Swan for the Money (10 page)

Chapter 16

I tossed the leash to Dr. Blake and ran toward where the figure was lying. Definitely a human form. Probably a small one, though it was hard to judge size since the figure was lying down, curled on one side, and swathed in a voluminous black garment.

“I’m coming,” Caroline shouted. “Remember, I’m a nurse.”

I thought I recognized the black garment on the fallen figure as a rain cape, quite possibly the one Mrs. Winkleson had been wearing all morning as she strode around barging into things and ordering people around. I wondered, briefly, if we were panicking over a cloak someone had dropped in the pasture. No, there was a foot sticking out from under the black fabric, with a thick ankle and a familiar-looking sturdy black shoe on the end of it. I plopped to my knees beside the figure and scrambled for her wrist to check for a pulse.

“Emergency!” I could hear Dr. Blake shouting into his cell phone.

What was Mrs. Winkleson doing out here in the pasture? No time to waste figuring it out. She had no pulse. But she was still warm— normal body temperature as far as I would tell. My mind raced to figure out what Dad’s instructions would be. Chest compression, probably.

“No pulse,” I said over my shoulder to Caroline.

“We should do CPR, then,” she said. “Turn her over.”

“Dammit, I don’t know,” my grandfather was saying on his phone. “Looks like a dying nun to me. No,
dying
. D-Y-”

I reached to turn Mrs. Winkleson on her back and realized there was a complication. A pool of blood was spreading out from under her, and she had something sticking out of her back. Caroline knelt down beside me and tugged at the object. It didn’t budge.

“My secateurs,” I said aloud.

“Hang on, Debbie Anne,” my grandfather said to the dispatcher. “Meg’s saying something. Who did you say it was, Meg?”

“Pull those out and turn her over,” Caroline said. “I can do the chest compression, but I can’t budge those.”

I gulped, then grabbed the secateurs and pulled, hard. The secateurs came out. I didn’t see a lot of blood come out with them. Was that a good sign or bad? I wondered, as I rolled Mrs. Winkleson over on her back. Not good, I decided, from the look on Caroline’s face. She started rhythmically pumping on Mrs. Winkleson’s chest. I stood up and stepped back to give her room.

“Someone used my secateurs to stab Mrs. Winkleson in the back,” I said. I could hear my grandfather repeating my words into the phone.

Mrs. Winkleson’s face was covered with blood and mud, and there was an enormous amount of blood on her clothes and the ground— Caroline’s hands were red, and the knees of my jeans were soaked. But I didn’t see a lot of new blood flowing from the wound. Even in the short time since I’d turned her over, the rain had begun to dilute and wash away the existing blood.

She was facing toward the barns, I noticed.

“They’re sending an ambulance,” Dr. Blake shouted. “I’m calling your father.”

Suddenly I noticed Mrs. Winkleson’s hands. Her left hand had fallen back behind her head, as if she were waving to someone, but her right hand, which had flopped out to the side when I turned her, was clutching something white. White and red, actually. A bloodstained piece of paper.

I reached down to secure the paper, but just as my hand touched it, an enormous hairy goat head swooped down and chomped on it with large, yellow teeth.

“Hey! Stop that!” I said, smacking the goat on the nose. The goat turned to flee and keeled over after a few steps. Unfortunately, he continued chewing vigorously, and swallowed just as I reached him.

“What’s wrong?” Mr. Darby said, racing over. “Did someone hurt Elton?”

“You mean the goat— he’s fine,” I said. “But he just ate some evidence.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“She was clutching a piece of paper in her hand, and the goat ate it.”

“Well, you can’t blame Elton for that,” Mr. Darby said. “As I told you before, paper’s like candy to them.”

“Can’t you make him cough it up?” I asked. “He can’t have digested it yet.”

“They’re fainting goats, not puking goats,” Mr. Darby said, sounding rather cross.

I went back where Caroline was still briskly administering CPR to the victim. I checked Mrs. Winkleson’s hand and found she was still holding a corner of the paper. I gently teased it out.

“What does it say?” my grandfather asked.

“ ‘Or else,’ ” I read.

“Or else what?”

“Or else, period,” I said. “It’s just the lower right hand corner of the paper. That’s all that’s left.”

“No signature?”

“No.”

“Do you recognize the handwriting?”

“It’s typed.” I showed him the paper.

“Well, that’s not much help,” he said. “You shouldn’t have let that goat eat the rest of it.”

Luckily we were interrupted before I could answer.

“Meg! What’s up!”

I turned to see Dad climbing over the fence.

“She’s been stabbed,” I shouted back. “Caroline’s doing CPR.”

“Oh, dear!” Dad was over the fence now. He turned back to take his black medical bag from Chief Burke, then trotted toward us while the chief climbed over the fence more slowly, as if he already knew that Dad’s medical effort was doomed to failure and his own investigative work about to begin. Or maybe it only seemed that way to me because I’d seen how badly off Dad’s latest patient was.

The chief turned to me.

“You found the bo— the victim?”

“Actually, Spike found her,” I said.

“I can’t very well question him, can I? What happened?”

“Mind if I sit down?” I suddenly realized that my knees were shaking.

I walked over and sat down on one end of the goats’ trough. The chief followed me over and took out his notebook. He scribbled furiously as I told him how I’d found Mrs. Winkle-son. Then, at his request, I did an instant replay of my entire morning. I turned over the small scrap of paper I’d pried from Mrs. Winkleson’s hands and he pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket and put them on before taking it and peering at it over his glasses.

As we talked, both of us watched the effort to save Mrs. Winkleson— first by Dad and Caroline, and then by the EMTs who arrived with the ambulance.

At least the chief watched. I tried hard not to. I didn’t faint at the sight of blood, like my brother— if I did, I’d have become as horizontal as the goats the second I looked at Mrs. Winkleson. I could handle blood, but I had a hard time watching all the technological marvels of modern medicine. I was profoundly grateful they existed, of course, and hoped people like Dad and the EMTs would be around if I ever needed them, but I also hoped if that ever happened I’d be temporarily unconscious and unable to watch.

They were putting her on the stretcher, about to take her away, before the chief showed any sign of being finished with me.

“One more thing,” he said, his eyes on the EMTs. “Any possibility she was already out here when you went through the first time?”

“No,” I said. “Because I saw her up at the house, remember? And besides—”

“What is all this commotion? What’s going on here?”

Several goats fainted, and everyone else turned and gasped. Mrs. Winkleson was standing at the fence, her hands on her hips, scowling fiercely at us.

Chapter 17

“I thought you said the victim was Mrs. Winkleson,” the chief said, frowning at me.

“Victim?” Mrs. Winkleson said. “What do you mean, victim?”

“I thought it was,” I said, ignoring her. “Right size and weight, wearing black clothes. And her face was covered with blood and dirt, and I didn’t really look at it for long.”

“I said what’s going on here?” Mrs. Winkleson shrieked.

“We’re investigating a mur— an attempted murder,” the chief said.

“What? On my estate? Outrageous!”

She stormed over to the gate, unlatched it and strode into the pasture.

“Madam,” the chief said. “Please stay outside the fence. This is a crime scene. Madam, I—”

He took a step in her direction, tripped on a horizontal goat, and fell over.

“Watch the goat!” Mr. Darby said.

“Stop that woman!” the chief shouted.

Mr. Darby didn’t move. Clearly crossing his employer wasn’t something he could do. Or perhaps he was still in shock at the discovery that the victim wasn’t Mrs. Winkleson. He’d seemed quite calm when we thought she was Mrs. Winkleson, but since her arrival, he’d been staring at the frail form Caroline and Dad were working on, with his mouth hanging open and a horrified expression on his face.

Mrs. Winkleson kept going. The chief was still trying to disentangle himself from the goat.

I jumped up and ran after her.

“The chief said to stop!” I called.

“I want to know what is going on here!”

She was only ten feet from the victim.

I tackled her. We went down in a muddy heap amid the stiff forms of half a dozen startled goats.

“Arrest her!” Mrs. Winkleson cried. “Assault and battery! Trespassing!”

“I’d be happy to, madam,” the chief said, limping up to us. “But then I would have to arrest you for disturbing a crime scene and interfering with a police investigation. Please stand back and let the medical personnel do their job.”

She glared at both of us, and then turned and walked back to the fence. She stopped in front of the gate and crossed her arms.

“Algie, no! Bad goat!” Mr. Darby said. Not in a very loud voice, but the goat that had been lowering his head and aiming at Mrs. Winkleson’s derriere straightened up and looked around as if to say “Who? Me?”

“You could at least tell me who has managed to get himself killed on my property,” Mrs. Winkleson said, apparently unaware of her narrow escape.

“Herself,” the chief corrected. “She’s not dead yet, and I have no idea who she is.”

“We thought it was you,” I said. “I thought I recognized your rain cape. But now we don’t know who she is.”

“Yes we do,” Dad said, over his shoulder. “Sandy Sechrest. One of the rose growers exhibiting this weekend. From northern Virginia, I think. Very nice person. Unsound on the use of manure, but she had— has—quite a gift for raising miniature roses.”

“Had,” the chief repeated. “She’s gone, then?”

“Has,” Dad corrected. “We’re doing what we can.”

The chief’s lips tightened. He could read the message on Dad’s face and in his tone.

“Do you know Mrs. Sechrest?” the chief said, turning to Mrs. Winkleson.

“Of course,” Mrs. Winkleson said. “Not well, but I know all the members of the rose club. No idea what she was doing out here the day before the show, though. Unless she was one of Ms. Langslow’s volunteers.”

I shook my head.

Just then the EMTs picked up the stretcher and began carefully picking their way across the rough ground and between the goats.

“Getting back to what you saw,” the chief said, turning back to me. “Now that we know the de— the victim is not Mrs. Winkleson, is there any chance she could have been already lying here when you went by the first time? On your way to the house?”

I thought for a few moments and shook my head.

“No idea,” I said. “I was focused on getting to the house and not startling the goats. I don’t think I would have noticed if one of them was already lying down. I noticed her right away when I came back from the house, but I mistook her for a cluster of unconscious goats.”

“If it makes any difference,” Dad said, “I doubt if it could have happened before you went up to the house.”

He’d been following the EMTs but paused when he heard the chief’s question.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t think I spent more than half an hour on my trip up to the house.”

Dad shook his head.

“Still probably too long.”

“You can tell that by the body?” the chief asked.

“I can tell that by the blood,” Dad said. “There was quite a lot of it when Caroline and I first got here, but by now it’s been mostly washed off by the drizzle. And we had quite a frog-strangler there for a few minutes, just before I got the call to come out here. If she’d been attacked before that, there wouldn’t have been much blood left for us to see.”

“He’s right,” I said. “I saw that myself, just in the short time I was with her. A whole lot of blood washing away before my eyes.”

“What if she was stabbed before the first time Meg came by and continued to bleed the whole time?” the chief asked.

My stomach churned at the thought. If that was how it had happened, my failure to see her the first time would probably end up costing her life.

“No,” Dad said. “With those wounds, she’d have bled out in much less than half an hour. This had to have happened very close to when Meg found her.”

Dad’s words set my mind more at ease, though apparently it was going to take a while for them to calm my stomach.

The chief studied Dad’s face for a few moments, then nodded, as if grudgingly acknowledging a good point.

“Do you need me here?” Dad asked. “If not, I’m going to ride along to the hospital.”

“Go,” the chief said, waving toward the ambulance. “And keep me posted.”

Dad nodded and hurried after the EMTs.

“Did I see your cousin Horace over in the barn?” the chief asked.

I nodded.

“Want me to find him?” I asked. Caerphilly didn’t have any CSIs of its own, so the chief usually borrowed Horace on those rare occasions when a case warranted doing forensic work.

The chief nodded, and I was happy to have a reason to leave the goat pasture.

“If you’re quite through here—” Mrs. Winkleson began.

“No, madam,” the chief said, interrupting her. “My officers and I are nowhere near through here, and I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to go back up to your house. I’ll come up later to find out what you can tell me about this sad business.”

“Are you ordering me off my own property?”

“No, madam,” the chief said. “I’m asking you to stay away from my crime scene. I’m investigating what I expect will soon become a murder, if it hasn’t already. The requirements of my investigation take precedence over anything else.”

“The nerve!” Mrs. Winkleson exclaimed. From past experience, I could tell she was winding up for a full-scale hissy fit. I turned back to do what I could to head her off.

“How terrible for you, Mrs. Winkleson!” I said. “Knowing that the person who tried to kill you is still at large! But of course, the chief will be doing everything he can to find the perpetrator before he can strike again, and in the meantime, if there’s anything anyone can do to help you through this dreadful ordeal, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

She blinked as she considered this. Then she turned back to the chief.

“You’ll be providing me with police protection, of course,” she said.

“Alas, madam, we do not have the personnel to do that,” the chief said. “With a crime of this magnitude, we’ll need to seek whatever help we can get from nearby counties and from the State Bureau of Investigation.”

“But I’ve been receiving threats!” Mrs. Winkleson snapped.

“What kind of threats?” The chief looked up from his notebook with an expression of genuine interest. No doubt, like me, he was thinking about the “or else” typed on the scrap of paper I’d rescued from the goat.

“I don’t know,” she said. “The usual thing. Stop the rose show or you’ll be sorry. Stuff like that. And they took my dog, too. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

“My officers are even now searching for your missing dog,” the chief said. “Why didn’t you report these threats when we talked earlier this morning? Did it not occur to you that they might be relevant to your missing dog?”

“I thought they were nonsense until now,” she said. “Now I realize they were serious.”

“The disappearance of your dog didn’t convince you?”

“That, too.”

I could see the chief, himself a dog own er, found her cavalier attitude toward Mimi’s absence as unsatisfactory as I did.

“It would have been helpful to know about these threats earlier,” he said. “We will certainly keep them in mind as our investigation progresses.”

“Are you telling me there’s nothing you can do to protect me?” Mrs. Winkleson bellowed.

“I can catch whoever did this as soon as possible,” the chief snapped. “That’s the best thing I can do to help you and everyone else in this county, and I hope I can expect your full cooperation.”

They glared at each other for a few moments. Mrs. Winkle-son suddenly put on her Lady Bountiful face.

“Of course,” she said. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Or if any of my staff are less than fully cooperative. I’ll leave you to your work.”

She gave him the same sort of gracious nod I’d seen her give her butler when she was in a good mood, and then sailed off toward the barns.

“Motive’s going to be a problem in this one,” I said, when she was out of earshot.

“I don’t see why,” the chief said. “For a few moments there, I wanted to kill her myself.”

“That’s your problem,” I said. “Everyone feels that way. Too many suspects.”

“We’ll manage,” he said. “Could you find your cousin Horace now?”

In other words, mind my own business. I nodded and went back to the barns in search of Horace.