Eleven Little Piggies (16 page)

Benny mostly gnawed on his new plastic soothing device for the rest of the evening and made do with only occasional bouts of wailing. ‘Maybe we should get another one of these things,' Trudy said, rinsing the drool-covered plastic before putting it back in the freezer for a quick chill, ‘to take to Maxine's house.'

‘Oh, indeed,' I said. ‘Let's buy half a dozen and we'll carry them around with us in a cooler.'

By his bedtime, Trudy decreed Benny was eligible for a low-dose aspirin and I gladly fetched it.

‘Just think,' she sighed as he finally quit twitching and drifted off to sleep, ‘this tooth is only the first of twenty.'

‘All the same to you I'm going to try not to think about that,' I said. And neither one of us did, very much, because we went to bed early and fell asleep as we pulled the covers up.

 

People Crimes detectives clustered around Ray's table Wednesday morning, antsy and anxious to finish debriefing and get on with the day's work.

Partly, they didn't want to talk about yesterday's domestic disturbance – it was brutal and sordid and they all felt bad about the children involved. The social workers who were getting handed most of the follow-up work grumbled that it was very hard to place kids anywhere during Thanksgiving week, and they thought better policing could have prevented much of this. My cops reported giving them level stares and saying, ‘Easy for you to say.'

‘Oh, hell,' I said. ‘Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, isn't it? I don't have time for that this week.'

Andy, who had spent a couple of hours getting a bellowing Dad into a jail cell at the cost of several patches of his own skin, said, ‘I do. I want to give thanks for good ear plugs and sturdy belly chains.'

Winnie described her late-afternoon visit to the farm. ‘Doris was schooling a horse when I got there and she said, “I can't stop in the middle of this but if you can wait a few minutes I'll give you your list”. So I watched.'

Winnie's normally stoical face lit up. ‘She was teaching a young gelding to change leads in a straight line.'

‘How do you know? You mean you ride horses too?'

‘Well, not lately, but . . . when I was in grade school one of those charities decided to offer riding lessons to underprivileged kids and I qualified. My grandmother had grave doubts about letting me go out in the country and muck around with huge dangerous beasts, but I talked her into it and I really loved it.

‘I have to say, though, I never thought of horseback riding as an art form before. But that Doris is so skilled – she sat on that horse like an elegant statue while he trotted around the arena several times, getting more and more – I think they call it collected. Then he cantered across the central space on the right lead and I swear I never saw her do anything, but in the middle of the ring he twitched his ears, and as if she'd thrown a switch he was leading with his left front foot. And you know what? After that smooth-as-silk move they were both sweating.'

Ray, who didn't understand or approve of Winnie's fascination with Doris, watched her carefully for a few seconds before he said, ‘But then you got the list?'

She gave him her Yellow Peril look. ‘Yes. Here.' She slapped a list down in front of him, and read it out for the rest of us. ‘One full-time housekeeper and two part-time kitchen helpers, one foreman and three field hands on Home Farm, a manager and two full-time assistants on the dairy place, and one manager, that's Matt, on River Farm – he gets along with no help except during haying, when they hire transient workers or send somebody from the other two places.'

‘So eleven and Doris makes an even dozen. And we've talked to three of them.'

‘If you count Maynard, but he's evidently been fired.'

‘All the more reason to talk to him some more if you can find him.'

‘And there are two new employees now,' Winnie said, ‘but I don't think we need to interview guards, do you?'

‘If they just got there? No. What are they guarding?'

‘Oh . . . Doris started thinking about the “new vulnerabilities” – I think that's how she said it. She's worried that all the stories in the paper about crimes at the farm will attract other bad people – that people will start thinking she's just a sitting duck out there. Henry's worried about it too, so they've hired two people from a security service to walk around the place at night. Watching for prowlers is how she says it. I suppose she likes that better than calling them murderers.'

‘Call it whatever she likes, I'm glad she's started to go proactive. I've been worrying about it too. Now, back to our twelve current employees. Can you and Rosie do them today?'

They both nodded happily – Winnie and Rosie love working together. I once asked Rosie why and she said, ‘We get the job done with no fuss. People see two small women, look right past the shields and think, “Harmless”. They let their guard down and tell us stuff.'

People would be well-advised to put their guards back up. Rosie has a black belt in Tai Kwon Do: she can break a board with her foot. Winnie does kick-boxing and runs marathons and has a wall full of swimming medals. It's good they get along and don't compete with each other.

‘There's another curious thing that keeps happening to me on that farm,' Winnie said. ‘That son of Doris's, the one who doesn't talk?'

‘Yeah, what about him?'

‘Maybe it's just because of my grandmother,' she said. ‘We didn't have very many words in common, so we learned to communicate a lot with body language. And after I noticed that boy Alan following me around . . . he wasn't getting in my way or anything, just kind of shadowing . . . I sort of started talking to him with my eyes, and he caught right on to that.'

‘How do you know?'

‘He showed me . . . a couple of things.'

‘What things?'

‘He saw me looking in the horse stalls, you know . . . I was wondering how the hay gets delivered to the horses, they all had full racks . . . and he climbed up on one and pushed open a trapdoor, so I could see there's a chute that comes down from the haymow. I think he knows how that whole place works.'

‘Well, good,' Ray said. ‘Did he show you the haymow, too?'

‘No, but I think I can get him to.'

‘OK,' Ray said, not very interested. He's told me lately he thinks Winnie's approach to detective work is a little too ‘woo-woo', that ‘she seems to rely on instinct too much'.

‘Also on being incredibly fast and strong,' I said, ‘think how she ran into that river last spring to rescue Rosie.'

‘Yeah, that was something, all right. I'd like her to be a little more . . . systematic, though.'

‘Give her time,' I said. ‘The system itself will teach her that.'

Now he said, a little impatient, ‘Who's next?'

Clint said, ‘I found my milk hauler. His name is Dusty Rhodes, can you beat that?' Clint's smile indicated he liked Dusty almost as much as Maynard. ‘He plays bass guitar in a country band. He's had five wives and he's not exactly sure how many children he can legitimately claim. Says he knows every roadhouse and honkey-tonk between here and the Florida panhandle. His information's a little stale on the saloons, though, because this last wife looks like a keeper so he's trying to hang onto this day job and stay home nights.'

Ray said, with exaggerated patience, ‘Did you get around to talking about the accident at all?'

‘Sure. He feels really bad about it, because he likes animals. And the people on that farm, he said, were very likeable too. They understood the horses were just crossing the road in the dark, so when he came around that sharp curve by the gate he had no time to stop. He drives that route regularly and knows the road, but that morning he had no good choices.'

‘The time – did you get a timeline for all this?'

‘Absolutely. That was the easy part, because Dusty's company requires them to stay in touch electronically and report any glitches as soon as they happen. He just brought up his email and showed me. He sent word about hitting the horses at four-eleven a.m. and reported he was on his way again at five-twenty-five a.m.'

‘And that's all going to be in your field notes?'

‘You got it.'

‘OK. About the sheriff's deputy—'

‘I got a date with him, I'm going there next. Steve Hanrahan, did I tell you that?' He looked at his watch. ‘I should be back by ten o'clock so whatever you want after that, I can do it.'

‘Good. Now, Andy?'

‘Back to the farm. I found Charlie and Elmer yesterday – they're willing to talk.' He showed us his you-can't-make-this-up smile. ‘They're more than happy to have me come back today. They want to hear all about the fight we were called away to.'

‘Fine. Keep them entertained and pick their brains.' Ray looked around the table. ‘Do we all see a connection between the horse accident and Owen's death?'

‘Sure,' Andy said, ‘the fence was cut. Somebody wanted all hands out on the road.' All the detectives nodded.

‘I agree,' Ray said. ‘I thought at first we should look for a robbery at one of the farms and consider Owen's death an unintended consequence. But I asked Doris to have her most trusted hands looking for missing items and they haven't reported anything.' He frowned. ‘If this was a plan, though, it's hard to see – you'd think having everybody up running around would make it impossible to plan anything. Well,' he slapped his notebook shut and stood up, ‘let's roll.'

When they had all charged out, Ray said he was going to read through the case history he'd compiled so far, make lists for the next few days' work and see if he could spot a clever plan in there somewhere.

I was due at a planning meeting with the chief and the city council, an event I approach with about the same enthusiasm I give to a root canal. What's the use planning for a department where anything can happen and usually does? But I was there to back up the chief in defense of our budget, about which the city fathers have a favorite verb: cut. So I went along and blew away an hour explaining why police cars need gas and why law enforcement weapons work best with frequent testing and plenty of ammo. Before it was over, I had begun to long for a teething ring.

Back at my desk, I encountered the usual blinking phone, fought down an impulse to ignore it for a while and then was glad I answered, because Ray's voice on the tape sounded anxious. ‘I've got two things happening at once. Can you help me?'

I trotted right over, glad of a chance to do something useful with the rest of my morning.

‘Rosie called from the farm,' he said. ‘Said all hell's breaking loose out there. Doris and Matt are having a fight.'

‘Doris and— I thought they were the two who got along.'

‘I think they did till now. But yesterday when she fired that hand that Clint likes so much – what's his name? Maynard – apparently he went running to Matt and Matt hired him back. I guess Matt thought he could keep him hidden at River Farm, but Doris sent one of the other hands, Elmer, over there for a load of hay and this morning she heard Elmer laughing, telling one of her kitchen helpers, “Guess who showed up to help me load that hay!” Now she's got Matt on the phone telling him – Rosie says you can hear her all over the farm – “I'm not going to have this!” Doris says Maynard is going to go, that's all there is to it, and if Matt interferes with her again he's going to go too.'

‘Wow.'

‘Yeah, wow is right. Rosie said, “What do you want us to do? Nobody wants to talk to us right now; they're all afraid of saying something that will get them fired.”

‘And just then LeeAnn sticks her head in and says Henry Kester just called her, said he was on his way in here, and hung up. Remember how he had to take his wife home all of a sudden but he said he'd be back? Well, today he's coming back.

‘And right after
that
Clint called and said the fight is spreading to the help now. He thinks I better send a couple more cops out there because they might need some help. But you know Henry Kester is not going to take kindly to waiting. So could you talk to him? I know he's not easy, but I'd like to go out to that farm, see for myself what's shaking.'

‘Of course,' I said. ‘Go ahead. Don't worry about Henry,' I told his gloomier-than-usual face. ‘I've been yelled at before.'

But Henry Kester, when he walked slowly off the elevator, did not seem at all aggressive. Grief had hollowed him out. He looked like a dry husk that any wind might topple.

I explained that Ray had been called away. I made up an errand since I didn't want to tell him my chief investigative officer was hurrying to a fight at his farm.

He just asked quietly, ‘You going to tell me what happened to my boy?'

‘I'll tell you what we know,' I said. ‘It's not enough yet.'

‘Fair enough,' he said, and sat down in my visitor's chair. He was too big for it, overlapped it, shrugged his jacket and shuffled his feet till he got settled.

I thought it would be too cruel to put him on one of the tiny seats in an interview room, so I decided I could live without the video and turned on my desk recorder. ‘I have to record this conversation, OK?'

He flapped a hand at it indifferently and said, ‘Fine.'

I explained to him the curious coincidence by which I happened to be at the goose-hunting field on the day Owen's body was found there. Then I took him carefully through the autopsy that showed us the birdshot in his son's body was not the steel shot that waterfowl hunters were allowed to use, and reviewed as gently as I could what we'd told him before – the evidence that indicated the body had been moved.

He stayed with me through all of it, squinting and wincing here and there but not turning away – determined to learn as much of the truth as he could.