Swan for the Money Page 12

  “Actually, yes,” I said. “It was a law that was supposed to outlaw slavery in any territory the U.S. acquired from Mexico. Introduced several times in the 1840s but never passed. Often cited as one of the earliest signs of the split that eventually resulted in the Civil War. Not exactly what I’d call ballad fodder, but you never know.”

  “I should have called you when the subject first came up.”

  “I wouldn’t know the first thing about it if I hadn’t helped one of the nephews with a term paper last semester. Which reminds me: can you bring me—”

  “Ms. Langslow?”

  I looked up from the phone to find the chief looking expectantly at me. What now?

  Chapter 19

  “I’ll be off the phone in just a moment,” I told the chief.

  He nodded, smiled, and assumed a visibly patient expression. He did not, however, move out of earshot.

  “Bring you what?” Michael asked.

  “Some cheesecake,” I said. “Remember that deli where we had such good cheesecake? You don’t get cheesecake like that down here.”

  “I don’t actually remember where that deli was.”

  “But there’s good cheesecake all over New York,” I said. “Maybe you can ask your student for a recommendation.”

  “Will do,” he said. “Talk to you later.”

  We said our good-byes, and I hung up

  “What can I do for you?” I asked the chief.

  “One of my officers found Mrs. Sechrest’s car behind some bushes along a lane that runs around the other side of the farm,” the chief said. “Pretty impossible to get good tracks after all this rain, but it looks as if she hid her car there, snuck in the back way, and was making her way toward the house when she was attacked.”

  “Why do you suppose she did that?” I said.

  He sighed.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” he said. “Was she on your list of volunteers?”

  “No, but Mother was going to call around to guilt trip a few more people into helping. Maybe she talked Mrs. Sechrest into coming. You could ask her. Mother, I mean. Or Mrs. Sechrest if—when—she regains consciousness.”

  He nodded.

  “Only that’s not likely to happen, is it?” I blurted out. “We all keep correcting ourselves, saying ‘attacker’ instead of ‘killer’ and sticking attempted in front of murder, and using the present tense when we talk about Mrs. Sechrest, but we’re not really expecting her to pull through, are we?”

  The chief sighed slightly and tightened his lips.

  “Any of your other volunteers come in the back way?” he asked.

  Okay, I wasn’t really expecting an answer to my question. Or maybe I’d already gotten my answer.

  “Not that I know of,” I said aloud. “But I’m sure more of them would have if they’d known there was a back entrance. People were getting really tired of waiting for the front gate. It was supposed to have been left open for the volunteers, but Mrs. Winkleson forgot about that, or changed her mind after the dognapping, and at one time we had at least a dozen vehicles stacked up and waiting for up to half an hour.”

  “I know,” he said. “Remember, Minerva and I were trying to get in to help out.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Anyway, maybe she knew the back way and decided to avoid the crowd.”

  “The back way into the farm, or into the house?”

  “Either.” I shrugged. “Both. Who knows?”

  He frowned and looked down at his notebook.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I wish I could be more help, but I don’t actually know everything about Mrs. Winkleson and her farm. Just what I’ve learned over the last couple of months while planning the rose show.”

  “You probably know more about her than anyone, actually,” the chief said. “At least anyone who’s willing to talk to me.”

  “What about her staff?”

  “Darby claims he doesn’t pay attention to anything but the animals,” the chief said. “Can’t answer the simplest questions about her friends or her habits. He might actually be telling the truth. The man doesn’t seem to notice anything that’s not on four legs. And the rest of the staff aren’t even that helpful. Can’t get a sensible word out of them. The ones who even speak English, that is.”

  This was more information than the chief normally shared with civilians, which must mean he was getting incredibly frustrated.

  “I wouldn’t have expected them to be that loyal,” I said aloud.

  “Loyal? Hell, they’re scared silly. More of her than of me. And none of them are local.”

  Which meant that he couldn’t rely on his officers, all of them local, to tap the Caerphilly grapevine and bring him information witnesses wouldn’t share officially.

  “If you hear anything, let me know,” he said. “Note that I said if you hear anything. I’m not asking you to go out and snoop around.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He sighed.

  “I don’t suppose I can convince you to leave the detecting to us,” the chief said. “It’s not like finding the victim obligates you to solve the crime.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I am taking it a little personally that she was stabbed with my secateurs.”

  “Your what?”

  “The garden shears that someone used to stab Mrs. Sechrest,” I explained. “Secateurs is another name for them.”

  “Why don’t you just call them garden shears, then?” the chief grumbled.

  “I do, but the ladies in the garden club think secateurs sounds more elegant,” I said.

  “So these— blasted things belong to you?” the chief asked.

  “Not really. I made them for Mother. She wanted something more elegant and ornamental than the ordinary shears you can find in garden centers.”

  The chief studied me with a familiar scowl on his face. He got very testy at anything that even hinted of interference with his criminal investigations. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out how he felt about someone who had, however inadvertently, furnished the would-be killer with his weapon.

  “So if you made them and gave them to your mother,” he said, finally, “what were they doing over here, stuck in Mrs. Sechrest’s back?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Mother and I haven’t seen them in almost two weeks.”

  “You lost them?”

  “They were stolen,” I said. “By someone in the garden club.”

  “The garden club?”

  “It happened the Sunday before last, when the garden club all met here to go over the plans for the show,” I said. “I’d only just finished the secateurs, and Mother was so proud of them that she pretended to have stuck them in her tote by mistake. She found an excuse to pull them out and wonder why on earth she’d brought them, so she could show them off. Everybody wanted their own set.”

  “Nice for your business.”

  “Yes, though it would have been nicer if Mother had waited to wave them around at the show,” I said. “You have no idea what a pain it’s been, trying to find the time to make forty-two pairs of shears on top of all the things I have to do to get ready for the show.”

  “How many have you made so far?” he asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  “Then how can you be sure this is the one your mother lost at the garden club meeting?”

  “Had stolen from her at the garden club meeting,” I corrected. “I’m pretty certain for two reasons. One is that I still have the rest of them locked up in my forge, except for this pair.”

  I fished through my bag and pulled out the secateurs I’d brought. The chief flinched, and I saw him reach toward his holster.

  Chapter 20

  “I surrender!” I said, dropping the secateurs and putting up my hands.

  “You startled me,” he said. “Blast it all, put your hands down. People are staring.”

  I put my hands down, then bent to pick up the secateurs, which I gave to the chief, handle first.

 
; “And just what are you doing walking around with an identical duplicate of my murder— attempted murder weapon?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t any kind of a weapon this morning, when I put it in my tote,” I said. “And it’s not identical. See this little decorative bit?”

  I pointed to a small, stylized twig and leaf that curled inside the handle. The chief leaned over slightly and peered at the secateurs. From his wary posture, you’d have thought he was being asked to inspect a rattlesnake.

  “On the first pair I made, the hole inside the handle was smaller, and that little sprig dug into your hands in a really annoying way. Not into Mother’s hands, which are very small, but most people would find it uncomfortable. So when I started making them in larger numbers, I rethought the design. Every pair of secateurs I’ve made since has had a hole about this size. The one I saw stuck in Mrs. Sechrest’s back was my original.”

  “The pair that was stolen from your mother at the garden club meeting.”

  “Yes.”

  He scribbled a little in his notebook. I wondered what. Was he writing down what I just told him? Or did he use his notebook to vent things that it wouldn’t do to blurt aloud? Had he just scribbled, “Meg Langslow: found victim. Made weapon and seventeen virtually identical copies. Definitely a suspect”? Or something more like. “Blast, but I wish I were back in Baltimore, where people try to kill each other for normal reasons, like drugs and money”?

  He saw me looking at his notebook and tilted it a little more toward his chest, as if he thought I was about to try to read upside down.

  “Do you know who stole your shears?” he asked.

  “Mother suspected the Pruitts and Mrs. Winkleson,” I said. The chief nodded, and scribbled. “Of course,” I went on, “that could just be because she doesn’t particularly like the Pruitts and Mrs. Winkleson.” The chief stopped scribbling long enough to glance up at me as if checking to see if I was joking. I shrugged apologetically. He dropped his eyes again and scribbled longer than seemed quite necessary to record what I’d just said.

  “Which Pruitts?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “There are usually three or four of them at garden club meetings, trying to give orders instead of doing any useful work.”

  “What else is new?” the chief muttered.

  “I’ve got the membership list here,” I said, raising my clipboard. “I can’t swear every member was there for the meeting, and there might have been a few non-members tagging along, but it would give you some idea. And here’s a copy of the volunteer list. It’s shorter.”

  “A lot shorter,” he said.

  “That’s because I only wrote down the people who actually committed to show up and work.”

  The chief nodded, and scanned the lists.

  “Will it inconvenience you if I keep these?” He didn’t sound as if a “yes” would change his mind.

  “Be my guest,” I said. He glanced up in surprise. “Everyone knows I keep the member list with me at rose show meetings, and they’re always asking to borrow it and not giving it back, so I’ve learned to bring a few photocopies. And any volunteers who aren’t here already either aren’t coming at all or won’t be in time to do any useful work, so that list’s pretty useless by now.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “But I mean it. Stay out of this.”

  “I will.”

  “I’m serious. There’s a murderer— attempted murderer— running around loose, and if that person thinks you can point the finger at them—”

  “Got it,” I said. “Solving the murder— or attempted murder— is your job.”

  For that matter, I could stop worrying about solving the theft of the secateurs. Odds were the chief would see that as an integral part of solving the larger crime. Even poor Mimi’s abduction would probably get a lot more attention because of the possibility that it was connected to the subsequent attempt to murder her owner.

  But it was still my job to figure out whether or not someone was sabotaging Dad’s black roses, and if so, who.

  Not that I was going to say as much to the chief.

  My cell phone rang. Rob.

  “Meg? I saw the ambulance leave, and Dr. Smoot just came in asking for the chief. I sent him up to the barns. What’s going on?”

  “Someone tried to kill Mrs. Winkleson and got the wrong person,” I said. “Rob says Dr. Smoot’s here,” I added, to the chief.

  “Damn,” the chief said. “As if he could do any good out here, with the . . . victim heading off to the hospital. Let me have that a second.”

  I gathered from the chief’s side of the conversation that Dr. Smoot was already out of earshot. The chief began giving Rob instructions about keeping out unnecessary personnel, particularly reporters. I left him to it and went outside to greet Dr. Smoot.

  I spotted him already up at the goat pens, leaning on the fence. At least I assumed the figure in the inky black cloak was Dr. Smoot. Mrs. Winkleson would approve if she saw him, but he wasn’t dressing in black for her approval. The county’s acting medical examiner had developed a taste for the supernatural, and had begun habitually wearing a black cloak with a red satin lining, looking like a refugee from an old-fashioned horror film.

  Then again, the last time I’d made assumptions about someone in a black cape I’d been dead wrong. I began strolling toward the figure.

  The chief caught up with me halfway and handed me my cell phone.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Did you call Smoot?”

  I shook my head.

  “Probably listening to his police radio again,” the chief grumbled. “Can’t seem to get it through his head that we’ll call him if we need him. Been showing up whenever there’s a 911 call, scaring people to death with that vampire getup and that old-timey hearse he’s taken to driving.”

  I noticed he kept his voice down so Smoot couldn’t hear him.

  Dr. Smoot turned to greet us as we neared the fence.

  “Now this is what I call a proper crime scene,” he announced. “Plenty of room to work in.”

  Chief Burke closed his eyes, as if counting quickly to ten. He knew, of course, that what Dr. Smoot really liked was the fact that the crime scene was outdoors. Dr. Smoot was a severe claustrophobe, and tended to have panic attacks when asked to examine a body in any indoor space smaller than a ballroom. He was gazing over the flat field toward the distant tree line with great satisfaction.

  “Yes, very nice,” the chief said. “Unfortunately, you’ve come all this way for nothing. We don’t have a body, at the moment. We just sent the victim off to the hospital. You’ll have to catch up with her there. More convenient anyway if you end up having to do a post mortem.”

  “Oh.” Dr. Smoot’s face fell. Clearly he wasn’t enamored of the idea of a visit to the county morgue. Of course, the one or two times I’d been there, I’d felt a little claustrophobic myself, but I’d have thought with Dr. Smoot’s keen appreciation of all things funereal and supernatural he’d find the morgue a congenial place, even if it did have four walls.

  “Well, they’ll do what they can for her at the hospital,” he said, finally. “No rush. As long as I’m here, I might as well see if I can help out in any way.”

  Chief Burke didn’t look overjoyed at the offer.

  “There’s still the search for the missing Maltese,” I said. “I imagine the chief will have to pull his officers off that to solve the attempted murder, so perhaps you could help out with that.”

  “Maybe I can take a look at her vampire horses,” Dr. Smoot added, with a gleam in his eye.

  Chapter 21

  “Vampire horses?” the chief echoed. He stared at Dr. Smoot with dismay. More dismay than usual.

  “She has a bunch of horses that she doesn’t let out in the daytime,” I said. “Because she doesn’t want the sun to fade their perfect black coats.”

  “So she says,” Dr. Smoot intoned. “But has anyone tested this?”

  “Tested it?” the chief repeated
.

  “What are you planning to do?” I asked. “Wave garlic at them? Sprinkle them with holy water?”

  “Just walk them outside in the sun,” Dr. Smoot said. “See what happens.”

  “Not much sun right now,” I said, glancing up at the clouds that looked ready to rain again at any moment. “Wouldn’t be much of a test.”

  “It’s daylight that does the trick, not actual sunshine,” Dr. Smoot said.

  “You should probably check with Mrs. Winkleson’s farm manager before you bother the horses,” I said.

  “Right, right. Where are they, anyway?”

  I shrugged. The chief stared impassively at him. Dr. Smoot sighed, pulled his cape around him, and strode off.

  The chief watched him go with a frown on his face.

  “Damn fool thing, showing up at my crime scenes in costume,” he muttered.

  “Chief?”

  We turned to see Horace, wearing his tatty gorilla suit and holding a pitchfork, standing nearby with a stricken look on his face. He looked like one half of a gorilla-themed parody of “American Gothic.”

  “Oh, not you, Horace,” the chief said. “It’s Smoot. Gets on my nerves.”

  “I don’t normally wear the suit when I’m on duty,” Horace said, “but—”

  “And since you’re a volunteer and were off-duty when we called on you, you can wear what you like,” the chief said. “I appreciate your helping out. Did you need me for something?”

  “I can go and change,” Horace said.

  “Horace,” the chief said. “I don’t have a problem with you wearing whatever you want to the crime scene, because when you show up, you’re a hundred and twenty percent professional. You don’t waste my time with all this nonsense about vampire horses. And if I catch Smoot messing around with Mrs. Winkleson’s horses instead of doing his job, I just might lock him up in a small closet and misplace the key for a few hours. Now go on and tell me what you came to tell me.”