The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat (10 page)

Kevin gave me a half salute and nodded to his chief. “Yessir. I ducked the wrong way. You told me she was right-handed? Turns out she's ambi-whatsis.”

Ambidextrous. Curious, I glanced at the Nature of Wound subcategory on the autopsy report. “A right-handed perp, in any event,” I said. I observed the goat-headed cane, carefully wrapped in plastic. “Well done, my boy.”

Simon rose, took the cane, and locked it in the evidence cabinet. “Yep. You can get along home, now, Kevin.”

“Yessir.” He turned to leave and hesitated, one hand on the office door. “It's not all going to be like this, is it?”

“Could have been worse,” Simon said thoughtfully. “She could have had a gun.”

Kevin shut the door with a nervous bang.

I read through the reports from Syracuse.

Neither the forensics nor the autopsy provided much joy. Staples's fingerprints were found outside the stainless-steel rim of the bulk tank. The thumbprints and the heel of the hand were under the rim, the fingers of both hands were inside. Brush marks on the lower half of the tank had possibly been made by someone's knees. The scenario was obvious: Staples had been struck on the head while bending over the tank, sagged against it, and been tipped over. The actual cause of death was drowning. From the amount of milk splashed on the floor around the tank, the victim had struggled a little.

“I don't see the old lady as a viable suspect,” Provost said.

“Archimedes would disagree.”

Provost closed his eyes, and then opened them again. “I'll bite, Doc.”

“‘Give me a lever and I'll move the world.' Archimedes said that, not I,” I added impatiently. “It wouldn't take a huge amount of strength to tip the body into the bulk tank. If he were badly stunned—and from the description of the head wound, he would have hardly been conscious as he went under—he wouldn't have struggled much.” I thought about it. What I knew about ageing was confined to the remarkable resilience of animals and the annoying changes in my own body. “Let's say it's not totally impossible.” I paged through the rest of the report. “The cleanliness of the dairy is a hindrance. There are no data of note anywhere except the tank.” I replaced the papers in the file and handed it back to Simon. “No witnesses. No forensics. Whatever case we make, Provost, is bound to be circumstantial.”

“So it's going to come down to motive?” Simon didn't look happy. “The law likes hard fact, Doc.”

I cast a glance at the cabinet that held the cane. “We may have the means. Intensive questioning of the suspects can establish opportunity. And just plain research will support the motive. There are quite a few avenues to pursue.”

“You think so?” Simon demanded. “Who've we got for suspects? A ninety-four-year-old widow? A jury's going to love that.”

“Then our first step should be to establish the parameters of our investigation by eliminating who is not a suspect. I may have mentioned before that a criminal investigation involves the same thought processes used in diagnosing a pathological condition.”

“Yeah, Doc.”

“Fact find, assess, and conclude.”

“Yeah, Doc.”

“Our first step is to rule out.”

“Yeah, Doc.” He sighed. “It'd be nice if we could rule out more chatter on the disease model.”

“You mean you'd like to cut to the chase, as they say.”

“You got it in one.”

I leaned back in my chair and steepled my fingers. It occurred to me that it would be very pleasant to have a Scotch in my hand. “There is something to consider about this case that is very odd. An anomaly, if you will.”

Simon rolled his eyes.

“Until I discover the source of the contamination of the milk, we have two issues to consider. I believe the contamination to be sabotage, designed to close the dairy down. Why close the dairy down? We have the murder of the milk inspector: the motive seems to be revenge for his womanizing, in which case the sabotage and the murder are unrelated; or his accurate reporting of the MSCC levels, that, too, would work to close the dairy down. In which case his murder and the sabotage are unconnected. Unless Staples was the saboteur. But I believe the two are connected. I just don't know how.”

Provost rubbed his forehead. “I think I'm getting a headache. You mean somebody could have killed Mel out of jealousy—and somebody
else
is trying to close the dairy.”

“Let's take the murder on, first. I am close to discovering the antecedents of the other problem. We will reserve a conclusion on that for a later time.”

Provost shook his head, as if bothered by flies. “The murder. Yeah. Now. I don't need to tell you that most murders are committed by the vic's loved ones.”

“A fact known to all,” I agreed.

“So how d'ya see Mrs. Staples as the perp?”

I shook my head. “She was in Syracuse with her mother the day of the murder. The alibi's been verified by the mother, but duplicity is the hallmark of this particular family, so you might want to get third-party verification.”

Provost looked at me admiringly. “You know what I don't get? I don't get how you can use so many words and not run out.”

I was completely nonplussed.

Provost smiled slightly. Then he looked at his notepad. “Okay. Next is the jealous husband. I checked on that class he said he was at. He wasn't there for most of it.”

I shifted in my seat. “Neville,” I finally admitted, “does not have a verifiable alibi. But Luisa swears he didn't know with whom she was involved until you let the cat out of the bag, which, of course, was sometime after the crime was committed.” I deliberated. “To be frank with you, Simon, if Neville had done it, it would appeal enormously to this woman's vanity. I do not trust her as a witness. Which is why I trust her initial statement that she kept Neville in the dark. If we are assessing probabilities here, I would place Neville's probable guilt at a very low number.”

“You don't think he did it,” Simon said, with an air of not having heard one word in ten.

“I do not.”

“And what about the missus?”

I frowned. Not at the thought of Luisa's guilt, which was pleasing, but at the locution. “I doubt it. She says she was waiting for Staples at the apartment in Ithaca the morning of the murder. She spent the time pouring out her troubles to a sympathetic neighbor. That is easily verified. Not to mention the fact,” I added with some distaste, “that she is a shrieker and a hysteric. There would have been a noisy altercation in the milk room. Ashley would have heard them.”

“Which brings us back to the Caprettis and their kin.”

“Doucetta has the volatility to commit the murder. Anyone who has a stake in the inheritance would have a substantial revenge motive. If the bad samples kept turning up, there's no question the dairy's reputation would suffer. You know how hysterical the public at large becomes over food contamination issues. A leak to the press about what is essentially pus in the milk would create a firestorm of dismay.”

“Pus,” Provost said with a revolted air.

“That's a fair approximation of how a reporter might look at it.”

“So we've got Marietta, the granddaughter. Caterina and the husband, Frank.” He tapped his pencil on his yellow pad. “I know Frank Celestine. He bowls on the same nights I do.”

“I haven't met him. Does he have the nous to commit murder?”

“If I knew what you just said I could tell you. What he is, is a blowhard and a bully. And that construction company of his is a joke.” He wrote on the yellow pad, then said, “Now we come to my favorite.”

“Brian Folk.”

“According to Mrs. Staples, Folk and Mel were thick as thieves.”

“And may have
been
thieves, from what we already know.”

Provost nodded. “Right. So he and Mel have a falling-out. He follows him to the dairy 'cause he's there to take another flippin' sample. And whack, Mel ends up face-first in drink.”

“Which leaves the dairy out of it altogether.”

“Right.”

“But what about the elevated MSCC?” I protested.

“You said the two things are separate.”

“I said they
appear
to be separate,” I corrected him. “I also said I
believe
them to be connected.”

“I tell you a couple of rules about murder, Doc. I call it the School of the Blindingly Obvious. Which is basically, the simplest answer's the right one. If it's staring you right in the face, you'd be an idiot to look any farther.”

“Fair enough, as far as it goes,” I said. “So you believe that next step is to rule out Brian Folk?”

“Seems a good place to start. I'll get Patty to do a record search in the morning, see if there are any felonies in his background. And then I'll tackle the little SOB himself.”

I rose somewhat stiffly from my chair. “Madeline has signed up for the cheese-making seminar at the dairy. Her first class is tomorrow. I thought I might look in on it with her. The cheese maker is Caterina Celestine, whom I have not met. But I have an uneasy feeling about the place. Something odd is going on. And I believe Folk has nothing to do with it.”

I returned home through the deepening twilight. I hadn't seen my wife or my dog since breakfast. The hot dog I'd eaten had proven a most unsatisfactory lunch. I had missed my late afternoon drink on our porch, where Madeline and I discussed the events of the day. There was an ache in my joints that was becoming all too familiar. The hours-long trek through the pastures that afternoon had brought muscles into play that had been unused for some years.

Therefore, I was in no mood to see Victor Bergland sitting at my kitchen table next to my wife.

“Hello, sweetie,” Madeline said. “Look who's here!” She rose and greeted me with a kiss. She smelled faintly of chlorine from her swim. Lincoln came and leaned against my knees, a habit of his when he is feeling neglected.

“Hello, Victor.”

“Hello, Austin.”

“I see Madeline has supplied you with some of my Scotch?”

“Actually,” Madeline said, handing me a glass of that selfsame nectar, “Victor brought some.”

I took a sip. It was single malt. A Laphroaig, in fact. I took another. I began to feel quite mellow.

Madeline kissed me again. “Sit down, sweetie. Joe said you stopped off to see Simon. Did the two of you get anything to eat? No? You just wait right there.”

She bustled off to the kitchen. I sat across from Victor. He didn't look like himself. Lincoln put his paw on my knee in an imperative way. I stroked my dog's ears and tried to decide what was odd about my old friend. “You're wearing a shirt with a reptile on the pocket.”

Madeline set a plate of cold potato salad, strawberries, and southern smoked ham in front of me. “It's a Lacoste,” she said cheerfully.

I knew the name. “It's what they call a golfing shirt,” I said. “Have you taken up golfing, Victor?”

He looked down at himself. Victor has a bit of a belly. The knit made him look as if he swallowed a basketball. “Thelma thinks it'd be a good activity for my retirement.”

I stopped cold, a forkful of ham in midair. “Your retirement?”

Madeline bustled back to the table. She bustles when she's flummoxed—a rare occurrence with my self-possessed wife. “Yes,” she said brightly. “Now that Thelma and Victor have less need for his salary as a professor, she's thinking maybe they should golf. And go on a cruise or two. And not work.”

“We've just joined the Summersville Country Club,” Victor said. “The course is by some fellow who's top-notch. Robert Trent Jones, that's it.”

“The Summersville Country Club is filled with Republicans, Victor.”

Madeline went tsk. “There's nothing wrong with Republicans, sweetie. Some of our best friends are Republicans.”

“I don't think so,” I said testily.

“Joe's a Republican,” Madeline said.

I set my empty glass on the table. Madeline filled it up again. I kept my gaze on Victor. “You're thinking of resigning your position as chair?”

“Thelma thinks it's taking too much time. And what am I contributing to veterinary science anyway? I haven't done any real research in years. I spend all my time on committees, trying to keep everybody happy, which is just about impossible in a university atmosphere, as you well recall.”

I thought of the relish with which Victor entered the lists of engagement. It would not be too far-fetched to say that academic politics were his aphrodisiac. Nothing put a sparkle in his eye or a spring in his step like disaffected associate professors squabbling over who should be teaching remedial chemistry. (Kindergarten classes were oases of reason compared to the rationales offered by those that flatly refused to teach them.)