The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat

by Claudia Bishop

  “I am not dead yet,” Doucetta said. “I will cut you off without a penny!”

  “No, you won’t.” Caterina put her hand under her mother’s elbow and escorted her back to her chair. “We’re family. You’d rather cut off your right arm than cut us off.” Her lips drew back, and for a moment, the pleasant, downtrodden woman I knew looked wolfish. “Even Frank, right? You made me stick with him all these years because our family doesn’t divorce.” The look passed. Her face sagged back into the tired lines of a middle-aged woman. “So don’t talk to me about being cut out of the will.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” the old woman grumbled.

  Caterina knelt by her mother’s chair. “The dairy can’t keep itself, Mamma. The only thing keeping us afloat is the money that goes through the retail store on behalf of the Italian uncles. And we’re going to have to stop that. Banking’s tightened up so much after 9/11 we can’t get the money in and out liked we used to. It’s time to let go.”

  Doucetta reared back as if she’d been stung. “What are you telling me, here!”

  “You really thought we were making it without help from the uncles?”

  Marietta clutched her forehead in both hands and sank her head onto her knees. “I don’t believe this,” she said. “Money laundering? Murder? And we’ve got—connected uncles?”

  Doucetta smacked her cane point-down on the concrete. “Basta!” she shouted. “You’ve ruined us all! And you’ve betrayed me!”

  “We’ll be fine if you don’t panic,” Caterina said. “And think of the money coming in from the cheese people. That’ll go a long way toward making up for the betrayal.”

  “You didn’t have to burn the place down to convince me!”

  “We’d tried everything else.” She clasped her mother’s hands. “Okay? Is it all okay?”

  Doucetta mumbled her lips. And she looked very, very old. Ancient. Like something that had been exhumed. She nodded once, sharply.

  Caterina stood up and looked at her sons. “Now. As for Dr. McKenzie.”

  Her sons turned and looked at me.

  The wind off the lake was suddenly cold.

  “Don’t you dare,” Marietta said between her teeth. She looked up at them. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Think about what?” Pete said.

  Tony mimed swinging a baseball bat.

  “If you touch a hair on his head,” Marietta said dramatically, “you will have to go through me.”

  “I never liked the smell of goat,” Marietta complained.

  “The bucks do have a repellant odor,” I admitted. “But the does are quite neat in their habits and odor free.”

  We were tied together, sitting back-to-back in the dairy nursery. This was a room about fifteen by twenty feet long, located at the rear of the principal goat shed. The lights were on, in an effort to promote rapid estrus in the does. There was a large viewing window on one side, and an overhead door at the rear. Directly in front of us were overhead feeders loaded with hay. The vista out the viewing window was pitch black. The overhead door was locked. The five does and eight newborn kidlings who were the legitimate residents of the pen lay comfortably in the straw. The mothers chewed their cuds and looked blandly at us. Goats have vertical pupils, and their eyes can appear quite human. It was actually quite comforting, as if little people stared warmly at us. The babies suckled, slept, and occasionally tumbled over one another like newborn puppies….

  “What time is it?” Marietta asked, for perhaps the hundredth time…. The woman was becoming tiresome. She had discovered I was able to twist my wrist to look at my watch and asked every half hour or so. “Three thirty,” I said. “I suggested that you try and get some sleep. I’ll suggest it again. The barn help won’t be in to feed and water until six at least.”

  Marietta wriggled in the straw, trying to find a more comfortable spot. She’d wriggled so much when Tony and Pete dumped us in here that she’d worn a bare spot right to the dirt floor.

  “Where do you suppose they’re going, the three of them?”

  “I have no idea.” Actually, I did have an idea. I had lost my pension fund in the Enblad scandal several years ago. The CFO was currently living on an island with no extradition treaty to the United States. “It may be somewhere in the Pacific. Or, perhaps even Italy itself. That country refuses to extradite criminals to countries with the death penalty.”

  “Do you suppose the cheese people will still want to buy us?”

  “If your grandmother agrees, I don’t see why not.” I paused. “You were dealing with Jonathan Swinford, weren’t you?”

  “Yes! How did you know that? He didn’t want the news to get out until the deals were done. Can’t say as I blame him. The vineyard’s part of DairyMaid now. It’s publically traded, as you probably know, and they have to be cautious about the stock.”

  “I deduced as much. But why did he choose Brian Folk as an intermediary?”

  “Beats me. Folk wasn’t stupid. Just icky-looking.”

  “Icky-looking.” I laughed heartily. Marietta laughed, too.

  The lights outside the viewing window snapped on. I saw a furry, familiar face at the window. The air filled with loud barks.

  “Lincoln!” I said.

  A few moments later the overhead door to the nursery rolled up. My wife swept into the room.

  “Austin!” she said. “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

  “YOU’RE darn lucky you weren’t killed,” Victor said. “Good God, Austin. You should think seriously about giving up the detective business.”

  I passed the plate of beer-battered onion rings over to Joe. “Yes, indeed. Tied up for hours in a darkened room with Marietta Capretti. Very dangerous.”

  We exchanged a long, wordless look.

  “I’m shocked to my bones,” Thelma said. “Just imagine. Organized crime right here in Summersville!”

  “It’s a heck of a story,” Rita said proudly.

  We had persuaded Rudy Schwartz to push together three tables in the center of the Monrovian Embassy, to celebrate the successful conclusion of the Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat. Madeline had lifted the ban on cholesterol, and I had a huge Monrovian Special in front of me. Allegra, Joe, Nigel Fish (whose besotted expression when he looked at Allegra reminded me of a flounder), and Rita sat on one side of the long table. Madeline, Thelma, Victor, and I sat on the other. My happiness would have been complete had Lincoln been allowed to join us, but Rudy was unfeelingly obdurate.

  “Anyone figure out where Caterina and her sons got to?” Joe asked.

  “Last the Feds heard, they were on a plane out of La Guardia headed to South America,” Nigel said. “They must have had an exit plan in place. They sure made it out of town in a hurry.”

  “What do you suppose is going to happen to that five million dollars Doucetta’s going to get from the cheese people?” Allegra asked. “Do you think she’ll use the money to open a boutique dairy?”

  “She’ll have quite a competitor in me,” Thelma said immodestly. “I signed the lease on my new store today.”

  “Really?” Joe said. “You decide what to call it?”

  “Madeline suggested the name. I think it’s perfect. I’m calling it Le Grand Fromage.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Because,” Thelma said with immense satisfaction, “I am.”

  Cottage Cheese Recipe

  Cheese is easy to make! Austin talked Madeline into trying this recipe for cottage cheese. It makes a wonderful cheese cake.

  1 gallon goat milk*

  1/4 tablet rennet, sometimes called junket

  1/2 cup cold water

  Use a kitchen thermometer to warm the milk to 86°F.

  Dissolve the rennet in the water.

  Add water/rennet mixture to the milk. Stir it up a little. Let it stand in a warm place (75°F or above) until a curd forms on the surface. This should take an hour or so.

  Leave the mixture in the pot.
Cut the curd into one-inch squares.

  Stir gently.

  Warm very slowly to 110°F.

  Strain mixture into a sieve lined with cheesecloth.

  Rinse mixture by running cold water over it. (Don’t remove it from the colander.)

  Store in the refrigerator in a covered bowl.

  This cottage cheese can be mixed with all kinds of delicious things: chopped chives, your favorite seasonings, chopped parsley, and salt. You can make it a sweet cottage cheese by adding honey or jam.

  Author’s Note

  Goats are delightful pets—smart, sweet-natured, and kind. An excellent primer on goat care is Storey’s Guide to Raising Dairy Goats by goat-keeper extraordinaire Jerry Belanger.

  And for more cheese recipes, contact the New York State Farmstead and Artisan Cheese Makers Guild via their website.

  For those readers interested in raising goats, there is an industry newspaper called the Goat Rancher that can be found online at www.goatrancher.com. It is there you will find outstanding editorials by our industry’s guru, Frank Pinkerton, PhD, whom we call “The Goat Man.”

  CLAUDIA BISHOP is the pen name of Mary Stanton. She is the author of eighteen mystery novels. The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat is Austin McKenzie’s third case.

  Claudia is also the senior editor of three mystery anthologies. As Mary Stanton, she is the author of two adult fantasy novels and eleven novels for middle-grade readers.

  Claudia divides her time between a small home in West Palm Beach, Florida, and a two-hundred-acre goat farm in upstate New York. She can be reached through her website, claudiabishop.com.

  * You can use cow’s milk if all your goats are out to pasture.