Dark Side of the Moo (Bought-the-Farm Mystery 2)

by Ellen Riggs

  The heavy blanket of darkness that dropped over the countryside had lifted just enough for me to see Keats’ blue eye shining up at me. In that moment, it felt like he was warning me to be careful.

  “Gotcha,” I whispered. I hadn’t expected this experience to be a cakewalk, but the Flordale crew were like toddlers high on sugar.

  Pulling on a clean T-shirt and overalls, I opened my bedroom door quietly and tiptoed past Jilly’s room and downstairs to the kitchen. She’d set up the coffee the night before so that all I had to do was press start. Then I checked the back door for Keats. There was no sign of him, so I went to the front door and found him standing on the porch.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  Instead of coming in, he circled my legs to herd me down the stairs. The mumble deep in his throat that passed for conversation began. He wanted me to come to the barn. Pronto.

  “No way,” I said. “Coffee first. Plus I hear people moving. I invited everyone to join me for egg collection and it sounds like I have takers.”

  He resigned himself to wait and sat down at the top of the stairs with his white-tipped tail wrapped neatly around him. The blue eye was still fixed on me, however. Whatever he wanted to communicate was important, but perhaps not urgent. He mumbled at me again and it sounded like, “Fine, you’ll see.”

  I went back to the kitchen and poured coffee into travel mugs for the early risers. Keri was first to stagger into the kitchen, yawning, arms outstretched like a zombie. I put a mug in her hands and she said, “You okay? That was quite a show, last night.”

  “Totally fine,” I said. “Sorry about my mom. She’s a piece of work.”

  She laughed quietly. “Sorry about Wilf. He’s a piece of work, too. I don’t need to tell you that.”

  “You don’t,” I said. “But we’d better be discreet. He’ll need coffee badly this morning.”

  “He’ll be out cold for ages.” She took a long sip of coffee. “I doubt he’ll regret missing the egg hunt.”

  Paulette and Nellie soon joined us. I hadn’t expected the hen coop to be a major attraction. In fact, I’d counted on a quiet hour to gear up for the rigors of the day. Perhaps they wanted to debrief about what had transpired at dinner, or even about how things were going in the corporate office. I’d have to be quick on my feet to dodge the political minefields. Flordale wasn’t my problem anymore—something Jilly had drilled into me before they arrived. “You cannot save them,” she’d said. “Boundaries. Make them and keep them.”

  After everyone had doctored their coffee and taken a few fortifying sips, I led them out to the porch, where Keats continued to sit like a statue. Indeed, he was so still that Nellie gave a little scream when he moved.

  “That dog is so creepy,” she said, with a shiver. “It’s like he’s looking right through me.”

  I wondered what my perceptive dog saw inside Nellie. At Flordale, she was always on the hustle, trying to get promoted before doing her time in the trenches, and shamelessly using her looks to get ahead. Or at least trying to. Flordale’s culture had come a long way and sexism wasn’t typically an issue. It was a shame because Nellie was bright enough and could have honed her skills to climb the right way. I’d even hired an executive coach for her and the Raptors, but people needed to be ready to hear the message.

  She gave Keats a wide berth as she went down the stairs and he swivelled to watch her, ears back. As I expected, he’d given her a failing grade in the character department. In fact, he blocked me from catching up to her and gave a little whine.

  “Don’t listen to her,” I whispered. “You’re not creepy, buddy, you’re perfect.”

  Nellie turned. “Are you becoming a weird dog lady?”

  “Always was, I guess, but it only had an outlet after I met Keats.”

  Our footsteps were nearly silent in the damp grass and all heads turned to stare at the slip of sun peeking over the meadow. It always started slow like that, before taking a sudden leap over the horizon. I held my breath waiting and then enjoyed their collective gasp.

  “Beautiful,” Keri said. “Now I see why you’re way out here. It’s so peaceful.”

  I held up one hand and folded my fingers one by one. “Five, four, three, two…”

  Aladdin let out a crow that would have annoyed the neighbors, if they hadn’t had a rooster, too. While I had the only proper hobby farm in the area, people had been migrating here—or back here—to keep chickens, grow gardens and make jam. They called themselves homesteaders. Mom called them hippies.

  Keats subtly, and then more obviously, tried herding me around the front of the barn. He knew full well I was aiming for the coop out back, just as I did every morning. After dodging him a couple of times, I said, “Okay. You win.”

  “Who’s that, dear?” Paulette asked.

  “Keats,” I said. “He wants his weird dog lady owner to check on his cow baby.”

  “You know all that how?” Nellie asked.

  “Body language, mostly. Our first job of the day is the hens but he’s relentlessly pressing me to the front of the barn.” I looked down at him. “Just let me get the ladies set up and I’ll come right back and check everything out, okay?”

  He sat again, but this time his mouth opened in a wide pant. Since it was a cool morning, I had to assume he was stressed. That did give me pause, since he wasn’t anxious by nature.

  Round the back, I picked up three baskets and gave each woman her own. Letting them into the coop, I said, “Just poke around under the hens for the eggs.”

  “Just… poke around?” Nellie asked. “Won’t they attack us?”

  “Nope. They’re used to it. Gently push the feathers aside and feel for an egg.”

  “It’s a good thing I brought these,” Nellie said, pulling a pair of lightweight white gloves out of the pocket of her leather pants. “Spa gloves. I don’t want birds pecking my manicure. Keri, I have more in my room if you want.”

  “But we might not feel be able to feel the eggs,” Keri said. “Or we could crush them.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Nellie said. “I spend good money on these nails.”

  When Nellie subsided, I continued. “Some hens lay every day, some don’t. It’s like an Easter egg hunt each morning.”

  Keri and Paulette laughed. “So this is what you do for excitement now?”

  “You’re going to love it, you’ll see,” I said. “On top of the suspense of whether you’ll find anything, you’ll see that not all eggs are created equal. There are big ones, small ones, white ones, brown ones, gray ones, speckled ones and more.”

  “Do they all taste the same?” Keri asked.

  “You tell me after breakfast,” I said. “Eggs are always on the menu and I know Jilly would love to walk you through a nice scramble.”

  “It seems mean,” Paulette said. “Taking away all their babies.”

  I shrugged. “It’s a renewable resource. Every day there’s a potential new egg baby. And trust me, I have plenty of chickens here without hatching any new ones. People are always getting bored with their backyard coops and dropping birds off here.”

  Keri walked into the coop, calling, “Get ready to surrender your eggs, ladies.”

  Paulette grabbed my arm before I left. “Thank you for having us, Ivy. I know it couldn’t be easy.”

  “It’s good to have you, Paulette,” I said. “You were always so kind to me and I’m glad you can see for yourself that everything ended up just fine.”

  She gazed around at the sunrise and back to the serene hen coop. Aladdin had stopped crowing when we arrived, satisfied that he summoned the day. “It most certainly has,” she said. “The property is gorgeous, the inn is warm and welcoming, and that dog is very special.”

  My eyes filled with tears and I sighed. I never used to be a crier, but rescuing Keats had unplugged my tear ducts and the mere mention of him could get me started. It was annoying at any time, but more so with a colleague who knew me as composed, possibly even tou
gh.

  “He sure is,” I said. “Luckiest day of my life when I found him.”

  “But you almost lost your life, and then you lost your job.” Her eyes filled too, and she squeezed my arm harder. “I could have strung Wilf up for firing you, especially after all you’d done for the company. It was inexcusable.”

  “Paulette, it’s okay. Really.” I scanned the horizon to collect myself. “The writing was on the wall when I told him I didn’t want to travel anymore to downsize staff. He dismissed that and I can hardly blame him, when it was part of my job. Then when I banged my head and rambled to the press, I became a liability to Flordale.”

  “But he totally ripped you off with that insulting package. You must have wanted to kill him.”

  I swallowed hard over that. Wilf’s unfair treatment had put me in a financial bind. By withholding the payout I deserved, Wilf left me in a position of taking guests sooner than I wanted. Not to mention taking guests I didn’t want, like him.

  “Wilf actually did me a favor by making it easy to go,” I said, as Keats came around the corner and whined again. “Now, go hunt for eggs while I do my rounds. Duty calls.”

  Once I latched the coop door behind them, I followed Keats around the barn. “Thanks, buddy. I was dying to escape that conversation.”

  He didn’t stop to chat. Panting hard, he trotted ahead of me and turned again and again to shoot a blue-eyed glance.

  “What’s the big rush?” I asked. “Now I’m starting to worry. Is Archie okay?”

  He mumbled something urgently. The message sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place it.

  Heidi and Clara bellowed before I got to the door. Then there was a bleating cry that sounded like a perfectly healthy calf to me. In fact, he put more power behind that noise than the day before. Heidi must have donated generously at the milk bar.

  It was dark inside and the first thing I did was walk across the barn to the bank of switches. When the lights came on, Heidi and Clara hung their heads over the side of the large stall, as usual, but Archie couldn’t reach that high.

  Florence the old blind mare gave a whinny that made me stop on the way over and stroke her nose. She grabbed my sleeve in her teeth and held on. That wasn’t typical at all. She often surprised strangers like that, but my clothing got a free pass.

  “What’s up, girl?” I stopped to avoid a tear in my jacket. “You okay?”

  She didn’t let go, so I had to tap her under the chin to get her to release me. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I have to check out the new kid.”

  The goats and the sheep started up a chorus of bleating that seemed louder than usual. The cows and the horse were moving restlessly.

  “What’s with you guys?” I said, walking over to the cow stall. I stopped and rubbed Heidi’s nose and she reared back, unleashing a deafening bellow. “Ow, ow, ow. I need these ears. Are your hormones making you cranky, mama?”

  I stepped backward and then something shocking happened: Keats nipped me. More specifically, he nipped the back of my pant leg hard enough to feel a hint of teeth and drive me forward again.

  “Hey, none of that, sir. You do not treat me like livestock. Hear me?”

  Instead of looking sheepish, as he normally did when he overstepped, he dove in for another nip.

  I stepped lightly around him. “Keats! What gives? I can see Archie and he looks totally fine. I don’t have time to rock your calf like a baby. I’ve got guests now. Important guests.”

  Once more he dove in and I jumped right between the heads of Heidi and Clara to get away. The girls were unpredictable and I didn’t appreciate having my head in a cow sandwich.

  “Easy now, ladies,” I said. “It was his fault, not mine.”

  That’s when I finally noticed what Keats had become so desperate for me to see, and it wasn’t Archie, the one-eyed calf.

  It was a pair of maroon velvet slippers and legs in blue striped pajamas.

  Chapter Five

  I crept into the bushes outside so that I could watch the house and the barn, but not be seen myself. Then I pulled out my phone. “Jilly. It’s me.”

  “I know who it is.” Her voice was pre-caffeinated and groggy. “What I don’t know is why you’re calling me. Couldn’t you just knock on my bedroom door?”

  “I’m at the barn. You need to come down here. Stat.”

  “Why are you whispering? Have the cows gone to the dark side?”

  “Maybe,” I said, kneeling on the damp earth. “Actually, yes, I think they have.”

  “Ivy, what’s going on? You sound all freaky. Did something happen to Archie?”

  All the grogginess had left her voice now. Adrenaline had done the job better than caffeine ever could.

  “Archie’s fine. It looks like the graft worked. But I think Heidi might have gone crazy from hormones.”

  “Did she attack you or something?” Now I could hear rustling as she got up. “Are you hurt?”

  “Not me, no.”

  There was a long pause and stillness at the other end. “Who—or what—was hurt, Ivy? Tell me.”

  “Just come down here. Please, Jilly. The Flordale women are in the hen coop. They don’t know what happened.”

  “Well, I don’t know what happened, either.” Her bedroom door clicked open. “I’m on my way but tell me now. The secrets you spring on me are bad for my heart.”

  “As soon as you get here, I promise. I don’t want you to wake anyone. We need to think about the guests.” I knelt down, slung an arm around Keats and pulled him to me. “At least the guests we have left.”

  “We lost a guest? Already?” The front door opened and she appeared on the porch. “Who’s missing?”

  Covering my mouth, I whispered, “Wilf. He’s gone.”

  “Gone? He can’t be gone. His Corvette’s sitting right there.” She pointed as she walked down the front stairs. “Although that’s not where he left it yesterday.” Suddenly she gasped. “Oh my god, Ivy, he ran his car into your truck and just left it there. He must have come out drunk after we all went to bed.”

  “I didn’t notice that. But we have bigger problems than a dent in my truck.”

  Her pace picked up till she was almost running. She was still in her pink floral pajama bottoms with a light jacket zipped over the top. Her long blonde hair flew around in a Medusa-style halo. “Can we go back to Wilf being missing? Did he wander off in the bush?”

  “I didn’t say missing. I said gone. As in, gone the way of Lloyd Boyce, the dogcatcher.”

  She stopped abruptly in the middle of the gravel driveway. “You mean he’s…?”

  “Don’t say it.” I came out of the bushes and walked toward her. “But yes. Wilf is with Lloyd now. Wherever the bad people go.”

  She made a choking sound halfway between a laugh and a scream. “Oh no. He’s actually…”

  “Pushing up daisies. He bought the farm. Wilf is no longer.”

  Jilly started moving toward me again, slowly now. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. He was in with the girls. In his pajamas.”

  “What girls? Nellie and Keri? The Raptors?”

  A laugh slipped out and I cut it off with my free hand. It wouldn’t take much to tip me into hysteria. “No, in the barn.”

  “He was in the barn with Nellie and Keri?” I could see her shoulders shift in a shrug. “I guess that kind of thing happened a lot in the old days. A roll in the hay and all that. And team breakaways are notorious for debauchery.”

  “No, Jilly, listen. I found Wilf with Heidi and Clara. And I’m afraid it looks like they… Well, it looks like they trampled him.”

  “He probably passed out in there after all that whiskey. Or had a heart attack. I’m sure it was an accident. Heidi and Clara wouldn’t deliberately…”

  Now I shrugged. “They’re testy heifers. Charlie said Heidi’s been extra moody since her miscarriage. Maybe the new calf fired up her maternal protective instincts when Wilf went into the cow stall.”
/>   She ran her free hand through her hair. “Why on earth would he do that? You warned him.”

  “Exactly. He did it because I warned him. Wilf doesn’t like to be told what to do. I suppose he wanted to defy me, and in his drunken state he couldn’t dodge the cows.”

  We were standing a few yards apart now, phones still to our ears. She took a deep breath and let it out. I could see that as well as hear it.

  “Okay,” she said, closing the small distance between us. “Well, this is unfortunate. Very unfortunate. You’ll have to let Kellan and Asher figure everything out. You have guests to worry about.”

  “Right. Yes. I’ll call Kellan now.”

  “You haven’t called him already?” Her voice spiked. “Have you learned nothing, Ivy?”

  “I was psyching up for it. This is terrible, Jilly. Another person has died at Runaway Farm.”

  “I know. It is terrible. And crazy. But we’ll get through this, just like we got through it the last time.”

  “Okay. Okay.” I turned and took a few steps toward the barn. “Where’s Keats?”

  “Ivy? Ivy.”

  I turned back, and she reached out to squeeze my arm. “Let’s not panic.”

  “I’m not panicking.”

  “No? Then why are we still talking on the phone?”

  “Good point.” I clicked the phone off and she did the same. “It’s upsetting, for sure, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen something like this. Or even the second.”

  “Then you know the drill. You go into that barn and call the police.” She turned me around and started frogmarching me forward. “I’m going to leave you here and go to the chicken coop. I’ll collect the ladies, take them up to the house and ply them with mimosas. No one will notice Wilf is missing for ages if I do my job right. They’ll expect him to be hungover.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.” I nodded at Keats as he came to the door of the barn to meet me. “Keep people at the back of the house. I don’t want them getting in the way of the investigation.”

  She sighed. “They’re going to notice the police eventually. Call me back in twenty minutes and we’ll brainstorm some key messages.”