Murder Most Fowl

by Edith Maxwell

  Paul had gotten defensive about Lucinda and Cam asking him questions last night. Maybe Albert would know something about Paul’s past. She’d have to remember to ask Pete if his team had followed up on Paul’s connection. Interesting that Paul was such a good musician. He’d played with the group the rest of the evening and had looked like he enjoyed himself. Cam thought she picked up on flirting between him and the woman he’d called Katrina, but maybe it was only the energy of old friends sharing something they both loved.

  She wrestled a big chunk of matted-together leaves over the bin wall, shaking it as she dropped it so they would separate. Pete. It was Tuesday and he’d said his boss had threatened him with demotion if he didn’t have someone in custody by the end of the week. And the days were ticking by. He didn’t want Cam to go out into dangerous situations. Heck, she didn’t, either. But if she could gather information that might help him, he couldn’t argue with that. Could he?

  Cam came to a layer of nearly finished compost, dark and crumbly, which was easy to toss over the side. The pile in the empty bin was growing into a cone, with the new material sliding down the sides. Then there was land-hungry Judith. Judith who vaped. Judith who seemed to expect she would get her own way. Judith who could apparently afford anything she wanted. Cam sure wouldn’t want to be her daughter. Maybe Ellie knew Isabella and could . . . But, no, Ellie was on vacation in Florida.

  After the rightmost bin was full, with a mound now heaped above the rim of the bin, Cam moved to the one on the left. She forked the loose leaves from the top into the now empty middle bin, then paused to stretch her back. Stretching made her think of Katie, who must be a dancer or do yoga or something, the way she’d stood up from the ground in one movement at the llama farm on Sunday. Katie hadn’t wanted to tell Cam if Pete seemed satisfied with her answers. Cam removed her cap and rubbed her head. It seemed like everybody was hiding something. And speaking of hiding, Greta had been trying to hide something, Cam was sure of it. She had no idea how she was going to help Megan. She was pretty sure Pete wouldn’t encourage such help, either.

  As she resumed digging, the tines hit an obstacle. Maybe the middle of this pile was still frozen. But the other one hadn’t been. She poked some more but couldn’t get purchase on the blockage to move it or lift it out. Sometimes a clump of grass clippings or a collection of kitchen garbage glued itself together. But this seemed more solid.

  A gust of wind rustled the dry leaves on the grapevine behind her and the cold air chilled her cheeks even as she was sweating in her coat from the work. Cam took her hands off the pitchfork handle. A murderer was out there, a killer who wanted to keep his or her identity hidden. What if someone had hidden something—a piece of evidence, an incriminating object—in her compost? She shook off the thought. Her imagination was getting out of control. She’d been through this before, this living with a killer on the loose, and if she let herself become paralyzed with fear, she’d never get any work done.

  She jabbed the pitchfork in at a different angle and lifted a clump of what had been lobster shells. That was all the obstacle was, and it wasn’t actually solid. As she tossed the forkful over the side, something glinted, something nonorganic.

  “What in heck?” Cam threw down the fork to sift through the top of the material in the middle bin, finally drawing out a simple gold bracelet, dirty and dented. Cam rubbed at the bracelet, a quarter-inch wide ring of gold, with her glove, thinking she saw letters engraved on the inside, but she couldn’t make them out. She slid it into her pocket before she resumed work. Compost was an aggregator. That bracelet could have come in with the lobster bodies or the horse manure, both of which were off-farm inputs. Or she supposed it could have been lying in the soil of her own farm for years. She imagined Great-Aunt Marie losing the bracelet while hoeing up potatoes a decade or two earlier. Albert would know, and she was going to visit him this afternoon. She’d clean up the bracelet and take it along to show him. Cam smiled at the memory of Marie, who had loved her, taught her, and laughed with her. The sturdy little woman had been more of a mother to Cam than her own, a tall, spare academic who lived in her head and never seemed comfortable with affection. That Marie had been taken by pancreatic cancer in her early seventies still didn’t seem fair to Cam. But death was never fair.

  She picked up the fork and kept on transferring the forkfuls to the other bin. She was almost to the bottom when one forkful made something long and ivory-colored fly through the air onto the new pile. What was that? She set the tines of the fork into the ground and took a step closer, narrowing her eyes at it. The something was a bone.

  She took one more step. She stuck her hands in her jacket pocket as she leaned over to examine it. The bone was about nine inches long. She tried to think of animals with legs that long. A coyote, maybe, or a baby deer, both of whom roamed the woods. Not the fox. But she should get it out of there—it clearly wasn’t going to break down, and maybe she could find someone who would know what kind of bone it was. She reached her gloved hand toward it.

  And froze. The bone looked exactly as long as her forearm. It could be a human bone. The one that had worn the bracelet.

  Chapter 12

  What an awful thought, that she might be looking at part of a human. Cam shuddered as she slowly pulled out her cell phone. She snapped several pictures of the bone, then called the nonemergency number for the Westbury Police Department. She wasn’t handling this alone.

  After an officer picked up, Cam identified herself and gave her address. “I found a bone in my compost pile. It’s about nine inches long and I—”

  “Do you know how it got there?” the officer asked.

  “No. This pile includes manure from a local horse stable, and a load of lobster shells, too, so it might have come in with one of those.” Cam cleared her throat. “But I just, you know, wondered if it might be human remains.”

  “What makes you think that?” The officer’s voice was sharp. “Don’t you have animals on your farm?”

  “None that size. I only have chickens, and two very much alive pets. I called because right before I saw the bone, I found a gold bracelet. And then I thought maybe the bone and the bracelet went together.”

  “Don’t touch the bone. We’ll send someone out as soon as we can.” He disconnected.

  Cam headed for the house to wait for the police. Inside, she drew the bracelet out of her pocket and laid it on a paper towel on the kitchen counter while she still had her gloves on, then stowed her outerwear. Despite having found a bone that might be human, her stomach was reminding her she’d only had toast for breakfast. She threw together a quick cheese-and-pickle sandwich while she waited for the police, and ate standing, gazing at the bracelet. Who had lost it, and where? She didn’t think girls these days would wear something so old-fashioned as a gold bracelet, so it probably hadn’t come in with the horse manure. Or it could be Sue Genest’s, the stable owner who was in her sixties. If the jewelry had come in with the lobsters, could it have been in the salty ocean and not be corroded?

  She set down her plate and picked up the bracelet with a tissue. Would the police want to take this, too? Of course. She shouldn’t get fingerprints on it. She tried to wipe it off with another tissue, but dirt remained, so she gently cleaned the inside with the dish brush, then picked up the bracelet with the tissue. She carried it to her desk and switched on the light. What she wanted to see were the letters on the inside. She peered at them. The engraving looked like an embellished FL. So it wasn’t Marie’s. She snapped a picture with her cell phone, then another, trying to catch the letters.

  Sue might know something about it. Cam pressed the number for the stable owner, but the call went to voice mail. Sue was no doubt out in the riding ring or tending to the horses.

  With a sigh, Cam laid down the phone and opened her laptop. A search for the properties of gold revealed that it didn’t corrode in salt water. Interesting. Or in horse urine, presumably. She ran another search and learned that salt water
preserved bone, but that sea creatures could degrade it, whatever that meant, after twelve years. She glanced at the time display, which read ten-thirty. When were the police going to show up?

  She gazed at the bracelet again. Someone had lost it. Was anyone missing it?

  At the sound of a door slamming, she grabbed her coat and headed outside. Chief Frost climbed out of a Westbury police car, and Ruth walked around the front of it toward Cam. At least they hadn’t come roaring up with lights and sirens on, but why was the chief here? Cam walked up and greeted both of them.

  “Ms. Flaherty, I understand you believe you uncovered human remains,” George Frost said. “Can you show us, please?” Trim iron-colored hair showed under his hat, and his lean face looked tired.

  “Well, I found a bone. I don’t know if it’s human or not. It’s just that I had uncovered a gold bracelet right before that. And when I saw the bone, it looked the same length as my forearm, so . . .” Cam gestured toward the back. “The bone is out in the compost pile. Follow me.” She led the way. “How are the girls, Ruth?” she asked as they walked. She wasn’t going to pretend she and Ruth weren’t friends just because this was a business call. The chief knew they were.

  Ruth glanced at the chief before answering. “They’re great and growing fast. First grade has really opened them up.”

  “I haven’t seen them in a couple of months. You should bring them by for lunch on the weekend. They’d love to see my little chicks.”

  “They sure would.” Ruth smiled. Chief Frost, on the other hand, was all business, and by the set of his mouth Cam expected he disapproved of the friendly chat.

  When they arrived at the compost piles, Cam pointed at the bone. “There it is. I expect it’s an animal bone, but you guys must have a way of determining that, right?”

  Ruth squatted and peered at the bone. She straightened and turned to the chief. “Looks close enough to human to call in the teams.”

  “Got it.” He stepped away, pulling a phone out of a case on his duty belt.

  “Which teams?” Cam asked Ruth.

  “Crime scene and evidence collection units. I’ll take pictures to document the area, and we’re going to have to investigate the rest of the property. The chief might choose to bring in a cadaver dog, too.”

  “Really? All that?” At a cold gust of wind, Cam pulled her coat tighter around her. “Don’t you need to make sure it’s a human bone first?”

  “It looks a lot like an ulna. You know, one of the bones in the forearm. I did a rotation in the forensic anthropology unit at the state police training facility last year. In animals of that size, the radius and the ulna are usually fused. They’re always separate in humans.”

  Chief Frost returned to where they stood. “Teams are on their way. Canine unit, too. Now, what was this you said about also finding a bracelet?”

  “I did. It’s in the house.” Dasha trotted up. “If you have a dog coming, should I put Dasha in the house?”

  “Yes,” the chief said. “Officer Dodge, please secure the bracelet and take a statement from Ms. Flaherty. I’ll wait out here for the units.”

  Cam offered tea to Ruth in the house, but her friend declined.

  “Sorry, we have another call we need to get to after this.” Ruth pulled out a digital tablet and a paper evidence bag, which she proceeded to label. After she used the tablet to shoot a couple of pictures of the bracelet, she lifted it with a pencil and slid it into the bag. “Okay, tell me exactly how you found this item.”

  “At least sit down, won’t you?” Cam said, sliding into a seat at the table.

  Ruth sat, fingers hovering over the tablet’s virtual keyboard.

  “I was turning the compost an hour ago.”

  “For the record, what does that mean?” Ruth glanced up and smiled. “Not many officers are big into gardening.”

  “Compost is a mix of organic materials—leaves, grass, plants. I get manure from a local horse farm, and I also got a load of lobster shells last fall. Anyway, it’s a mix, and with air, moisture, worms, and soil organisms, it breaks down into a rich soil amendment. Organic farms depend on compost for nutrients, and it improves the structure of the soil, too.”

  “And you turn it why?”

  “To keep that activity going, you need to expose more of it to air, mix it up. So anyway, I was turning one pile into the next bin when I saw that bracelet.”

  “You’d never seen it before.”

  “No. I saw it had initials on the inside, though, and when I brought it in here, I kind of scrubbed it a little.” Cam winced, expecting what came next.

  “Cam. Do we have to send you to the Citizens’ Police Academy? You of all people should know that you never touch a piece of evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?” Cam’s voice rose. “I didn’t think of it being related to a crime until I unearthed the bone. I simply thought it was an interesting piece of history. And I didn’t really think it was human bone.”

  “Okay.”

  “I didn’t touch the bracelet without gloves on.”

  “There’s that. So where do you think the bracelet came from?” Ruth looked up.

  “It had to be in the manure or the lobster shells. Or maybe it’s been in the soil here for a long time and it only now surfaced. That’s possible, too. Winter frost heaves push up all kinds of things from deeper down.”

  “Like maybe it was your great-aunt’s?”

  “Maybe. I’ll ask Albert when I get a chance.”

  “Be sure to let me know what he says.”

  “Ruth.” Cam gazed at her. “I don’t mind finding a gold bracelet. But what if the bone is the arm it was on? How long has the person been dead? And where’s the rest of the skeleton? Could someone have been buried right here on the farm?”

  “That’s why we call in the teams, Cam. To find out exactly that as best we can. But that’s something else you can ask Albert. Maybe the previous owners had a home burying ground on the property. People used to do that kind of thing, way back when.”

  Cam gazed out the window. “I can see farmers a century earlier interring a deceased grandmother, or maybe a child who had died of fever. A grandmother buried wearing her favorite gold bracelet. But wouldn’t they have had markers, or a fence around the graveyard?”

  “Who knows? Markers fall down. Fences rot.”

  “I hate the thought of tilling up ground that people’s earthly shells were buried under,” Cam said. “On the other hand, what better way to honor the dead than by growing food for the living above them?”

  Cam pulled into the long drive of Sue Genest’s stable on Middle Road near the Newburyport border and hit the brakes. The police had finally let her leave at a little before two. Her driveway had been full of cruisers and other vehicles, and officers had swarmed the property. She’d told them it was unlikely that other bones were around, if the one in the compost had come in from off the farm, but they didn’t listen. They’d even sifted all the rest of the compost, both the stuff she’d already turned and the fresh pile. Which was actually a help to her, since the small particles of sifted compost integrated much more easily into the soil. She just never had enough time to do it herself.

  The stable and riding ring sat on a hill, with pasture sloping down all around it like a full skirt in midtwirl. A skirt with a pattern of fence lines and the coloring of camouflage cloth, blotches of brown mud mixing with early grass greening up. It being mud season, Cam was grateful for the graded and well-graveled drive as she accelerated toward the top of the hill. She’d only been here twice: late last spring and again in the fall, when Sue Genest had used her small front loader to scoop manure into Cam’s truck.

  A minute later she climbed out of the Ford and opened the door to the big structure that let riders and steeds practice their techniques and gaits all winter long. The air inside was somewhat warmer than the chilly outside, and the smell of sweat and manure was present but not overpowering. Sue stood in the middle of the ring, wearing a heav
y green-cabled sweater over cream-colored riding pants and low black boots. She pivoted gradually, keeping her narrow face toward the horse and rider who rode following the perimeter of the barn. Cam closed the door behind her, staying near it and watching for several minutes. The rider, an adult wearing a black helmet and short jacket, seemed to stand up in the stirrups and then sit over and over. Cam had never ridden a horse. She didn’t know if this was cantering or trotting or posting, words she’d read in books as a child but had never learned from doing it herself. All she knew was that it didn’t look like the galloping horses she’d seen in movies.

  Sue occasionally called a comment to the rider, who then altered her position slightly, or sped up a little. Sue caught sight of Cam and waved at her, indicating that she should stay where she was. Finally the lesson ended with Sue clapping twice, then walking toward the horse. The rider coaxed the horse to a stop and dismounted, holding the reins with one hand as she pulled off her helmet with the other. Cam was surprised to see Judith under there. Didn’t she have a full-time job? Or maybe she could set her own hours, since she worked from home as a consultant.

  Sue and Judith conferred in the center of the ring, then started toward the side of the building that housed the stalls, with Judith leading the horse. Cam walked toward them.

  “What, you need a load of early manure?” Sue said when she was within earshot. She shot Cam a warm, toothy smile. Sue’s graying blond shoulder-length hair was pushed off her forehead with a comb, as she always wore it. Despite the heavy sweater, her thin frame was apparent.

  “Hey, Sue. No, not quite yet. The stuff from last fall is starting to cook again.” Cam glanced at Judith. “Hi, Judith.”

  “I wondered what you were doing here,” Judith said. “But of course a farmer needs manure.” The corners of her mouth curled up but she didn’t particularly look like she was smiling.