“Great!” she said merrily. “I’ll be right down to let you in.”
We waited by the gate, and peering through it we could see a large herd of what looked like a cross between a dog and a long-necked goat. Within a few moments, a woman emerged from the barn, waved to us, and moved over to a four-wheeler. She came down to the gate by way of a dirt road, and after dismounting from the four-wheeler, ambled over to meet us.
Dressed in a green and blue flannel shirt, jeans, and riding boots, she wore her silver hair short, and there were laugh lines and crinkles at the corners of her eyes. It told me she spent a majority of her time either smiling or laughing, and that made me instantly like her.
“Well, hello!” she said, as she came to the gate with a key for the padlock. “I’m Audra. Welcome to Paccadilly Farms!”
We were all charmed by her bright disposition—well, at least Gilley and I were. Willem wore a forced smile and I noticed that he’d occasionally lick his lips nervously. I could also see that he was trembling ever so slightly.
He’d been so brave on the drive over, but I suspected now that he was here and faced with another possible incident from the curse, he was worried about what harm might come of it.
But, looking around at the wide open setting, and the adorable creatures at the end of the paddock, it was hard to imagine that any harm could be done.
Still, as I walked through the gate, I did keep an eye on the barn, making sure there were no signs of smoke to be had.
“Shall we meet the herd?” Audra asked.
Gilley nodded earnestly, and even Willem seemed to relax a bit at the mention of getting to pet these exotic creatures.
As we walked toward the herd, Audra gave us an education on alpacas. “I’ve had this herd for about fifteen years, and we started out with Studly, over there in the paddock across from the barn.”
I looked and saw a much smaller group of alpacas curious about our arrival, pressing against the bars of their paddock adjoining the one we were in. “He’s with all the other males,” Audra said. “You’ve gotta keep the boys and the girls apart, otherwise it’s just an ongoing orgy and the parents get upset. Of course the kids are delighted and they giggle and laugh, but in the Hamptons it’s like the natural order of things is unseemly or something.” Audra added a shake of her head.
Gilley and I chuckled and the tension in Willem’s smile eased.
“Now, we’re coming up on shearing season,” she continued. “The herd’s a little long in the coat, as you can tell, and we’re going to be taking off their winter coats next weekend—unless that storm roars in and blows my plans to pieces with it. There’s nothing worse than trying to shear a soggy alpaca, take it from me.”
I smiled again. I genuinely liked this woman.
“Anyway, you’re free to pet and cuddle them. They’re a really friendly bunch, and most of my females are pregnant right now, so they’re happy just to lay around and get fat.”
As we got closer I couldn’t help but ask, “Do they ever bite?”
Audra shook her head. “They’re incapable of it. They only have bottom teeth and a hard pallet up top. You’re more likely to get nuzzled by them than anything else. They like people and they’re very personable.”
Audra then looked down at my feet, where I was also looking, to make sure I didn’t step on any “land mines.”
“No need to watch yourself,” she said. When I eyed her curiously, she added, “Alpacas have a communal dung hill. See that mound way over there?” she said.
I looked and there indeed was a big pile of poo.
“That’s the community toilet. We sell the poop for a pretty penny around here. People love to use alpaca waste as fertilizer because they get less weeds in their gardens. It’s great stuff.”
By now we were close to the herd and I slowed my gait. It wasn’t that I was necessarily afraid of them, but they were larger up close than I’d thought, and that made me a teensy bit wary.
Gilley and Willem, however, held no such reservations. They stepped forward and were quickly surrounded by white, gray, black, and rosy brown fluffy Muppet creatures.
Willem was sent to giggling delightedly when several alpacas began nuzzling his shirt, probably looking for treats.
Audra moved over to Willem and offered him a small baggie that had an assortment of apples, carrots, and broccoli stalks in it. “There,” she said. “Feed them that.”
Willem took the baggie and began to dole out the treats. His expression made my heart swell and tears glisten my eyes. His face was filled with wonder and delight, and I was both thrilled for him and heartbroken for this man who’d lived most of his adult life shut away in a big house with no access to simple but wonderful experiences like this.
Gilley caught my eye just then, and he nodded. We’d done a good thing bringing Willem here.
We spent about twenty minutes mingling with the herd, and I found them to be a bit magical myself. Their coats were incredibly soft and plush, and they had a split lip that kept trying to part the buttons on my shirt. It was impossible to stand amid a herd like this and be in a bad mood.
Audra disappeared at one point, but soon she reappeared with more treats for us to share with the herd. After handing a treat bag to Gilley, and one to me, she said, “Let me know when you’d like to see the store. I’ve got a sale on all my winter sweaters right now. All sizes, all colors.”
I perked up and handed Gilley my baggie. I was always in the market for clothing for the boys, who were growing at a rapid rate. “Any in navy blue?” I asked. The boys were only allowed to wear navy blue sweaters on their campus as their uniform code was strictly enforced.
“A bunch,” she said. “This way.”
I began following behind Audra, listening to the sounds of Gilley’s delighted giggles, which sent me giggling as well. Gil has the most infectious laugh.
I also allowed myself a small sigh of relief. So far, nothing bad had happened and there wasn’t even a hint of disaster in the air.
Of course, that was the moment that all hell broke loose.
As we neared the building that was marked “Paccadilly Store,” there was a screeching of tires, and out on the road a car with what appeared to be a distracted driver overcorrected and launched itself directly into the corner of fencing for both paddocks. As Audra and I stared in stunned silence, the car came to a stop just inside the female alpacas’ enclosure, sending the herd nervously in circles around Gilley and Willem.
I realized that I’d reflexively reached out to grab Audra’s arm, but as the car door opened and a man got out who seemed no worse for wear, I let out the small breath I’d been holding. “Oh, thank God,” I whispered. “He’s all right.”
But Audra hardly seemed relieved. Her gaze went from him over to the gaping hole between the two enclosures and the smaller herd of males who were moving toward it with increasing speed. “Oh, shit!” she exclaimed.
Before we knew it a dozen male alpacas were streaming into the enclosure with the females, who were now even more animated by the appearance of the males, and Gilley and Willem were stuck within their midst being bumped and pushed around.
Audra’s hand went to her forehead; it was as if she didn’t quite know what to do. And then I saw her look toward her four-wheeler and she began to run toward it.
Meanwhile the first of the male alpacas had reached the females, and he began to try to mount anything that moved. Some of the females immediately laid down, but several more simply began spitting.
“Gilley! Willem!” I yelled. “Get out of there!”
But they were surrounded and there was a flurry of chaotic movement as they both did their best to fight their way out of what was quickly becoming an alpaca orgy. Several males lay down next to the females and they began to go to town, while other males clung to the backs of the spitting and spinning females and little alpacas simply tried to move out of the way.
Willem managed at that point to break free, and he came das
hing toward me as fast as his small legs could carry him. I was torn between trying to help him to safety outside the paddock or going in for Gilley, who was totally overwhelmed.
Willem was closer to me, and with a growl I climbed up on the paddock’s poles and reached out for his hand. He grabbed on and I pulled as hard as I could, getting him up and over to safety.
I then looked for Gilley, hearing him begin to shriek, and saw that one of the male alpacas had become very excited and was propped up on Gilley’s back. “Get him off me! Get him off me!” Gilley shrieked.
He darted forward trying to lose the alpaca, only to run right into a female who then spit into his face, covering Gilley with chunks of the treats he’d been offering her only moments before. “Oh, my God!” I shouted. “Gilley!”
But poor Gil was apparently blinded, and he covered his eyes and simply stumbled this way and that, still trying to shake the determined male alpaca on his back.
I watched the whole thing in horror, not knowing what to do. If I went into that pen, I didn’t know if I could get out, and just when I was seriously considering it because I couldn’t stand to see Gilley in such distress, Audra appeared on her four-wheeler, charging into the fray, scattering many of her alpacas to save Gilley.
With strength and agility that belied her appearance, Audra reached down, grabbed Gilley by the back of the collar, and hauled him into the seat next to her. She then gunned the engine and roared over to us.
I got up on the paddock poles again, reached down to help Gilley, who was still shouting, “I’m blind! I’m blind!” over the railing. He landed with a thud on the ground and promptly lay down on his back. “And I’ve been defiled!”
Audra looked at Willem and said, “In the barn! Get me all of the harnesses on the pegboard!” She then hit the gas and shot out toward the herd.
Willem took off toward the barn while I crouched down beside Gilley, digging through my purse to pull out a small packet of tissue and a bottle of water that I always carry with me. Carefully, I wiped away the mess on his face and gently poured the water around his eyes. Gilley blinked and took up the tissue to help remove the rest of the sticky mess.
Meanwhile, Audra was racing around the paddock, shooing some of the males away from the females. Willem came out of the barn, loaded down with harnesses, and he raced over to the fencing and began to climb up the poles. I almost moved to help him, but he managed to get up and over, in spite of the short length of his legs, and then he was off racing again toward Audra.
Once he reached her she grabbed a few of the harnesses, pointed to several of the male alpacas, and mimed how to put on the harness. She then pointed to a section of fence, and I understood that they were going to round up all the males and tie them to the fence until Audra could attend to the broken section near the road.
I got close to Gilley, handed him the water, and said, “I’m going to go help Willem and Audra. Will you be okay here?”
“I’ve already been defiled, Cat, what else could possibly happen to me?”
I bit my lip, as Gilley blinked his bloodshot eyes and poured more water on his face. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t answer that. Just go help them.”
It took us about twenty minutes to round up all the alpacas and get the females into a third, much smaller paddock, and the males into the barn.
Once Audra had locked the males in, the sound of their distress calls filled the air. “They hate being locked up like that,” she said, brushing off the dust and grime that’d been kicked up as we all raced around to corral the herd. “Nothing I can do about it at the moment. My boys don’t get back from their jobs until six, and that’ll be the soonest I can get that fence fixed.”
Out on the road, a tow truck had appeared, along with a patrol officer. He came up through the paddock and met with Audra while Willem and I made our way over to Gilley, who was seated against the fence post. I squatted down next to him. “Hey,” I said, brushing some of his tousled hair to the side. “How’re you doing?”
Gilley made a sweeping motion down his front. “How do I look like I’m doing?”
Willem came to stand next to Gilley too. I was shocked to see actual tears in his eyes. “This is all my fault,” he whispered.
Gilley’s face fell and his anger instantly dissipated. “It’s not,” he said. “Willem, it’s not.”
Willem looked toward the road, and the car that was being hoisted onto the tow truck. “That’s not a fluke,” he said, pointing to the gaping hole in the fence. “That’s the curse.”
I stood up and reached out for Willem’s hand. “Hey,” I said, struggling to find any kind of a silver lining or even an encouraging word to say. The afternoon had started off so beautifully—and ended in chaos and disaster. Still, no one had been hurt. Well, Gilley’s ego might’ve suffered a severe blow, but he’d recover. I decided to lead with that. “So we got a few bumps and bruises, Willem. We’re all okay, and even the driver’s okay. No alpacas were hurt—”
Gilley interrupted with a bark of laughter. “They had a good time, I assure you. That one over there even looks like she could use a cigarette.”
We looked over at the dopey-eyed female who I swear to God was wearing a postcoitus grin the size of Texas.
And that made me giggle. And then I began to laugh. And then I couldn’t stop laughing. And soon, Willem also began to laugh, and finally, Gilley joined in too.
So we left the farm a little worse for wear, but having survived yet another encounter with Willem’s curse.
Which was what I call progress.
* * *
Later, when Gilley and I arrived back at Chez Cat, I invited him over for dinner and the use of my master bath to get the lingering scent of horny alpaca off him.
Gilley has long admired my master bathroom, with its immense shower stall, eight shower heads, and adjoining sauna.
Meanwhile, I used one of the other six bathrooms to quickly clean up and change. Then I headed into the kitchen and began to prepare a meal for us.
I decided that one of my favorite pasta recipes was called for—Gilley definitely needed some comfort food after his tryst with Mr. Studly, the poor dear. And while I prepared it I thought about Willem and wondered if it was wise to continue to push the boundaries of this curse.
With that in mind I placed a call to Heath. I was quite relieved when he picked up the call. “Cat?” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m good, Heath, thank you, but I do have quite a lot to share with you. Do you have a moment?”
Over the course of the next twenty minutes, while I prepared a delicious, decadent sauce for the pasta, made with bourbon, cream, Baileys, and Kahlúa, served over al-dente linguini with chicken and sweet English peas, I explained everything that’d happened to us since Willem became my client.
Heath did a fairly good job stifling his laughter when I described what’d happened to Gilley that afternoon, but he grew serious when I begged the question, “Is it safe to continue to push Willem to go out into the world? I mean, am I putting anyone’s life at risk?”
“That’s a very good question, Cat, and, unfortunately, it’s not one that I can easily answer. The energy I picked up around Willem didn’t feel deadly, but it did feel determined. It wants to cause mayhem, and it may, and I do mean may want some sort of a sacrifice to satisfy its appetite.”
I felt my blood run cold. “Sacrifice? You mean . . . like human sacrifice?”
Heath sighed. “Maybe.”
I gulped. “Well, it’s not getting one!” I said defiantly. But then I tried to reason with Heath’s assessment. “If it’d wanted a human sacrifice, Heath, wouldn’t it have gotten one by now? I mean, Willem is in his midthirties, and although he almost never leaves his home, he still has ventured out, to school, and his grandmother’s home, and my office. And no one was seriously injured in any of those instances.”
“I hear you, Cat, but I feel it’s still necessary to warn you that just because the curse didn’t feel pow
erful to me, doesn’t mean it can’t, at times, be quite powerful. Enough to cause some real damage. So all I’m saying is . . . tread lightly.”
I paused the stirring of the bubbling sauce I was making to stare out into space, and the memory of Willem’s delighted face as he reached out to pet the alpacas for the first time was all I could see in my mind’s eye. “I don’t want to stop trying to help him,” I whispered.
“Then don’t,” Heath said. “Hell, M.J. and I have tackled far more destructive curses in our time, and we survived. Even Gilley came through those scenarios intact.”
And that gave me courage.
I thanked Heath, hung up, and got back to cooking. Right around the time Gilley appeared looking flushed with heat but very relaxed in my extra fluffy white bathrobe, I glanced at my watch and realized something. “Huh,” I said.
“What?”
“Well, it’s almost seven, and I never heard from Chanel.”
“Did you check your phone? Maybe there’s a voice mail.”
I lifted the phone and checked all the calls, smirking when I saw two missed calls from Shepherd. “Can you believe Shepherd called me?” I said. “Twice!”
“He probably just wanted to yell at you for springing his number one suspect.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course that’s what he wanted. So glad I didn’t give him the satisfaction of picking up the line. Meanwhile, there isn’t a single missed call, text, or voice mail from Chanel.”
“Maybe she needed to go home and take a nap,” Gilley suggested. “I doubt she slept at all in that jail cell.”
“Good point. I’ll bet that’s exactly it.”
Still, something bothered me about the fact that Chanel hadn’t even sent me a text to say thank you. . . . After all, I’d bailed her out of jail and I’d gotten her the best attorney money could buy.
With that in mind I set Gilley’s plate in front of him (waiting for him to take a bite, moan appreciatively, and give me a twin thumbs-up) before I placed a call to Marcus.
“Catherine,” Marcus said before I’d heard the phone even ring. “How is my favorite client this evening?”
To Coach a Killer Page 23