Swan for the Money

by Donna Andrews

  “Oh, dear,” Caroline said. “So sad when families don’t get along.”

  “They’re nephews by marriage,” I said. “And I think she resents them showing up to inspect their future inheritance.”

  “They’d better watch out or she’ll disinherit them,” Dr. Blake put in. “It’d probably serve them right, the greedy bastards.”

  “Ah, but she can’t disinherit them,” I said. “According to the local grapevine, she only has life occupancy. When she goes, the nephews split the farm and whatever’s left of their uncle’s fortune. Which is probably a lot smaller than it used to be before she turned the farm house into a palazzo.”

  “Are you sure?” Caroline asked.

  “About the palazzo? Wait till you see it,” I said. “And about the fortune getting smaller, I have no idea, though it stands to reason, given everything she’s been doing to the house.”

  “I meant about her nephews getting Raven Hill after she’s gone,” Caroline said.

  “I haven’t looked it up, but I expect someone on the grapevine has,” I said. “Wills are a matter of public record, you know.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think I can understand her caution about the gate,” Dr. Blake said.

  “Yes, but she can’t keep the place locked up like a fortress this weekend,” I said. “It’s bad enough for her to buzz Garden Club members in one by one for meetings. At least it encourages car pooling. But today we’ve got a dozen people coming over to do setup and hundreds expected tomorrow for the show.”

  “Hundreds?” my grandfather echoed.

  I glanced up at the sky and sighed.

  “Well, dozens, anyway,” I said. “Just the exhibitors would be two dozen, and some of them will bring friends and family, and we’re bound to get a few spectators. But she’ll probably balk at leaving the gates open after the dognapping.”

  “We’ll reassure her,” Caroline said. “With Chief Burke on the case, I’m sure it will turn out well.”

  I hoped she was right. But the thought of the poor missing dog darkened my mood.

  Inside the gate, the driveway curved gently to the left though a charming line of cherry trees, still shedding a few last blossoms, while white daffodils, and other white flowers bloomed lushly on either side. They were all a little the worse for the past week of rain and wind, but it still looked nice. Normally I could enjoy the beauty of the drive, but today, all I could think of was how expensive it all was. She had a large squad of full-time gardeners, and probably a full-time painter to keep the fences white. We passed a place where a spring storm had knocked over a cherry tree. The gap in the line had been filled with a full-grown tree. I didn’t want to think what that cost. But if I were a dognapper looking for someone who could afford to pay a hefty ransom, Mrs. Winkleson would be high on my list.

  Through the cherry trees we could see a small lake where a pair of black swans were swimming majestically, while to the right the landscape was dotted here and there with black-and-white cows.

  And, in one meadow, a pair of uniformed officers were combing the ground, stopping every once in a while to call out something. When we came close, the nearest one waved at me.

  “Mimi!” he called out. “Here, Mimi!”

  He appeared to be holding a bag of treats. The other officer was squeezing a squeaky toy. He might have been overdoing it with the toy, and wearing it out. Instead of a cheerful squeak it seemed to be emitting an unfortunate noise, halfway between a mournful wail and an asthmatic wheeze.

  “That must be the dog’s name,” Caroline said. “Mimi. Such a pretty name.”

  I nodded. I was scanning the surrounding landscape for something small, white, and furry.

  We came to a fork in the road, and I turned left, toward the house. We were holding the rose show down in the barns, which were a considerable distance from the house, the better to insulate Mrs. Winkleson from the less decorative aspects of her menagerie. But I had to talk to Mrs. Winkleson first.

  The road to the house ran around the edge of the lake, and the two swans sailed along, keeping pace with the car, as if escorting us.

  “Nice farm,” my grandfather said.

  “Estate,” I said. “At least if you happen to say anything to Mrs. Winkleson about it.”

  He snorted.

  “Lovely,” Caroline said. “But a little bland and monochromatic for my taste.”

  “Apparently not monochromatic enough for Mrs. Winkle-son,” I said. “Too much green. She grudgingly acknowledges the necessity for some leaves to produce the white flowers, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it.”

  “What a dingbat,” Dr. Blake pronounced.

  “Yes, and isn’t it lovely how nature conspires to ruin Mrs. Winkleson’s color scheme?” Caroline said, smiling as she gazed out the window. “The lush green grass, the glorious blue sky.”

  “Blue?” my grandfather said. “Looks gray to me.”

  “Today, maybe,” Caroline said. “But other days it must be blue enough to annoy her. The grass, the sky, the— oh, look at those peculiar cows.” She was pointing to the pasture on our right.

  Yes, the cows were unusual. They were uniformly a deep brownish black, except for the wide white band around their middles, which made them look more than a little like walking Oreo cookies.

  “Another reason Mrs. Winkleson’s nephews are peeved, from what I’ve heard,” I said. “She’s spending thousands of what could eventually be their dollars buying designer livestock. The cattle are called Belted Galloways— Belties for short.”

  “Old Scottish breed,” my grandfather said. “Excellent for grazing on rough land— they can thrive on coarse vegetation that other breeds won’t even eat. High quality beef.”

  “I think they’re charming,” Caroline said.

  “Lot of people do these days,” my grandfather said. “What do you bet these are just for show instead of for food?”

  “What a lot of calves she’s got,” Caroline said. “They almost outnumber the cows.”

  “Actually,” Dr. Blake said, frowning, “those don’t appear to be calves.”

  “You’re right,” Caroline said. “She’s acquired matching goats. This is a new development.”

  Chapter 6

  “What do you mean, a new development?” I asked. “The innocent tourist act wasn’t very believable to start with. Why not drop it and tell me what you’re really up to?”

  Caroline and Dr. Blake exchanged a look and then Caroline sighed.

  “As I suppose you guessed, we’re actually not here out of idle curiosity,” she said. “Clarence Rutledge is concerned about whether she’s treating her animals properly.”

  “So, this is actually a covert animal welfare mission,” I said, with a sigh. “And you’re using me as cover to help you infiltrate enemy territory.”

  “Precisely,” my grandfather said.

  “Does this have anything to do with the missing dog?” I asked.

  “Missing dog?” my grandfather said.

  “Missing as in stolen, you old fool. The dognapping Meg told us about. Not specifically,” Caroline added to me. “We’re not ignoring her safety, of course, but the chief is on that case, and there’s the welfare of all the other animals to think about.”

  I would have liked to ask what reason Clarence had to worry about Mrs. Winkleson’s animals, but we were approaching the front of the house. Mrs. Winkleson was standing at the top of her sweeping white marble front steps in a neat black-and-white checked suit and an oversized black hat.

  I parked, as I usually did, slightly to the side, where a stretch of white brick wall would screen my car from the front steps. Of course she’d probably already seen its bright blue color during my drive up from the gate, but I figured out of sight, out of mind. A single police car, presumably belonging to the two officers doing the search, was the lot’s only other occupant.

  Of course, there was nothing I could do about the umbrellas. Caroline’s was hot pink, and my grandfather
’s bright blue and emblazoned with the logo of the Blake Foundation. Lacking an umbrella, I settled for pulling up the hood of my slicker.

  We strolled around to the front of the house and waved to our hostess. I noticed that a black-clad butler was holding a black umbrella over her and getting soaked himself, poor man.

  Like most of Mrs. Winkleson’s staff, the butler was exceedingly short— so short he almost had to stand on tiptoe to let the umbrella clear her hat. I suspected that she only hired short people because she didn’t like being towered over. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but held herself so rigidly upright that she gave the impression of greater height until you found yourself standing beside her and had to fight the urge to lean down when talking to her.

  “Ms. Langslow,” she called down, with a slight nod. I suspected that the nod was calculated to convey the precise amount of respect due to someone in my social position. Mother would no doubt have known whether to bristle with resentment or beam in satisfaction. Being largely oblivious to such social niceties, I just smiled.

  “May we come in and sit down for a moment?” I called up. “I have something to ask you.” Sitting down, I’d have a better chance of talking her into hosting the party. At five-ten, I annoyed her, and since my grandfather loomed well over six feet, he’d probably send her into a rage if he stood up too long.

  Mrs. Winkleson nodded, and turned to go back into her house.

  Caroline and Dr, Blake were standing there, umbrellas in hand, eyeing the marble steps.

  “You two can start exploring if you like,” I said. “Or wait here in the car. I’m just going to ask her about hosting the garden club buffet.”

  “No, let’s beard the lioness in her den,” Dr. Blake said, offering Caroline his arm.

  “More like a zebress, don’t you think?” Caroline said. “And we can offer her our sympathies about poor little Minnie.”

  “Mimi,” I corrected.

  I knew better than to offer to help them with the steps. Both of them were too independent for their own good. But I fell into step behind them, where I would have at least a fighting chance of catching them if they slipped and fell on the rain-slick steps.

  At the top of the marble steps— seventeen of them— a broad marble terrace ran across the front of a white-pillared portico. If you focused just on the portico, the house bore a striking resemblance to the way Monticello would look if you painted all the red brick parts white. If you looked at it from farther away, you noticed that the elegant neoclassic portico was stuck onto a disproportionately large white cell-block of a house, making the poor thing look rather like a graceful little tugboat trying to guide an oil tanker into port. I felt so sorry for the poor little portico that I always tried not to look at it until I reached the terrace.

  Mrs. Winkleson was waiting at the top of the steps. I’d never actually seen her go up or down them, and was more than half convinced she had an elevator hidden somewhere in the house that no one but she was allowed to use.

  “Mrs. Winkleson, this is Caroline Willner and my grandfather, Dr. Montgomery Blake,” I said.

  Mrs. Winkleson turned her gaze from me to them, as if waiting for them to perform. Luckily my grandfather was slightly winded from the climb and only nodded at her, rather than attempting the Vulcan Death Grip, as Michael and I had nicknamed his excessively firm handshake. Caroline leaped into the breach.

  “What a lovely estate!” she exclaimed. “And it was so gracious of you to agree to hold the flower show here!”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Winkleson said. Her tone was rather stiff, but for Mrs. Winkleson, this was relatively gracious, so I could tell Caroline’s enthusiasm had charmed her.

  “Let’s go in,” Mrs. Winkleson said, and turned on her heel to lead the way.

  I stepped aside to let the others go in first and turned to look down toward the barns where we’d be holding the flower show. My heart sped up slightly when I saw that there was a police car parked by the barns, with a uniformed county deputy getting out of it. Was this just part of the search, or were the barns becoming a key part of the dognapping investigation? If that happened, there was no telling how much damage it would do to my plans for the show.

  Then the deputy tripped over his own feet and I realized it was only Sammy Wendell, who had volunteered to help out with the setup for the rose show. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that he was still available to volunteer or concerned that the chief hadn’t cancelled all leave to mount an all-out investigation into the disappearance of Mrs. Winkleson’s dog.

  Sammy walked over to a large pickup truck whose bed was piled high with folding cafeteria tables. My cousin Horace, wearing the battered gorilla suit that might as well have been his uniform, was letting down the truck’s tailgate, and Sammy ambled over to help him unload.

  No other cars or volunteers visible, but most of them would be in the way anyway if they arrived before the tables were set up. Sammy and Horace could handle that. I turned back to follow Mrs. Winkleson inside.

  As usual, I mentally kicked myself for not remembering to bring a sweater, though I was never sure whether the chill I felt on entering Mrs. Winkleson’s house was entirely due to her overuse of air conditioning. The stark black and white décor and her own chilly personality probably contributed just as much.

  “What a lovely house,” Caroline exclaimed. Knowing her, I could tell she was just barely restraining herself from adding something like, “Too bad the way you’ve decorated it looks like a cross between a funeral parlor and a museum.”

  “Pawn to king four,” my grandfather muttered, looking down at the marble floor, which was laid out in large black and white squares and did rather look like an oversized chess board.

  Around us, the walls and woodwork were all painted stark white. A white-painted chandelier hung from the ceiling, decorated with a few strands of jet beads. In four little alcoves, recessed spotlights highlighted large, elegant vases made of black pottery or glass. At one side of the foyer, an enormous black-painted Victorian hall stand was festooned with a variety of black hats, black gloves, black umbrellas, black coats, and one lone white silk scarf.

  “You may put your wraps there,” Mrs. Winkleson said, waving at the hall stand. I reluctantly shed my parka, and hung it on one of the lower hooks. Dr. Blake deposited his umbrella there, and Caroline was following suit when one of the gloomy black garments fell on her— a voluminous cloak. It took both my efforts and my grandfather’s to extricate her from its massive folds, while Mrs. Winkleson looked on disapprovingly. Or maybe she disapproved of my sturdy hiking boots. If that was it, tough luck. They were the only sensible shoes for dealing with the amount of mud I’d be encountering at her farm, and I’d wiped them carefully before coming inside.

  Then again, was she frowning from disapproval or worry? Maybe she was thinking of her missing dog.

  Strange, though, that I’d never seen any sign of a dog on my previous visits. No water bowls or chew toys; not even a leash hanging on the hall stand. Then again, I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Winkleson taking any chances that a dog might shed, pee, or chew on the furniture in any of her immaculate public rooms. She probably had a dog-proofed room somewhere for the Maltese. Maybe even a canine suite. The place was big enough.

  It suddenly came to me how one of the maids had come to find the ransom note at four in the morning. By that hour, they were already up cleaning.

  “This way,” Mrs. Winkleson said, when we’d finally rescued Caroline from the rain cape. We followed her into her living room— half an acre of black leather, white brocade, black marble tile, white carpeting and black lacquer furniture. Dr. Blake chose a black leather armchair that I knew from experience was a lot less comfortable than it looked, while Caroline and I both perched on the edge of a white brocade couch. Mrs. Winkleson took a chair across the room, a mere fifteen feet from us. For her, that was almost intimate.

  Out in the foyer, I saw a tiny, black-uniformed maid scuttle out and begin
mopping up the water our wraps and umbrellas had shed. Mrs. Winkleson spotted her, and glanced at her watch, as if timing how long it had taken the maid to arrive. I hoped for her sake— for all our sakes— that she’d been fast enough. I’d seen her give a maid a ten-minute tongue-lashing for breaking a teacup, and had only just barely kept my mouth shut, partly because I didn’t dare do anything that would make her cancel the rose show, and partly because I was afraid if I offended her she’d take it out on the maid. But I wasn’t sure I could hold my temper any longer if she put on a repeat performance.

  “The garden club would like to ask you another favor,” I said, launching directly into the business of the day. “They were going to hold their cocktail reception at my parents’ farm, but there’s a problem.”

  “What sort of a problem?”

  I was hoping she wouldn’t ask that. I wasn’t sure she’d understand Mother’s squeamishness about the manure smell, and I certainly didn’t want the whole world to know that my parents weren’t speaking to each other because of it.

  “An odor problem,” I said. “It’s . . . um . . . well, have you ever had a septic field go bad?”

  Her face wrinkled into an expression of disgust. Caroline and Dr. Blake looked at me with amusement.

  “I won’t go into the details,” I said. After all, if I quit now, I hadn’t actually told a lie.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Winkleson murmured.

  “But there’s no way we can have the party there, and we thought— what a great opportunity to let the exhibitors see a little more of your fabulous estate. And of course it won’t cost you anything— the catering’s all being paid for by the garden club, and they’ll do a thorough cleanup after the party’s over. In fact, the whole garden club will do whatever’s necessary to ensure that the cocktail party is absolutely no trouble at all to you.”