Alpaca Lies (Bought-the-Farm Mystery Book 5)

by Ellen Riggs

  That was confirmed as the ATV circled me with a flourish, and the driver gunned the engine for dramatic effect.

  “Watch the pets, will you?” I said, as Edna Evans, my octogenarian neighbor, turned off the engine and dismounted with no sign of the stiffness I felt many a morning. “If you want to drive like a maniac can you do it on your own property?”

  Keats gave Edna a half-hearted swish of his tail. She wasn’t a dog person and he wasn’t her biggest fan, but since she’d saved our lives from a cold-hearted killer, he’d softened his stance. He stared up at her expecting a greeting. Instead, she bent to make a fuss over Percy. The cat had once belonged to the feral colony Edna had overseen, but when the opinionated marmalade switched allegiance to me she’d been a good sport about it.

  “Why so cranky?” she asked, straightening. The ATV’s headlights created a large bright circle and we moved into the center of it. “I thought you were a morning person.”

  “Late night,” I said. “My guests were tripping the light fantastic and wrecking my hardwood floors.”

  “Oh, I heard the music,” Edna said. “The entire township heard the music. I called the cops and they’d had half a dozen noise complaints. They didn’t bother coming out because someone is the chief’s favorite.”

  My face burned, but I doubted she could see it. “What’s with the army fatigues? Is that going to be a regular thing now?”

  “On your property, yes. There’s always trouble here and it’s best to dress for it.”

  “Sometimes you’re causing the trouble here,” I said. “Why does everyone remember the trouble and forget their complicity?”

  She shrugged. “I was an innocent victim in the henhouse debacle. Even so, I’ve made up for it since.”

  I offered a noncommittal grunt. “Did you really call in a noise complaint on me? After all we’ve gone through?”

  Her teeth gleamed in the darkness. They were surprisingly white for someone her age, and quite possibly dentures. “I called, but your brother and the chief were off duty. I didn’t bother explaining to Betty what was going on. She’s dumber than a bag of hammers but a lot more talkative.”

  My face flushed even more. When I’d arrived at the station weeks ago carrying an old femur under my arm, Bunhead Betty had me forcibly restrained by two officers. Worse, she’d refused to believe I was seeing Kellan. It was one of the more humiliating moments of my life, and there’d been plenty of those lately.

  “Well, I’d hate for the town to run out of gossip about Runaway Farm,” I said, turning back to the barn. “Thanks for throwing a few logs on the fire. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”

  “Hold your horses, young lady.” Edna’s voice boomed out and then echoed back to us from the hills. As a former nurse who’d terrorized schoolchildren during vaccinations, she didn’t take kindly to being summarily dismissed. “Have you checked your phone this morning?”

  “No, why?” I shook off my mitten and reached into my coat pocket. After scrolling for a second, I said, “You called half a dozen times in the middle of the night. What gives?”

  “How could you sleep through that din? I had an important matter to discuss with you.”

  “At four o’clock, four-twenty, four-fifty and—”

  She pushed down the phone with one camouflage glove. “At precisely the time I saw people wandering around out here and frequently thereafter. I thought you might worry about either your guests or your livestock. But I guess I was wrong.”

  I grabbed her glove as she started to pull her hand away. “What did you see?”

  Edna was prone to spying on my property with binoculars and night vision goggles and that hadn’t stopped since we’d become—well, “friends” was too strong a word. We were frenemies, like Keats and Percy, I supposed, keeping things lively with a mixture of ambushes and rescues.

  “Oh, so now you’re interested in what an old lady has to say.” Her teeth gleamed again.

  “I’m always very interested in what you have to say.” I offered some teeth back and added, “About my farm. Less so about my personal life or my driving.”

  Her exasperated sigh created a big cloud of steam. “It’s a package deal. And you’re lucky to get my wisdom at a steep discount.”

  I put my mitten back on and spun my hand to encourage her. “You were spying on the place, and…”

  “I was surveilling and noticed suspicious activity. I think you should relocate your sow, so I can monitor her better.”

  I had tried keeping Wilma inside at night but her protests disrupted the other livestock. Since Charlie had built her an insulated house outside, she was a much happier pig.

  “Keats, check on Wilma, please.” I gestured to the far side of the barn. Instead, he trotted in the other direction. “Is she loose?” I followed him. “Don’t tell me she’s loose.”

  “Did he answer?” Edna said, chuckling. My communication with Keats and Percy was one of the few things guaranteed to amuse her.

  I heard mumbling ahead as Keats voiced concern over something. “He answered. You’re right there’s a problem. But it’s not about Wilma.”

  “You can tell all that from a grumble?”

  Her voice was so close to my shoulder that I jumped. “He has a different tone for different animals. Wilma’s fine. The problem is with the camelids.”

  “Huh.” Edna sounded moderately impressed. “If the dog’s right, I’ll give him a little more credit.”

  I stopped and she ran right into me. “Edna, can you bring the ATV over and shine the lights in there? I don’t trust Drama even in broad daylight.”

  Edna slapped her hip as she turned. “Never fear, I’m packing. And I’m not afraid of a stupid camel.”

  “Llama,” I said, sighing. “I’m still waiting for my camel to arrive.”

  There was a roar behind me as she pulled the ATV around and the lights flooded the pasture. Alvina stood near the gate, her big eyes wider than ever. In the far corner, the two llamas huddled with their donkey protectors.

  Midway between them a dark shape lay on the ground. At first I couldn’t connect the various elements to make a whole.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I whispered, when Edna rejoined me.

  “Only if you think it’s a man,” Edna said. “Dead or alive, it’s hard to say at the moment. But I’m going with the former because he looks… posed.”

  I glanced down at Keats and learned all I needed to know. His tail stuck out straight, his ears were back and his ruff was high.

  “Oh no,” I said. “Edna, it’s happened again.”

  Chapter Seven

  I started climbing the fence without even thinking. “Maybe it’s okay. Maybe he’s just—”

  “Saving the last dance for you?” Edna said. “Because unless I’m much mistaken, that’s the instructor your mom’s been making a fool of herself over. That’s nothing new, of course. It’s been a downhill spiral since Dahlia met your father at that dance forty years ago. I was there that night, you know.”

  “Can we not talk about that right now?” My puffy jacket hooked on the fencepost as I tried to jump off. For a moment I dangled, with my boots thrashing wildly.

  Edna reached out and brought her arm down hard in a flashy arc. The sound of fabric tearing followed the slashing movement and I landed hard. “Learned a few tricks at the survivalist convention,” she said.

  “Did you just slash my coat with a switchblade?” I called, as she walked over to the gate and let herself into the pasture the easy way. Once the dog and cat had followed, she clicked the gate closed behind her.

  “Hunting knife,” she said. “You know I like to be ready for anything.”

  She wasn’t kidding. Not long ago, she’d hidden in a cold shack to avoid a deranged criminal. The police had since emptied her stash but she’d probably restocked elsewhere. A wise prepper had many lairs.

  “That was a perfectly good coat,” I said, following the white tuft of Keats’ tail deepe
r into the pasture.

  “You would have hung there all day thinking about your deadbeat dad when we have deader things to worry about right now.”

  “You don’t know this guy’s dead,” I called over my shoulder as I hurried toward the body.

  “I’m a nurse, remember?”

  “A school nurse, who terrorized children with needles.”

  “I had a life before that, Ivy, and I saw plenty of bodies, believe you me.”

  By now we’d reached the prone form. Keats stood well back and lifted one white paw in a point. One of his many remarkable talents was that he’d acquired the natural traits of many breeds.

  “I see it, buddy,” I said. “We’ve got this.”

  I shone my phone light over Edna’s shoulder as she bent down to check for a pulse. The man was face down, with one arm stretched over his head, an index finger pointing toward the alpaca. His body was bent at the waist and one leg crooked, as if he were frozen in a horizontal bow.

  Edna straightened. “Dagnabit, I don’t like to be right about things like this.”

  Actually, Edna liked to be right about everything but she did offer a gusty sigh. There was no reason to discuss the person’s identity. The dark ponytail was a giveaway. José had apparently taken his final bow.

  After a minute or so, Percy strolled up and began making scraping motions at José’s head with his front paw.

  “Stop that,” I said. “It’s disrespectful. This is not your litter box, Percy.”

  There was a snuffle beside me and I glared at Edna. She’d covered her mouth with her big glove but her shoulders shook. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Don’t talk about litter boxes at a time like this, Ivy. It’s disrespectful.”

  “How can you even think about laughing? This is tragic!”

  Now she lowered her glove. “People respond to stress in strange ways. Even me.”

  “Well, stop it. You and Percy can go and do something useful if you can’t control yourselves.”

  “And what might that be?” Another giggle escaped her. “Shall I put on a pot of tea?”

  “Edna, enough.”

  She waved her glove and then slapped her leg. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I guess when you’re closer to the end of days, like me, you’ll lighten up a bit. I just can’t help wondering what—”

  “What Kellan will say,” I finished. “About there being another fatal incident at Runaway Farm.”

  My voice dried to a rasp and floated away as I finished the sentence. I certainly wondered what Kellan would say, too. That’s why I hadn’t called him despite the phone still being in my hand.

  “Murder, you mean,” Edna said. “Just call a spade a spade, Ivy. Going through life pretending manure doesn’t stink does you no favors.”

  “You don’t know it’s murder.” I rested my hand on Keats’ head to tap into his strength. “José could have had a heart attack after dancing so hard last night. He’s not a young man.”

  “Again, self-delusion,” Edna said. “Look at his pose. Someone left him that way on purpose.”

  “Not necessarily. He was an elegant man. He probably just collapsed gracefully.”

  She gave me a little shove. “Smell. The. Manure. This situation stinks to high heaven.”

  “I refuse to believe the worst until I have no other choice,” I said.

  Taking the phone out of my hand, she shook off her glove, bent over and directed the beam at the back of José’s head. “Notice the blood in his hair. It’s my opinion as a retired nurse that someone deliberately ended José’s life.” She glanced up at me and her own face had a corpselike pallor in the flashlight’s glow. “Or something, I suppose. Maybe it was murder by camel. Or donkey. They can be vicious, too.”

  Drama was feisty and might well deal a death kick, if provoked. The donkeys were also capable of defending themselves or their charges. It was their job.

  I bent over for a closer look and knocked heads with Edna. “Sorry, sorry,” I said, as she stood up and rubbed her temple with more “dagnabits.” When she simmered down, I asked, “If he got conked in the head, why isn’t there more blood?”

  She shrugged. “Cold weather, possibly. Or maybe he was struck somewhere else and dropped here. Like I told you, I saw at least two people moving around. If I’m honest, I thought your mom was having a private tango.”

  I straightened so fast it made my back twinge. “Edna, please tell me you didn’t see Mom out here tangling with José.”

  The catlike gleam in her eyes said she wanted to toy with me longer but she relented. “On second thought, I don’t think Dahlia was tangoing with José. A strong wind could blow your mother away, and while José wasn’t robust enough for my tastes, I doubt Dahlia could have pulled this off.” She tilted her head and then took away what she’d given me. “Not alone, anyway. They could have ganged up on him, I suppose. There’s always politics in a group like that. I heard the women were hanging off his every pirouette yesterday. The grapevine was on fire.”

  I closed my eyes and held my breath, my hand still on Keats’ head. He gave a little whine so high-pitched it was likely only I could hear. “Okay. Okay. You’re right.”

  “I’m right?” The words threw her off guard. She probably didn’t hear them often enough. “How so?”

  “Not you. Keats. He wants me to calm down and focus.” I glanced at José and then turned my back on the body. “I told Kellan the other night that I was getting used to seeing things like this. But I was wrong.”

  “You’re obviously rattled if you’re blatantly communing with that dog,” she said. “You know I don’t hold much stock with that woo-woo business.”

  “Oh please. You told me to interrogate your cats when you were getting carried off by the cops a few weeks ago.”

  “I was disoriented and in shock. I’m not a young woman, Ivy.”

  There was a noise behind me and I turned. “Edna! Don’t take pictures of the body. It’s indecent.”

  “It’s common sense. If we’re going to figure out what happened, we need a record.”

  “We’re not going to do anything. This is a job for the police.”

  She blew out a raspberry and moved around José, still clicking. Percy sat at the dead man’s shoulder and washed his paws.

  “I feel partially responsible,” she said. “I saw something going on and when I couldn’t wake you I called the police. I shouldn’t have let Bag of Hammers Betty deter me from my civic duty. Maybe the cops could have stopped this, or at least detained the killer. So yes, Ivy, I’ll help you figure out what happened.” She snapped half a dozen photos of José’s black lace-up shoes. “And we need to get off on the right foot. You’re always chasing a snowball downhill. I prefer a more orderly approach to my cases.”

  “You don’t have cases,” I said, trying to take my phone back.

  She pressed her gloved hand against my sternum and held the phone away. After scrolling for a second with her bare hand, she pressed something.

  “Hi, honey.” Kellan’s voice boomed out over the phone’s speaker and I tried harder to grab the phone. “What’s up?” he asked. “It’s early.”

  “Hi to you, too, honeybuns,” Edna said, smirking.

  There was a long pause at the other end. “Who is this and why do you have Ivy’s phone?”

  “Oh relax, young man,” Edna said, skipping away from me. “Your honey is fine. She’s just afraid to tell you what happened in the camel pen last night.”

  “Miss Evans.” Kellan sounded officious now. Coplike. “Put Ivy on the phone right now.”

  I called out, “It’s okay, Kellan. Let Edna tell you.”

  Maybe if I didn’t actually say the words aloud they wouldn’t turn out to be true. Maybe this would turn out to be a nightmare, like the polar bear attack I’d dreamed about. Maybe I could keep my distance from another highly suspicious death.

  Telling Kellan myself would make it all real instantly. There’d be that moment of shock, followed by bewilderment a
s he contemplated what to do about the problem here. The way things were going on the farm, he’d eventually have no choice but to put some distance between us for the sake of his career. Calamity followed me like a plague of locusts.

  Clearing his throat, Kellan said, “Just spit it out, Edna.”

  “Call me Miss Evans,” she said. “A little respect, please. Because right now I’m your only lead in this investigation.”

  “Investigation?” he said. “What investigation? Ivy, what’s she talking about? Is she maybe…”

  His voice trailed off and Edna lifted her chin. “No, I am not losing my faculties, young man, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  Her indignation gave me a window to snatch my phone back.

  “Kellan,” I said. “Chief Harper. You need to come over here right now. And bring the whole team.”

  “On my way,” he said. “You’re okay?”

  “I’m okay. Keats and Percy are okay. José Batista… not okay.”

  “I’ll call an ambulance.” His staccato delivery told me that he was getting dressed and probably hopping around as he pulled on his pants, socks and shoes.

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing they can do for José.”

  There was a long pause with only huffing at the other end. “Oh no. Ivy…”

  “Just hurry, please. Before the guests get up.”

  Edna saw a new opportunity to be annoying. “I’ll head inside and put on some coffee while you wait out here, Ivy. Get a move on it, Kellan. You’re slower than molasses in a blizzard, just like every cop this town’s ever seen.”

  Kellan offered a few tart observations in return but Edna was already loping toward the house. She wasn’t a young woman, but she sure moved like one.

  Chapter Eight

  It wasn’t long till I heard the sirens in the distance, but those moments standing alone with José’s body truly did pass like molasses in a blizzard. Keats moaned softly and kept nudging my bare hand, which dangled at my side holding the phone. Finally he leaned his full body into me and gradually a bit of warmth crept up my legs and moved slowly toward my heart. I wanted to go over to Alvina, who looked so desolate standing by the gate. The llamas and donkeys were starting to shuffle around, either frustrated by the disturbance or hungry for breakfast. The sun had finally reached over the horizon with frail beams that weren’t capable of combatting the chill. Winter had sunk its fangs into the rolling hills and snow would bite even harder soon.