Hen of the Baskervilles Read online

  “Chocolate and licorice?” I didn’t recall ever drinking a wine that tasted even ever so slightly of either flavor, much less both, and the idea sounded perfectly dreadful. Of course, the odds were if I’d had the merlot, I’d have just thought that it tasted like really good red wine. So I opted for tact. “Not really, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  I left the wine pavilion and headed back for the fair office. On the way, as I was passing the sheep barn, I noticed there was a crowd at the small exhibition ring nearby, so I strolled over to see what was up.

  When I got closer, I realized that the crowd consisted almost entirely of teenagers. Most of them, boys and girls alike, were in t-shirts and jeans. Some of them were talking to each other or texting on cell phones. Some were flirting or arguing. Many were just standing there, looking down at their boots or sneakers.

  What was odd was that every single one of them had his or her back to the show ring. The entire ring was lined three-deep on all four sides with teenagers who were studiously ignoring whatever was in it.

  So of course I was dying of curiosity to see what they were ignoring.

  The ring was surrounded on three sides by bleachers that provided a couple of rows of rough board seating. A few kids were perched there, but not many, probably because it was a little uncomfortable to sit on the bleachers with your back turned to the ring. I threaded my way through the crowd, saying hello to the occasional kid who knew me. I suppose I could have asked them what was up, but I was reluctant. After all, I was the deputy organizer—I was supposed to know what was going on.

  So I when I reached the bleachers I climbed to the top row and peered over all the heads. As I watched, someone opened a gate on the far side and three sheep trotted into the ring.

  Three of the nakedest sheep I’d ever seen.

  Michael and I had lived across the road from Seth Early’s sheep farm for years now, so I knew what sheep looked like at all stages of life, from fully fleeced to newly shorn. But I’d never seen Seth’s sheep quite this closely shorn. These three sheep looked as if they’d been first shorn and then shaved. Their skins were very pale, but with a slight rosy flush to them, and surprisingly wrinkly in places. Like around the neck and at the top of the legs. As they trotted in formation around the ring, I found it fascinating to see how the skin around their legs wrinkled and smoothed in time with their steps. Amazing how long their legs were, and how slender they appeared without the heavy wool to conceal their real size. They looked … graceful. Not a word I’d ever previously thought of applying to sheep.

  And yet, as these three trotted around the ring, with brisk steps and an alert manner, I kept feeling the impulse to avert my eyes. I wondered if the sheep found the sudden change from fleece to flesh disconcerting or liberating.

  And I still hadn’t figured out why the teenagers were very deliberately avoiding even so much as a glance at the naked sheep.

  I saw Seth Early leaning on the ring near the gate where the sheep had entered. His Border Collie, Lad, was lying at his feet, staring fixedly at the sheep as if he could barely restrain himself from leaping out into the ring to herd them. I climbed down off the bleachers and strolled over to see if Seth could explain what was going on.

  As I walked, I saw a few other adults circulating through the teenagers, handing out sheets of paper and pencils, and warning them to “Wait till we give the word.”

  “And what happens when they get the word?” I asked Seth, when I reached him.

  “They turn around and start judging,” Seth said.

  “So these three sheep are competing for something?” I asked.

  “No, the kids are competing. They’ve been learning how to judge conformation. Now we’re seeing who’s learned the most.”

  An older man—one of Randall’s uncles, though I couldn’t remember which—stood up on a small platform near us and addressed the crowd.

  “Okay—we’re ready!” he announced. “When I say the word, you have fifteen minutes. Ready! Set! Go!”

  The teenagers all turned around and began staring at the sheep, jostling each other for the best positions on the rail, and scribbling on their sheets of paper.

  “Those sheep have already been judged by qualified sheep judges,” Seth said. “Now it’s the kids’ turn to rate them. There’s twenty teams from FFV clubs all over the state. The team that comes the closest to matching how the adults rated the sheep wins the blue ribbon.”

  “Is there a reason for shearing the sheep so closely?” I asked. “They look as if they’ve been shaved.”

  “They have,” Seth said. “I just shaved them. We do that before they go into the ring, so the judges can see the conformation. Go out there, Fred. Keep ’em moving.”

  One of the nearby adults went through the gate into the ring and followed the sheep around, chivvying them into motion from time to time. Lad whined a bit as if longing to be allowed to do Fred’s job.

  “Are you making them trot to show off the conformation, or so one side of the ring doesn’t get a closer look than the others?”

  “A little of both,” Seth said. He leaned on the fence and watched with satisfaction as the sheep trotted.

  “So I assume these sheep have flaws that the kids should identify?” I asked. “Because giving them perfect sheep to judge wouldn’t be much of a test.”

  He nodded.

  “Any idea what’s wrong with ’em?” he asked.

  I studied the sheep. I’d spent a lot of time gazing at Seth’s sheep over the last several years, both when they were peacefully grazing in his pasture across the road and when they turned up in unexpected places on our land or even inside our house. But I was usually studying them to see if they were about to eat parts of my garden or track dung into the house, not to assess them as worthy or unworthy specimens of their breed.

  I waited until the adults were collecting the judging sheets before replying to Seth’s question.

  “If I were giving a ribbon, I’d give it to the medium-sized sheep,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “The biggest one has a slight sway back,” I said. “I don’t recall that any of your sheep do. And the smallest one looks as if her body is too big. Or maybe her legs are too small. Out of proportion.”

  “Not bad.” He nodded with approval. “Not bad at all. We’ll make a shepherd of you yet.”

  “Alas, that’s unlikely,” I said. “We’re running out of room for the llamas as it is.”

  “Last time I was over at the sheep barn, one of your boys was begging his daddy for a sheep,” Seth countered.

  Would it hurt Seth’s feelings if I mentioned that Jamie, an inveterate animal lover, was also begging for kittens, chicks, rabbits, turtles, snakes, axolotls, frogs, canaries, pigeons, turkeys, ducks, guinea pigs, hamsters, and “cowsies”?

  “By the way—” Seth began. Then he broke off, looked around as if to see if anyone was eavesdropping.

  “We seem to have had another prank,” he continued, in a lower voice. “Not a new one—happened last night, like all the rest of ’em, but wasn’t reported.”

  “What was it?” I asked. “And why wasn’t it reported?”

  “Someone spray-painted rude words on the side of each of the sheep we were originally going to use for this event,” Seth said. “They belonged to Mason Shiffley, and you know how prim and proper he can be.”

  I nodded. Mason Shiffley had been raising Black and Tan Coonhounds for forty years, and still referred to the bitches as “lady dogs.”

  “We should have Horace take a look at them,” I said. “There could be clues. Where are they?”

  “Mason was so mortified that he didn’t tell anyone,” Seth said. “Just hustled them into his truck this morning, took them home, and sheared them. And then drove himself over to the hospital and checked himself in. Seems he had a heart attack.”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “They think so. No thanks
to whoever graffittied his sheep. Maybe he’d have had it anyway, but you’ll never convince me that prank didn’t hurry it along.”

  Then he chuckled, a little sheepishly.

  “I know it’s rotten to laugh,” he said. “But whoever did it painted the words in that glow-in-the-dark neon-pink spray paint. Mason comes out just before dawn to tend the sheep and all he sees are three really bad words glowing in the dark. You ask me, he probably started having the heart attack then and there. He just didn’t give in to it until he’d cleaned up the sheep.”

  “And destroyed potentially useful evidence.”

  “He may be prim, but he’s thrifty. He’d probably have kept the fleeces so he could separate out the wool that’s still usable.”

  “I’ll tell the chief.” I was already pulling out my cell phone to do so. “Keep this under your hat, will you?”

  “Can do,” Seth said. “I only found out when Mason and his sheep didn’t show up and we had to find some replacement sheep for the contest. No need for everyone to know. Happened last night like all the rest of the pranks. Everyone already knows there was a prankster out last night. No sense upsetting everyone all over again.”

  I agreed, and so did the chief when I reached him.

  The day wore on. The competitions had begun. In the quilt and pie barn, pickle judging gave way to jams, jellies, and preserves. The first round of calf-roping ended and the first of the sheepdog trials began in the rodeo ring. The karaoke competition (country music division) was underway on the stage. The dairy cow judging (youth division) started up in the small ring near the cow barn. I tracked down the volunteers who’d be on patrol tonight and told them when and where to report for their shifts.

  In the late afternoon I ran into the Bonnevilles talking animatedly to someone I recognized as a student reporter from the Caerphilly College newspaper. Talking and posing with their remaining bantam hen in their arms while the reporter snapped pictures with his iPhone. I tried to pass by unseen, but the reporter recognized me and flagged me down.

  “Meg, any official comment from the fair management on this chicken theft?” he asked.

  “We are shocked and saddened by this outrage.” I kept my face solemn and frowned slightly. “And you can be sure that the Un-fair will do everything we can to assist law enforcement in bringing those responsible to justice.”

  The Bonnevilles nodded as if they approved of my dolorous tone. I stepped over to them and patted them both on the shoulder.

  “Courage!” I whispered. Mrs. Bonneville sniffled and lifted her chin bravely. Mr. Bonneville put his arm protectively around her shoulder.

  I retreated while the going was good. Unfortunately, the reporter chose to follow me, leaving the Bonnevilles and their hen standing in a small, forlorn clump.

  “Seriously,” he said. “Do they think the birds are dead? Is that why they’re in mourning?”

  “You’d have to ask them,” I said.

  “No thanks.” He shuddered. “I already did, and I wasn’t sure she’d ever stop crying. And Chief Burke just says ‘no comment.’”

  I relented.

  “The chickens are from a rare heirloom breed,” I began.

  “Expensive?”

  “For chickens, I expect they are,” I said. “But you should ask a poultry expert. And as you can tell from the size of the one they’re holding, nobody raises them for meat. So there’s reason to be optimistic that the thief took them for breeding purposes, and I have every confidence Chief Burke will recover them.”

  He was tapping on his iPhone—taking notes, I realized, in his generation’s replacement for a notepad.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Not sure my editor will even think this is worth running—unless she decides my photos of the Baskervilles are good for comic relief.”

  With that he dashed off, before I had a chance to correct him on the names. I glanced back and saw that Mr. and Mrs. Bonneville were walking slowly down the pathway toward the chicken tent, looking like a small funeral procession. If they were trolling for attention, it wasn’t working. People were glancing at them out of the corner of their eyes and giving them a wide berth.

  I managed a hurried dinner with Michael and the boys and then it was back to dashing up and down the fair, making sure the judges had their forms and their packets of ribbons, nagging them to turn in the names of the winners, reassuring people that there had been no new pranks, and occasionally catching a few moments of a performance or a competition. Knitting, crochet, and embroidery. Pigeons. Sheep-shearing. Barrel races. Hog-calling. The sheer number of events was overwhelming—thank goodness I’d recruited a senior volunteer to wrangle each event space, instead of running them all myself, as I’d originally planned.

  At 6:00 P.M., the agricultural part of the fair grew quiet, but by that time the Midway was in full swing, the country singer was giving her first concert, and the first round of a small (but American Kennel Club–approved) dog show was underway. Michael took the boys to the dog show for the first hour, and I managed to join them just before it was time to whisk the boys away to bed—in Rose Noire’s tent, since the sheep barn was too close to the tantalizing noise of the Midway.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when the country music and canine fans filed out the front gate, except for a few who sauntered over to enjoy the last hour of the Midway.

  “Next year we need to find a way to close off the rest of the fair while the Midway is open,” I told Randall when I ran into him backstage after the concert. I was making sure all the tech sheds and dressing rooms were locked and he, presumably, was waiting to escort the singer back to the Caerphilly Inn.

  “Put it in your notebook for the postmortem,” he said. “And can you also make a note that next year we need to find a main act who’s not a total … diva?”

  I glanced a little anxiously at the door of the largest dressing room, in which I had assumed the country singer was still changing. It wasn’t a particularly thick door, nor were the walls all that soundproof.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Randall said. “She’s gone. You can lock that one up, too.”

  “I thought you were chauffeuring her.” I found the right key and secured the dressing room, which was actually a refurbished vintage fifties Airstream trailer.

  “She liked the looks of Rob better,” Randall said. “So he gets to show her the town nightlife and I get my beauty sleep.”

  “Caerphilly has nightlife?” I said. “Who knew? Clearly Michael and I are becoming old fogies.”

  “I didn’t think any of the student hangouts would suit,” he said. “So I recommended that he take her to the bar at the Caerphilly Inn. More convenient.”

  “Convenient?”

  “I figure another drink and she’ll pass out, and he can get a bellhop to help him heave her into bed,” Randall said. “If you thought I meant something salacious, don’t worry. Unless his eyesight has deteriorated considerably of late, I think his virtue is safe. He’s doing this purely to help me out, and if you see him before I do, tell him I appreciate it.”

  “Will do. See you tomorrow.”

  Randall nodded and ambled off.

  I continued my rounds, making sure all the buildings were locked, and that the early shift patrols were showing up at their posts. Until the Midway closed, they were keeping a close eye on the path that led from it through the main body of the fair to the gate. By ten o’clock, everything was as secure as we could make it.

  The bad news was that instead of curling up in my sleeping bag for a well-earned rest I’d be spending the next four hours on patrol. The good news was that since I was in charge of the patrols, I’d assigned Michael to be my partner, so we’d get to spend a little time together—something that hadn’t happened much of late, thanks to all the preparation for the fair.

  And our beat was the Midway, which was open till eleven tonight, so we’d at least have a few distractions to help keep us awake during the first hour of our patrol.

  Chapter 16


  “What about the boys?” Michael asked, when I rounded him up to start our shift. “Is Rose Noire okay with them staying at her tent?”

  “She’s fine with it,” I said. “And if we like, we’re invited to join her for breakfast. Organic oatmeal and freshly blended fruit smoothies.”

  “Good luck to her,” Michael said. “Last time I heard they were demanding pepperoni pizza and chocolate ice cream for breakfast.”

  We checked that we had our flashlights and cell phones and strolled over to the Midway. It was at the same end of the fair as the cow barns, but across the split-rail fence that ran along the border between Caerphilly and Clay counties.

  I had to wonder about that fence. It hadn’t been erected just for the fair—it was an established fence, well weathered except for occasional spots where someone had patched breaks with newer timbers. Most local farmers found plain barbed wire fences sufficient. Was there some agricultural reason for the more elaborate fence here, or was it symptomatic of the longstanding distrust between the denizens of the two counties?

  I shoved the thought out of my mind and concentrated on watching the crowds.

  “Shall I see if I can win you a life-sized, glow-in-the-dark, lime-green stuffed hippopotamus?” Michael was pointing to the ball toss and flexing his fingers, as if eager to test the skills he’d honed all summer playing fast-pitch softball.

  “They’re not life-sized, only four feet tall,” I said. “And while either of your sons would love a stuffed hippo taller than he is, you know what will happen if you bring one home and expect them to share.”

  “True.” He shuddered slightly, no doubt remembering the particularly savage battle the boys had had a few days earlier when Josh became convinced that we had given Jamie a larger helping of watermelon chunks.

  “I could try to win two,” he suggested.

  “Try later,” I said. “When we’re off duty.”

  “Remind me why we’re patrolling the Midway,” he said, as he dodged a teenager who was too busy talking on her cell phone to watch where she was waving her giant ball of cotton candy.