Swan for the Money (20 page)

Chapter 37

I whirled back and saw a small posse of shaggy black-and-white forms romping through the open door at the other end of the barn. Around me, rose growers were shrieking and cursing, grabbing buckets and holding them above their heads, throwing random objects at the goats, or just standing horrorstricken, with single roses clutched convulsively to their chests.

“Don’t startle them!” Mr. Darby yelled, as he appeared in the doorway behind the goats.

Too late, of course. The goats had keeled over as soon as the shrieking began. Most of them lay stiff-legged on the barn floor, well short of the nearest rose, but one had actually reached an unlucky exhibitor’s table before being startled. She’d knocked over several buckets when she fell and lay there, happily chewing one red rose while another hung out of her mouth by its stem. Fallen roses were scattered about her, including another red rose that almost looked as if she’d tucked it behind her ear. A pity we hadn’t startled that particular goat a little sooner.

“She’s eating my black roses!” the rose grower shouted. “Stop her!”

“Marguerite Johnson! You naughty goat!” Mr. Darby said. But he didn’t try to help the rose grower, who was frantically trying to pry Marguerite’s jaws open, while the dark red rose inched closer and closer to her mouth. Finally, Marguerite opened her mouth enough to fold in the blossom itself, and the rose grower fell back on the ground nearby and burst into sobs.

“Bad goat,” Mr. Darby repeated. “Bad, bad goat.”

I could see that some of the goats’ legs had begun to twitch slightly. I set the vase with Mother’s dowager rose on a windowsill that looked out of reach for even the tallest goat.

“Drag them outside before they can move again,” I shouted, taking hold of one end of the nearest goat. “And shut that damned door!”

Some of the rose growers and volunteers leaped into action, grabbing goats by the legs and tugging them toward the door. Mr. Darby picked up Marguerite— evidently one of his favorites— draped her over his shoulders, and carried her out. She was still chewing and eyeing the rest of the roses with interest as she sailed out the door.

Mrs. Winkleson tottered out of the barn door just as we got the last of the goats outside. She looked pale and drawn. Clearly her ordeal at the hospital had taken its toll. I was about to ask how she was feeling and if she needed any extra help, but she opened her mouth and blasted my sympathy to shreds.

“What’s going on here? What are you doing to my goats?”

“Taking them out of the barn, so they won’t eat your roses along with everybody else’s,” I said. Everyone else was scurrying back inside, as if eager to avoid accusations of goat abuse. “I thought you took them up to another pasture to avoid precisely what just happened,” I said, turning to Mr. Darby.

“I did,” he said, sounding uncharacteristically heated. “But someone left a gate open between the pastures. We can’t have all these garden club ladies and police officers running around leaving gates open willy-nilly. We have valuable livestock here!”

“I doubt if any of the garden club ladies have been mucking around in the muddy pastures,” I said. “They’re too busy racing against the clock to get their roses ready. And most of the police officers grew up on farms themselves, and know better than to leave gates open.”

“Then who let my goats out?” he said, in a slightly less belligerent tone.

I shrugged elaborately, and then allowed my eyes to fall on Mrs. Winkleson’s boots, which were coated with red clay mud. I made sure he followed my glance before I looked away. As I suspected, he got the hint immediately. It didn’t hurt that Mrs. Winkleson, looking far less frail than she had a moment ago, was obviously trying to sneak up on a couple of the goats, with her huge black umbrella at the ready.

“I’ll take them up to the back pasture,” he said. “Where they’ll be safe.”

With a malevolent glare at his employer, he made a chirping noise and began striding away across the pasture. The goats scrambled eagerly after him, like rats after the Pied Piper.

“I don’t want them interbreeding with the inferior stock up in the back pasture!” Mrs. Winkleson called after him.

“They’re not interested in breeding this time of year,” Mr. Darby called back. Was it my imagination, or did I hear him mutter “stupid cow” under his breath?

“Has Marston brought my roses down?” she asked, turning to me. “There’s no time to waste.”

“If he has, they’ll be inside the barn,” I said. I strode back inside and didn’t look back to see if she was following.

Three of the rose growers besieged me the minute I stepped inside.

“We lost valuable grooming time!” one shouted.

“That goat ate my darkest roses!” another wailed.

“We need an extension!” the third shouted.

I checked my watch.

“Attention,” I boomed, in my loudest tones. “The goats are now being removed to a secure area. Due to the interruption, we will be extending the grooming time by precisely ten minutes. Entries must be completed by 10:10.”

Most of the exhibitors looked content.

“But what about my black roses?” It was the poor woman whose table Marguerite the goat had upset.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You have my profound apologies. Please give me a list of the categories in which you would have entered the roses you lost. If we discover that any of your competitors had anything to do with the goat incursion, we’ll disqualify them from those categories, if not from the entire show.”

She seemed mollified. Mrs. Winkleson, who was near enough to overhear me, frowned, opened her mouth to say something, and then thought better of it. Good. I was more sure than ever that she had something to do with the goat invasion, and I hoped she was on notice that I was watching for any more tricks.

She went over to the table where Marston was waiting with a two-level chrome bar cart full of roses and paraphernalia. More roses than paraphernalia actually. The cart had obviously been customized for rose show use. Both levels had been fitted with a black-painted wooden frame containing row after row of holes precisely the right size to hold the standard show vases. The bottom rack held Mrs. Winkleson’s roses, already parceled out into individual vases the same size and shape as the show vases, only made of black glass. The top rack was empty, no doubt awaiting the finished roses.

It didn’t look as if the roses needed much finishing. The roses— all either white or deep, deep red— were arranged with regimented precision, and the black vases already carried the standard tags that had to be filled out for each entry.

Two of the tiny maids stood nearby. One deposited a black metal basket on the table— Mrs. Winkleson’s rose-grooming tools, no doubt— then curtsied and hurried out. The other held a black wrought-iron lawn chair.

“Don’t just stand there, stupid! Put the chair down!”

The maid hurried to obey, and then scurried out as if afraid someone would strike her. Why did I suspect that if she didn’t have an audience, Mrs. Winkleson might well have done just that?

Marston stood by impassively as Mrs. Winkleson seated herself in the chair and made a great show of arranging her tools.

Then she stuck her arm out. He picked up a black vase containing a white rose and placed it in her hand. She brought the rose closer to her face and scrutinized it, though her inspection seemed to lack some of the intensity and passion Mother brought to her rose grooming.

“Vase!” she snapped.

Marston reached out, selected one of the regimented clear glass vases from the table and handed it to Mrs. Winkleson. She pulled the rubber band holding the show tag off the black vase and slipped it around the glass one. Then she moved the rose to the newly labeled vase and handed the black vase to Marston, who replaced it in the bar cart.

She turned the rose around, twitched gently at a petal, flicked an invisible something off one leaf, and then handed it to Marston, who placed it on the top rack of the trolley and handed her the next rose in line from the bottom rack. Mrs. Winkleson dealt with that in equally brisk fashion. At this rate, she’d have no trouble readying her entries in time. Clearly any roses impertinent enough to display imperfections had already been dealt with elsewhere. Why did I envision a basement workshop with two or three captive rose-groomers chained to benches, working on blossoms under Mrs. Winkleson’s supervision, perhaps even using forbidden tools or techniques, if there were such things?

Not something I should worry about. Mrs. Winkleson could have broken every rule in the ARS’s book without my noticing. But odds were if she did break any, someone would notice. Every other exhibitor in the barn was watching her, some out of the corner of their eyes, others with frank, hostile stares.

Occasionally, between roses, she’d lean back in her chair and close her eyes for a few moments, as if gathering strength. This made sense, actually, given what she’d been through the night before. Anyone else would have had people hovering around, asking could they do anything, imploring her not to overdo it, and clucking in sympathy. Instead . . .

“Look at her, acting as if she can hardly lift a finger,” Molly Weston said, looking up as I walked by her table.

“Well, it might not be an act,” I said. “I don’t know exactly what they do these days to treat cyanide poisoning, but I’m sure it’s no picnic.”

“She really was poisoned?” Molly asked. “I thought that was just a wild rumor. Or a fit of hypochondria on her part.”

“No, she really was poisoned,” I said. “Dad took her to the hospital.”

“Well, that’s different. Poor thing, even she doesn’t deserve that.”

“But we all reap what we sow, don’t we?” I said.

“We surely do,” Molly said, and returned to the rose she was grooming.

Just then Chief Burke appeared in the doorway of the barn. I glanced over to where Minerva, his wife, was working on her roses. The chief looked her way, too, but only briefly before striding down the aisle between the tables and stopping beside Mrs. Winkleson.

“Madam, I need to—”

“I can’t be bothered now!” Mrs. Winkleson said. “I have less than an hour to finish my roses!”

“Fine,” the chief said. “I’ll just let my murder suspect go. No problem to have him running around on the loose until you can be bothered to answer a few questions. He probably won’t kill too many people in the meantime. Of course, since you seem to be the main one he’s trying to kill— well, never mind.”

If he really meant that, he’d have stormed off instead of folding his arms and standing by her table, glowering.

“Suspect?” Mrs. Winkleson repeated.

I’d have expected her to look at least a little bit happy at the thought. But she kept looking at her roses and then back at the chief, as if torn. I could tell the chief’s temper was near the exploding point.

“As official organizer of the rose show,” I said, “I will grant Mrs. Winkleson— and anyone else you need to question— an extension on their preparation time equal to the number of minutes they would otherwise lose by cooperating with your investigation.”

“Thank you,” the chief said. “Now, madam, if we could go somewhere more quiet?” He gestured toward the barn door.

“Watch the roses,” she said to her butler. “And you’d better be counting from when he first interrupted me,” she added, turning to me.

“That’s fair,” I said.

Of course, to be really fair, I should probably give a five- or ten-minute extension to everyone. Not much rose grooming had happened since the chief entered, and I suspected it would be a while before the others put the interruption far enough out of their minds to concentrate on the roses again.

I didn’t think there was any way I could concentrate myself.

Chapter 38

“Keep an eye on things,” I told Rose Noire. She was at a table nearby, working on Sandy Sechrest’s miniature roses under the intense scrutiny of Mother, and for that matter, just about every other rose grower in the room. Apparently Rose Noire’s idea of posthumously entering Mrs. Sechrest’s roses in the show had so won the hearts of the other members of the Caerphilly Rose Society they’d all put their heads together and donated the equipment Rose Noire would need for her grooming.

But since Rose Noire had no experience whatsoever with grooming roses, I thought it would be a more touching tribute if they’d all pitch in and groom a few. Apparently there were limits to what even the most altruistic of the exhibitors would do when there were trophies at stake and they already had more roses than they could possibly groom by the 10 a.m. deadline— though I’d just extended it to 10:10. I hoped the judges were okay with that.

I looked around outside. Deputy Sammy and Horace were standing outside the horse barn, so I deduced that’s where the chief had taken Mrs. Winkleson for their private chat. I strolled over.

“You can’t go inside,” Sammy said, stepping in front of the door.

“Wasn’t planning to,” I said. “Just wondering if you had any idea how long the chief’s going to be with Mrs. Winkleson?”

“No idea,” Sammy said. “Do you need her for something?”

“I could live without her indefinitely, but the rose show can’t,” I said. “I have to give her a full forty-five more minutes to finish her roses before the judges can start. While I realize arresting a murder suspect is more important than judging the rose show, I have a whole barn full of people back there who might not get it.”

“Well, we’re not exactly arresting him for murder just yet,” Sammy said.

“Who’s him, and what are they arresting him for, then?” I asked.

They both glanced involuntarily at a nearby police car. Mr. Darby was sitting in the back seat, while another officer was leaning on the fender, keeping his eyes on the prisoner.

“Mr. Darby?” I exclaimed. “The chief thinks he did it?”

“Why? Who do you think did it?” Horace asked.

“I have no idea who did it,” I said. “If I did, I’d tell the chief. I’m just surprised. He seems like a nice man.”

“It’s always the nice ones you have to watch,” Sammy said.

“That’s the quiet ones, not the nice ones,” Horace said. “And I agree. A very nice man. Look how much he loves animals.”

“It’s because of the animals,” Sammy said. “I’m sure that’ll turn out to be the reason he did it.”

“I don’t think he did it at all,” Horace said. “The cattle rustling, yes, but—”

“Cattle rustling?” I repeated. “So this is related to what I saw last night?”

“And what your grandfather and Caroline discovered yesterday afternoon,” Horace added.

“We got a lead on the truck you reported,” Sammy said.

“From my tire tread impressions,” Horace said.

“And we went over to Mr. Darby’s place early this morning,” Sammy continued. “That’s why we couldn’t be here to help.”

“No problem,” I said. “You did plenty yesterday, and what with the murder and the attempted murder, I assumed you’d both be pretty busy today. What happened this morning?”

Sammy glanced behind him, as if to make sure the chief was safely inside, and leaned closer.

“Dr. Blake and Caroline discovered that Mr. Darby and his cousin have a small farm over in Clay County with dozens of those fancy cows and goats on it,” he half-whispered. “And his explanation of how he came by them sounded fishy.”

“He had a bunch of sale papers, but they were all made out to other people’s names,” Horace put in. “He claimed it was because Mrs. Winkleson wouldn’t have sold the cows and goats if she’d known it was him.”

“Which could be true,” Sammy said. “You know how she is.”

“Lot of work proving anything,” Horace said. “Hunting down all those people whose names are on the bills of sale, and finding out if they really did buy goats and cows, and if so, if they really sold them to Mr. Darby, and if not, if they knew Mr. Darby was using their names. And what if it turns out that you can’t find those people?”

“Then maybe that would mean the sales weren’t legit,” Sammy said.

“In other words, he stole them,” Horace said.

“And tried to kill Mrs. Winkleson to cover it up,” Sammy added.

“Now that’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me,” Horace said, shaking his head. The two of them appeared to have forgotten that I was there, and I was almost holding my breath, trying to keep it that way. “Surely he’d have known that as soon as anything happened to Mrs. Winkleson, we’d be crawling all over the place to investigate, not to mention her attorney taking an interest in all her business records to prepare for probate. If I were him, the last thing I’d want to do would be to stir up a hornet’s nest before I’d managed to hide the stolen livestock and cover my tracks.”

“But that’s because you know how a murder investigation works,” Sammy said. “And hindsight is twenty-twenty. Even he probably realizes now that it wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Especially since he blew it twice in one day.”

“Three times if you count that last cow-stealing trip,” Horace said.

“And then finding that hydrogen cyanide in his cottage,” Sammy said.

“It’s a common pesticide,” Horace said. “I bet you’d find it at half the farms in this county.”

“Not that common, and how many farmers do you think there are in the county with motive, means, and opportunity to knock off Mrs. Winkleson? And what did he hope to accomplish by stealing her dog?”

“Mr. Darby stole Mimi?” I exclaimed. “Have they found her?”

“Not yet,” Horace said. “But they haven’t finished searching his farm.”

“And the note they found in Mrs. Sechrest’s hand came from the same printer as the one they found in Mimi’s empty crate.”

“
Appears
to come from the same printer,” Horace said. “And we haven’t found that printer yet. What puzzles me is—”

The barn door slid open, and Mrs. Winkleson emerged. Horace and Sammy snapped to attention.

“The nerve of that man!” Mrs. Winkleson said, over her shoulder. “I shall dismiss him immediately. And I’ll have Marston bring you those records as soon as possible.”

She headed for the prep barn. The chief emerged.

“Can I help you?” he asked me.

“You need to question any more of the rose exhibitors?” I asked. “If you do, let me send them out to you. It will be less distracting to the rest.”

“No, I’m good,” the chief said.

“Then I’ll go back and log Mrs. Winkleson in,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You’re not even curious what I was questioning her about?” he called over to me.

I turned back. Horace and Sammy looked anxious.

“I can see Mr. Darby in the back of the patrol car. I can put two and two together.”

Sammy and Horace relaxed slightly.

“For your information,” the chief said, “I am not arresting Mr. Darby on suspicion of murder.”

“Then what are you— never mind,” I said. “I should know better than to ask. So you’re telling me that we should all still watch our backs.”

He smiled and nodded.

I puzzled over that as I went back to the barn. Did that mean the chief didn’t really think Mr. Darby was guilty of the murder and attempted murder? That he didn’t believe the cattle theft was related to the other crimes? Or just that he was enjoying keeping his cards to himself?

They’d found cyanide in Mr. Darby’s cottage? I think I’d remember if I’d seen anything of the sort on his shelves. So either it had been hidden someplace I wasn’t able to look, or it hadn’t been there when I’d searched. Maybe someone had planted it there.

Or maybe when I’d visited the cottage he’d been carrying it around in his pocket, already planning his second attempt on his employer’s life.

At least, if Mr. Darby had been the one to steal Mimi, he probably wouldn’t have done anything to her. Perhaps they’d find her soon.

But if Mr. Darby was the dognapper, what was Sandy Sechrest doing with a copy of the note left behind in Mimi’s crate? Had anyone searched Mrs. Sechrest’s house for signs of Mimi?

Not my problem. Not right now, anyway. I had a show to run.