Die Like an Eagle (17 page)

“I should be going,” I said as I stood up. She followed me to the doorway, and I had the slightly disconcerting impression that if I'd begun dancing the Charleston or hopping down the hallway like a rabbit, she'd probably have absentmindedly done the same thing.

“Don't forget about Robyn,” I said, as I opened the front door. “Even if you don't need the shelter, she's a good listener about stuff like this.”

“I'll keep it in mind.” She smiled, but I noticed that she'd picked up a dust rag and was already eyeing the hall table for specks. I deduced that she probably shared my tendency to clean when stressed.

When I got back to the Behemoth, I was undecided whether to call the chief first or Randall. Then I realized that making any calls while sitting in front of Gina's house would probably feed her anxiety. So I drove several blocks before parking and calling. Neither Randall nor the chief was in and I wasn't in the mood to boil down my conversation with Gina to a message, so I just left each a request to call me.

And when the chief called back, was there any subtle way to ask if Gina had an alibi? I hoped for her sake that she did. She definitely had a motive to kill Biff. The resemblance between him and Shep was uncanny in the daylight, and it had been full dark. What if she'd shot Shep before realizing he wasn't Biff? Or what if she'd pulled a gun on what she thought was her husband, realized her mistake, and shot Shep anyway, to keep him from revealing her attempted murder to the police—or to Biff?

The chief was no dummy. He'd have thought of all this.

But it would be nice to know sooner, rather than later, if Gina was a victim or a killer.

I'd see what I could find out when the chief called. And mention to him that Biff might be on the outs with a vengeful Pruitt with a prison record. Meanwhile, since there was still plenty of time before dinner, I decided to make one more visit. This time to one of Biff's clients. I scanned the list Phinny had given me for someone I knew well enough to approach. I didn't recognize half of the names. A fair number of his projects had been for Pruitts, especially in the years before the rest of the town had risen up and kicked them out of the Caerphilly town government. I skipped over those names. Even if the Pruitts were willing to talk to me—which was unlikely, since they were well aware that I'd played a significant part in their downfall—I wouldn't trust a word they said.

Most of my friends and neighbors seemed to have avoided dealing with Biff. Probably because they were also friends and neighbors of the Shiffleys. I kept scanning the list for anyone I felt I could approach.

Aha. Willard Entwhistle. The last name sounded familiar. I pulled up the Summerball roster I kept on my phone. Yes, there was a Kermit Entwhistle on the Flatworms, another coach-pitch team. And I couldn't remember running into any other Entwhistles before, so odds were Willard was Kermit's father. Or grandfather. Either way, I might be able to play the Summerball family solidarity card.

And according to the building permit records, Brown Construction had built a pig shed and pasture fence for Mr. Entwhistle a year and a half ago.

I programmed Mr. Entwhistle's address into my GPS and set out.

 

Chapter 13

Mr. Entwhistle's farm was in the far south end of the county, where asphalt pavement gave way to gravel roads, making me glad once more that I was in the indestructible Behemoth rather than my own car. My GPS lost signal several times, and I was about to go back to the list to find a more accessible Brown Construction client, when I spotted a small, neatly painted sign that said:
ENTWHISTLE ORGANIC PIG FARM. TAMWORTH AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE OLD SPOT
.

“Cool!” I murmured. Not just a pig farmer, but an organic one—and raising what I recognized as rare heritage-breed pigs to boot. Not surprising, actually, in Caerphilly. A few years ago we'd begun hosting the Un-Fair, a regional agricultural festival showcasing heritage breeds and heirloom crops, and many local farmers and farm hobbyists had started raising heritage animals of all sorts—including Dad, with his Dutch Belted cows and Black Welsh Mountain sheep. This promised to be interesting.

I turned into Mr. Entwhistle's lane, and after a short stretch of woods I emerged into the open again with rolling green pastures on either side of me. The field on the left was dotted with tall, lean pigs with sleek ginger-red coats. No spots on the coats, so I deduced that these were the Tamworths. To my right, then, must be the Gloucestershire Old Spots, their white coats decorated with random splotches of black. The pastures positively swarmed with activity—pigs were trotting about, rooting in the ground, drinking from the stream that bisected both fields, and wallowing with abandon in the mud on the banks of the stream. Clearly Mr. Entwhistle's pigs were not only organic but free range. If I didn't know about the existence of such things as free-range bacon and organic pork chops, I could easily have envied these pigs their healthy and carefree life.

I pulled into the farmyard, parked the Behemoth in a spot where it didn't look as if it would be in the way, and stepped out. In town, I'd have marched up to knock on the front door of the house. But only a lazy farmer would be inside the house on a beautiful spring day like this, and from the look of things, Mr. Entwhistle was anything but lazy. Everything was neat, clean, and in good repair. It even smelled fresh, which must have been hard to manage with pigs. I turned around slowly, scanning the house … the barn … the Tamworth pig shed … the pastures … the Gloucestershire Old Spot pig shed.…

“Can I help you?”

I turned to see a sandy-haired man in jeans and a plaid shirt, standing beside the Tamworth shed. He didn't look unfriendly—just guarded, as if he and the pigs weren't quite used to seeing a lot of visitors.

“I hope so,” I said. “You must be Mr. Entwhistle.” He didn't deny it. “I'm Meg Langslow. I work for the county. And I think our kids all play baseball together. Your boy's on the Flatworms, right?”

He nodded. He was frowning. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the county. He might be one of those rural folks who distrusted the government on general principles. I should definitely push the baseball connection. But carefully. Even though his son wasn't on Biff's team, they could still be cronies.

“I was looking for someone to help me with something,” I said. “And I figured, since you were a fellow baseball parent—”

“Why can't you people just leave me alone?” He didn't raise his voice, but there was a world of venom in his tone. “I paid my sponsorship money. What more do you want?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just go back to Biff and tell him to—tell him to leave me alone.” I had the feeling he'd been on the verge of using saltier language and stopped himself at the last minute. “If he keeps harassing me I'll pull Fletcher and Kermit out of baseball entirely. Hell, I might anyway.”

“Can we start over?” At least now I knew how to play it. “Because I didn't come from Biff, and I have nothing to do with Biff—well, as little as possible. Unfortunately, my job for the county includes managing the contract with Brown Construction to renovate the town square—a contract I frankly would never have signed. So far Biff hasn't done a lick of work—doesn't even return my phone calls. I looked in the town records to see what else he'd built, and saw the permits for your pig shed and fence, and I came out to see if you had any helpful hints on how to get the jerk to do his job, because obviously I don't have the touch.”

He studied me for a few moments.

“So you're not a friend of Biff's,” he said.

Hadn't I just made that abundantly clear?

“Not in the least,” I said. “I am merely one of the many people who suspect the murderer got the wrong brother.”

“Ha!” Not a very cheerful laugh, but it was progress. “Sorry I snapped at you. I jumped to the conclusion that you were the new collector for his extortion racket, but I guess Evie Pruitt's still doing that.”

“Extortion racket?” My eyes must have been bugging.

“That's what some of us call the sponsorship ads we all end up having to buy in the opening day program,” Entwhistle said. “I could advertise in the
Clarion
for six months for what Brown charges, and since I don't do retail sales, it's not as if I get much bang out of it. But I want to support the league my sons play in, so I ante up every year. And these days I do it by check, so there's no way he can pretend to have lost my contribution. Evie drops by to say I still owe for the ad, I can show the canceled check. Since you've never heard about this, I gather you don't own a small business.”

“My husband teaches at the college,” I said. “Technically, I do run a small business—I'm a blacksmith—but that's taken a backseat since the boys were born, so Biff probably only knows me as that annoying woman who keeps asking when he's starting work on the town square. I don't suppose you can share any tips on how to manage him as a contractor?”

“Wish I could help you, but I'm afraid Biff's never done any work for me.”

“But according to the building permit file—”

“Oh, he pulled a permit all right,” Mr. Entwhistle said. “And took a hefty deposit. And then did absolutely nothing for three months.”

“This is starting to sound all too familiar,” I said.

“And it gets worse,” he said. “I needed the new pen because I was adding the Tamworths.”

“Beautiful animals,” I said, and he beamed.

“They're new since last summer,” he said. “I've had the Gloucestershires for four years now. Guy I knew had been breeding Tamworths for years, but he had to sell because he's going into assisted living, and I bought his herd. Got a good price on them because he knew I was keen on keeping the breed going. But I couldn't just turn them in with the Old Spots.”

“Or you'd have nothing but Gloucesterworth Tamspots, and there go two breeds,” I said.

“Well, I'm not the only breeder of either,” he said, with a chuckle. “But I want to do my part to keep the breeds alive, and my friend was getting close to the sale date on his farm, so I really needed the new pasture and shed. I kept bugging Brown, and he finally showed up to do the work, and then my problems really began. He dumped a couple of truckloads of
treated
lumber on my farm.”

He said the word “treated” with the same mixture of outrage and disgust that Mother would use in uttering “manure” or “polyester.” I was puzzled for a moment, and then I remembered.

“Oh, that's right,” I said. “Treated wood's against the rules for an organic farm.”

“And first he tried to claim using naturally seasoned wood wasn't in the contract,” Entwhistle said. “Which was nonsense, because it was right there in black and white. And then he tried to claim it was a mistake, and I said, fine, just get it off my property before it contaminates my soil. And then he tried to claim he couldn't get any of the right kind of wood in time to meet my deadline, so how about if he just used the wood he had and gave me a certificate stating it was naturally seasoned wood to show the inspectors. That's when I fired him.”

“Good for you,” I said.

“And it's not just because he could have cost me my organic certification,” he said. “Although that would have been a real danger if I'd let him get away with it—did he really think the inspectors wouldn't recognize treated wood? No, I just figured that a guy who would lie to the USDA's organic inspectors probably wouldn't be any more honest with me. I don't want to do business with someone like that.”

“Wish the county didn't have to,” I said.

“So that's my advice if you really want to get your project done,” Entwhistle said, shaking his head. “Try to get him to live up to his schedule, and he's like the Invisible Man, but fire the sorry son of a gun and you'll never get him out from underfoot. Had to chase away his workers five or six times when they showed up and tried to start the project using that damned poisoned wood. Took a couple of weeks to get the lumber off my land, and then I only managed it by hiring the Shiffleys to build my shed and pasture and making it a condition of the job that they take the nasty stuff back and dump it in Brown's lumberyard. Should have hired them in the first place—they came in ahead of time and under budget. I should never have listened to Brown when he said he could beat their price.”

“But at least you're rid of him now,” I said.

“I wish,” Entwhistle said. “I'm suing him to get back my deposit, and he's suing me for not paying for the work he never even started, and you can definitely count me in as another one of the people who think the killer got the wrong brother. Probably lucky for me they didn't kill Biff or the chief would likely have me high on his suspect list.”

“He might anyway,” I said. “There's been a lot of speculation that whoever did this mistook Shep for Biff. It did happen in the middle of the night down at the ball field. And for that matter, since I'd never met Shep, I mistook him for Biff when I found the body in the morning.”

“Pity,” he said. “Shep never did anyone any harm that I know of, or if he did, you can bet Biff was really the one behind it. Shep had the good grace to look embarrassed the couple of times he showed up leading a team of workmen and tried to start building with that nasty treated lumber. So when do you think I can expect my visit from the chief?”

“No idea,” I said. “Not necessarily all that soon. The more I learn about Biff, the more I realize what a long list of possible suspects the chief is dealing with.”

“Safety in numbers, then,” Mr. Entwhistle said. “And let's hope there's a few more farmers on the list so I'm not the only one with no alibi for the middle of the night.”