.
“Well, thank you, ma’am.”
“And what are your names?”
“He’s my son, Roy,” the driver said, indicating the boy. “I’m Giles. We’ll make sure your goats are settled in before we leave here tomorrow morning.”
“And I’ll make sure your room is made up.” Delilah bustled away toward the guesthouse where Henry had been banished for the past few nights.
Lambert said, “Miz Trumbull, I want to tell that boy Rivers how sorry I am I misjudged him.”
Victoria thought about Jordan’s new role as hero. “He would appreciate that, I’m sure.” She’d better warn Jordan. “Shall I go with you? I can hold Chickee.”
“I’d appreciate that, Miz Trumbull.”
Victoria looked around, but Delilah was already at the door of the guesthouse.
In a short time Henry emerged carrying a half-open gym bag with a shirtsleeve waving out of it. Delilah followed. Victoria heard Henry say, “You warned him about the snapping turtles, I trust?”
“I can bring you home, Miz Trumbull,” said Lambert.
“Thank you.”
Victoria settled herself in the passenger seat of Willoughby’s battered red pickup, clearly identified as his because of the mismatched blue right front fender. She waited for him to capture the rooster.
Willoughby finally cornered Chickee in the goat pen. He gathered the rooster up tenderly, holding Chickee’s feet with one hand, wings with the other. He elbowed a new-looking towel off a hook just inside the barn door, caught it with his teeth, wrapped it around Chickee somehow, carried the now docile rooster over to his truck, and handed the towel-wrapped rooster to Victoria.
“He won’t hurt you, Miz Trumbull.”
The rooster lifted his head and tilted it to stare at Victoria with first one beady eye, then the other. Victoria smoothed the ruffled feathers on his head and neck.
“See? He likes you.” The truck started up with a rattle. Delilah and Henry, partway up the marble stairs, deep in conversation, had their backs to Lambert’s truck and didn’t appear to notice.
Giles and young Roy unloaded bales of hay from the van, and the tiny goats nuzzled the boy and the hay.
When it seemed possible that the truck might get them as far as Simon Look Road, where Oliver Ashpine, Lambert Willoughby, and Jordan Rivers lived, Victoria asked, “Does Chickee have a new coop?”
Lambert slapped the lamb’s wool cover of the steering wheel. “That goddamned mutt—excuse me, ma’am. Tore the old one all to pieces.”
Victoria nodded. Jordan had asked her about predators breaking into chicken coops.
“Will it take you long to build another?”
“I can get enough of it done in an hour. I reckon I’ll put the new one on the other side of my property. Ashpine’s side.” Willoughby thumped the wheel again. “That’ll show him.”
“I’ll be glad to watch Chickee while you work on the new pen,” said Victoria.
“Chicken sit?” Willoughby glanced at Victoria with a sly grin.
“Certainly.” Victoria continued to stroke the rooster’s head. Chickee extended his neck and made a kind of gurgling sound.
“Well, if you don’t mind, Miz Trumbull. He’d like that.”
Willoughby turned off Old County Road onto Simon Look. The truck rattled over the washboard surface and finally stopped at one of three houses in a sort of rough cul-de-sac. The yard was cluttered with an assortment of old cars and plastic toys that had weathered from red, yellow, and blue to sickly shades of pink, beige, and gray. Victoria looked beyond the broken cars and toys to the house.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed.
The house was nowhere near the size of Delilah’s, but it was every bit as big as Victoria’s huge rambling old farmhouse. Except Willoughby’s house was brand new.
“Built it myself,” said Willoughby, proudly.
Where had he come up with the money for this three-story
edifice with its tall brick chimneys, slate roof, and shiny copper gutters? A greenhouse extended off to one side. Victoria could see an indoor swimming pool beyond with stained-glass windows along one side. It occurred to her that she might look at Willoughby’s property card. Had the assessors assessed this grand house? And for how much?
edifice with its tall brick chimneys, slate roof, and shiny copper gutters? A greenhouse extended off to one side. Victoria could see an indoor swimming pool beyond with stained-glass windows along one side. It occurred to her that she might look at Willoughby’s property card. Had the assessors assessed this grand house? And for how much?
“What d’ya think?” said Willoughby
“Astonishing.” Victoria stopped patting Chickee, who twisted his head around and pecked her hand.
“Wants you to keep doing that,” said Willoughby. “Well, I better go on over to Rivers’s place. Apologize. Take my medicine.”
“May I come along?”
“Glad to have you.”
Victoria tucked the bundled-up rooster, who was making cooing noises, under one arm and she and Willoughby dodged between the old cars and broken toys.
Willoughby stopped at the corner of his property. “Scene of the crime. Look at that, will you.”
Whatever the coop had been, it was now only a pile of chewed-up sticks and twisted chicken wire. The ground was splotched with what looked like blood. Stray feathers wafted up as they stood there, circled and settled again. Willoughby picked one up.
“Looks like a duck feather,” he said. “The kind you find in pillows.” He rubbed the feather between his fingers.
“Is that where Jordan Rivers lives?” Victoria asked, pointing across the dirt road to a modest Cape with a solar panel on its roof.
“That’s his car, but I don’t see his bicycle. Got one of those kinds where you sit down like a Barcalounger.” He turned and started down the road to his place. “I’ll get going on that coop, long as he’s not here and you don’t mind holding Chickee.”
They’d only gone a few steps when Jordan returned, bicycle helmet sparkling in the patches of sunlight that filtered through the oak trees, his dark glasses reflecting Willoughby, Victoria, and Chickee.
Jordan’s face paled as he stared at the rooster. His jaw dropped. His feet slipped off the pedals. The bicycle tilted and he stuck out one foot to keep it from falling over.
“What … ? Who … ?”
On the way from Delilah’s Victoria had practiced what she would say
She gave Jordan a broad, false smile and winked her right eye. “Jordan, Mr. Willoughby is thrilled that you saved Chickee from that dog next door, isn’t that right, Lambert?”
Jordan stared at Willoughby
Willoughby held out his hand. “I’m man enough to say I was wrong about you, boy.”
Jordan slipped his fingerless doeskin glove off his right hand. “But …”
Victoria said quickly, “That was clever of you to take Chickee over to Delilah’s where you knew he’d be safe.”
“I apologize,” said Willoughby. “Come have a beer with me while I build a new pen.”
“New pen … ?”
Willoughby grunted out what passed for a laugh. “Ashhole’s turn.” He nudged Jordan with an elbow. “Get it? Ashhole! I owe you this one. I’m putting the new pen next to his house. That mutt’s not gonna break down this pen.”
Jordan looked from Victoria to Willoughby and back again. He swallowed. “A beer? I don’t suppose you have a Sam Adams?”
“Bud Lite,” said Willoughby. “Better get used to it. You’re coming over more often. I don’t usually misjudge people like I did you.” He slapped Jordan on the back. “Good man.”
“I’ve got to put my bicycle away.”
“I’m starting on that new coop,” said Willoughby. “Can’t keep Miz Trumbull holding the bag, so to speak.” He disappeared around the corner of the house.
“What’s going on?” said a dazed Jordan.
“As they say, go with the flow,” said Victoria. Chickee made another cooing sound. Victoria patted his head. Willoughby reappeared with three cans of Bud.
He held one out to Victoria. “Miz Trumbull?”
“Later, thanks,” she said.
“You can set him down. Done up in the towel like that he can’t move.” Willoughby headed toward the back of the house again. “C’mon, Rivers, old buddy.”
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” said Jordan.
“While you’re building the new pen, I’ll pick up the mess the dog made.” Victoria scowled at Jordan. She’d seen a rake leaning against a scrub oak.
Willoughby stopped. “No, ma’am. Don’t you touch that. I wouldn’t let a lady clean that mess up. No way. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, she’d be about your age now. I wouldn’t let her lift a hand. Us young folk can take care of the heavy work, right, Rivers?” Jordan hadn’t made his escape yet. Willoughby slapped him on the back again. “Your job is to take care of Chickee, Miz Trumbull.”
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