Murder Most Fowl

by Edith Maxwell

  “Hello, dear. Do I know you?” She smiled. Her snowy hair was pulled up into a bun on the very top of her head, giving her an old-fashioned look, although the decidedly modern powder blue fleece sweat suit she wore countered that effect.

  “Ms. Bertoli, I’m Albert St. Pierre’s great niece, Cam Flaherty.”

  “Oh, the farmer. I’ve heard about you, dear.” Her eyes twinkled with delight. “You’re the one who solves crimes about town, isn’t that right? Do sit down.”

  Cam sat on the edge of the other chair. “Thank you. I don’t want to interrupt what you’re doing.”

  “Oh, it’s no problem at all. I don’t get many visitors, you see. Now, what can I help you with? Are you working on a new case?”

  “I don’t really work on cases—”

  Nina batted away the suggestion. “You can trust me. I won’t tell a soul. I’ve been reading mysteries all my life, don’t you know? I started with Agatha Christie as a girl and just kept on going. It’s important to be able to keep a secret. Now, what can I help you with?”

  “Albert said you taught history and social studies at the high school. I’m trying to find out what happened to an Irish girl who was visiting several decades ago.”

  “Fionnoula Leary?” Nina’s pale face was remarkably unwrinkled for someone who had to be at least in her seventies if not much older, with only fine lines drawn around her eyes and mouth.

  “You remember her?”

  Nina nodded.

  Cam went on to tell her about finding the bracelet and the bone, and about the news article she’d unearthed. “I assume you knew about her disappearance?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed. I followed it closely. The family Fionnoula stayed with was the Brennans. They were tore up something fierce when she never came home.” She pointed a knobby index finger at the dark wooden piece of furniture the television sat on. Two doors in the front were closed. “Do me a favor, dear. In that cabinet is a scrapbook. Would you pull it out for me?”

  Cam knelt and opened the doors to a mess of papers, needlework catalogs, and envelopes. She glanced up at Nina.

  “In here?”

  “It’s in there somewhere.” Nina laughed. “I’m not very organized anymore, I’m afraid.”

  Cam’s hand finally landed on a book. She held the avalanche of papers back with her other hand as she pulled it out, and then shut the doors quickly before the contents of the cabinet spilled out. The book was an old-style photo album, with black pages and a weathered green cover. The book’s binding was secured by metal fasteners so it could be loosened to add more pages. Standing, she handed the book to Nina and then sat on the chair again.

  Nina slowly flipped through the pages. They were full of newspaper clippings that had been pasted in.

  “Here’s one of the ones I was looking for.” Nina extended the book to Cam.

  Cam gazed at an article from the Daily News, describing the Irish exchange student. It included a picture of a slender blond girl and a darker-haired one of about the same age, laughing into the camera with arms around each other’s waists. The caption read, “Fionnoula Leary enjoys American high school life with cousin Catriona Brennan.” Cam looked closer at the picture. On the hand that peeked out from Catriona’s side was a band of metal that had caught a flash of light. The gold bracelet. Then she studied Catriona’s face.

  Cam sat back, still gazing at the picture. That was Katrina, the fiddler. It had to be. Catriona must be pronounced Katrina if you were Irish. And she’d bet this year’s tomato crop that Paul and Catriona had been friends in high school. And Fionnoula. And Wayne. They had to be the friends Fionnoula went out with the night she disappeared.

  “What is it?” Nina asked.

  “I think I saw Catriona last night.”

  “Yes, she plays around here.”

  “And Catriona didn’t know what happened to Fionnoula?” Cam asked.

  “She claimed not to.”

  “Claimed?”

  “They were not only cousins but friends. Fionnoula was living with the Brennans. How could she not know? I’ll tell you something, young lady.” Nina jabbed her finger in the air. “I never did believe Catriona. She’d been one of my best students. I thought she was going to have a career in law, or maybe politics. After the disappearance, though, she changed. It was like she didn’t care anymore.”

  Chapter 14

  Six o’clock on a cold, overcast day felt a lot later. Cam had stopped by the station on her way, as she’d promised, and told Ruth everything she’d discovered about Fionnoula. Now she let Dasha out of the house and watched as he moseyed around the yard, sniffing at this and pawing at that before finding a suitable place to do his business. She made her way to the barn and checked on the chicks, where all was well. At the outside coop, most of the hens were already inside. Ruffles and Hillary usually vied for last place to go in at night, but she didn’t see the rooster in the yard. Cam held her breath as she poked her head into the coop, since she still hadn’t cleaned it, but didn’t see him.

  “Ruffles,” she called, standing up in the fresh air again. “Where are you?”

  Dasha trotted up and barked.

  “Not you, doggie. I’m looking for—” Cam stopped when she heard a squealing sound behind the barn. “What’s that?”

  Ruffles crowed from somewhere. Dasha alerted and barked again, then headed for the back of the barn, with Cam close behind. She pulled up short when she rounded the corner.

  Ruffles had his talons sunk into the back of a furry animal about the size of a small cat. The little guy wriggled and squealed, but Ruffles hung on tight. He flapped his wings and crowed again. Cam had had those talons on her own leg once and knew how sharp they were. The poor little pup. She peered at the animal. Its face still had baby proportions: a round face, big eyes, soft-looking gray fur. But its ears were clearly that of a fox, and its eyes had a feral look in them.

  “Ruffles, let go of that baby.” She clapped her hands twice, as loud as she could. Ruffles ignored her. Where had he found the kit? If the mother fox showed up, Ruffles would be the one under attack. But the rooster was too aggressive for Cam to be able to lift him off the fox kit, at least not without thick leather gloves.

  Ruffles flapped again. Dasha took up what looked like a defensive stance and growled. A shadowy shape a couple of feet tall emerged from the line of maples a few yards away. It moved toward them with slow, deliberate steps. The vixen was here. Cam took a couple of steps back. She’d rather Dasha came with her, but he wasn’t wearing a leash and she didn’t particularly want to grab his collar while he sounded like that.

  In a blur of reddish rust, the vixen raced to the kit. Dasha sprang forward but halted, still growling, a yard away from the scene. The vixen leapt into the air, grabbing Ruffles’ neck in her sharp-toothed mouth. He let go of the kit with a screech as the fox landed on the ground, swinging her head back and forth with Ruffles’ neck in her jaws until he went limp.

  The fox stared at Cam with pale orange eyes for a moment. The white around her snout and neck cut a clean line under the red-tinged rusty color of her head, making it look like a mask.

  “Dasha, come,” Cam said in a low voice.

  The dog gave one more look at the fox, then walked back to where Cam stood.

  The vixen dropped Ruffles on the ground and turned to her kit, giving it a couple of licks, then picked up Ruffles again in her jaws. She used her snout to nudge the kit ahead of her toward the woods. The kit scampered ahead of its mother with its still-stocky little legs, glancing back at Mom once in a while as if for reassurance.

  “Good boy,” Cam said to Dasha, laying a hand on his head. “You let that mother take care of her baby, didn’t you?” She watched as the foxes disappeared into the woods, then shuddered. “I guess that’s it for Ruffles.” The natural world could be a fierce and dangerous place. As was, at times, the human world.

  Cam frowned as she stood in front of her refrigerator door. Why hadn’t she assembled two las
agnas yesterday? The possibilities for dinner were scant, and she was exhausted from the day of working and talking. And then seeing Ruffles’ life snuffed out in a flash, not that he didn’t have it coming. But she’d grown almost fond of his brash, strutting personality and she’d miss him. Her customers had liked buying fertilized eggs, too.

  The cold air in front of Cam reminded her that she still stood with the fridge open. She drew out eggs, smoked turkey breast, mayo and mustard, and cheddar. She busied herself buttering whole wheat bread and slicing cheese. Preston sidled over and reared up, rubbing his head on her knee a couple of times, then gave his tiny plaintive request for a morsel of turkey, please. Cam smiled and tossed him a few small tidbits. She heated a frying pan and slid one of the slices of bread into it butter side down, then added a swipe of Ipswich Ale mustard, layers of turkey and cheese, then the top bread, to which she’d added mayonnaise on the unbuttered side. After the bottom side was golden and crisp, she flipped the sandwich, pressing it down, and cracked an egg into the pan next to it. Dasha lay on his bed in the corner of the kitchen looking interested but not making any demands. He’d had his dinner.

  A few minutes later she sat at the table with a glass of Pinot Noir and a plate holding her quick-and-dirty version of a Croque Madame, with the fried egg topping the grilled sandwich. She’d already brought over a jar of salsa and a knife and fork. She spread a forkful of salsa over the top of the sandwich, cut into it, and brought the bite to her mouth, a drop of gooey cheese and a splash of egg yolk hitting the plate as she did. Perfection in one small corner of the world.

  She spread out today’s Daily News to read as she ate. Which might have been a bad idea, because the top headline on the front page read, NO LEADS IN LOCAL MURDER CASE. It quoted Detective Peter Pappas as saying they were following up several avenues of investigation and persons of interest, but were not ready to make an arrest at this time. Cam hadn’t talked with Pete since yesterday afternoon. Maybe his team had discovered evidence leading to persons of interest. She ought to call him, anyway, and tell him about the box of ammunition. Would he be interested in the bracelet, too? Cam had a feeling it was related somehow to the murder. But she didn’t know how.

  She ignored the rest of the news article and turned to the feature section. The gardening column always was about what chemical products to apply. A story about a local woman devising a way to spray bicycle frames with highway-quality reflective paint was fascinating, as was an article about the two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday of Newburyport and the great fire of 1811. Cam shuddered inwardly at the thought of flames consuming half the downtown. She’d had two bad experiences with fire in her life, one as a child of six and one only last June. She never wanted to have to face her worst fear again.

  Cam took her wine to the computer and dove deep into Google, looking for more details on Fionnoula. She found another news story from a week after the first one. It said Fionnoula was still missing, and that the family, devastated, was sending out a plea for information from anyone who might have seen her. And then the trail went cold. She couldn’t find anything else that mentioned Fionnoula Leary. How strange. Nina had said Fionnoula had never surfaced. Had she run away? Or been abducted? Surely her return would have been reported. If Paul or Wayne, or both, had killed Fionnoula for some reason and buried her, they could still be in conflict about it, about letting the news out.

  Cam tapped the monitor and narrowed her eyes. Nina had been convinced that Catriona knew what happened to Fionnoula but had refused to say. Cam ran a search on Catriona Brennan but couldn’t find her. She’d likely married and changed her name. But she was part of a band, a lively popular group that played locally. How hard could it be to find her? Cam couldn’t remember the name of the group even though Paul had mentioned it. But the pub would know. She found the number and dialed it. Whoever answered the phone said the group was called Keeltori.

  A few more taps of the fingers, and bingo. Catriona Brennan’s last name was now Watson. Cam found both the band and Catriona on Facebook. She stared at Catriona’s face on her personal page, a close-up of her playing the fiddle on an outdoor stage that looked like it might be Boarding House Park in Lowell. Large dark eyes in a petite face made the musician look younger than she must be if she was Paul’s age. Cam clicked the About tab, but Catriona had privacy locked down, so the information only showed to friends. Cam didn’t click Add Friend—Catriona didn’t know her from anybody. Switching back to the band’s page, she checked the Events tab. They weren’t playing tonight, but would be at the Grog on Wednesday night.

  Wednesday. Was something happening Wednesday? She glanced at the calendar on her phone. Oh, yeah, it was the continuation of town meeting, but maybe she could stop by the iconic Newburyport bar and restaurant afterward. Cam sipped her wine. She should be doing farm business instead of delving into past history that might mean nothing. Paying bills didn’t stop just because not much was growing, neither did updating the Web site and Attic Hill Farm’s own Facebook page with fresh postings. The last was easy enough, even though she’d forgotten to take pictures while she was pruning yesterday. She clicked over and wrote a quick update about the spring greens, adding a picture she’d taken inside the hoop house last week. Maybe she’d stop blogging on the Web site. Facebook seemed to have taken over for blogs.

  As she hit Enter, she heard a noise and glanced up. Dasha was sleeping on a corner of the rug and Preston lay curled up snoozing at her feet, so it wasn’t either of them. She removed her fingers from the keyboard and listened. There it was again, sounding like a scratching on the window. Except there hadn’t been a breath of wind all day. The drum of her heart beat faster and faster even though she knew she had a good lock on the door.

  She’d drawn the curtains and didn’t particularly want to look out from a lit interior into the darkness. She switched off the lamp and closed the computer, then moved to the back door where she flipped the override switch for the normally motion-controlled outdoor floodlight. Peering out the window, she examined the stairs and driveway as they flared into existence. No figure skulked away into the night. No animal scurried away. And no human stood there hoping to gain entrance, either. She’d installed the motion-controlled light last June when there had been a person out there one time. The next time the light had come on it had illuminated only a skunk.

  Cam shook her head and turned the light back to motion-controlled. When her phone rang on the desk, she took three long strides to pick it up. Pete was on the other end.

  After she greeted him, she said, “What’s new?”

  “I wondered if you’d like company tonight. I’m beat and don’t feel like going home to a cold, empty apartment.”

  “I haven’t heard a nicer offer in a long time. Come on over.” She opened her mouth to tell him about the noise, then shut it. He didn’t need to hear about a false alarm.

  An hour later Pete sat with the remnants of his own Croque Madame on a plate in front of him at the table. He still wore his blazer but he’d untucked his shirt and his feet were shod in the fleece slippers Cam kept for his use in the house. Dasha, who’d been overjoyed to see his main human, sat happily at Pete’s feet.

  “Cam, you’re an angel.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin, then took a sip of beer, gazing at her.

  Cam snorted. “Hardly. I can put together a pretty mean hot sandwich, though.” She had refilled her wineglass and sat with him while he ate. “So what’s happening with the case? Or can’t you talk about it?” She wet a finger on her tongue and ran the finger around the rim of the wineglass until it sang.

  “We’re stuck. The commander is pissed. I went to talk to Judith Patterson and she wanted a lawyer there. And Ivan’s driving me nuts. Plus I was in court all afternoon on a different case entirely.” He shook his head. “What have you been up to?”

  “Besides farming, I’ve been wondering what beef Paul Underwood had with Wayne. I told you I saw him drive away looking angry the day before the murder, right?”<
br />
  “No, I don’t believe you did. What time of day?”

  “It was as I was heading there to talk with Wayne about my two chicks that died. Maybe four or five o’clock. You must have questioned Paul about finding the body.”

  “We did. Wayne was already dead when Underwood says he got there, although we’re still following up on confirming when he actually showed up and where he was before that. What’s this about a beef?”

  “Felicity Slavin was their high school teacher.” Cam went on to tell Pete what her friend had said about the falling out. “I was at Connolly’s Pub last night for Saint Patrick’s Day and Paul asked to sit with Lucinda and me. Our table had the last empty seats, I guess. I asked him what their falling out was over but he didn’t really want to say, only that he went to see Wayne on Saturday to sort a few things out. It didn’t really look like they had sorted out anything or he wouldn’t have looked like an angry bull driving away. And then Lucinda asked him why he went back over there Sunday morning and he got up in a huff.”

  “Interesting. Felicity doesn’t know what went on between them?”

  “No. But then today I found a gold bracelet in my compost pile. An old, dented, dirty gold bracelet, with the initials FL inside.”

  “And this has what to do with Paul Underwood? Or with Wayne?” Pete yawned. “Sorry. I haven’t slept much since Sunday.”

  Cam held up her hand. “Hang on another minute. I also found a bone about as long as my forearm, also in the compost.”

  Pete sat up straight, looking more alert. “What did you do with it?”

  “Exactly what I was supposed to. I didn’t touch it, and I called the Westbury police. They came and picked it up, and took the bracelet, too. They called teams in to check out the entire farm.”