The Silence of the Llamas (11 page)

a
s Matt got ready to leave for his office the next morning, Lucy could tell he was still thinking about the horrific scene at the Kruegers’ farm last night. They both were.

Lucy sipped her first mug of coffee, staring out at the small yard behind the cottage.

Low gray clouds filled the sky, and a light rain fell. Gusts of wind blew handfuls of wet, dappled leaves to the ground, covering the garden and lawn behind the cottage.

Lucy wondered if Matt would have to go out to the farm again today, when the animal control unit collected the llama’s body. She imagined a dismal scene—the wet, muddy pasture; rain splashing the blue tarp and probably washing away most of the evidence the detectives might find in the field today.

She turned when he came in the kitchen but didn’t ask him about it. Just watched as he poured a pile of bran flakes in a bowl and filled his travel mug with coffee.

“I have my knitting group tonight.” He crunched down on
his cereal, standing up, staring into space. She wondered if he’d even heard her.

“I remember. I’m going to work late and catch up on some paperwork,” he said between spoonfuls of cereal. “Guess it’s just me and the dogs . . . and some takeout. We’ll carry on bravely without you for a few hours,” he added in a mock-serious tone.

He smiled down at Tink and Walley, who sat side by side under the kitchen table. They answered with looks of adoration and beat their tails on the floor.

Lucy laughed. “I’m sure you’ll all be fine. Do you have to go back to the Kruegers’ farm today?”

“Gee, I hope not.” He looked somber for a moment and placed his empty bowl in the sink, then turned to her, his expression relaxed. “Thanks for coming with me last night. It was a pretty nasty scene. You really hung in there.”

His warm words pleased her. But she made light of her part. “You don’t have to thank me. I didn’t help much.”

He stood in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. “You always help me. Just by being there. And being . . . Lucy.” He gave her a hug and kissed her good-bye. Heading out the door, he added, “Get cracking on that vest, slacker. That was supposed to be my birthday present.”

That was true. Matt’s birthday was back in September. She was only a month off, so far. He might get it for Christmas at this rate, she calculated, but didn’t tell him that.

Once Matt left, she took care of her morning chores, skipping a dog walk into town due to the rain and a deadline on her current project, the graphic design of a children’s book about
farm animals. Thankfully, there were no llamas grazing on these pages. Just the usual collection of chickens, cows, and a horse or two. Once she got into her office, she felt distracted again, thinking of the sad twilight scene at the Kruegers’ place, a different story entirely.

Lucy knew her friends would be mad if she didn’t toss them at least a scrap of news before the meeting. She dashed off a group note just to put it out of her mind and get on with her day.

Dear All:

You’ll probably hear this from Ellie, or it might even be in the newspaper today. There was another strange event at the Kruegers’ farm last night. A violent one too. One of the llamas was stabbed, at about dusk. They called Matt, but by the time we got there it was too late. The Kruegers called the police. Finally. Maybe they’ll get to the bottom of it. If Ellie comes tonight, she’ll tell us more.

See you later—xo Lucy

P.S. to Maggie: I still have very weak character . . . and a very big tangle in my argyle project. Just warning you.

The weather had cleared by the time Lucy arrived in the village that night. Patches of night sky and a nearly full moon could be seen behind the branches of tall trees along Main Street. Lucy parked her Jeep across from the shop and spotted Dana’s and Suzanne’s cars parked nearby. Ellie’s car was not there, she noticed, and Lucy wondered if she was coming.

“Last but not least, as usual.” Maggie greeted her from the back of the shop as she walked in. Her friends were assembled
around the long oak worktable, with their knitting projects out and glasses of wine at hand.

“What did you bring for dessert?” Maggie asked curiously as Lucy shrugged out of her knitted wrap.

“It was my turn? You’re kidding . . . right?”

Maggie bit her lower lip. Suzanne put her knitting down and groaned.

Phoebe rolled her eyes and let out a moan. “Really?”

She managed to drag the word out to at least five syllables, Lucy noticed.

Dana was the only one who didn’t miss a beat in her stitching. She peered over her reading glasses, looking amused. “I have a few dried-fruit-and-nut bars in the car in my gym bag, if that helps. Gluten-free,” she noted.

“Yum-my. Let me at ’em.” Suzanne stuck out her tongue.

Lucy laughed then, too. “Of course I didn’t forget. I was just teasing. I can see now you’d probably banish me.”

“Not forever. Just a month or two. To teach you a lesson.” Suzanne collected herself and focused on her knitting again.

“You ought to be banished a little while for terrifying us. Some joke.” Phoebe set a stack of dishes on the sideboard alongside a pile of flatware rolled in linen napkins.

“I think the sentence depends on what she brought us.” Maggie walked in from the storeroom, following her assistant with a large covered pot. As she placed it on the sideboard next to the dishes, an appetizing aroma wafted in Lucy’s direction. She was curious to see what was for dinner.

“Carrot muffins with cream cheese frosting.” Lucy glanced
around to gauge her friends’ reactions. “I used carrots I bought on Saturday at a farm stand.”

“You are absolved,” Maggie announced regally. “Just put them somewhere safe and we’ll start on dinner.”

Lucy put the muffins away, then settled into her place at the worktable.

She took out her knitting and glanced at Maggie. “Is Ellie coming tonight?”

“She’d planned on it, but she just called a few minutes ago. She and Ben are still upset over the incident last night and were dealing with the police again today. She’s feeling drained and didn’t want to leave Ben alone.”

Dana looked up from her project, a long striped scarf. “This probably isn’t the last of it, either, if the police are investigating now.”

“Finally,” Suzanne said. “Too bad a poor llama had to get slaughtered before they called the police in.”

“Ellie regrets that now. She can see that they should have called sooner. I don’t have much experience with llamas. But I hear they can be very nice pets. Very sweet and playful,” Maggie said as she looked over her stitches. “That makes it a little worse, don’t you think? I mean, they had a real connection to the animal. Like a pet dog or something.”

“That’s true, Maggie. Emotional bonds with animals are very strong. Animals love us unconditionally, even when we don’t deserve it. And Ellie and Ben are not such experienced farmers yet that they’re used to losing livestock,” Dana noted.

“That’s what Matt said, too,” Lucy recalled from their conversation at home last night.

Maggie looked over at her. “Tell us what happened, Lucy. Ellie didn’t really go into the details, and I didn’t want to press her. One of the llamas was stabbed, out in the pasture?”

Suzanne had taken a skein of red yarn from her bag and was rolling it into a ball. She was making a sweater for her fourteen-year-old daughter, Alexis, who was very particular about her appearance these days. Suzanne predicted the teenager would probably not even wear the sweater when it was finished, even though she had personally selected the pattern and yarn.

“Did it die right away?” Suzanne asked quietly.

“It bled to death. Matt tried to save her, but by the time we got there it was too late. The stab wound was in the shoulder and shouldn’t have been life-threatening. But he said it was deep and severed an artery. There’s going to be an autopsy,” Lucy added.

“Animals are autopsied? I didn’t know that.” Suzanne looked up in surprise.

“It’s done by the county’s animal control center,” Lucy explained as she pulled the dreaded argyle project out of her bag. “They test wild animals, like raccoons, for diseases. Pet owners can request autopsies, too, if a dog or a cat dies unexpectedly or for some suspicious reason. The officer who came to the farm last night said it’s a felony to maliciously harm livestock. Whoever did it could go to a jail for a few years.”

“They should be locked up forever. It’s like killing a person. Almost worse, when you think how defenseless that poor llama was.” Phoebe looked angry, and her eyes were glossy, as if she was about to cry.

Dana took a pack of tissues from her bag and handed them
over. “I’m glad to hear Ellie and Ben finally called the police. It’s about time. They reported all the incidents, I’m assuming?”

“Yes, they did. A detective was coming by today to interview them and search the property for evidence. Did Ellie mention anything about that to you, Maggie?” Lucy asked.

“She did. Guess who was assigned the case? Our old friend Detective Walsh.” Maggie sounded as if the name left a bad taste in her mouth.

With good reason, Lucy knew. They all remembered Detective Walsh. He’d led the investigation of the murder of Amanda Goran, a knitting shop owner in their town who had been found dead in her store, her head bashed in by a hat block. It had all happened a little over a year ago now.

With no solid evidence at all, Detective Walsh had fixed his sights on Maggie as his prime suspect and relentlessly dogged her. Of course, she was totally innocent.

Luckily, Maggie’s knitting group friends had done some sleuthing of their own and discovered the real culprit. But Maggie still shuddered just thinking of those dark days and at the very mention of the bumbling, narrow-sighted lawman.

“It makes sense in one way. He’s so incompetent; maybe he’s been demoted to murder cases of farm animals. He didn’t do too well with humans.” Suzanne was alternating between her knitting and bites of her dinner—a tasty mix of shrimp, broccoli, and mushrooms served over brown rice. “This is yummy, by the way,” she added, pointing her fork down at her plate.

“Thank you,” Maggie replied. “And by the way, you’re probably right. Law enforcement is a tight-knit bunch. He’s too young to retire, and I guess they can’t fire him outright.”

“So they’ve sort of sent him out to pasture?” Lucy knew the quip was corny, but she couldn’t resist.

Phoebe held her head and groaned. “That was bad, Lucy. If you do that again, we might have to kick you out tonight anyway.”

“Go ahead. But the muffins go with me, kiddo,” Lucy teased her back.

“I thought it was cute,” Suzanne countered. “ ‘Out to pasture.’ Says it all to me.”

“Case assignment is just the luck of the draw. Detectives are assigned cases as the calls come in,” Dana said knowingly. “Of course, there is some favoritism by department heads,” she added.

“My hope that the police will find the menace who’s been harassing Ellie and Ben was significantly reduced when I heard Walsh’s name,” Maggie confided. “I didn’t tell Ellie that, of course.”

“This could be a slam-dunk case, even for Detective Walsh, if Ellie and Ben are right. Ben even got into a shouting match with Ridley while we were there. He must have seen the police cars and wondered what was going on. He was standing in the woods at the property line,” Lucy explained, “just watching everything. With a gun tucked under his arm. It was really . . . creepy.”

Phoebe cringed. “Ugh. . . . Sounds like a slasher movie.”

“He had a gun? You’re kidding, right?” Suzanne dropped a needle in her lap and looked down to find it.

Dana looked up from her work, too. “Maybe he was out hunting. Ellie and Ben said he did that at night a lot.”

“Hunting poor defenseless llamas, sounds like to me,” Suzanne countered. “So they were yelling at each other?”

Lucy nodded. She was trying to untangle the strands of yarn in her project, but it was starting to look even worse.

“It got pretty nasty. Luckily the police were still there and broke it up,” Lucy reported. “Ridley does think that Ellie and Ben bought the farm to flip it over to investors when the open space laws expire. He said they were just sitting on the land to make a profit and flung a few other choice insults in the same vein at them.”

“Do you know if the police found any evidence in the pasture today?” Dana asked Maggie. “Did Ellie mention anything?”

“Ellie said they found some marks on the fence that were probably footprints of someone climbing over. And a track of footprints coming from the woods,” Maggie replied.

“We heard about the marks on the fence last night,” Lucy said.

“They may have found other physical evidence, too, that they didn’t tell her about,” Dana added.

“I’m sure Detective Walsh has talked to Ridley,” Suzanne said. “That’s only logical.”

Maggie glanced over at Lucy’s sweater vest and silently winced, then waved her hand in a “give it here” gesture. Lucy quickly handed it over.

“Thanks, Maggie,” she practically whispered.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Maggie nearly shouted back. She peered down at the mess through her reading glasses. Lucy sensed the prognosis was not good.

Dana turned her knitting over and examined the stitches. She was making a scarf for her stepson, Tyler, who was in his second year of college. She and Jack also had a son named Dylan, who was still in high school. They were all going to visit Tyler next weekend to watch his team in a lacrosse tournament, and the scarf’s stripes were his team colors.

“It seems pretty simple to me,” Suzanne said. “Ridley does hate them, just like they said, and he can get on their property any time he wants to.”

“That’s true,” Dana conceded. “But these situations are seldom as simple as they seem. It could be Ridley. Or it could be someone else, entirely unknown to Ellie and Ben. And their reasons for doing this unknown to the Kruegers, as well.”

“Come to think of it, what about Angelica Rossi?” Suzanne asked. “Ellie talks about Angelica as a fairly hostile rival, even though Angelica acts like a big sweetie pie in public. Ellie said she smears Laughing Llama Farm every chance she gets. She probably wants them to clear out, too. I think her motives are even stronger than Ridley’s.”