Hen of the Baskervilles

by Donna Andrews

  “That makes sense,” I said. “The chief appreciates both initiative and thoughtfulness.” I didn’t add that he hated sneakiness. Plunkett would find that out soon enough. In the meantime, he looked very pleased with himself.

  “Have a good day,” he told me. Then he took another large bite, nodded to the vendor, and strolled off.

  “Here’s your lemonade,” the man behind the counter said.

  As he handed it to me, I noticed that my two dollar bills were still on the counter. In fact, they were closer to me than they had been when I put them down. I ignored them, sipped my lemonade, and nodded appreciatively. After a long few moments, the counter man picked up the bills and put them in his cash register.

  “I didn’t see any money change hands when Deputy Plunkett was here,” I said. “He’s running a tab with you?”

  “You could say that,” the vendor said.

  “Is that all he’s asking for?”

  The man snorted as if I’d said something ludicrous.

  “Anything you want the fair management to do about it?” I asked.

  “Best not.” He shook his head. “No need to antagonize the local law enforcement. Especially if the whole fair’s moving over here to Clay County next year.”

  I choked slightly on my lemonade.

  “Just where did you hear that?” I asked.

  “From him.” The vendor nodded in the direction Plunkett had taken. “You mean it’s not true?”

  “It may be true that Clay County will be having a fair next year,” I said. “But if they do, it won’t be the Un-fair, and they’ll have to organize it all by themselves. There’s considerable sentiment in Caerphilly County for having the whole Un-fair in our own county next year. Midway and all.”

  “That’s good to hear,” he said. “I’d come back for that. I’d have to be pretty hard up for business to come back to Clay County again.”

  “You think that’s a general sentiment?”

  He nodded.

  “A lot of us were disappointed when we got here,” he said. “We knew you’d checked us out pretty thoroughly before going with our outfit, and that’s usually a sign of a well-run event that treats the vendors fairly. Plunkett and his bully boys were a nasty shock.”

  So it wasn’t just Plunkett. I filed away the information.

  “Imagine how our chief of police feels,” I said aloud. “Having to deal him into our murder investigation.”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hard enough to catch whoever did it without somebody trying to undermine you while you’re doing it.”

  I was startled—not at the idea, which had occurred to me, but that someone with no inside knowledge of the investigation had come up with it.

  “You think Plunkett is deliberately trying to undermine the investigation?” I asked. “I assumed he was just incompetent.”

  “Who knows?” He shrugged. “He keeps bragging to us about how he’d have solved it by now. Making fun of what your chief of police is doing. Claiming he’ll never solve the case. Maybe Plunkett is just gloating. But do you really think he’s above doing everything he can to keep your chief from solving it?”

  “No,” I said. “It sounds just like him. He probably resents our taking charge of the case, so it makes sense he’d cause trouble.” Or maybe he was counting on solving the case to boost his chances of getting hired on in Caerphilly.

  “Besides,” the man said. “He keeps bragging about how low the Clay County crime rate is, and how they hardly ever have any unsolved crimes.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said. “Of course, I’ve also heard that that when they can’t find the real crook, they can always find someone to frame. Someone who’s been stupid enough to tick off Sheriff Dingle, for example.”

  “Or a carny,” the man said. “We make great scapegoats. We’ve all been pretty impressed that your police chief hasn’t taken the easy way out and arrested one of us.”

  “He won’t,” I said. “Unless he finds good evidence that one of you did it.”

  “I can’t be a hundred percent sure no one from the Midway did it,” he said. “But if I had to put money on it, I’d say it was someone from your side of the fence. No offense meant.”

  “None taken,” I said. “I agree with you.”

  I thanked him for the lemonade and strolled off. I decided I didn’t need to talk to the ringtoss operator. I had a pretty good idea what was going on.

  As I made my way back to the gate, I realized, a little sadly, that I was seeing the Midway with my own eyes again, rather than the boys’. The booths and rides might be brightly painted, but the colors were harsh and garish and the paint was getting a little chipped and faded. The games of skill weren’t completely rigged, but the odds always seemed to be with the house and when you came down to it the prizes were a little tawdry. And the fairgoers might be happy, but the barkers and concession operators had a pinched, anxious look. And they might have good reason to feel anxious. The counterman hadn’t said anything, but it was obvious that Plunkett’s free meal was only the tip of the iceberg.

  I waited until I was back on the Caerphilly side of the gate before stepping away from the path and pulling out my cell phone to call the chief.

  Chapter 31

  “Is there anything you can do about officers extorting money from fair vendors?” I asked.

  “If you have any evidence that any of my officers are—”

  “Clay County officers,” I added.

  “Oh.” His tone changed from indignant to rather melancholy.

  I relayed what I’d heard from the counterman—including his suggestion that Plunkett was trying to sabotage the murder investigation.

  “I’ve already had my suspicions about the wisdom of including Deputy Plunkett in our investigation,” the chief said. “But it shouldn’t be a problem now that the sheriff—our sheriff—has announced that he’s taking personal charge of the investigation.”

  “He is?” The sheriff of Caerphilly was over ninety, and had won his last few elections largely by proclaiming that he was going to keep delegating everything to Chief Burke, who in addition to being the police chief of the town of Caerphilly was also deputy sheriff of the county. I suspected a ruse.

  “He’s conducting the investigation from his farm,” the chief said. “So if Plunkett wants to stay involved, he’s welcome to go out there. Might have to slop a few hogs while he’s there. On the sheriff’s orders, I’ve put all my officers back on general patrol here at the fair.”

  “Where if they happen to run into any information that seems relevant to the murder—”

  “They can bring it to me, and I will assess whether it’s something the sheriff will want to hear about. Getting back to those allegations of extortion over in Clay County—we’d need to get the state police involved. I can contact them if there’s someone willing to stand up and make a charge. If no one’s willing—well, accusing another county’s law enforcement of corruption’s like taking a stick and whacking at a hornet’s nest.”

  “I’ll see if I can find at least one victim willing to complain before we let the hornets know we’re coming,” I said. “It’ll be a lot easier if we wait till the end of the fair, when they’ll be less afraid of retaliation. And if Randall and I can talk the rest of the fair committee into dumping Clay County from next year’s fair.”

  “That last idea has my vote,” the chief said. “And I’ll see if our sheriff has any suggestions about how to handle the situation. He’s been jousting with Sheriff Dingle a darn sight longer than I have. Might have some good insights.”

  “As long as they’re not old buddies.”

  “They most definitely are not,” he said. “In fact, the only times I can recollect our sheriff using intemperate language were a few occasions when he had to deal with his Clay County counterpart. Keep me posted if you find a witness willing to talk.”

  With that we hung up, and I headed back to the sheep barn.
r />   I found Michael and Rob trying to swaddle Groucho with what seemed like several acres of hot-pink polyester fabric festooned with matching feathers. Groucho wasn’t spitting at them, which I’d have been tempted to do if I were a llama in his situation, but he wasn’t cooperating one bit.

  “What on earth are you trying to do to the poor beast?” I asked.

  “Get his costume on,” Rob said. “We’re going as pink flamingos.”

  “Both of you?”

  “From what I’ve seen, the judges really go for it when the llama and his handler have coordinated costumes,” Rob said.

  Michael held up what appeared to be a jumpsuit made of the same garish pink polyester and feathers—presumably Rob’s costume. His mouth was twitching as if he were having a hard time not bursting out laughing.

  “Awesome.” I resorted to Rob’s favorite word. I probably giggled a little as I said it.

  “It’s not awesome yet,” Rob said. “It’s a mess. And we only have forty-five minutes till show time”

  “Let me try.”

  It took nearly all of the forty-five minutes, but Michael and I got both Groucho and Rob into their flamingo suits. Then we glued on all the feathers that had come off in the struggle. Groucho made a rather odd-shaped four-legged flamingo, so I improvised a second flamingo head out of surplus polyester and feathers, and attached it to the middle of his back. It bobbed and nodded as he walked, an effect I hoped the judges would find as comical as Michael and I did.

  “Cool!” Rob said. “Now there are three of us!”

  I’d have felt completely ridiculous doing all of this if not for the fact that throughout the barn, other llama and alpaca owners were stuffing their darlings into equally ridiculous costumes.

  When we finally had the flamingos ready, Michael and I collected the boys from the nearby pen where they’d been napping, and we all set off for the show ring.

  There were more llamas competing in the costume contest than there had been in the obedience trials. Did people really enjoy dressing up their llamas—and themselves? Or was it merely easier than obedience training?

  There were several llamas dressed in brightly colored serapes and sombreros, to pay homage to their South American roots. One golden-brown one was rigged out as a bumblebee, completed with black stripes on his body and huge gossamer wings. One exhibitor dressed each of his four llamas and one alpaca in the uniform of a different branch of the armed forces. I hoped no one in the audience took offense at the fact that he chose the diminutive alpaca to wear the Marine dress blues—although from what I could see, the alpaca was certainly the feistiest of the five. And there were the bride and groom llamas. A dragon llama being led by a helmeted Viking. A llama dressed as Santa, pulling a small, present-filled sleigh. A headless horseman llama. A QE2 llama led by his tugboat owner. A llama dressed in a black-and-white–striped prison suit, dragging a Styrofoam ball and chain behind him. A llama dressed as a bunch of grapes, featuring dozens of purple balloons.

  Michael and the boys and I cheered Rob on to a third-place ribbon, behind the bumblebee and the bunch of grapes. I decided not to depress Rob by saying that they probably wouldn’t have placed at all without the third head bobbing maniacally on Groucho’s back.

  “Silly judges,” Josh said, when we met Rob outside the ring. “Groucho is the best llama.”

  “Yeah, but your uncle Rob isn’t the best costume designer,” Rob said. “Meg, you think next time you could help me plan it? Your head totally won us the yellow. Maybe if we’d enlisted you earlier, we’d have scored a first.”

  “I have some ideas,” I said. “Let’s talk after the fair is over.”

  “Awesome!” Rob turned to the boys. “Come on, junior llama wranglers. Let’s go back to the barn and celebrate. But you’ve got to help me hold on to Groucho.”

  He waved and strolled off with both boys clinging fiercely to the lead rope.

  “Do you really have time to take up llama costuming?” Michael asked.

  “No, but if I play my cards right, I can get Mother interested in it,” I said. “And if she balks, I can probably enlist Rose Noire.”

  “Good plan,” he said. “Incidentally, Rob agreed to babysit for a few hours if I helped him with Groucho’s costume, so now we have some time off. Want to go someplace nice for dinner?”

  I didn’t even have to think about it.

  “No,” I said, with a sigh. “We’d have to clean up and drive somewhere and mind our manners while we wait for our food. I don’t have the energy for that. I just want to go over to the Midway and have an Italian sausage topped with a mountain of onions and green peppers and then skulk around for a while to see if I can catch any of the Clay County deputies in the act of extorting from the Midway vendors.”

  Michael blinked.

  “Okay,” he said. “I like those Italian sausages, too, and I have to admit it will be easier. But do you seriously suspect the Clay County deputies of committing extortion, or have they just been getting on your nerves lately?”

  “Both, actually. I’ll fill you in on the way there.”

  By the time we reached the Italian sausage booth, Michael was just as outraged at Deputy Plunkett as I was. Just as outraged, but a lot less sanguine about our chances of bringing him to justice.

  “You can’t solve everyone’s problems, you know,” he said, as we strolled along, trying not to wolf down our sausages.

  “Right now, it feels as if I can’t solve anyone’s problems.”

  “You’ve helped Molly.”

  “I’ve helped her find a divorce attorney and a defense attorney,” I said. “I wish I could find a way to help her that wasn’t going to cost her a lot of money. I can’t track down the missing chickens. Chief Burke would have my head if I tried to barge into his murder investigation. But this I might be able to do something about.”

  So we strolled up and down, chatting up the vendors as we bought food and played games. Michael won a stuffed penguin. We spent way too much money trying to win a matching one before giving up and deciding to give it to Rose Noire, who was fond of penguins.

  We didn’t find any carnies ready to give evidence against Plunkett and the other rogue Clay County deputies, but we did find a few people who said they’d think about it. We got a lesson from a friendly barker on which games were least stacked against the customer, and a tutorial on running the Ferris wheel from the carny in charge of it. I took dozens of dramatic shots of the nighttime Midway—especially the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round—for possible use on the fair Web site. At about eleven or so, we both hit the wall.

  “I think that’s as far as we’ll get tonight,” Michael said. “And I just had a horrible thought—are we going on patrol after this?”

  “No,” I said. “I gave us the night off. After all, we were up most of last night.”

  “Not to mention how you’ve been running yourself ragged all day.” Michael stifled a yawn. “But who’s going to supervise the patrols?”

  “Vern,” I said. “Who is also off duty tonight, but doesn’t mind having an excuse for hanging around.”

  “Good man. Want to split a funnel cake before we head back to the barn?”

  “You’re on,” I said. “But you’re going the wrong way—funnel cake’s this way.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I was. And I was right. By now, I had a pretty good mental map of the Midway in my mind. It was actually pretty small: three rough lanes lined with booths and rides, anchored at one end by the merry-go-round and on the other—the end farthest from the fence—by the Ferris wheel. Either by accident or design, the lanes were crooked enough that you couldn’t see all the way up or down any of them. The little zigs and zags meant you were constantly turning the corner to see new vistas, and gave the impression the place was a lot bigger.

  Michael was impressed that I led him unerringly to the funnel cake concession. I thought it was a lot more impressive that I could, if asked, tell you exactly what, if anything
, we’d learned from every carny we’d talked to and where they stood on the question of testifying against Plunkett. Ringtoss? Played dumb. Taco stand? Mad as hell but afraid of talking. Funnel cake? Thinking about it.

  I’d figured out that some of the booths were owned by the company we’d hired and staffed by their employees, while others were independent contractors. The independents seemed more willing to consider speaking up—probably because they could choose not to come back to an event in Clay County, while the employees might have no way to refuse an assignment if they wanted to keep their jobs. Would it help if I contacted the company and let them know what I suspected? I decided to talk it over with Randall first.

  Michael and I saved a small bit of funnel cake in case the boys spotted the telltale splashes of powdered sugar and demanded their share. When we arrived back at the barn, we found that Rob had already tucked them in bed in our stall. We let them nibble their bits of funnel cake as a bedtime snack, and after a quick toothbrushing, they drifted off to sleep, with Spike and Tinkerbell curled up beside them and the llamas leaning over the fence to watch.

  Then we tried to settle down ourselves. As usual, Michael dropped off to sleep almost immediately. I lay there, listening to his not-quite-snores and the quiet breathing of the boys, the dogs, the llamas, and the countless sheep in the stalls surrounding us. My eyelids were so heavy I couldn’t keep them up. My body ached with tiredness. My brain was foggy from lack of sleep.

  Why couldn’t I sleep?

  I tried to toss and turn quietly, to avoid waking all the sleepers around me. I lay there, thinking about the events of the day. No, not thinking: fretting.

  “This isn’t going to work,” I told myself.

  I got up and tore a page out of my notebook. I scribbled “Checking on the patrols,” on it and put it on my pillow, so Michael would see it if he woke and not worry. Then I set out to walk the fair.

  Chapter 32

  I ran into some of my patrol volunteers almost immediately, just outside the pig barn. I turned on my flashlight and saw that three of them had arranged folding lawn chairs in a semicircle around a large cooler. They all had beers in their hands and their feet propped up on the cooler.