The Hen of the Baskervilles (11 page)

“We're taking every precaution to make sure that all the exhibits are safe,” I said. “I've been inspecting all the buildings this morning, and apart from the three initial incidents, we've had no other reports of any kind of theft or vandalism—not so much as a pea in the produce tent.”

“My wife's in the craft barn—she spins the fleeces into wool and exhibits the skeins—and she heard about that poor woman whose quilt was vandalized.”

Aha. If Romeldales had fleeces, odds were they were sheep.

“We've got extra security there as well. And—are your Romeldales in the main sheep barn?”

He nodded. Sheep, then.

“My husband and I are there ourselves,” I said. “We're camping out with our llamas, and helping our next-door neighbor keep an eye on his Lincolns.”

To anyone else, I would have said Lincoln sheep, but someone who kept one heritage sheep breed had probably heard of the others—and if he hadn't, he could get a taste of how confused the rest of us were at all the heritage breed name-dropping.

“We're going to have volunteer patrols out tonight, and they'll be organized out of our end of the sheep barn,” I went on. “So while I wouldn't brag about it to the cow or pig people, the sheep will get a little bit of extra protection.”

He departed, much calmer. But by the time I'd finished reassuring him, the morose man in the blue windbreaker had disappeared.

I turned and headed for the show office, but I ran into Randall halfway there.

“Mother's dealing with Genette,” I said. “Have you seen this?”

I handed Randall Shiffley the flyer for the Virginia Agricultural Exposition. He frowned thunderously.

“No,” he said. “But I've heard about it. That Brett Riordan fellow has been handing them out to all the exhibitors.”

“Do you think it's a threat?” I asked “To the Un-fair, I mean.”

He pondered a moment, then shook his head. It wasn't a “no” kind of shake, more like “who knows?”

“Doesn't look like one to me,” he said. “But I might be too close to the whole thing. I don't think it's going over that big with the farmers. Riordan doesn't know beans about farming. Someone asked him if the events at his fair were going to be FFV-endorsed and he didn't even know it stood for Future Farmers of Virginia. But I understand he's connected to the wine community. If the winemakers come in big on his event, it could be trouble for us.”

“His only connection is that he's dating a winemaker that every other winemaker in the state hates,” I said. “So the smart money says the winemakers will be staying away in droves.”

“Let's hope it turns out that way.”

“I think it will,” I said. “Remember how Mother convinced us we needed to get the best possible wine judges and put them up in the Caerphilly Inn?”

“I hope it was worth it,” he said.

“It will be.” I explained the winemakers' distrust of Genette's intentions, and Mother's decision to recruit nationally known judges.

“How do the official state fair's wine judges measure up to ours?” Randall asked.

“They might be as good, but they can't possibly be better.”

“Great,” he said. “Well, I'm off to pick up that country singer.”

“Now?” I looked at my watch. “I thought she wasn't performing until this evening.”

“Taking her over to the college to do a radio interview,” Randall said. “Apparently she's a little cranky about being in a town without a Starbucks, and I'm going to see if having the mayor himself as a chauffeur impresses her much. You're in charge.”

He ambled off, head swiveling to check out every detail as he passed.

No doubt some emergency would crop up as soon as he left, but in the meantime, I decided to drop by the poultry barns to see how things were going there. Earlier, the mood had been tense and anxious in all three barns, but I was hoping now that the fair had begun and admiring visitors were thronging the tents, things would have calmed down.

And that seemed to be the case in the duck barn. People were feeding and grooming their own ducks, inspecting each other's ducks, and trading bits of duck-related advice and gossip.

“—don't take his word for it—he wouldn't know a Buff Orpington from a Muscovy—”

“—you need to adjust their feed—they need a lot more protein when they're laying—”

“—I always use a broody hen—I just don't think you give the poor ducklings a proper start when you stick the eggs under an incubator—”

“—she's going to let me know when she starts selling some of the ducklings—”

“—sounds as if you need to worm them—”

“—yes, but the eggs are
supposed
to be that color in a Cayuga—”

I had to admit that the variety of ducks in the barn was an eye opener to someone who'd grown up knowing only fuzzy yellow ducklings and fluffy white ducks. There were plenty of ordinary white domestic ducks, but also beige ducks, brown ducks, black ducks, iridescent beetle-green ducks, blue-and-white ducks, and ducks whose color I would have described as “brown tweed,” although I doubted that was the official term.

I paused to admire a display of ducklings that was a popular attraction for the children attending the fair. The ducklings seemed to be having a great time, swimming around in a little pool, climbing out, waddling up a long, shallow ramp, and then sliding down a slide to land in the pool again with a plop.

“I should bring my kids to watch this,” I said to a woman leading a little girl not much older than Josh and Jamie.

“Only if you want to have them nag you for the next year about getting their own ducklings,” she said.

“We could keep them in our tub,” the little girl said. “They'd like it in our tub.”

The woman rolled her eyes. She had a point. Did I really want to take care of ducks on top of five llamas, two toddlers, two dogs, and a husband?

But they were cute. Maybe I could talk Dad into getting some ducks.

The goose and turkey barn was also—well, not exactly calm. If you stood in the middle of the tent, you could hear a deafening chorus of honking from one end and frenzied gobbling from the other. But the human inhabitants were busy and cheerful, if a little too ready to brag about their charges.

I heard several goose owners asserting that their birds weren't ill-tempered and noisy and didn't produce copious amounts of manure, while nearby other goose fanciers were touting their geese as expert sentinels and extolling the lush state their lawns could achieve when fertilized by geese.

The heritage breed turkey fanciers all seemed inordinately proud of the fact that their birds were all capable of breeding without artificial insemination. Or maybe they were just relieved.

“You mean every single turkey we see in the grocery store is a test-tube turkey?” one visitor was asking. “There must be millions of them!”

“Over two hundred and fifty million last year alone,” the heirloom turkey breeder replied. “And every single one of them a turkey-baster turkey, so to speak.”

“That seems like a lot of work for something so … so…”

“So easy for my birds to do without any help whatsoever from me,” the farmer said.

The women held out her hand for a flyer on how to order an heirloom turkey for Thanksgiving.

I didn't need a flyer. I had all the turkey breeders' names and addresses in my Un-fair files.

“But how do they do it?” the woman asked.

I decided this wasn't something I wanted to hear about, so I moved on to the chicken tent.

As soon as I stepped inside, I realized that the chicken tent was still seething with tension and anxiety. Maybe it was understandable, since they were the ones who'd actually been hit by the thieves. But I was hoping that seeing the police hard at work on the investigation, together with the news of our patrols, would help.

Alas, no. As I looked around, I could see people walking around with their shoulders hunched tensely. People starting when someone came up behind them. People frowning or snapping at each other. Even the chickens were not cackling and clucking and crowing with the same carefree abandon they'd displayed yesterday, during the setting up, before the cruel abduction of two of their number.

I looked around to find the volunteer in charge of the tent. The new volunteer, now that Mr. Dauber had been exiled to the far end of the parking lot.

“How's it going?” I asked.

“You have no idea,” she said.

“Actually, looking around, maybe I do,” I said. “Seems even gloomier than it was this morning. I'd have thought everyone would have calmed down by now.”

“I think they would have if not for the Bellinghams,” she said.

“The Bellinghams?” Probably yet another heritage breed whose owners would be mortally insulted if I didn't pretend I'd heard of it. I was fishing in my pocket for the list of breeds I'd printed from the American Livestock Breed Conservancy's Web site. “What's wrong with—oh! You mean the people whose Russian Orloff bantams were stolen? They're the Bonnevilles.”

“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “If they'd just go home already, I think the mood would pick up.”

“Home? I thought they were down at the hospital.”

“They insisted on coming back to the fair,” she said. “Against your father's orders. He's still trying to talk them into going back to the hospital for more tests. But they have one chicken left, and they don't trust anyone else to guard it. I gather it was sick with something last night, and Mrs. Bell—Mrs. Bonneville was nursing it back to health in their trailer, or it probably would have been stolen with the others. So unfortunately they're back, at least until after their chicken competes.”

“Unfortunately?” Was it just my imagination, or did I detect a distinct note of hostility in her voice. What was going on here? A severe case of “blame the victim” or something else?

“Sorry,” she said. “I know I don't sound very sympathetic. It's just that—well, see for yourself.”

She led me down the aisles and then stopped, looked around rather furtively, and then indicated something to our right.

In the middle of the bank of wire cages were two cages decorated with giant black bows at least a yard wide, with trailing ends that drooped onto the sawdust floor. Between the two decorated cages, and almost hidden by the bows, was a third cage, in which a small black-and-brown hen was sitting. I recognized the bird Mrs. Bonneville had been holding so tightly this morning.

“Good grief,” I muttered.

“Excessive grief if you ask me,” the volunteer said. “I know they love their chickens—I love mine. But if I went around the bend every time a fox got one—that'd be crazy.”

“Besides, we don't know that they're dead,” I said. “Or gone for good. I think the police are seriously pursuing the theory that someone stole them to build up his own flock of Orloffs. Which means the thief would take good care of them, and there's a good chance the chief will catch him and the Bell—the Bonnevilles will get their Orloffs back.”

“Yeah, but in the meantime they're determined to make everyone else feel their pain,” she said. “If you think the cages are over the top, get a load of that—”

I turned to see what she was pointing at, and saw the diminutive figures of the Bonnevilles walking slowly down the aisle. He was wearing a dark gray suit with a black armband on his right sleeve and was leaning heavily on a cane. She was dressed all in black, complete with a veiled black hat, and was leaning on his arm in a way that seemed ill-advised unless the cane was purely for effect.

“Did they bring those funeral outfits with them, I wonder?”

“Apparently they stopped off to pick up a few things in town,” she said. “If you talk to them—”

“I don't plan to if I can help it,” I said.

“Don't ask them whether their birds were microchipped.” She rolled her eyes again. “No idea why, but the question totally freaks them.”

“I saw what happened when Vern Shiffley asked them about that,” I said. “I have no intention of causing an encore.”

“Did he really have a heart attack?”

“Not according to Dad. Possible cardiac arrhythmia. Or maybe just a panic attack.”

“Not the way he tells it.” She shook her head. “And before you ask, I have no idea why the idea of microchipping would bring on a coronary. Or a panic attack. Heck, I've been wondering if you're allowed to do it to children. Wouldn't that be nice?”

“I'm waiting till they get a GPS feature, so you can always tell where they are,” I said. “Maybe the Bonnevilles decided not to microchip the birds and are mad at themselves.”

“Could be,” the volunteer said. “Or maybe if their birds are microchipped, they're afraid the thief will find out and destroy them if he thinks he's about to get caught with them. Either way, if you value your sanity, don't bring up microchipping.”

“Got it,” I said. “I need to run.”

“Wish I could,” the volunteer grumbled.

I wasn't actually fleeing the tent to avoid the Bonne-villes. An idea had struck me. I hurried over to the fair office, made sure it was empty, and pulled out my cell phone.

 

Chapter 14

I called Stanley Denton, a private investigator who'd recently relocated to Caerphilly.

“I know, I know,” he said, as he answered his phone.

“You know what?” I asked.

“I assume you're nagging me because I haven't shown up yet to support the fair. I promise, I'll be there with bells on soon. Maybe tomorrow, certainly by Saturday. I've been stuck up in Culpeper on a case, but it's all over now but the paperwork.”

That's good,” I said. “Because Saturday is the pie competition. You need to be here to cheer Muriel on to victory.”