I was at a loss for a response, so I picked up a cheese puff and ate it. My wife is both an enthusiastic eater and a notable cook. It was an excellent cheese puff, so I had another.
“Of course, if you want a good candidate for our next corpse, I’ve got one,” Madeline said. Her sapphire eyes darkened a trifle.
I raised one eyebrow in query. Madeline is of a genial and easygoing disposition. Animus of this type is most unlike her.
“Thelma Bergland, that’s who,” Madeline responded, although I hadn’t actually asked the question. “Ever since Thelma inherited that pile from her rich old auntie, she’s been drivin’ us all to distraction. You know how Lila and I have our usual Friday lunch? Thelma called up yesterday, asked if she could join us, and she didn’t show. Didn’t even call. So we went and ate without her.” Another cheese puff disappeared down Madeline’s throat. “Phooey.”
“Thelma came into an inheritance?” I said.
“Austin, sometimes I think you don’t listen to a thing I say. I told you all about it last night after supper.”
I had spent the prior evening writing a draft of my weekly column for the Summersville Sentinel, Ask Dr. McKenzie! (The exclamation mark is courtesy of the Sentinel’s advertising department.) The issue at hand had been a particularly interesting question about sarcoptic mange. I had a faint recollection of hearing Madeline’s mellow contralto murmuring in the background. Clearly, I’d missed news of some import.
“So you did,” I said cordially. “But I hadn’t realized a small legacy would make that much of a change in their circumstances.”
“Small legacy? Austin, it was two and a half million dollars!”
“Good heavens,” I said. I was astonished into momentary silence. Then, as my surprise abated, “Well, good for them.” Victor, who had succeeded me as chair of the Bovine Sciences department, had long wanted to establish a Bergland bovine scholarship fund. Now he’d be able to do it.
Madeline sipped her iced tea and gazed over the porch railing at the ducklings bobbing on the pond at the foot of the lawn. A pair of Muscovy ducks had taken up residence there this spring. The two were on their second family. “Austin. What’s the first thing we’d do if somebody dropped two and a half million dollars in our laps?”
“Raise Allegra’s and Joe’s salary.” Although there was only one full-time job available at our clinic, Madeline and I had been unable to decide between the two applicants who had showed up to interview for the position. So the two of them shared the job, for not much more than a pittance, I’m sorry to say.
“And then what?”
I was stumped.
“We’d get a dishwasher.”
“And then what?”
I have to admit that other than the comfort of knowing that the taxes and utility bills would be covered every month, there’s only one thing we wanted that cost anywhere near two and half million dollars.
“The McKenzie Medal for Outstanding Research in Bovine Sciences,” Madeline said, with her usual perceptiveness. She placed her warm hand on my mine. I clasped it affectionately. “Not to mention that program where you can buy a goat for a third world family. Oh, there’s a lot of useful stuff we could do with that kind of cash.”
“But what would you do with it, my dear?”
“We have everything we want. I mean, I’d be just as happy if NYSEG put us back on their Christmas card list, but we’re going to be payin’ those bills on time for the rest of this year, at least, so I’m not really worried about that.”
“I should point out that the money has been left to the Berglands, and not the two of us,” I said. “Perhaps we should curb these flights of fancy. Just what is Thelma up to?”
Through the open windows behind me, I heard the phone ring. I ignored it. There are few things in life more intrusive than the telephone; there is nothing more intrusive than the telephone’s obnoxious younger cousin, the cell phone.
“Thelma?” Madeline began as she rose to her feet, “Thelma is…well. You’ll just have to see for yourself at dinner tonight.” She disappeared through the French doors to our living room, and reappeared moments later, the telephone receiver in her hand. “It’s for you, darlin’.” Then, as she handed the receiver to me she mouthed, Victor.
I held the phone in my hand for a moment. What should one say to a legatee, especially one who had suddenly, unexpectedly, come into a large quantity of cash? A legatee, moreover, who was a friend of long standing? Perhaps a quiet but heartfelt “Congratulations” was in order. I put the phone to my ear and said, “McKenzie here.”
“Austin, it’s good to hear your voice. How are you?” my old friend said courteously.
Victor’s usual greeting is over-hearty, profane, and insulting. Somewhat taken aback, I said, “I’m well, Victor. And you?”
“As well as can be expected.”
This, then, was the moment to offer a modest “Well done!” or “Delighted to hear of your good fortune.” I drew breath.
“Is this a convenient time?” he rolled on, smoothly.
“It’s four fifteen in the afternoon,” I said. “You know perfectly well I’m drinking Scotch.”
“Of course. Sorry to trouble you. Perhaps I could call you later.”
This was all extremely unsettling. By now, Victor and I should have exchanged rude opinions on our intelligences at the very least. “No, no. Please. Go ahead.”
“I have a favor to ask.”
“Certainly.”
“Neville Brandstetter has a young second-year, Leslie Chou.”
Brandstetter I knew. Very sound in anything pertaining to goats. “The student doesn’t come to mind, but I know Brandstetter, of course.” A bit of a joker, I recalled. And he was the possessor of a large red beard that must plague him no end in this heat.
“He’s come up short on a QMPS team. Needs an experienced veterinary to supervise young Chou. Shouldn’t take more than a few weeks of your time, if that. And there’s a stipend attached, of course.”
A Quality Milk Production Services team partners with the State of New York to assess the suitability of working processes of dairies. The team consists of a veterinarian and several technicians. The former is usually a professor in good standing at the ag school. The latter can be students or those trained in various aspects of the milk trade: nutrition, chemistry, whatever. I am a beef man, myself, although I have more than a passing acquaintance with dairy cattle. A thought occurred to me. “Brandstetter’s goats.”
“True.”
“You want me to supervise a quality team at a goat dairy?” I was nonplussed. I treat very few goats—just George and Phyllis Best of Best’s Boers—none of them dairy.
“The girl’s quite knowledgeable. And how complicated can it be, Austin? The milking process is the same whether it’s cows or pygmy buffalo.” This isn’t strictly true, of course, since the chemistry of milk varies considerably between species, but I was relieved to hear the testiness. That was a bit of the old Victor!
“Not very,” I admitted. “I’ll need to brush up on the sampling procedures. And I know next to nothing about the periods of normal changes in the milk due to lactation.”
“Please add whatever research time you need to the invoice,” Victor said. “So I can tell Brandstetter you’ve agreed? He asked for you specifically, for some reason.”
Odder still. But an invoice was an invoice. “Certainly.” I had a sudden, unwelcome thought. “It wouldn’t be Tre Sorelle dairy, by any chance?”
Victor paused.
“Anna Luisa’s dairy. His wife,” I added, by way of clarification. “Who is the daughter of that notorious termagant, Doucetta Capretti.”
“It is, Austin, but…”
“There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it,” I said. “The answer is no, Victor.”
“Are you sure?” he asked with concern. “I know how tight things are for you folks and I thought…”
“The detective business is shaping up nicely,” I said rather
icily. “And the clinic business is substantially improved. I would rather spend a week at a shopping mall than one second overseeing Ms. Capretti’s goats. The elder Ms. Capretti, to be precise.” Her granddaughter Marietta Capretti was quite a dish. So was Anna Luisa.
“If you’re sure,” Victor said doubtfully.
“I am certain.”
“Neville will be disappointed. But I’ll let him know. And, oh, Austin?”
“Still here, Victor,” I said impatiently.
“There’s been a change in plans for tonight’s dinner.”
Our standing date for the Friday night fish fry was at the Monrovian Embassy, Summersville’s best hamburger joint. “Oh, yes?”
“Thelma thought we’d enjoy an evening at Suzanne’s.”
“Suzanne’s?” This restaurant made the food at the Inn at Hemlock Falls look paltry! The Sunday edition of the New York Times had called it a gourmet experience to be savored again and again. This was a far cry from the beer-battered onions of the Embassy. I glanced at Madeline. She frowned. I rarely see my wife frown. She extended her hand for the phone.
“Victor? Are you two thinkin’ we might go to Suzanne’s tonight instead of the Embassy? You are? Would it be okay with you if we saved Suzanne’s for another time? I’d need a little more time to prepare for a place that nice. You understand? Great. Thank you, darlin’. We’ll see you at the usual time.” Madeline clicked the phone off and held it in her hand as if judging its weight. “Suzanne’s,” she said. “As if. And it’s forty dollars an entrée. Whooee.”
And that, until we sat at the Monrovian Embassy with the Berglands, was her entire comment on the matter of Thelma’s two-and-a-half-million-dollar inheritance.
THE Monrovian Embassy is a byword in Summersville. Rudy Schwartz’s breakfasts are close to incomparable; nowhere else will one find such crisp hash browns, such smoky-flavored bacon. At lunch and dinner, the Monrovian hamburger smothered in beer-battered onion rings is second to none. But it is the Friday night fish fry that brings Summersvillians out in force. It is fortunate indeed that Rudy’s steers are regular clients of the McKenzie clinic; we would have trouble getting a table otherwise.
The Embassy sits on Main Street; the rear parking lot is on the edge of a small tributary to Cayuga Lake. At quarter to seven, I parked our Bronco near the Dumpster, the scene of the crime in our recently closed murder case. “That brings up memories,” I said, gazing at the rusty metal sides with some affection.
“And what does that bring up?” Madeline said with unaccustomed tartness. “Your breakfast, I bet.” I followed the direction of her forefinger. An enormous red Hummer sat on the grass verge between the parking lot and the stream. It was trimmed in brass: brass bumpers, brass surrounds on the headlights, brass handles on the doors.
“Victor’s?” I said in some surprise.
“Thelma’s auntie didn’t leave her millions to Victor,” Madeline said. “It’s Thelma’s.”
Although Thelma is shaped like an artichoke and has the voice of a mandrill monkey, she is a sound liberal. A Democrat you can count on. The Hummer was an anomaly of no small order.
We made our way through the crowd at the front door and into the belly of the restaurant itself. The interior—like the shambling exterior—is comfortably shabby. Battered wooden booths line one wall; a long wooden bar lines the other. The middle is occupied by a higgledy-piggledy collection of tables and chairs. The back wall has three doors: one on each side leads to the bathrooms; the center goes into the kitchen.
Victor sat in our regular booth, the one nearest the Gents. He rose and waved us on. Thelma was next to him; I didn’t see all of her until I sat down next to Madeline.
“Good heavens,” I said. “What happened to you, Thelma?”
My wife put her hand on my knee and pinched it.
“Howdy, Thelma,” Madeline said cheerfully. “Lila and I missed seein’ you at lunch today.”
“I spent most of the day in Syracuse,” Thelma said. “Shopping.”
I wondered what store had exploded over Thelma’s person—although I didn’t say that aloud.
Madeline tells me one can infer a number of things about human beings from they way they look. She has a point. Exterior clues can reveal many things about health. A staring coat can be evidence of malnutrition or parasite infestation. A dull hide or a shelly hoof may indicate an endocrine imbalance. A generally unkempt appearance has a lot to say about the responsibility of one’s caretaker.
We’ve known Thelma Bergland for more than twenty years, and she’s always looked like an artichoke. She didn’t resemble an artichoke anymore. Something had pinched her figure in, in places where formerly it had bulged out. Her hair was a bright yellow instead of liver brown. She had a lot of stuff on her face. Glittery blue stuff on her eyelids. Pink stuff on her cheeks. She clanked when she moved, due, I assumed, to the amount of gold jewelry on her bosom and wrists.
“So, Austin,” Victor said, rather loudly. “Have you changed your mind about Neville Brandstetter’s offer yet? He’s anxious that somebody gets a look in at the dairy. Seems the somatic cell count keeps coming back well over a million.”
“Have I what? No,” I said rather testily. “I haven’t.” I stopped looking at Thelma and looked at Victor. His somewhat stocky self was stuffed into a sports coat. His hair was shorter and glistened with something very like Show Sheen. With his banana-shaped nose and wooly hair, Victor always reminds me of a Suffolk ram; at the moment, he looked more sheepish than usual.
“See something funny?” he asked in rather a dangerous way.
This new Victor would not appreciate my little pun, so I said, “Not at all.” Then taking the ram by the horns, so to speak, I said, “I understand congratulations are in order. I hear you’ve come into a bit of a windfall.”
“Well, of course,” Thelma said in her corvine screech—at least her voice hadn’t mutated into something strange and wonderful!—“it’s my ‘windfall’ as you call it. Victor didn’t get a penny.” She withdrew a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at each eye. I was curious to see if the glittery blue stuff rubbed off. It didn’t. “My poor aunt Violet. Such a loss.” She tucked the cloth back in her bag and snapped, “Victor, would you please check on our drinks? We put our order in ages ago.”
“Of course, dear.” Victor got up and headed toward the bar.
“Victor!” Thelma said.
He stopped halfway there, shook his head as if he had a fly in his ear, and came back.
“Austin and Madeline would like something, too, I’m sure.” She smiled. There was a bit of red stuff on her teeth. Her teeth looked a lot whiter than they had before. And more pointed, somehow, although that may have been my imagination. “Please. Order what you like, you two. It’s on me.”
“Scotch for you, old man,” Victor said heartily. “Maddy? What about you?”
Thelma tapped her glass with a fingernail. Her fingernails had grown a lot longer in the week since I’d seen her last. This was puzzling. “Try a Campari and soda, Madeline. It’s delicious.”
“Thank you,” Madeline said. “That sounds just fine.”
Victor bumbled off to the bar.
“Thelma,” I said, “your appearance has changed. What…” Madeline’s warm hand tightened warningly on my knee.
I subsided into sheer confusion for the rest of the evening.
“THELMA inherits two and a half million dollars and Dr. Bergland ends up putting Show Sheen in his hair?” Allegra said gleefully. “Oh. My. Goodness.” She burst into giggles. Allegra’s giggle is infectious, and the rest of us around the breakfast table couldn’t help but smile. She is a pretty girl, with greenish eyes and hair the color of a Hershey bar. She was about to enter her first year as a veterinary student and was preparing by taking a few summer courses in small animal husbandry.
“That’s not what it’s all about, though, is it?” Joe said. Joe, about to enter his third year as a veterinary student, just manages to keep
afloat with a combination of scholarships, our clinic salary, and an occasional odd job as bartender at the Monrovian Embassy. His shift at the Embassy had started at nine last night, just as Madeline and I were leaving. He’d started his breakfast by regaling Allegra with tales of Thelma’s behavior. “Bossed him around, buying exotic drinks for anyone they even knew remotely. Rudy doesn’t stock half the stuff she asked for. She’s using the money to beat poor Doc Bergland over the head.” He hunched disapprovingly over his oatmeal. “It’s pretty brutal.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll work it out just fine,” Madeline said.
Saturdays are less frenetic than weekdays, and we begin breakfast at nine, rather than the usual seven o’clock, which meant the mail had been delivered. Madeline sorted through the stack and said somewhat absently, “Getting that kind of money dumped in your lap all of a sudden is like being out in a storm in a tippy boat. Hard to keep your balance.”
Allegra’s laughter deserted her abruptly. “Money,” she said darkly. Her own family had nearly been destroyed by her father’s pursuit of it. Sam Fulbright had paid the price—one to three years in a downstate prison—but Allegra still dealt with the aftermath. Thanks to a legacy from her grandmother, her own studies at Cornell were paid for, but she needed her assistant’s pay to supplement it. “She’s going to be sorry she ever cashed that check.”
Madeline, perusing a letter, said, “Ally, honey, it’s no use fretting over stuff like money…good glory!”
In twenty-two years of happily married life, I’d never heard that tone of voice from my wife before. Joe half rose out of his chair. Lincoln began to bark. Juno, our half-bred Akita, chased her tail in an agony of excitement. Even Odie the cat stopped her methodical tail washing and stared at us, her gold eyes wide.
“My dear, whatever is the matter?”
“Taxes!” Madeline smacked the letter flat on the table. “It’s this year’s bill for taxes!”
I settled back in my chair. Lincoln looked at me, yawned, and curled himself at my feet. Odie abruptly resumed the ministrations to her tail. Only the people in the room remained attentive. “I had heard we were due to be reassessed,” I said. “I take it the news is not hopeful?”
The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat Page 3
