Six Geese A-Slaying (22 page)

“Because he’s the killer,” Rob said, startling all of us.

“Rob! You’re all right!” Dr. Blake exclaimed.

“No, I’m not,” Rob said. “My head hurts, and Meg’s holding me upside down.”

“It’s the only way I can carry you,” I said. “Despite being my brother, you’re extremely heavy.”

“Ha, ha,” he mumbled.

“Into the feed room,” Werzel said again. “Now!”

To emphasize the “now” part, he fired the gun into the air. Or, more accurately, toward the rafters. We all flinched, and
a flock of chickens who had been roosting on the overhead beams scattered in all directions. Including down, which was alarming
to witness, since none of them were particularly skilled at flying. Several of them made interim stops on the walls or doors
of the stalls—presumably the reverse of how they’d gotten up onto the rafters in the first place. One made a temporary landing
on Dad’s head before hopping down to the floor, and Caroline had to catch another plummeting hen. But apparently Werzel had
missed them all. None seemed hurt, though you’d have a hard time convincing them of that—they were all running around the
rafters or the barn floor squawking as if the sky were indeed falling.

“You idiot,” Dr. Blake roared. “You could have killed one of those poor birds.”

“He’s planning to kill us,” I said, as I dodged another downward fluttering hen. “Why would he worry about a few chickens?”

“Into the feed room,” Werzel said. “I don’t need all of you as hostages. I could make my life a whole lot easier if I finished
off a few of you right now. Don’t tempt me.”

“Come on, Monty,” Caroline said. “Let’s not get ourselves shot by this lunatic.”

She marched into the feed room, taking off her cardigan as she went, as if she planned to settle in and make herself at home.
Dr. Blake and Dad followed more slowly, and I trudged in last and set Rob down on the floor as gently as I could.

“If only I had my medical bag,” Dad said, as he knelt down beside Rob and busied himself with an examination.

Werzel stayed at the doorway, checking the room. Apparently he liked what he saw. Dr. Blake was standing in the corner with
his arms crossed, frowning thunderously at Werzel. Caroline had hung her sweater up on the wall and was sitting primly on
a bale of hay.

“Okay,” Werzel said. “You can all stay here. Except for you. I still need you.”

He was pointing the gun at me.

Chapter 32

Back out in the main barn, it was still intermittently raining hysterical hens, and the other animals were growing restless.

“Let’s fetch those boxes,” Werzel said.

The louse could at least have given me a coat.

When I came back in with the first box, I heard raised voices coming from the feed room.

“Don’t be an idiot!” Dr. Blake was bellowing.

“But we have to do something!” Dad yelled back.

“Well, that’s a stupid plan,” Dr. Blake countered.

“Can you think of a better one?” Dad asked,

“Will you two old fools shut up so I can think!” Caroline boomed.

They continued to haggle loudly the whole time I was carrying boxes in from Werzel’s Subaru. If they really did have some
kind of plan I wished they’d keep their voices down while they were discussing it. Were any of them really that hard of hearing?
Or perhaps they didn’t think they could be heard over the mooing of the cows, the baaing of the sheep, and the squawking of
the hens, most of whom had made it down to solid ground and were practicing wind sprints up and down the barn floor.

Werzel had me stack the boxes on the middle of the barn floor just outside the feed room door. Yes, if I were going to burn
the barn down with my prisoners locked in the feed room, that was where I’d start the blaze.

I was on the last load, with the can of kerosene perched on top of the box, by the time I finally thought of a plan. I was
going to pretend to be losing my grip on the box, stop to shift it, and then drop it, whirl around, and brain him with the
kerosene can. Not a brilliant plan, but the best I could think of.

I was tensing to strike when I tripped over one of the hens. The box I was carrying overturned, spilling out its contents—several
dozen brown nine-by-twelve labeled envelopes.

“Get up! And pick that stuff up!” Werzel snapped.

“Okay,” I wheezed, as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me in the fall. I pretended to be struggling to get up on one knee,
paused as if getting my breath, and began grabbing envelopes. I noticed a familiar local name on one envelope—one of the Pruitts—and
then made a determined effort not to read any others.

“Hurry up!” Werzel said.

“I’m hurrying,” I said. I pretended to hurry, chattering my teeth slightly and shaking my hands to make it more plausible
that I was fumbling the envelopes so badly.

I fumbled them all out of my hands when I got to the kerosene can, the better to grab it and swing as hard as I could at Werzel.

Unfortunately, I missed.

“Nice try,” he said, stepping all too easily out of the way. “But I’m not—yech!”

As he stepped back, Ernest the llama spat at him—not ordinary spit, either, but the nasty-smelling greenish stuff llamas produce
when they’re really vexed. The horrid gob landed directly on his face. Werzel scrambled as far from Ernest as possible, reaching
down as he went for a handful of hay to scrub off the llama-spit. When he stood up again, he backed up against the other side
of the central aisle.

“That’s it,” he said. The traces of green goop still running down his face only made his smug smile even nastier. “You’ve
outlived your usefulness. Time for—owww!

He’d backed up against Cousin the donkey’s stall. Cousin’s head suddenly appeared over the stall door, and he sank his enormous
yellow teeth into Werzel’s upraised gun arm.

Werzel yelped and dropped the gun. I dived for it. Unfortunately, since Cousin wasn’t a bulldog, he let go to try for another
bite, allowing Werzel to dive for the gun, too.

We cracked skulls so hard that I saw stars. Werzel must have, too, though, and it slowed him down long enough for me to emerge
with the gun.

I scrambled to my feet and backed away. After one of his police training sessions, Horace had told me how many feet away you
needed to be from a running assailant to ensure that you could shoot him before he reached you. Unfortunately, I couldn’t
remember the exact distance—ten feet? Twenty feet? Or was that yards? All I could remember was that it was a lot farther than
I would have guessed. I kept backing as fast as I could without tripping over the rampaging hens, and Werzel staggered to
his feet.

“Give me that,” he said, taking a step toward me.

“I don’t think so.” I stopped backing, put both hands on the gun, and aimed it at him.

He started backing away again. I felt relieved until I realized he was backing toward the feed room door. Did I dare shoot?
If I missed would the bullets go through the wall where they could hit Dad, Dr. Blake, or Caroline?

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” I said.

He kept backing.

I pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

I tried again. The trigger clicked slightly.

Werzel looked puzzled.

“I could have sworn I had more bullets,” he said.

“You jerk,” I said. The idea that he’d held me at gunpoint for the last hour with an unloaded gun was the last straw. I switched
my grip on the gun so I could use it as a club and took a step toward him.

Maybe not the smartest move. Werzel grabbed a nearby pitchfork and aimed it at me, the nasty smile returning to his green
goo-stained face.

Just then the feed room door fell backward off its hinges into the feed room and Caroline Willner stepped out holding a club.

No, on closer inspection, I realized she was carrying a plaster replica of a cow’s hind leg. What the—

“Take that, you fiend!” she shouted, as she cracked Werzel over the head with the fake cow leg.

The weapon crumbled, but it did the trick. Werzel staggered and fell over, and Caroline and Dad both raced to sit on him.

“Quick!” Dad shouted. “Take the pitchfork away!”

“Get some rope!” Caroline ordered.

I wrested the pitchfork out of Werzel’s hand and was tying him up with a dog leash I found hanging on the wall when the door
at the other end of the barn flew open.

“Hands up!”

Chief Burke and Sammy entered in a gust of snowflakes, guns drawn and pointing at us.

“About time,” Dr. Blake grumbled. “Thanks, Debbie Anne. The cavalry’s here.”

Debbie Anne? I realized he was holding the handset of a wall phone. He put the handset back on the phone. Then he hung Caroline’s
sweater back over the phone and winked at me.

So that’s why they’d been talking so loudly—so Werzel wouldn’t hear them taking the pinions out of the door hinges and calling
the police.

“These people attacked me!” Werzel shouted.

“Nonsense,” Caroline said. “Arrest him for animal endangerment.”

“And murder,” I said. “Let’s not forget murder.”

“I’m innocent!” Werzel wailed.

“Shut up,” Dr. Blake said, “or Caroline will smite you again.”

He handed Caroline another plaster cow’s leg. She scrambled off Werzel’s back and stood over him, holding the leg by the hoof
and tapping it gently into her left hand, as if impatient to wield it. Dr. Blake picked up the pitchfork and went to stand
on the other side of Werzel, scowling with plausible menace. Werzel glanced back and forth between them, hunched his shoulders,
and shut up.

Dad emerged with Rob leaning heavily on his shoulder.

“You take over, Chief,” he said. “I’ve got to get Rob down to the hospital.”

“What the hell is going on here?” the chief asked.

Dad and Rob shambled out. The others—even Werzel—looked at me. I took a deep breath.

The door slammed open again and Michael ran in, brandishing the poker from Cousin Horace’s fireplace set. He’d probably picked
it up in his office when he saw the signs of Rob’s scuffle with Werzel. Nice to know we had the same good taste in weapons.

“Where’s Meg?” he shouted. “And what happened to Rob? And what’s going on?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

Chapter 33

The stables made surprisingly comfortable temporary quarters. Of course, the last few hours had been so exhausting I’d have
found a concrete pavement comfortable. After we gave our statements to Chief Burke, Michael and I raced back to the drama
department for the one-man show. Then we spent several hours fending off questions from family, friends, neighbors, and the
press—though fortunately the only reporters still in town and not incarcerated in the county jail were the editor of the
Caer-philly
Clarion
and a part-time stringer for the college radio station. It was nearly ten by the time we got back to Michael’s office, and
people kept dropping by to see us, so in spite of the fact that both of us were tired enough to fall asleep in one of the
two-foot snowdrifts the twin storms had left behind, we took advantage of a lull between visitors to pack up our essential
gear, sneak out, and hike back to the stables.

“It’s the last place anyone would look for us tonight,” Michael said with satisfaction, once we’d put the feed room door back
on its hinges and spread out our sleeping bags inside the room. We’d thrown a blanket over some of the hay bales just outside
the feed room, and were lounging there, finishing our dinner.

We’d had to take a rain check on the planned steak and shiraz but we’d unwrapped a few gifts intended for various relatives—a
bottle of merlot, some gourmet cold cuts and cheeses, and four different kinds of Christmas cookies. If we all made it to
Mother and Dad’s for Christmas tomorrow, the intended recipients would understand why we hadn’t brought their presents.

Michael had brought his iPod and a tiny set of speakers, so we had nonstop Christmas carols, courtesy of the college radio
station. We lit a couple of battery-powered lanterns that the Ag Department kept around to use during power outages, and we
even had our own elaborately decorated little Victorian-themed Christmas tree, stolen from the German department down the
block.

“Borrowed,” Michael kept insisting. “We’ll have it back long before they even notice it’s gone. And it adds the perfect touch
to our holiday feast.”

We’d spread the presents for each other around the base of the tiny tree and hung our stockings on one of the stall doors.

We were lying in a comfortable pile of hay just outside the feed room door drinking the wine out of Michael’s office coffee
mugs and eating slices of cold cuts and cheese with our fingers, but it seemed like the most sumptuous feast imaginable. Of
course, still being alive had just a little to do with my exhilaration.

“You can’t imagine how I felt when Spike came running into my dressing room, covered with blood and barking his head off,”
Michael said again.

“And I did him such an injustice, assuming that the last thing he’d do was go for help.”

“He’s no Lassie, but he did the job.”

I stuffed another bit of cheese through the mesh at the front of Spike’s crate, by way of a thank you and Christmas treat,
but he was so overstuffed from all the previous treats of cheese, prosciutto, and salami that he barely opened his eyes. It
was the first time I’d ever seen Spike ignore food, and I was willing to bet it would be the last. In nearby stalls, Cousin
and Ernest were still munching on an extra ration of oats. In fact, every animal in the barn was joining in the feast except
for the chickens, who had gone back to roost in the rafters. We decided that for now they’d prefer sleep to food, so they’d
be getting their Christmas treat in the morning.

“Just what was that thing Caroline whacked Werzel with, anyway?” Michael asked. “It looked like a plaster model of a cow’s
leg.”

“That’s exactly what it was,” I said. “Dad was planning to make reindeer tracks in the yards of a few children—Chief Burke’s
grandson, and Cousin Mildred’s kids. So he went over to the zoo a few days ago, made molds from one of the deer, and cast
some plaster hooves.”

“Cool,” Michael said. “Even better than dancing on the roof with sleigh bells, and it’s not every year you get snow to do
it in.”

“Yes, but when the snow forecast changed to feet instead of inches, he realized he needed more than just the hooves. He needed
the whole legs. He decided that a cow was the best substitute available on short notice, and the only cows in town were in
the college barn. Caroline and Dr. Blake came along to help him. They were making molds of the cow’s legs in the stall, and
using the feed room to pour the plaster and dry the legs. Lucky for me they were still at it when Werzel and I showed up.”

“I’m sure you’d have found a way to foil him anyway,” Michael said. “Or at least hold him off until I got here. Just one thing
bothers me—was Doleson just a blackmailer, or do you think he also murdered that politician?”

“Drood? No idea. I gather the chief’s going to reopen the case. See if there’s any evidence to prove whether it’s suicide
or murder.”

“Time will tell, I suppose,” Michael said. “And what happens to all Doleson’s blackmail files?”

“Under lock and key in the chief’s office,” I said. I wriggled into a slightly more comfortable spot in the hay and decided
it wasn’t worth the effort of reaching for another slice of ham.

“Bet a few people will get a little nervous when that comes out,” Michael said, suppressing a yawn.

“I imagine anyone in those files has been more than a little nervous since the news of Doleson’s death got out. The chief
didn’t say much about what he planned, but from what I got out of Horace, I gather that except for anything that would constitute
a prosecutable crime, the rest of the files won’t ever see the light of day.”

“That’s good. Speaking of prosecutable crimes—does the chief have enough evidence without those photos Werzel deleted?”

“Werzel may have deleted them, but as any of Rob’s techies will tell you, deleted doesn’t mean gone for good. The computer
techs have probably already got those photos back. And I’m sure they can find some traces of blood on the lens.”

“Outstanding,” Michael murmured.

We listened to the carols in comfortable silence for a few minutes. “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” gave way to “O Little
Town of Bethlehem.” I was about to suggest that we call it a night and retire to the feed room when—

“Meg! Michael! What are you two doing here?”

I started and opened my eyes to see Dad, Dr. Blake, Caroline, Randall Shiffley, Clarence, and Mother standing over us.

“Getting away from the crowds,” Michael said. “At least that was the idea,” he added, sotto voce.

“What are all of
you
doing here?” I countered.

“Got to replace that reindeer hoof Caroline broke over the killer’s head,” Dad said.

“Reindeer hoof?”

“He means the plaster cow leg,” Caroline explained. “Unless the police messed with the molds, they should still be in here.”

They all trooped into the feed room where Michael and I had set up our sleeping bags. Well, most of them trooped in—the feed
room was a little small to hold them all. Mother and Caroline stood outside looking on.

“Is this going to take long?” Michael asked, rather plaintively.

“Only an hour or so,” Mother said.

“Isn’t it going to be a little difficult to make plausible reindeer tracks in this much snow?” I asked. “I remember the last
time Dad did this, there were only patches of snow, and it was pretty easy to keep from making human footprints too near the
reindeer tracks. But in this much snow—”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Caroline said. “We’re going to use the boom lift!”

“I’ll put the arm out level to the ground,” Randall said, sticking his head out of the door. “And move it along real slow,
so they can make beautiful hoof prints ten or fifteen feet out in the middle of that unspoiled patch of snow in the town square.”

“And sleigh tracks!” Clarence exclaimed. “We’ve got a pair of sleigh runners so we can make the sleigh tracks, too!”

“That sounds like fun,” Michael said. He sounded as if he was almost tempted to help. But then he yawned prodigiously.

“James,” Mother said, “why don’t you do that out here?”

“Why?” Dad said, from in the feed room.

“Because Meg and Michael have had a very long day,” Mother said. “And I think they would like to rest.”

From anyone else, it would have sounded like a suggestion, and the plaster hoofcasters might have protested. But Mother was
using the “she who must be obeyed voice,” and even Dr. Blake obediently helped pick up their gear and carry it to the far
end of the barn.

“And try to be quiet,” Mother said. “After all—”

“What’s that?”

We all stopped and listened.

“Could that be bells?” Caroline asked.

Yes, it definitely sounded like sleigh bells going by the barn. Actually, more like over the barn.

“Who’s running around with sleigh bells at this hour of the night?” Dad asked. What he really meant, of course, was who else
had stolen his idea. He dashed for the door, and the others followed him out into the snow. We could hear them stumbling about
outside and shouting to each other.

“They went that way!” we heard Clarence call.

“Impossible!” Dr. Blake shouted.

“I’ll have them keep it down when they get tired and come back in,” Mother said. “Good night, dears.”

She gave us each a kiss on the cheek and a slight but definite shove in the direction of the feed room. I noticed that our
previously limp stockings were now bulging with goodies—how had she managed that in so short a time?

The sleigh bells jingled by again—this time they were definitely overhead.

“Good night, Mother,” I said. “And say good night to Dad and Grandfather and Caroline and Clarence and—”

“And all the rest of the Waltons, yes,” she said. “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

For once I decided to let Mother have the last word.