The Case of the Roasted Onion

by Bishop, Claudia

  I pulled Odie off my shoulder and set her down. She curled about my ankles in protest. She wanted her dinner, too.

  By the time the kids and I trailed back into the kitchen, Madeline had fed Linc and Odie and tidied up the sink. Ally had the Lab puppy from the surgery cradled in one arm. Joe followed her in, looking fit to be tied. “The puppy shouldn’t be here at all,” he said to her back as he trailed her into the kitchen. “The cast won’t be ready to come off for a week, at least. She’ll heal better in the cage.”

  “You can put her over there, dear,” Madeline said, pointing to the dog basket next to the woodstove.

  Ally set the puppy into the basket as if she were a porcelain egg. Lincoln padded over and gave her a good sniff. Odie settled on the stovetop and glared down at her, her tail switching back and forth. (If Joe had had a tail, he would have been switching it, too.) I contemplated that peculiarly marked fur. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps the bit of fur Provost found by the road at the scene of was from some other animal. Perhaps this whole series of events was a nightmare.

  “She’ll heal better with people around her,” Ally said, a bit defiantly. She sat down next to me at the table.

  “Miss Dog Expert.” Joe sat at my other side.

  “You’ve never heard of wellness psychology?”

  They faced off over the dinner table.

  It was precisely the same behavior exhibited when two new colts are introduced to a herd. I was interested in the activity, but I was ready to move and stop the fuss before somebody got kicked.

  “What’s for dinner?” Joe asked. “It smells terrific.”

  I exchanged a glance with my beloved. There was something quite poignant in that homely question, in the sight of the two faces at the dinner table. We had never had children of our own, a sorrow we had mourned and then put behind us.

  “Oh joy,” Madeline said suddenly. “Oh calloo, callay.”

  “You look startled, Allegra.” I passed the peas to her. “Madeline misquotes Edward Lear when she is happy.”

  “What do you quote when you’re not happy, Mrs. McKenzie?” Ally asked.

  “She becomes very quiet,” I said. “A rare occurrence for her.” I chuckled. Nobody else did, including Madeline. Madeline looked at me. Oh, dear. I tugged at my mustache and cleared my throat.

  “You’re not eating, Dr. McKenzie?” Allegra asked. “Oh, that’s right. You’re due at the McClellans.”

  “That’s still on?” Joe said. “I thought Grazley was a member of the Veterinary Commission, too.”

  “But the sniper got him,” Allegra said soberly.

  The sniper. I bit my mustache in disgust. I looked at the puppy in her basket. And I had an idea I should have had long before. “Excuse me a moment.” I rose from the table and went into the living room. I called the ASPCA, an action I should have taken as soon as I’d picked up the puppy from the road. I returned to the table and sat down.

  “There is no sniper,” I said. “I’d bet my degree on it.”

  Allegra and Joe stared at me. “No sniper?” Joe asked. “I mean, there is a sniper, since two men have been shot at long distance. Do you mean it isn’t a random killer?”

  The boy was quick, I’ll give him that. I didn’t answer him. I needed time to turn this information over.

  Madeline’s brow creased with concern. “Austin?”

  “My dear?”

  “You look . . . unsettled.”

  “I am quite unsettled,” I said testily. “And I don’t wish to talk about it at the moment.”

  “I know who you can get to replace poor Dr. Grazley, Dr. McKenzie,” Allegra said, after a second helping of green peas.

  “Who would that be, my dear?”

  “Dr. Bergland.”

  I paused.

  “There’s not much Dr. Bergland doesn’t know about horses, from what I hear,” Joe said.

  “There is a great deal Victor doesn’t know about horses,” I said.

  Madeline seized gratefully on this topic of conversation. “Now, sweetie. He’s absolutely the last word on azo-whatever. You said so yourself.”

  “Azoturia myositis syndrome,” I said. “Perhaps. Not as much of it about as there used to be, however.”

  “Compared to Dr. McKenzie, I’m sure Dr. Bergland doesn’t know a thing,” Ally said loyally.

  Joe bit into a sourdough biscuit and stared at her while he chewed. “You’ve never met the man. How would you know how much he knows about horses?”

  Ally tossed her head. “It’s easy enough to tell about that sort of thing.”

  “You know what that was?” Joe said. He leaned over the table. “That was a suck-up comment. Just plain old suck-up.”

  Madeline stuck her oar in before we had a full-scale war over the lamb patties. “I can’t think of anyone else we could get on such short notice, Austin.”

  “I’m certain he’ll be too busy with university affairs to bother,” I said.

  “It’s spring break,” Madeline said. “And he only teaches the one seminar anyhow.”

  “There’s a lot of vets around,” Joe said. “Maybe some of the adjuncts at the school? I could ask. They’d probably jump at the chance to work with you, sir.”

  “Now who’s a suck-up?” Ally muttered.

  “Very few vets have the credentials required to attend a rated three-day event, that’s true,” I said. I mulled for a bit. There seemed to be no other candidate. “I suppose you’re right, Madeline. I’ll give Victor a call after dinner. With luck,” I said hopefully, “Thelma will have break week all planned out for him and he’ll have to decline. Last year, she hauled him on a ten-day cruise on the Bosporus with her mother.” I grinned and exclaimed, “‘Cribbed, cabin’d and confined’!” to everybody’s confusion, but Madeline’s, since I quote Byron when I’m feeling nettled, and she’d heard it all before. “I’ll give him a call. There may be time for him to meet us at the McClellans this evening.”

  But Brewster McClellan had anticipated me, and Victor and Thelma were to attend the dinner that evening.

  Which is part of the reason why dinner at the McClellans’ was such a bust.

  But not all of it.

  “WHAT in the world has gotten you so upset?” Madeline demanded, as soon as we were in the car headed to dinner.

  “I called the ASPCA.”

  “You did? Why? Oh!” Madeline’s comprehension was instant. “The puppy. You called to see if they had adopted out a part-Lab puppy.” She turned to me, her eyes gleaming in the dark of the car. “And?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “To whom?” Madeline’s voice was filled with trepidation.

  “Stephanie McClellan.”

  Madeline settled back without a word. After a bit, she said, “I don’t believe it.”

  “We are speculating ahead of the facts,” I admitted. “We don’t know for certain, for example, that there is a match.”

  “Oh, come on, Austin. You’re not facing up to this.” She shifted in the seat. “So now what?”

  “We will follow our noses. I wonder . . .” I fell into musing. “Do you suppose this all has something to do with Earlsdown? The one connecting factor here is that Grazley, Schumacher, and now I myself are on the committee in charge of qualifying horses. And if anything ever happened to prevent Beecher from competing . . .”

  “She’s killed two people because she thinks it’ll keep her in a horse show?! I can’t believe it! I won’t believe it! She’s just a child! And Austin, it’s just an event!”

  “McClellan seems to have put a great deal at stake, however.”

  All knew by now that Brewster McClellan bought his way onto the Earlsdown Committee with a generous cash donation, although to be fair, this is not as opportunistic as it might seem. Big horse shows cost a great deal of money. Without donations, the horse world would be a far smaller universe. But Brewster also bought his way into ribbon money with Faraway, who’d cost a huge amount of money, if Victor were to be believed, and a
ll of that came to naught last year when the horse had died. This new horse, Beecher, had cost even more than Faraway, according to McClellan himself.

  Fair play is characteristic of the horse world. It’s one thing to win with a horse you’ve brought along with discipline and tears through the lower ranks of the circuit. It’s another kettle of fish when you jump in right at the top with an animal somebody else has labored over. There would be a prejudice against Stephanie and her expensive horses from the beginning. “Everybody’s against me!” she’d cried.

  We drove on in silence, until we reached the edges of the property. I confess that I didn’t know what to do.

  The McClellans’ place occupies one of the most beautiful spots in Tompkins County. There are acres of woods, meadows, and pasture. I had heard that one of Ithaca’s wonderful gorges cuts right through the middle of the property. There’s nothing happier than one of those gorges in the springtime. Water cuts through the limestone like a knife through butter, leaving layers of lichened rock. The water falls, cascades, spills, flows, dances, and weaves through these incredible caverns as if it’s been loosed from a cage.

  It’s enough to make you believe in heaven.

  “Do the McClellans live over the gorge?” Madeline asked as we drove into the evening.

  “No.”

  She sighed. “Too bad.”

  “They live in the middle of five hundred acres of meadow. The gorge cuts through the back. He calls it the Manse.”

  “Well, there’s a clue to his character,” Madeline said.

  I turned into the drive, which was lit along its length by electric standards made to look like gaslights. I pulled into the semicircular driveway. I braked and stared. I had never seen the front of the house before.

  “Now, Austin.”

  “That’s a full-sized replica of the fountain of Trevi,” I muttered. “With those four stone horses rushing off into nowhere in particular.”

  “I’m sure they decided to copy the fountain because of the horses, sweetie.”

  “The place looks like a Florida restaurant.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll serve us tropical rum punch and coconut fried shrimp. Yum.”

  I parked the truck next to Victor’s old Citroën and got out. I shook the dog hair out of my sports jacket and slung my coat over my arm. We slogged up the steps. The front door was as high as our barn door and split down the middle, like the doors of the cathedral in Rheims. I half expected a butler, but Marina herself opened the doors.

  “It’s Dr. McKenzie. How nice to see you again.” She kissed the air on either side of my face. She seemed unnaturally cheerful. There was a foggy look to her eye. Had she been a horse, I would have suspected that she’d ingested a modicum of acepromazine. Just enough to make her woozy. “And Madeline?!” She spread her hands wide. “Who else could it be, but Madeline?”

  She did the air-kiss maneuver with Madeline. “I love your caftan, Madeline. It’s . . . it’s . . . positively royal.”

  “My wife blooms in purple,” I said. “And you look . . . er . . . well, Marina.” I would be the last to criticize the poor woman if she were on drugs. Who had a better right?

  Madeline smiled back at me. I had picked her caftan out myself, as a twenty-first wedding anniversary present. I like a lot of color.

  “Aren’t you two just the cutest things?” Marina asked the air.

  There was no possible answer to this, so I didn’t make any.

  “Well, we’re all in here. Just follow me.”

  She tapped her way unsteadily down a long hall with black and white marble tile for a floor. She was wearing breeches, which made me wonder if we were going to eat dinner in the barn, and a white silk blouse and ruby necklace, which made we think we weren’t. So we followed her wherever she was taking us and I finally asked where we were going.

  She looked back over her shoulder. “Since this is an informal meeting, I put us in the library.”

  I brightened a bit at the word “library.” But of course, it was no more a true library than I am the pope. Fake Stubbs on the walls. Hunter green walls and that shiny blond oak. And shelves and shelves of books, all bound in leather with gold titles, and not one of them looking like a real book looks, which is to say, as if somebody had actually read it.

  “South Florida restaurant,” I said.

  Madeline nudged me. Hard.

  “Madeline!” Victor said. “You look magnificent!” He hustled on over to give her a kiss. Thelma hustled on over faster than he, so he couldn’t. She was wearing yellow-green, which was not a good idea. It made her look like an artichoke. I think Thelma came from the womb with a bad temper. Like the wolverine. Of course it could be bad digestion. One look at that yellowy skin and pursed-up mouth and it was obvious that her stomach bothered her on a regular basis.

  Thelma gave Madeline a peck on the cheek and Victor an elbow in the gut. She passed her cheeks over mine in an air kiss. Her breath smelled like Maalox.

  Madeline asked Thelma about her mother, and how she was settling in. (Ha!)Victor and I eyed one another. Then Marina grabbed Victor and the two of us and shepherded us to a little group gathered by the sideboard.

  “Here’s the rest of our little commission.” Marina said with manic cheer. “I’d like to introduce Diana North. Here are the McKenzies and Victor Bergland.”

  “It’s a privilege to meet you both.” Diana North shook my hand, then Victor’s. Diana North had a nice, healthy shape, a suntanned face, and a lot of thick brown hair cut short. She had a good smile, too. It was obvious that she’d calm any animal she met, just by her easy ways. You could also tell she was a little shy with humans since she shook hands with me twice. Then she said, “That’s a wonderful caftan, Mrs. McKenzie.”

  “It was a present from Austin.”

  “This is Greg D’Andrea.” Marina glanced up at him sideways, with a little private smile. Greg was one of those thirtyish men that witnesses on Law & Order always describe as average, frustrating policeman like Lenny Briscoe. Medium height, medium weight, and as do a lot of people who don’t smoke these days, he chewed toothpicks. But he had a good leg on him, and a straight back, which meant he was probably quite good on a jump course.

  He didn’t smile, but gave Victor a quick, loose handshake and nodded at me.

  One of those little silences fell, the kind that happens when people who don’t know each other can’t think of a thing to say.

  “May I get you a drink, Mrs. McKenzie?” Greg D’Andrea asked.

  “Love one,” she said.

  He went over to the sideboard. There was a row of Waterford crystal decanters with the names of the liquor on brass tags around the necks. You should be able to tell bourbon from Scotch by the color and nobody with any palate at all drinks vodka, which meant that the clear bottle is always gin. And people who don’t know what they’re drinking shouldn’t drink at all.

  “I’ll have a touch of the Laphroaig,” I said. “And for you, my dear? I don’t see any sherry—ah. Yes, I do. Over there, D’Andrea.”

  Madeline asked Greg if he was going to compete at Earlsdown, and Diana, too, and we talked about horses, which is a very relaxing thing to do, and then the commission duties, which Victor was rather pushy about, until Brewster McClellan came in from wherever he had been. He brought two more people with him. One of them was Lila Gernsback. I froze momentarily. Lila is a lushly built brunette of about Madeline’s age. She is a widow, and I believe, a divorcée as well. She has, as Victor so bluntly states, the hots for veterinarians. For some reason, she has always fixated on me. She makes me highly nervous.

  Lila caught sight of me despite my diplomatic retreat between the bookcases, shrieked, “Austin!” in a voice with the timbre of a steam whistle, and waved cheerily, which caused her generously exposed breasts to bounce. She stayed put, however. A riding accident some six months ago had slowed her down considerably. To my dismay, she was due to have the casts off and ditch the crutches in several weeks’ time. She
was quick with the cast on; she’d be even quicker with the cast off.

  Lila was accompanied by a tall, heavily fleshed man with a bald head surrounded by red fringe. He wore bright red plaid pants and a blue sports coat. I glanced Madeline’s way. She looked at Lila with an expression of comic dismay, then winked dramatically at me.

  Marina skittered into the room and clapped her hands. “It’s time, people!”

  And we all marched into dinner.

  The dining room had marble floors, Italian-style frescoes on the walls, and three chandeliers hanging over the table. It was not at all welcoming. But the far end of the room had French doors that had to front the pastures and meadows around the house. During the daytime, the view must have been spectacular.

  Place cards at each setting were stuck into miniature pewter fox heads. Brewster sat at the head of the table with his back to the French doors; I was seated at his right. Marina sat at the foot, with Madeline on her right. That put the entire length of the table between us. The place to my right was empty. I took a look at the place card, which said “Stephanie” in elaborate calligraphy.

  Marina caught the direction of my glance. “She’s just finishing up in the stable.” And sure enough, about three seconds later Stephanie came through the French doors and slouched into the seat next to me. She was dressed in breeches like her mother, but unlike Marina, she had made no concession to evening attire, with a silk shirt or otherwise. It was pretty clear from the sweat stains on her rear that she’d been riding. And even clearer from the smell that she’d been mucking out.

  I rather like the scent of horse manure. It’s a comfortable kind of smell, as long as the stalls are picked out every day (it’s another thing all together if you don’t and let it pile up). Besides, I’m so used to it, I don’t care.

  “Steph?” Marina said. “You didn’t get a chance to wash up? I hate to say it, darling, but there’s an . . . an odor.”

  Stephanie gave a snort of disgust, leaped up from the table, and stomped off through the entryway without a word.