“Looking for smoldering piles, do you suppose?” Rita said, nodding at the two suited figures. “Think they’d know anything about the source of the fire?” She braked, turned the ignition off, and sat for a moment, taking things out of her tote bag and putting other things in. I got out of the passenger side and approached the nearest rubber figure. He took his helmet off.
“Rassmussen,” I said.
“Doc,” he nodded. “’Fraid there’s not too much to do here, but it’s good of you to come and help. Doc Tallant’s already been and gone. Wasn’t too bad, considering. Lost three goat kids, a buck, and a couple of does.”
“No people,” Rita said, coming up behind me. “You can confirm that?”
Gordy turned and pointed. “They’re all over there. Except for Mrs. Capretti and the herd manager and his people.”
We were perhaps a hundred yards from the dairy office. Marietta, Caterina, Pietro, Tony, and Frank stood in an awkward clot at the fire-darkened office door. Marietta raised a hand in salute. I waved back. Then she and the two boys disappeared into the office. Buckled by the heat, the door failed to close behind them.
“They took Doucetta to the ER last night to check her out,” Gordy said, “but she made such a fuss they brought her back. But that granddaughter of hers made her stay in bed. So she’s up to the house. The barn help’s in the barn.”
Rita took her tape recorder from her tote and held it up. “Have you determined a cause of the fire yet, Mr. Rassmussen?”
“This for attribution?” he asked with a wry smile. He had clearly been there all night. His face ran with sweat. Ash smeared his forehead. He smelled of fatigue.
“Of course it’s for attribution,” Rita said.
“Then let me get out of this rig first, will you? Cripes, it’s hot!” He shrugged himself out of the overcoat and overalls and kicked his boots off. He padded over to the fire truck in his stocking feet, retrieved his shoes and a bottle of water from a compartment near the neatly coiled hose, and sat down on the ground. “Whew!”
“Bad one?” Rita asked sympathetically,
“Could have been worse,” Gordy said. “But I’m beat. You can put in that article of yours that the volunteer firefighters of Summersville did one hell of a job, though.”
Rita smiled. “I’ve already got a list of names. Nigel’s out right now getting pictures. You can bet we’ll give them a pat on the back. We have a pretty good shot of the fire at its height. I’m going to run it front page, above the fold, with a whacking big headline: ‘Summersville Volunteers in a Blaze of Glory.’” She struggled with a small surge of emotion. “I think you guys are as brave as all get out.”
“Huh,” Gordy said. He took a long swallow of water and coughed.
“As do I,” I offered.
Both of them ignored me.
“So you guys must have some idea of how this happened.”
Gordy wiped his nose with his forearm and stared at Frank Celestine. Celestine stood with his legs planted wide, and his arms folded across his chest. Caterina sat on the front stoop, her hands in her lap. She looked like a sleepwalker. “That one”—he jerked his thumb in Frank’s direction—“says it’s lightning. Lightning,” he added in disgust.
“There was quite a storm last night,” I said.
“Yeah. But was it raining gasoline?”
“So it was arson,” Rita said. “Any idea who set the fire?”
“We’re pulling out all the stops on this one. Provost called in the state arson squad.” Gordy looked up at the sky, as if expecting a helicopter to descend momentarily. “And they’re supposed to be here any time now. Part of how come Riley and me are still here is to keep the site blocked off from anyone who’s nosing around.” He gestured toward the center of the T, where most of the destruction appeared to have occurred. The area was cordoned off by the familiar yellow police tape. Riley, if it were he in the concealing overcoat, tramped around the perimeter in a guardlike fashion.
Rita shoved the tape recorder closer to Gordy’s mouth. “Can you tell me a little bit about the type of evidence that made you realize the fire was set?”
“I guess,” Gordy said, a little uneasily. “It’s not supposed to be secret, is it?”
Rita grinned at him. “With some twenty volunteer firemen running around here last night, you don’t expect to keep it a secret long, do you?”
“You got a point there, Santelli.”
“Thank you, Rassmussen.”
They stood and smiled at each other. I had an odd feeling of being superfluous. Madeline tells me I am somewhat insensitive to the more subtle signs human beings use to communicate with one another. Since embarking upon the career of investigating detective, I’ve made considerable effort to improve in this area. Rita was a widow. Gordy was a divorcé. I made a deduction. “Are you dating one another?” I asked, to ease the silence.
Rita’s freckles disappeared in a tide of red. Gordy took a large gulp of water and had a coughing fit. Rita turned off the tape recorder with a decisive jab of her thumb and glared at me. “Any other social clunkers you want to drop into the conversation, McKenzie?”
“Ah, no,” I said.
“Bottles with rags stuffed in the neck,” Gordy said loudly. “We found gasoline-soaked rags, and a lot of shattered bottle glass. Hard to say how many. But more than six or seven, that’s for sure.”
“Really?” I said. This was very interesting. “A Molotov cocktail sort of affair?”
“I guess so.” Gordy looked doubtful. “You don’t think Russians set the fire, do you?”
“What Russians would that be?” I asked rather tartly.
Gordy was saved from the embarrassment of a reply by the arrival of two black Ford LTDs and Simon’s Ford Escort. The investigators from Syracuse had arrived.
Rita headed straight to the arson team. Gordy trailed after her. Frank’s head came up, and he jogged after them, avid curiosity in his face. I deliberated a moment. Under some gentle persuasion, Provost would fill me in on the fire forensics. And if I had to endure any more of Celestine’s company, it would have to be under less trying circumstances. Now might be a good time to discover if anyone from the dairy had a clue as to how the fire was set.
Caterina stood as I came up to the office door and gave me a small smile. “It’s probably the wrong time to say so, but I really enjoyed meeting Madeline last night.”
“Madeline is a delight,” I agreed. “I take it you’re all right?”
“Me?” She looked down at herself, as if astonished I’d asked. She wore a droopy sort of skirt and white blouse. A Tre Sorelle scarf was wrapped around her head. She touched it. “Tony said I should wear this to keep the ashes out of my hair.” The smile she gave me this time was much more confident. “He’s such a good son to me.”
“I’m sorry for all your trouble.” I turned to look at the devastation.
“Tony says it’s not as bad as it looks, although he said not to say so to anyone else.” She added in a whisper. “The insurance, you know. Tony says they’ll try to wriggle out of paying us if they can.”
“Hm,” I said. “Tell me, when did the fire start?”
She widened her eyes. “We didn’t know a thing was happening ’til we got back here after dinner last night.”
“What time would that have been?”
“About two, I think. Frank likes to stay until closing. He thinks it shows support for the club.”
I let this one pass.
“By the time we got here, the fire was almost out. Everyone was milling around in this confused way.” She trailed off. “I didn’t know what to do, exactly, so I got Frank to bed….”
I let this one pass, too. The man was undoubtedly dead drunk.
“And then I made coffee for everybody. Sandwiches, too. The volunteers were about starved to death. And then Mamma had this sort of attack.” Her hand went to her chest. “The firefighters made her get into the ambulance. Of course, she didn’t want to go.” Then she a
dded earnestly, “She really feels the loss of her cane, you know. Is there any way you can talk Lieutenant Provost into getting it back fast? She’s using this aluminum thing now, and she says it’s too light to be any use at all.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I promised. “Who was home when the fire started?”
“Home? Um. Marietta had a date. The volunteers called her on her cell phone and she came right back. The guy came right along with her.”
I drew my notepad from my pocket. “Do you remember his name?”
“Um. Let’s see. It’s that nice doctor from the clinic at Hemlock Falls. Andy Bishop, that’s his name. He was the one that took a look at Mamma when she started that scary coughing and said she should go to the ER. Anyway, he left, and Marietta started making phone calls. The whole milking system’s been just trashed, and we’ve got all these does to dry off. She thought maybe she could get some help with the injections. We have over five hundred milking does, you know.”
“You mean the volunteers in the sheds aren’t milking the does?” I said. “They’re drying them off?” Two injections of lincomycin spectinomycin two days apart accomplish this quite successfully.
Caterina jumped. My tone must have been stern. “Well, yes, the poor things. They can’t walk around all bagged up. Their udders could burst.”
“I’m well aware of that, Caterina.” I took a breath to calm down. “But you do realize what a disaster this is for the dairy. The only way to get the does up and milking again is to rebreed them. Gestation is five months. Tre Sorelle won’t be producing for five months until the kids are weaned.”
Caterina’s mouth formed a soft O.
I pushed open the door to the dairy office. Caterina followed me. Marietta sat huddled behind the desk. Her face was haggard. “My dear girl,” I said. “I am so sorry. But was this really necessary?”
She nodded mutely. Then she said, “What else could we do?”
“Borrow the milking machines, of course.”
“From where?” Caterina interrupted bitterly. “We had ten. You tell me who’ll lend us ten goat-milking machines soon enough to save five hundred does.”
Pietro and Tony stood at the window, looking out at the activity in the sheds. I still wasn’t sure which one was which. The taller one turned and came up to me, hand extended. “Thank you for coming, Dr. McKenzie.”
“You’re quite welcome,” I said, shaking his hand. “I just wish there were more that I could do. Are you quite sure you want to dry the goats off?”
“Pete and I couldn’t see any other way out of this particular mess.”
So the taller one was Tony. He had a more aquiline nose than his brother did. Neither resembled their father in the least. A fortunate circumstance, in my opinion.
“Please sit down, Dr. McKenzie.” Pietro drew a chair from the corner and set it close to the desk. “My mother, as usual, is quick with the food.” He gestured at the coffee urn and a pile of cookies on a plate next to it. “May I get you a cup of coffee?”
“Thank you. Black, if you would.”
He poured it into a foam cup and handed it to me. “She was out in the shed setting up coffee and cake for the volunteers before the sun was up,” he said rather ruefully.
“Your mother,” I said.
“Yes. And Mrs. McKenzie, too? She’s the curvy lady with the reddish hair?”
“Er, yes.”
He flung his hands wide in a very European gesture. “She’d have a hard time getting down the street whistle-free back home,” he said. “My uncles like a lady of substance.”
“No offense,” Tony added. “And with all due respect.”
“Shall we leave it at that?” I asked dryly. “And ‘back home’ is Italy, and not here?”
They exchanged glances. “We decided to emigrate just after college,” Pietro said. “We grew up speaking Italian here, of course, Donna Doucetta insisted. And when we ran into a little trouble here…”
“Kid stuff.” His brother shrugged.
“Donna Doucetta made it pretty clear we needed kind of a cooling-off period. So she sent us to live with her brothers in Siena.”
Tony smiled. “Italy treated us pretty good. And we never looked back.”
“Until now,” Pietro said. He looked out the window at the courtyard. His father had returned from the goat sheds. He stood in front of Caterina. His mouth was going, and we couldn’t hear what he said, but Caterina shook her head and backed away.
“I warned him,” Pietro said in a tight voice.
“Go,” Tony said.
Pietro made the office door in two strides and flung himself into the yard. His father retreated as soon as Pietro came down the steps and shambled off toward the house.
Tony looked at me and shrugged. “He just needs a little reminding now and then. It’s all about respect.”
“We heard the sirens last night,” I said, rather abruptly. “About ten thirty.”
“Yeah. We were watching a DVD up at the house, just kind of enjoying the storm, you know?”
“You and Pete.”
“Right. And then Aunt Luisa came running in screaming that the goats started raising a ruckus. You know how they get.”
Goats were an excellent early-warning system. But I wasn’t concerned with the goats at the moment. “Your Aunt Luisa? You mean Anna Luisa Brandstetter?”
He made a wry face. “The screamer. Yeah. She showed up here yesterday about dinnertime with a pile of suitcases and not enough tissue.”
My face must have shown my bewilderment.
“Crying, sobbing, shrieking, you name it. She had a fight with Neville. Told Donna Doucetta she was moving back home. Pete and I hauled her suitcases into a bedroom and she shut herself up for a while. We could still hear her though. And then Neville shows up.”
“Neville Brandstetter?”
“You think there’s more than one guy named Neville in Summersville?” he said impatiently. “Yeah. Neville shows up. They go back into her bedroom. They scream. They shout. Donna Doucetta marches in and starts yelling at the both of them. He leaves. That’s it.”
I was silent. This was a very distressing development.
“So,” Tony said, getting back to his story. “Aunt Luisa comes out saying the goats are yelling. I walked out onto the balcony and saw this flickering, like, right where the milking parlor was. I yelled at Pete to call nine-one-one and ran down the hill like the devil himself was after me. By the time I got here, the whole center part of the dairy was whoosh!” He flicked his fingers in the air. “You ever been close to a fire, Dr. McKenzie? The heat it gives off is amazing. The herdsman and the barn help take the van into the village on Wednesday nights after the seven thirty milking ’cause that’s when the movie changes at the theater. There wasn’t a heck of a lot just the two of us could do and of course, Aunt Luisa’s just useless. We had a couple of meningeal does in the back with their kids and we tried to pull them out but it was nothing doing.” He paused. “You’ve got one heck of a fire department here, I’ll give you that. Those guys were here in about fifteen minutes. It was amazing. I didn’t think a small town like this one could get a turnout like that. I’ll bet there were twenty guys here. A couple of women, too.”
The phone rang, startling all three of us. Marietta had been sitting silent throughout Tony’s summary. She picked the phone up, listened for a moment, and then said, “Thank you,” in such a heartfelt tone, that I knew she had been strung very tightly. She hung up and looked at her cousin. “That was Jonathan. He said they’ve finished with the does. Isn’t that amazing? So fast. It’s all happened so fast.” She fell silent.
“That’s my man,” Tony said.
“Jonathan?” I said. “Jonathan Swinford?”
“Yes. He showed up this morning with the volunteers to help with the goats.” She smiled at me. “Along with Madeline, of course. You should have seen your wife, Dr. McKenzie. She had everyone organized into teams and had the goats moving through the chutes in
nothing flat. And she ordered me out of the barn. Said I’d be of more help later on. With Grandmamma.” She looked around, as if a bell had rung. “I’d better go up and check on her. She’s supposed to stay in bed, but it’s like trying to keep a helium balloon from rising to the ceiling.”
“May I go with you?”
“You know, I think she’ll be glad to see you.”
I turned to Tony as I went out the door. “What time did Dr. Brandstetter leave the house?”
He thought a minute. “Maybe a half hour before Aunt Luisa told us about the goats. He was some pissed off, I can tell you.”
I followed Marietta up the hill in a somber mood.
“SO it’s you, arsehole,” Doucetta said. She sat up in a king-sized bed, frail and unbearably sad. Anna Luisa, looking like an unmown lawn after a heavy rain, sat in a chair near the bed. It was a spectacular room, filled with heavily ornate furniture and with a view of the valley. Doucetta waved her aluminum cane. “They are trying to kill my dairy.”
Luisa got up and rustled toward her mother. She wore a diaphanous sort of negligee and her hair was uncombed. “Now, Mamma, just settle down. The fire’s out. We only lost three goats and five kids. The rest of the does are just fine.”
Doucetta glared at me. “This daughter is as stupid as the other one.” She waved her hand at Luisa dismissively. It was as gnarled as the roots of a banyan tree. “The goats that burned up were meningeal goats. They were dead anyway.”
“Mamma! I can’t believe you’re this coldhearted!” Luisa flounced to her chair.
Marietta smiled to herself and began to straighten the clutter on the nightstand. I smoothed my mustache. Meningeal goats are infected with deer worm, which is usually a fatal condition. Even in crisis, Doucetta could not be accused of sentimentality.
“Coldhearted? I have to be coldhearted. They are trying to kill my dairy.” Two tears rolled down her cheeks. Her bright black eyes were cloudy. She closed them, and lay so still that for a moment, I feared she had fainted.
The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat Page 17
