The Hen of the Baskervilles (2 page)

But they all seemed to steer clear of the far corner of the barn. I could see the tall form of Vern Shiffley, the senior deputy who was in charge of the police presence at the fair. He was talking to someone.

Two someones, as I could see when I finally shoved my way through the agitated flock of chicken owners. Presumably the Baskervilles or Bensonvilles or whatever their names were—the owners of the missing fowl. Both were short and round and rather nondescript. The man was wearing khaki pants and a beige shirt. The woman wore a flower-print dress in shades of beige and pale pink so muted that it looked faded even though I suspected it was brand new. She was holding a small brown and black chicken and stroking it absently.

“Hey, Meg.” Vern waved me over. “Meg Langslow's the assistant director of the fair,” he said to the couple.

The two turned their eyes toward me without appreciably moving their heads. I almost flinched under their mute, accusing stares.

“I'm so sorry about this,” I said. “Vern, what can we do to help?”

“Any chance you could round up some volunteers to help us search for the chickens?” Vern said.

“Absolutely.” I pulled out my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I call my trusty planner and to-do list, and began scribbling some notes on who to enlist. Then I noticed Bill Dauber, the tent volunteer, standing at my elbow. No, he was standing a little behind me, as if he didn't want to be seen.

“Organize a search,” I told him, in a low voice.

“Roger!” He dashed off, as if glad to have an excuse to leave.

“They could be miles from here by now,” the man said. The woman sniffled and the chicken she was holding squawked and struggled—I deduced that the woman had tightened her grip.

“They could, and we'll be doing what we can to track them down,” Vern said. “But whoever did this took the chickens, not the cages. For all we know, it could have been a prank. Maybe someone just set them loose. Or maybe someone did steal them, but it can be hard holding on to one riled up chicken—and this guy was trying to carry two? I'd say there's a good chance one or both will turn up if we do a good search nearby.”

I hoped if they did turn up they'd still be alive. Should I have some knowledgeable person check the fried chicken stand to see if any of their supplies were a little too fresh?

“How did they manage to steal the chickens?” I asked aloud.

“We had only two officers patrolling the whole fairground last night,” Vern said. “We figured since it was only farmers here at night it wouldn't be a high-crime area. Unfortunately, it would be pretty easy for someone to watch until they knew the pattern of their patrols and then elude them.”

“But we had a volunteer who was supposed to be here in the tent all night,” I pointed out.

“He was here.” The husband of the bantam-owning couple, his voice unexpectedly fierce. “He slept through the whole thing.”

“Mr. Dauber had himself a lawn chair over near the tent entrance,” Vern said. “Looks like he made himself a mite too comfortable and dozed off. My best guess is that the chicken thief slipped in through the back entrance.”

No wonder Dauber had been so eager to leave.

“Your best guess,” the man echoed. “Have you done any forensics?”

Vern winced slightly, no doubt wishing himself back to the day when
CSI
and other TV cop shows hadn't made “forensics” a household word.

“You forget, we're just a rural sheriff's department in a small and very cash-poor county.” Vern's accent suddenly sounded a lot more country than usual. “We have to call in someone to do forensics, and it's hard to justify it for anything less than a murder.”

From the way the wife was looking at him, I suspected she was almost willing to provide the murder.

“What about Horace?” I asked. “He's in town for the fair.”

“If you think he'd be willing,” Vern said.

I was already dialing his number while Vern turned to the couple to explain.

“Horace Hollinsgsworth, Ms. Langslow's cousin, is a veteran crime scene analyst from York County,” he said. “With luck, she can talk him into doing the forensics for us.”

Luck was with us. Horace was awake and very eager to be of service, probably because another cousin, Rose Noire, was panicking that she hadn't prepared enough stock to sell in her organic herbal products booth and had recruited him to help.

“Are you sure you don't mind?” I asked.

“If I never tie another little pink ribbon on another little purple flowered bag of stuff that makes me sneeze, I'll die a happy man,” Horace said. “Beats me why people pay money for a bunch of dried weeds. But don't tell Rose Noire I said that.”

“If she asks, I'll tell her you reluctantly agreed to help out for the good of the fair,” I said.

“I'll be right over.”

I relayed this good news to Vern.

“That's great!” He turned back to the couple. “Now, folks, I don't want you to touch anything until Mr. Hollingsworth gets here. Do you have someplace else you can keep your other chicken?”

I spotted Mr. Dauber, who was buttonholing people to recruit them for the search and assigned him the additional task of finding a new cage for the forlorn fowl, who seemed in ever-increasing danger of being hugged to death. Given how fast Mr. Dauber scrambled to follow my orders, I deduced he was feeling guilty about his failure to protect the bantams. As well he might. And it probably wasn't a bad idea to put some distance between him and the red-faced, scowling husband of the couple who owned the bantams.

“Before you leave,” Vern was saying. “One question occurs to me—have you had your birds microchipped?”

“Microchipped?” the husband repeated. “We—”

He clutched his chest and keeled over.

 

Chapter 2

“Call 911,” I said as I scrambled to the fallen chicken owner's side.

“Is he okay?” Vern already had his cell phone to his ear.

“He has a pulse,” I said. “And it seems steady enough. But he's unconscious. And his face is pale and sweaty.”

Vern was repeating my words into the phone, presumably to Debbie Ann, the dispatcher. I sat back on my heels, took out my own cell phone, and called my father. Although theoretically semiretired from active medical practice, Dad had agreed to act as volunteer medical officer for the fair. Once the fair opened, we'd have EMTs and an ambulance on site, but this early in the day—well, Dad was always an early riser. Maybe he was here already. And there was nothing Dad enjoyed better than a nice adrenaline-laden medical emergency first thing in the morning.

A capable-looking woman knelt down on the man's other side. She loosened his collar and eased his head into a more comfortable position.

The man's wife hadn't made a sound since he'd collapsed—she just stood there, staring and clutching the chicken. The chicken, though, was making enough noise for both of them, at least until a nearby volunteer in a
BACKYARD CHICKEN FARMER
t-shirt gently eased the poor bird out of her hands.

“Debbie Ann's sending the ambulance,” Vern said. “Let's call your dad.”

“I've already got him,” I said. “Dad, possible cardiac patient in the chicken tent. Are you here at the—”

“On my way,” he said. “I was just over in the first-aid tent, getting ready for the day.”

The capable-looking woman was taking the man's pulse with one eye on her watch. The doctor's daughter in me recognized the unmistakable demeanor of a trained medical professional, so I stood back out of her way. It actually wasn't more than a couple of minutes before Dad bustled in, carrying his deceptively old-fashioned–looking doctor's bag, which he'd equipped as a fully functional modern first-aid kit. The local EMTs had occasionally been known to borrow supplies and equipment from him. He waved absently at me and hurried over to the fallen man. After a few moments, he glanced up, gave me a quick thumbs-up, and turned back to his patient.

I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding and took Vern aside for a quick word.

“Evidently Dad thinks he'll be all right,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Does Randall know about this?” Vern's cousin Randall Shiffley, in addition to being the mayor of Caerphilly, was the fair's director.

“Not yet,” Vern said. “He just took off to meet some reporter at the front gate and give him a tour of the fair. I figured it was better to wait until they'd finished.”

“Good call,” I said. “But what if he was planning to bring the reporter here to the chicken tent?”

Vern winced slightly and turned a little pale.

“Yeah, he probably is planning to,” he said. “He's that proud of all the rare and unusual chickens people brought. Can you figure out a way to get the word to him? I should stay here and handle the situation. It'd help if we can just keep the reporter away till the ambulance gets here. Once Mr. and Mrs. B are off to the hospital things should quiet down a bit.”

“Good idea,” I said. “But find someone who can take care of their remaining chicken while they're gone. Someone they trust.”

“Can do.”

“By the way, what is their name? We can't keep calling them Mr. and Mrs. B.”

Vern looked chagrined.

“I didn't quite catch it,” he said. “And they're so touchy right now I didn't like to ask.” He spotted something and his face brightened. “Hallelujah! Here's the EMTs.”

I stood aside while the EMTs trotted in. Then I left the tent and pulled out my cell phone. Randall's phone went to voice mail.

“Call me as soon as you get this, even if you're still with the reporter,” I said.

But I didn't think it was a good idea to wait until he came back. I decided to look for him.

I glanced around, wondering where to start. I saw a flurry of activity outside the produce barn—four people popped out, then two of them went running off in different directions while the other two popped back inside. I headed that way.

Stepping inside reminded me that I needed to grab some breakfast before too long. Should I feel guilty, thinking about my stomach after the events of the morning? I stifled the thought. Dad seemed to think Mr. B was going to be all right. That was good enough for me.

Or maybe my better nature was overcome by all the sights and smells in the produce tent. Right in front of me were long tables covered with apples of every kind—red, yellow, and green; large and small, all sorted and labeled with the cultivar and the name of the grower. Nearby were grapes, pears, and plums. And a little farther back—

I heard a shriek from the back of the tent, followed by loud wailing. It sounded like a child. I knew my own two toddlers were safe at home with Michael, but the sound triggered a familiar stomach-twisting anxiety. People were turning and heading toward it. I scrambled to follow.

At the very back of the tent were the entries in the largest pumpkin contest. There were already twenty contenders on display, with a few more due to show up today. I had to admit they weren't the most attractive pumpkins I'd ever seen. None of them were the vivid orange you looked for in a pumpkin, and they didn't have a typical rounded, wide-ribbed pumpkin shape. They all looked pale, bloated, and slumped. But they were undoubtedly large. The smallest ones looked like overstuffed ottomans, and you probably could have carved small carriages out of the largest few, which one veteran pumpkin aficionado told me probably weighed at least sixteen or seventeen hundred pounds.

It had made me nervous yesterday every time another giant pumpkin came into the barn, hauled on a trailer behind a pair of tractors, with a dozen burly volunteers to lift it into place. I decided then it was a good thing the giant pumpkins weren't cute and rounded—at least they weren't likely to roll onto one of the hapless movers. Most of them looked more likely to collapse inward from their own weight.

But what if one that was more rollable than most had been hauled in since I'd given up watching the arrivals? One that could roll over onto someone. Like a child. Of course, the child wouldn't still be wailing if he'd been crushed by a giant pumpkin. He'd be screaming in agony if he could make any sound at all. But if he'd seen someone else crushed …

When I pushed my way through the crowd at the pumpkin end of the tent, I saw a boy of about nine or ten sitting on the ground in the middle of the remains of a smashed pumpkin. He was crying uncontrollably and had some kind of goop all over him. Almost certainly pumpkin guts. At a guess, he was surrounded by close to sixteen or seventeen hundred pounds of pumpkin guts.

“What happened?” I asked. “Is he hurt?”

I was already pulling out my cell phone to call Dad.

“Th-they smashed my pumpkin,” the boy wailed. He waved his arms, and since both of his fists were clutching handfuls of pumpkin debris, seeds and little bits of flesh flew everywhere. A man was stooped beside him, patting him on the back.

“We came in this morning to check on it,” the man said. “And we saw this.”

He indicated the mountain of pale orange and white debris.

“Wasn't there anyone here in the barn overnight?” I asked. I was pulling out my notebook and flipping to the page where I had a list of all the volunteers with their cell phone numbers.

“Volunteer was at the other end of the barn,” someone said. “Didn't see anything.”

I definitely needed to have a word with the volunteers, who seemed under the delusion that their job was purely honorary. And was I premature in seeing a pattern in these two events?

I already had my cell phone out, so I called Vern.

“We have an act of vandalism in the produce barn,” I reported. “Someone smashed one of the biggest pumpkins.”

“I'll be right over,” Vern said. “Just seeing our patient off in the ambulance. He's conscious and complaining.”