The Hen of the Baskervilles (7 page)

“Does this mean you're volunteering to be Quilts, Pies, and Wine Czarina again next year?” I said. “Awesome.”

“Only if I'm allowed to evict eyesores like that,” she said.

“If you can come up with some enforceable rules, we'll enforce them.”

Actually, I had no doubt Mother could do it herself.

“Thank you, dear. And you did have that rule against exhibitors interfering with other booths. I was able to use that to shut down the music.”

“I remember you mentioned music,” I said. “I gather we're not talking anything tasteful and classical?”

“Sounded like someone killing hogs,” the neighbor said.

“People fled the tent when she turned it on,” Dorcas added.

“It made the Rancid Dreads' music sound melodious,” Mother said. Possibly the first time she'd every used the word “music” to refer to the sounds emitted by our local heavy metal band, so I deduced that Genette's taste in music must be very strange indeed.

Brett and Genette were still pawing each other, obviously aware of the disapproving stares they were getting. Well, a few disapproving stares, and a lot of disapproving backs of heads. Mother raised one eyebrow and sighed.

“Not a big fan of public displays of affection?” Dorcas asked.

“As long as they're tasteful,” Mother said. “But there are limits.”

“Like when one of the displayers is still married to someone else,” I said. “That's Molly Riordan's husband, you know.”

“Don't you mean ‘ex-husband'?” Dorcas asked. “I thought I heard they were divorced now.”

“They will be, eventually, but right now they're only separated,” I said.

“The jerk,” Dorcas muttered.

“Precisely.” Mother's voice dripped with icy disapproval.

“And Mother, before you ask,” I went on. “I don't think we can enforce a rule against adultery in the wine pavilion next year, but we can misplace Genette's application for a booth until all the spaces are taken.”

“Thank you, dear.” Mother was almost purring with satisfaction.

“Great idea,” Dorcas said. “Wish you'd known her well enough to do it this year. Of course, I'm hoping she'll get bored with her vineyard by next fall.”

“Yeah,” her neighbor put in. “She bought it almost three years ago now. It only took her two years to get tired of running that restaurant she bought in Middleburg.”

“And before that, three years to give up on being a world-famous fashion designer,” Dorcas said. “Wonder what her next hobby will be?”

“She seems to have expensive hobbies,” I said. “Where does she get the money?”

“Inherited it, or so I heard,” Dorcas said. “Her family must have been really loaded.”

“Wasn't her family, from what I heard,” the other winemaker said. “Came from her late husbands—two of them, both with big wallets and weak hearts.”

“Sounds plausible,” Dorcas said. “However she got her hands on her money, she certainly never seems to have a problem paying for what she wants.”

Genette and Brett finally tired of their exhibition. She fussed over his hair, straightened the collar of his shirt, topped off his wineglass, and waved like a housewife in a fifties sitcom as he ambled off.

Then she turned around, scanned her surroundings, and spotted me. Her face twitched slightly, in what I realized would have been a frown if her forehead could move. Then she pasted an artificial smile on her face and gestured to me in much the way an impatient diner would summon an errant waiter.

“Uh-oh,” Dorcas said. “You've been summoned.”

“Don't let her bully you,” the other winemaker said.

“Meg will be fine.” Mother smiled encouragement at me.

Armed with that vote of confidence, I strolled over to Genette's booth.

 

Chapter 9

“Finally,” she said, as if she'd summoned me hours ago. “I need to talk to someone about getting my music back.”

“I can check with our lost and found,” I said, pretending to misunderstand her. “Are we talking sheet music or CDs or—”

“I haven't lost my CDs,” she said. “But that woman made me stop playing them!”

She was pointing to Mother.

“Yes, she's in charge of the wine pavilion,” I said. “And you do realize that we have a rule prohibiting anything that interferes with your neighbors' ability to do business in their booths, right?”

“But music wouldn't interfere,” she protested. “It would liven things up around here. I mean, look at this place! It's dead in here.”

I looked. Considering that it was barely a quarter to eleven in the morning—not a time of day I, at least, associated with drinking wine—the tent was pretty busy. A fair number of visitors were already strolling up and down the aisles, or stopping to talk to the winemakers. You could hear the occasional pop of a cork or clink of a glass, and the conversations blended into a pleasant hum, occasionally punctuated by laughter.

“Sounds fine to me,” I said.

“Maybe for a morgue. Check this out.” She turned around, punched a button, and a tsunami of noise erupted from the two speakers that had been masquerading as ugly occasional tables. It sounded as if someone were torturing half a dozen cats by throwing them onto drums, into trash cans, and through a couple of large plate-glass windows.

“Turn it off,” I shouted. “Turn it off!”

But she couldn't have heard me, and wasn't looking my way to see that I had my hands clapped over my ears. She had her eyes closed, and was swaying and twitching spasmodically.

Evidently neither shouting nor miming was going to work. I glanced down and saw power cords snaking down from the speakers and across the open ground in the middle of her booth to disappear under a chrome and Plexiglas panel. I leaned down and gave one cord a hard yank. A power strip slid from under the booth. I hit its off switch and sudden, blessed silence prevailed.

Utter silence. As I stood up again, I glanced around to see that all up and down the tent, people were staring at us with their mouths wide open and their hands protecting their ears.

“What did you have to do that for?” Genette was actually pouting.

“I'm afraid I agree that your music is in violation of the wine pavilion rules,” I said.

“And the county's noise ordinances,” called a nearby winemaker.

“I want to challenge everyone's conservative perceptions about wine.” It might have sounded plausible if she hadn't said it in the whiny voice of a thwarted toddler—a tone that was becoming all too familiar to me lately. “I want people to stop thinking of wine as something that only staid, middle-aged, affluent people can buy.”

A well-dressed middle-aged woman who was in the process of buying several cases of wine at the next booth turned and glared at her briefly.

“That's the whole idea behind my brand identity.” She indicated her booth with a sweeping gesture. “I hired an expensive, cutting-edge New York brand management firm to design it, because I wanted something edgy and urban and new! Not all this medieval Jefferson crap.” This time she waved vaguely at the rest of the tent. If looks could kill, Mother would already have felled her from across the aisle. “You need to bring wine into the twenty-first century!”

“We'll certainly take your suggestions under advisement,” I said. “For next year. But we have neither the time nor the money to change the decor for this year's fair. So we'd appreciate it if you'd try to work within this year's guidelines.”

“So what am I supposed to do with the forty-thousand-dollar sound system I had made for my booth?” She pointed to the hulking speakers, now silent but still radiating potential menace.

“They make … interesting occasional tables,” I said. “But do keep them clear of the aisles—we wouldn't want anyone to damage them.”

With that I went back to where Mother and Dorcas were waiting.

“That woman,” Mother said, shaking her head.

“If anyone kills her, I expect an alibi,” I said.

“If anyone's planning to kill her, tell them to come see me,” Dorcas said. “I want to get in on it.”

I glanced back at Genette. She was tugging one of her hideous speakers back behind the booth line, glaring my way as she did. I'd probably made an enemy just now.

I didn't much care.

“Let me know if she causes any trouble,” I said.

“I think I can handle any trouble she causes.” Mother sniffed slightly.

“Yes, but I can't ban anyone from the fair for misbehavior unless someone tells me about the misbehavior,” I said. “So I want to hear chapter and verse.”

“Absolutely,” Mother said.

I strolled out of the wine pavilion feeling confident that at least one part of the fair was under control.

As I stepped out and looked around, I heard someone call my name. I turned to see a man following me out of the tent.

“Can I help you, Mr.—” I glanced through the tent opening at the booth I thought he'd emerged from. Stapleton Wineries. “Stapleton?”

He didn't correct me. He glanced furtively in several directions, and then took a step closer.

“It's about Genette,” he said, in a voice calculated not to carry very far. “You need to keep an eye on her. She's sneaky.”

“I will,” I said. “Both eyes, and both ears. But don't worry. I think if she turns on the stereo again, someone will notice, and we'll have grounds to confiscate it. And maybe even kick her out.”

“I don't mean the stereo.” He waved one hand dismissively. “Though I have to admit, even if I were a Glass fan, that would be annoying.”

“Glass fan?”

“Philip Glass,” he said. “The composer of that music she was trying to destroy your eardrums with. Not my favorite of his compositions, actually. The wife and I have been known to blast that piece out the window on Halloween, to set the mood. No, I mean the pranks.”

“Pranks?”

“The chicken thefts. The pumpkin. The quilt. She's behind it all.”

“If you have evidence of this—” I began.

“I don't have any evidence, but it stands to reason. She was after the chickens.”

“Seems to me she could afford to buy a few chickens,” I pointed out.

“She could afford to buy anything she wants,” he said. “But what if someone won't sell to her? What if she doubles the price a couple of times and an animal's owner just keeps saying no? It happened to me.”

“She stole your chickens?”

“Lemon Millefleur Sablepoots,” he said. “Very rare bantam breed. I had a dozen—I was trying to build up a flock. One day she came over to the vineyard for a visit—God knows why; we're not friends. And she tried to buy the Sablepoots. Wouldn't take no for an answer. I finally told her that as soon as I got my flock established, I'd sell her some chicks. Didn't make her happy. She's into instant gratification. Then a week later, someone stole half of my flock. Including the rooster. Bye-bye future chicks.”

“And you think she has them?”

“Couple months later, she held a big party, and one of the things she was showing off was a pen full of Sablepoots.”

“Yours?”

“No, chicks. A dozen of them, young enough to have hatched from eggs since mine had been stolen. She claimed she bought them somewhere. Real secretive about where, though, and I can't find any reputable breeder who recalls selling to her. I'm almost positive she has another farm somewhere with my Sablepoots stashed on it. And who knows what else. But I can't find it—it's probably out of state. So she's building up a prize-winning flock of Sablepoots with stock she stole from me, and I'm still on the waiting list till another breeder has some chicks. A long list.”

“Sounds … suspicious,” I said. “If she does have another farm where she stashes stolen animals, wouldn't that be a job for law enforcement?”

“Yeah,” he said. “And our sheriff back home agrees with me, or at least he doesn't think I'm crazy. But he needs more than just me saying I think she did it. She's rich, and she's got political connections. If he tried to do a search on her assets, it would set off red flags. And if he goes after her and doesn't find anything—well, he likes his job.”

“So you think she's expanding to Russian Orloffs?”

“Could be. She had some Dutch Belteds and Red Polls at her winery spread last time I heard. Cows,” he added, correctly guessing from my expression that I had no idea what species he was talking about. “And then they disappeared. Did she sell them, or move them somewhere else? Someone should look.”

“I wouldn't have taken her for an animal fancier,” I said. “I can see her with a spoiled little purse dog, but cows and chickens?”

“Only rare ones. She likes to brag about how rare they are. And she hires people to do the actual work. Usually people who were perfectly happy working for someone else before she offered them double the salary to work for her. I guess it's a hobby.”

“Raising animals or acquiring other people's property?”

“Both,” he said, with a gruff chuckle. “Whiles away the time while she's waiting for the grapes to grow. For us working vineyard owners, the days are too short, all year long, for all the work we need to get done, but for a hobby owner like her…”

He shrugged.

“I understand why you'd be worried,” I said. “But I'm not sure what we can do.”

“Ask those poor people who lost their Orloffs if she ever tried to buy them,” he said. “And that kid whose pumpkin was smashed—his father raises Gloucestershire Old Spots—that's a rare breed of pigs. I haven't heard she was into pigs, but you never know. Ask him. Ask whoever had her quilt stolen if she raises some kind of rare livestock. Or maybe Genette's looking to expand and the quilt's owner also owns some land that borders on hers.”