Swan for the Money

by Donna Andrews

  At least the chief watched. I tried hard not to. I didn’t faint at the sight of blood, like my brother— if I did, I’d have become as horizontal as the goats the second I looked at Mrs. Winkleson. I could handle blood, but I had a hard time watching all the technological marvels of modern medicine. I was profoundly grateful they existed, of course, and hoped people like Dad and the EMTs would be around if I ever needed them, but I also hoped if that ever happened I’d be temporarily unconscious and unable to watch.

  They were putting her on the stretcher, about to take her away, before the chief showed any sign of being finished with me.

  “One more thing,” he said, his eyes on the EMTs. “Any possibility she was already out here when you went through the first time?”

  “No,” I said. “Because I saw her up at the house, remember? And besides—”

  “What is all this commotion? What’s going on here?”

  Several goats fainted, and everyone else turned and gasped. Mrs. Winkleson was standing at the fence, her hands on her hips, scowling fiercely at us.

  Chapter 17

  “I thought you said the victim was Mrs. Winkleson,” the chief said, frowning at me.

  “Victim?” Mrs. Winkleson said. “What do you mean, victim?”

  “I thought it was,” I said, ignoring her. “Right size and weight, wearing black clothes. And her face was covered with blood and dirt, and I didn’t really look at it for long.”

  “I said what’s going on here?” Mrs. Winkleson shrieked.

  “We’re investigating a mur— an attempted murder,” the chief said.

  “What? On my estate? Outrageous!”

  She stormed over to the gate, unlatched it and strode into the pasture.

  “Madam,” the chief said. “Please stay outside the fence. This is a crime scene. Madam, I—”

  He took a step in her direction, tripped on a horizontal goat, and fell over.

  “Watch the goat!” Mr. Darby said.

  “Stop that woman!” the chief shouted.

  Mr. Darby didn’t move. Clearly crossing his employer wasn’t something he could do. Or perhaps he was still in shock at the discovery that the victim wasn’t Mrs. Winkleson. He’d seemed quite calm when we thought she was Mrs. Winkleson, but since her arrival, he’d been staring at the frail form Caroline and Dad were working on, with his mouth hanging open and a horrified expression on his face.

  Mrs. Winkleson kept going. The chief was still trying to disentangle himself from the goat.

  I jumped up and ran after her.

  “The chief said to stop!” I called.

  “I want to know what is going on here!”

  She was only ten feet from the victim.

  I tackled her. We went down in a muddy heap amid the stiff forms of half a dozen startled goats.

  “Arrest her!” Mrs. Winkleson cried. “Assault and battery! Trespassing!”

  “I’d be happy to, madam,” the chief said, limping up to us. “But then I would have to arrest you for disturbing a crime scene and interfering with a police investigation. Please stand back and let the medical personnel do their job.”

  She glared at both of us, and then turned and walked back to the fence. She stopped in front of the gate and crossed her arms.

  “Algie, no! Bad goat!” Mr. Darby said. Not in a very loud voice, but the goat that had been lowering his head and aiming at Mrs. Winkleson’s derriere straightened up and looked around as if to say “Who? Me?”

  “You could at least tell me who has managed to get himself killed on my property,” Mrs. Winkleson said, apparently unaware of her narrow escape.

  “Herself,” the chief corrected. “She’s not dead yet, and I have no idea who she is.”

  “We thought it was you,” I said. “I thought I recognized your rain cape. But now we don’t know who she is.”

  “Yes we do,” Dad said, over his shoulder. “Sandy Sechrest. One of the rose growers exhibiting this weekend. From northern Virginia, I think. Very nice person. Unsound on the use of manure, but she had— has—quite a gift for raising miniature roses.”

  “Had,” the chief repeated. “She’s gone, then?”

  “Has,” Dad corrected. “We’re doing what we can.”

  The chief’s lips tightened. He could read the message on Dad’s face and in his tone.

  “Do you know Mrs. Sechrest?” the chief said, turning to Mrs. Winkleson.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Winkleson said. “Not well, but I know all the members of the rose club. No idea what she was doing out here the day before the show, though. Unless she was one of Ms. Langslow’s volunteers.”

  I shook my head.

  Just then the EMTs picked up the stretcher and began carefully picking their way across the rough ground and between the goats.

  “Getting back to what you saw,” the chief said, turning back to me. “Now that we know the de— the victim is not Mrs. Winkleson, is there any chance she could have been already lying here when you went by the first time? On your way to the house?”

  I thought for a few moments and shook my head.

  “No idea,” I said. “I was focused on getting to the house and not startling the goats. I don’t think I would have noticed if one of them was already lying down. I noticed her right away when I came back from the house, but I mistook her for a cluster of unconscious goats.”

  “If it makes any difference,” Dad said, “I doubt if it could have happened before you went up to the house.”

  He’d been following the EMTs but paused when he heard the chief’s question.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t think I spent more than half an hour on my trip up to the house.”

  Dad shook his head.

  “Still probably too long.”

  “You can tell that by the body?” the chief asked.

  “I can tell that by the blood,” Dad said. “There was quite a lot of it when Caroline and I first got here, but by now it’s been mostly washed off by the drizzle. And we had quite a frog-strangler there for a few minutes, just before I got the call to come out here. If she’d been attacked before that, there wouldn’t have been much blood left for us to see.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “I saw that myself, just in the short time I was with her. A whole lot of blood washing away before my eyes.”

  “What if she was stabbed before the first time Meg came by and continued to bleed the whole time?” the chief asked.

  My stomach churned at the thought. If that was how it had happened, my failure to see her the first time would probably end up costing her life.

  “No,” Dad said. “With those wounds, she’d have bled out in much less than half an hour. This had to have happened very close to when Meg found her.”

  Dad’s words set my mind more at ease, though apparently it was going to take a while for them to calm my stomach.

  The chief studied Dad’s face for a few moments, then nodded, as if grudgingly acknowledging a good point.

  “Do you need me here?” Dad asked. “If not, I’m going to ride along to the hospital.”

  “Go,” the chief said, waving toward the ambulance. “And keep me posted.”

  Dad nodded and hurried after the EMTs.

  “Did I see your cousin Horace over in the barn?” the chief asked.

  I nodded.

  “Want me to find him?” I asked. Caerphilly didn’t have any CSIs of its own, so the chief usually borrowed Horace on those rare occasions when a case warranted doing forensic work.

  The chief nodded, and I was happy to have a reason to leave the goat pasture.

  “If you’re quite through here—” Mrs. Winkleson began.

  “No, madam,” the chief said, interrupting her. “My officers and I are nowhere near through here, and I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to go back up to your house. I’ll come up later to find out what you can tell me about this sad business.”

  “Are you ordering me off my own property?”

  “No, madam,”
the chief said. “I’m asking you to stay away from my crime scene. I’m investigating what I expect will soon become a murder, if it hasn’t already. The requirements of my investigation take precedence over anything else.”

  “The nerve!” Mrs. Winkleson exclaimed. From past experience, I could tell she was winding up for a full-scale hissy fit. I turned back to do what I could to head her off.

  “How terrible for you, Mrs. Winkleson!” I said. “Knowing that the person who tried to kill you is still at large! But of course, the chief will be doing everything he can to find the perpetrator before he can strike again, and in the meantime, if there’s anything anyone can do to help you through this dreadful ordeal, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  She blinked as she considered this. Then she turned back to the chief.

  “You’ll be providing me with police protection, of course,” she said.

  “Alas, madam, we do not have the personnel to do that,” the chief said. “With a crime of this magnitude, we’ll need to seek whatever help we can get from nearby counties and from the State Bureau of Investigation.”

  “But I’ve been receiving threats!” Mrs. Winkleson snapped.

  “What kind of threats?” The chief looked up from his notebook with an expression of genuine interest. No doubt, like me, he was thinking about the “or else” typed on the scrap of paper I’d rescued from the goat.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The usual thing. Stop the rose show or you’ll be sorry. Stuff like that. And they took my dog, too. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

  “My officers are even now searching for your missing dog,” the chief said. “Why didn’t you report these threats when we talked earlier this morning? Did it not occur to you that they might be relevant to your missing dog?”

  “I thought they were nonsense until now,” she said. “Now I realize they were serious.”

  “The disappearance of your dog didn’t convince you?”

  “That, too.”

  I could see the chief, himself a dog own er, found her cavalier attitude toward Mimi’s absence as unsatisfactory as I did.

  “It would have been helpful to know about these threats earlier,” he said. “We will certainly keep them in mind as our investigation progresses.”

  “Are you telling me there’s nothing you can do to protect me?” Mrs. Winkleson bellowed.

  “I can catch whoever did this as soon as possible,” the chief snapped. “That’s the best thing I can do to help you and everyone else in this county, and I hope I can expect your full cooperation.”

  They glared at each other for a few moments. Mrs. Winkle-son suddenly put on her Lady Bountiful face.

  “Of course,” she said. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Or if any of my staff are less than fully cooperative. I’ll leave you to your work.”

  She gave him the same sort of gracious nod I’d seen her give her butler when she was in a good mood, and then sailed off toward the barns.

  “Motive’s going to be a problem in this one,” I said, when she was out of earshot.

  “I don’t see why,” the chief said. “For a few moments there, I wanted to kill her myself.”

  “That’s your problem,” I said. “Everyone feels that way. Too many suspects.”

  “We’ll manage,” he said. “Could you find your cousin Horace now?”

  In other words, mind my own business. I nodded and went back to the barns in search of Horace.

  Chapter 18

  Horace and Sammy were in the show barn, staring at some of the tables.

  “Meg, do we really have to paint all the table legs black?” Sammy asked. “I could go into town and get some paint, but we borrowed them from the New Life Baptist Church, and I think they’d rather get their tables back the same color they started out, and besides—”

  “I agree,” I said. “No painting the table legs. And if Mrs. Winkleson has a problem with that, tell her to talk to me. Horace, the chief could use your help.”

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “Someone tried to knock off Mrs. Winkleson just now,” I said. “Unfortunately, they attacked someone else by mistake. The chief could use your forensic talents. Sammy, he could probably use your help, too.”

  Horace hurried off. Sammy started to follow, then turned back to me.

  “Who’s the, um, victim?” he asked.

  “Mrs. Sechrest. One of the rose growers. Not from around here.”

  Sammy nodded.

  “I suppose I should be ashamed to say that’s a relief, but it is,” he said. “You said tried. Will she make it?”

  “We don’t know yet,” I said. “Dad didn’t look too cheerful.”

  Sammy shook his head and hurried after Horace.

  No one else was in the barn. Were the volunteers all in the other barn, working on the setup there? Out helping with the search for Mimi? Or all up at the goat pasture, staring at the crime scene?

  I was determined not to do that myself, so I looked around for something to do. I spotted an open box, presumably what Sammy and Horace had been working on when Mrs. Winkle-son blew through and demanded that they paint the table legs black. The label on this box read, helpfully, “labels.”

  I opened the box up and looked inside. It was full of small black and white plastic labels. I picked up one. Class 130. Okay, the classes were the different categories in which the roses would be entered. I knew that much from proofing the program. I dumped the box’s contents on a nearby table and began to sort them. I ended up with labels for classes 101 through 149, and also three sets of alphabetical labels. Where were all those A– Zs supposed to go?

  And why was I assuming the show would go on? For all I knew, the chief would declare the whole area a crime scene, and before the afternoon was out I’d have to pack up the little plastic labels again.

  “Something wrong?”

  I looked up to see one of the rose growers watching me.

  “Do you know what to do with these?” I asked, indicating the labels.

  “Just how much do you know about rose shows, sugar?” the woman asked.

  “Next to nothing,” I said. “My mother suckered me into doing this because I have a reputation in the family for being organized. But she promised there would be someone here to help who knew how this whole thing is supposed to run.”

  “I can help with that. Molly Weston.”

  Since there were no roses nearby, I assumed that was her name. I shook the hand she held out, and then stood by while she started shuffling the little plastic rectangles.

  “Do you have one of the programs?”

  I rummaged around until I found the box of programs and handed her one.

  “Okay,” she said. “This is pretty straightforward. Class 101 is for hybrid teas or grandifloras from a grower with 75 or fewer rose bushes,” she said. “And 102 is for growers with 76 and above. Those are the two biggest categories— so big that we need the alphabetical tags underneath. I’d say use the first four tables for 101 and the next four for 102. The next few are fairly small, maybe half a table each, until you get to the miniatures. That’s what the third set of alpha tags is for. I’d say another four tables for them. Here— follow me.”

  She handed me a couple of stacks of plastic tags and I trailed after her, placing the tags on the tables, closer together or farther apart, depending on how popular she thought the categories were apt to be.

  We had only done a couple of tables when my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket. Michael.

  “It’s my husband,” I said. “I should—”

  “Go talk to the man,” she said, waving me away. “I’ll handle this.”

  I flipped the phone open and strolled outside, where I could have some privacy.

  “Hey, beautiful,” Michael said. “Do you miss me?”

  “You have no idea how much,” I said.

  “Rose show even worse than you anticipated?”

  “About
as bad as I anticipated up until an hour ago,” I said. “Then it took a nose dive when someone tried to kill Mrs. Winkleson.”

  “Tried? She’s all right, then?”

  “She’s fine. Unfortunately the attacker probably managed to knock off another one of the rose growers. Dad went with her to the hospital, but it’s not looking good.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Who?”

  “Sandy Sechrest.”

  “I don’t recognize the name,” he said.

  “That’s because she was never anything but polite, helpful, and cooperative in the last few weeks,” I said. “It’s only the rude, demanding, unhelpful, nasty ones you’d recognize, because they’re the ones I come home and bitch to you about.”

  “Actually, the only name I can think of off the top of my head is Mrs. Winkleson.”

  “That figures,” I said. “There are some others you’d probably recognize if I said the names, but she’s been the worst. Did you hear that someone abducted Mrs. Winkleson’s dog last night?”

  “My God, you have had a morning. Do you think they’re related? The murder and the dognapping, I mean?”

  “No idea. And unlike Dad, I’m trying to leave the detecting to Chief Burke. Let’s talk about something else. How’s the trip going?”

  “Could be better,” he said. “I don’t suppose the attempted murder counts as a crisis for which you need me standing sup-portively at your side?”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I thought you felt duty-bound to see your student’s play.”

  “That was when it was a play,” he said. “He didn’t tell us that during the rehearsal period it had mutated into a musical.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Used to be Millard Fillmore and the Compromise of 1850: A Tragedy of American History. Now it’s Millard! The Musical! With two exclamation points no less.”

  “Actually, that sounds as if it could be an improvement.”

  “I doubt it. According to a review we read on the way up, the only halfway hummable tune in the whole show is a ballad about the Wilmot Proviso.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “And since we’re all professors, and hate to admit ignorance of anything, even if it’s not in our field, now we’re all frantically trying to pretend we know what the Wilmot Proviso is and what it has to do with Fillmore. You don’t happen to know, do you?”