The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat

by Claudia Bishop

  “Do you have any idea who could have set the fire, Mrs. Capretti?”

  Her eyes snapped open. “That tax inspector.”

  “He’s dead, Grandmamma,” Marietta said.

  “I know he’s dead, you idiot. He kept nosing around here like a stray cat after garbage. He wanted me to sell out to the cheese people. I said hell, no. You want to know who set fire to my dairy? The cheese people did.” She glared at me. She sat straight up among the pillows. “You!” she said. “You’re a detective. Es vero?”

  “If you are asking me if that’s true,” I said cautiously, “yes, Mrs. Capretti, I am.”

  “Go after the cheese people and smack them around! I want you to find out who is trying to kill my dairy!” Her bony fingers worked the fringe on the bedspread. “Who is trying to kill me!”

  I looked at Marietta, alarmed. “Someone has threatened her life?”

  “No, no. She means that the dairy is her life.” Marietta looked down at her grandmother with an expression equal parts affection and exasperation. Doucetta raised her aluminum cane, looked at it in disgust, and flung it across the room. “I want my cane back, too!” she shouted. “There is a curse on this house until my cane is returned!”

  “I thought the curse was lifted when the boys came by,” Marietta said. “So there’s another curse?”

  Doucetta pointed at her. “You! You can go too far!”

  “That’s absolutely true,” Luisa said waspishly. “You let Marietta get away with far too much, Mamma.”

  “Why don’t you just pack up your bags and wriggle back to that poor husband of yours?” Marietta suggested.

  “Shut up, all of you!” Doucetta demanded. “A sick old lady like me, and you’re fighting like a couple of alley cats. Shame on you. You especially, Luisa. What are you doing here? You should by home with that bad-tempered husband of yours. You’re here, instead, tormenting me! And look at you! In your nightgown at eleven o’clock in the morning. I want you dressed and out of my house! Go! Go!”

  Luisa fled the room with a sob. Doucetta muttered angrily to herself. Then she said, “So, Mr. Fancy-Pants Detective. Will you find out why I am cursed?”

  “I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Capretti.”

  “Swear to me that you will find this killer!”

  I cleared my throat. Then I said, “Yes, indeed.”

  “Murderers all around me,” she grumbled. “The milk inspector? Someone did us all a favor there. The tax man? Pft.” She spat. “No loss to the troops. But my buildings! My creamery! All my cheese!” The tears rolled down her cheeks. It was really quite horrible. “Aaaahhh!” she wailed.

  “You really need to sit back and calm down, Grandmamma.” Marietta sorted through the assorted detritus on the nightstand and held up a carafe. She glanced at me. “You don’t think it’s too early to give her a little red wine?”

  It is a curious fact that some people see little difference between vets and physicians. “I see no harm in it all. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind some myself.”

  “Good idea.” Marietta unearthed three glasses and poured a healthy slug of wine in each. I sat on the bed to drink it. Marietta sat next to me. She raised her glass. “To the goats,” she said. “To the goats,” Doucetta and I responded. The wine went down quite easily, being a cabernet franc of no small distinction, so we had another. It was quite cozy.

  “Austin!” Madeline walked into the bedroom and stopped short. “Whatever are you doing?”

  Thirteen

  “YOU were cuddlin’ her,” Madeline said firmly.

  “I was not,” I said, just as firmly.

  Madeline placed a dish of brown rice on the table and followed it with a plate of lima beans, corn, sliced red pepper, and chopped celery. I loathe lima beans. And brown rice sticks in my teeth.

  “This is lunch?” I asked.

  “It’s a very healthy lunch. Practically no cholesterol at all.”

  I’d let Rita know I’d be leaving the dairy with my wife, and the two of us left Marietta to her grandmother and Luisa to her packing. Madeline had been very quiet on the ride home, except to remind us we were due in Hemlock Falls within the hour. She was quiet as she prepared lunch, and quiet until she sat down to eat it.

  “Cuddlin’,” she said again.

  In twenty-two years of happily married life, I have learned sometimes the best tactic is to suck it up. “If I were cuddling, it was inadvertent.”

  “That’s worse.”

  “I apologize. Abjectly and sincerely. You are the light of my life, Madeline. I love you deeply. Marietta means nothing to me.”

  Madeline blinked. Her sapphire eyes were swimming. “You don’t know just how attractive you are, Austin. Even at seventy-two. I’m sorry I hollered in front of everybody.”

  “It cheered Doucetta right up,” I said ruefully. “She laughed so hard I thought we’d have to send her back to the ER.”

  Two dimples appeared in Madeline’s cheeks. “She did, didn’t she? Poor old thing. She’s been through hell, right enough. And if it isn’t enough that the dairy’s in such a mess, she’s got Luisa pitching around the house like a boat without a rudder.” She got up and kissed me and sat down again. “I’m sorry I got a little ratty.”

  Suddenly, the lima beans didn’t seem so awful. I swallowed a forkful. “I am very glad we aren’t on the outs, my dear.”

  “Keep your hands off good-looking women and it won’t happen again.”

  “Yes, my dear. Shall we go on to happier topics?”

  “More useful ones, anyway. We’ve got this arson to solve on top of the murders.”

  “I understand you organized the volunteers in the goat sheds this morning. Who was there?”

  “It was heartwarming to see how many people showed up to help. People you’d never expect. Rudy and Deirdre were there. And the mayor, although you’d expect that, this being an election year. And Swinford and Ashley showed up. They’ll all have to come back day after tomorrow, of course, so we can give the does a second injection. But it went pretty well.”

  “Were any of the volunteers at the fire last night?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. If you’d like me to check, Trudy kept a list so that Marietta or whoever could send out thank-you notes. You want me to find out?”

  “I think it would be helpful.” I sat musing for a moment.

  Madeline cleared the platters of rice and beans from the table. Then she sat and pushed her hands through her hair. “What a disaster for the dairy! Who could have done such a thing? And why?”

  “Greed. Lust. Revenge,” I said.

  “I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,” she said crossly. “You sound like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.” She closed her eyes briefly. “There I go, snapping at you again. It’s all this awful stuff. I feel so sorry for that old lady I could cry. Austin, we just have to find out who did this!”

  “Yes,” I said. I pushed the lima beans around my plate with my fork. “This is a curious case, my dear. Every likely suspect has a substantiated alibi. The Celestine brothers didn’t get into the country until after the murders occurred. Their father spends his evening drunk as a skunk—in front of witnesses! The barn staff seems to go everywhere together and alibi each other. The only suppliers who have a grudge are in their eighties and wouldn’t squash a fly if it flew up their respective noses.”

  “There’s the cheese people.”

  “I had intended to go to Folk’s office at the town hall and see if I can find any leads to the cheese people.”

  “I don’t believe for a minute in the cheese people theory,” Madeline said. “For one thing, if the cheese people want to buy out the dairy, they’d want the price as low as it can go, right? So the fire’s to their advantage. But they seem to have hired Folk to be their go-between and here’s Folk trying to get Melvin to give them a clean bill of health. I don’t get it.”

  “That’s easily explainable
. Folk was undoubtedly getting a finder’s fee if the deal went forward. And the fee is usually based on the percentage of the sale. It’s a motivator to keep the assessment high, as well. If Folk were alive, I wouldn’t find it totally unbelievable that he set the fire to force Doucetta to sell. But he’s not. Perhaps an agent of his?” I bit my mustache. “I need to check Folk’s office out. With luck, he kept an appointment book and I can track down who’s behind the spurned offer to buy Tre Sorelle. There’s one other suspect that we must consider, however. You realize that Neville was on the scene last night? Just before the fire started?”

  Madeline put her hand to her cheek in dismay. “So that’s what Doucetta was on about. Luisa’s left Neville? And you’re back to thinking he’s behind this? No! I refuse to believe he had anything to do with it.”

  “There are laws of probability at work here, my dear. Do you really suppose that the murders and the fire are totally unrelated? What is most obvious is usually true. Neville is the only person connected with the dairy that had a motive to kill Staples that does not have an alibi. For either murder. I’m sure that Folk was at the dairy at the time of the murder, and that it can be verified. It is probable that he saw Neville kill Staples. And Neville is in a rage about his wife. He may have turned that rage toward the dairy itself.”

  “And Caterina was behind the sabotage of the milk.” Madeline shook her head. “Which explains everything, at least. I don’t know if it’s right, though. It can’t be! This is just awful.”

  I pushed myself away from the table. “I need to see Simon. I must gain access to Folk’s files. And it’s time Neville and I had another talk. And, of course, there’s the question about the financial viability of the enterprise, especially now that the does are down for five months. I don’t mean to press you, my dear, but we have a lot to do today. Are you ready to go to Hemlock Falls?”

  The village of Hemlock Falls lies southeast of Ithaca, in the middle of the gorges. It is a spectacular drive from Summersville, even in the depths of winter. In summertime, it is glorious. For the half hour it took us to drive down 96, the green fields of corn, lush hedgerows, and the ponds of lichen-rich water drove all thoughts of murder from our minds.

  Most of the buildings that sit on Main Street in Hemlock Falls are constructed of stone quarried from the surrounding hills. The village must have a very active chamber of commerce; white stone planters filled with geraniums sat under wrought-iron lampposts and the signs on all the stores were of a consistent, attractive design.

  “There’s Thelma’s car,” Madeline said. A green Taurus was parked in front of a three-story stone building with a sign that said Nickerson’s Hardware. “The store she wants is between the hardware store and that realty company.”

  “Schmidt’s Realty Company and Casualty Insurance,” I read aloud. I pulled in next to the Taurus and turned off the ignition. “What happened to the Hummer?”

  “Leased, thank goodness. Thelma drove it right back to the showroom and stood there hollerin’ until he cancelled the lease.”

  I shuddered. At full volume, Thelma’s voice would rout the entire string section of the New York Philharmonic.

  There was a small store tucked between the tall hardware building and the one-story stone affair that housed the realty company. A tall, handsome young man stood in the doorway. He looked part Indian to me; I learned later that he was half Onondaga. He looked down at us with a smile as Madeline and I approached him.

  “Dr. McKenzie, Mrs. McKenzie?”

  “We are,” I said.

  He extended his hand and shook ours in turn. “John Raintree. Mrs. Bergland and Dr. Bergland are inside.”

  “I’ll go right in, sweetie. You stay out here and talk to Mr. Raintree.” Madeline disappeared into the interior.

  “It looks like a suitable space,” I said. Cases Closed’s first case had taught me that a few preliminary social niceties often pave the way to more productive questioning. I was not in the habit of being rude (as Victor had it) or too direct (as Ally said) or even insensitive (Who else but Madeline?). It was more a matter of wasting time in blather. But blather worked.

  Raintree looked at the façade. “It’s been through a number of incarnations. A Laundromat a small restaurant, a woman’s gym, a computing company.”

  I frowned a little. “It seems odd that a viable business wouldn’t work here.”

  “The location’s great,” he said. “Other factors came into play. Not related to business.”

  Raintree had a restful quality about him. We stood in amiable silence for a while.

  “Thelma’s told you of her plan to open a cheese store?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Retail’s never easy. But she’s got the financial resources. The deeper the pocket the better.”

  “I understand you represent the Tre Sorelle Dairy?”

  “Yes. Well, my firm does. I have a very good young CPA who’s a wizard with Mrs. Capretti. I’m thinking of assigning him to Mrs. Bergland.”

  “A CPA with tact and charm, I gather,” I said. We exchanged sapient glances. “You won’t handle the account yourself, then?”

  “Well, no,” he said easily. “My expertise lies in handling larger companies. I’m glad I happened to be on hand to meet Mrs. Bergland, though. My wife and I are here to visit some old friends.”

  I was quite impressed. Mr. Raintree was the head of a successful firm and he had made that clear with tact and discretion.

  “You’re a veterinarian, Dr. McKenzie.” He made this a statement of fact, rather than a question. “How much of an effect will the fire have on the dairy’s operations?”

  “Devastating,” I said shortly. I explained about the necessity to rebreed the does. “Can the dairy survive?” I asked.

  He didn’t reply for a long moment. “I wouldn’t advise anyone to invest in a dairy the size of Tre Sorelle,” he said, finally. “The overhead’s too high for the gourmet cheese business. You need does that produce year-round. You can’t afford any drying up. And the number of milking does is too low for the high-volume, lower-quality cheese market.” He smiled. “It’s like the Three Bears story I tell my daughter at bedtime.”

  “If Mrs. Capretti were to receive an offer to buy her out, would you advise her to take it?”

  “Mrs. Capretti has received such an offer. She turned it down.” He looked at me, a frown of worry between his eyes. “The money’s coming from somewhere,” he said with sudden candor. “I don’t know where. I have an idea. And if I’m right, we’ll be resigning the account.”

  “I see,” I said, although I didn’t. Not yet. But if the same idea was nudging John Raintree into withdrawing his accounting services, it would explain a great deal about the murders.

  What kind of trouble were the Celestine boys in when they were sent off to Italy?

  Who were Doucetta’s brothers, Pete and Tony’s “wizard uncles”?

  How “connected” was Donna Doucetta?

  And why had the boys returned now?

  “Dr. McKenzie?”

  John Raintree’s pleasant baritone jerked me out of my brown study. Two women had appeared out of nowhere and were smiling at me. The younger was tall, slender, with striking red hair and tea-colored eyes. The older one looked a bit like a Sherman tank, with ginger hair and a gaze as direct as a gunshot. “I beg your pardon. I was mulling over a small problem.”

  “Marge Schmidt,” the tank woman said. “I own the store, here. You thinking about taking a lease?”

  “Of Schmidt’s Realty, of course,” I said, shaking her hand. “I am not, but my wife and her friend Mrs. Bergland are considering it. They are inside.”

  “Hang on, Quill, John,” Mrs. Schmidt said. “I’ll be right out.” She marched into the store.

  “I’m Sarah McHale,” her companion said. “Please call me Quill. And welcome to Hemlock Falls.” She had a lovely voice.

  The talk drifted into other channels, and I got no more tantalizing information from John Raintree. T
helma, Victor, and Madeline emerged from the prospective cheese store a short time later. We made our farewells, and Madeline and I were on our way back home.

  “Thelma met her match in Marge Schmidt,” Madeline said. “But I think they came to an agreement about the lease. And how did you do, sweetie? Did John Raintree have anything interesting to say?”

  I share everything with my wife. But I was not about to share my suspicions about the origins of the money that seemed to be keeping Tre Sorelle afloat. There was an element of danger there. “There might be a lead or two worth pursuing. But there are other matters of more urgency. I am going to go into Summersville to see Simon, and perhaps get more information on Brian Folk. May I drop you at home and use your car?”

  “You go right on ahead, sweetie.” She smiled at me. “You just sit on any impulse you might have to hug good-looking women!”

  My tête-à-tête with Marietta was not soon to be forgotten.

  Madeline’s Prius was the only vehicle available to me since Joe and Allegra needed the Bronco for the Longacre farm call. The weather had become hotter and muggier. I left poor Lincoln at his post under the willow tree and drove the short distance into town. I was fortunate to find Provost, although he was on his way out the door when I walked into his office. He didn’t look like a happy man. When he saw me, he looked unhappier. “There you are, Doc.”

  “I see I’ve caught you on the fly.”

  “What?” He stared at the car keys in his hand. “Yeah. So you did. It’ll keep for a bit.” He settled on the corner of his desk and punched a call into his intercom. “Kevin? I’m going to be another twenty minutes. Whyn’t you go over to the sub shop and pick me up an Italian. No, not an Italian.”

  “The Bomber,” I advised. The lima beans I had for lunch were a distant memory. “And I’d be much obliged if he would pick one up for me.”

  “You got that, Kevin? Two Bombers. And a couple of Diet Pepsis.” He waved me toward the office chair. “You find out anything at the dairy this morning?”

  “Not a lot that would be germane at the moment,” I said evasively. “Did the arson team offer any preliminary results?”