The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat (3 page)

“Thelma thought we'd enjoy an evening at Suzanne's.”

“Suzanne's?” This restaurant made the food at the Inn at Hemlock Falls look paltry! The Sunday edition of the
New York Times
had called it a gourmet experience to be savored again and again. This was a far cry from the beer-battered onions of the Embassy. I glanced at Madeline. She frowned. I rarely see my wife frown. She extended her hand for the phone.

“Victor? Are you two thinkin' we might go to Suzanne's tonight instead of the Embassy? You are? Would it be okay with you if we saved Suzanne's for another time? I'd need a little more time to prepare for a place that nice. You understand? Great. Thank you, darlin'. We'll see you at the usual time.” Madeline clicked the phone off and held it in her hand as if judging its weight. “Suzanne's,” she said. “As if. And it's forty dollars an entrée. Whooee.”

And that, until we sat at the Monrovian Embassy with the Berglands, was her entire comment on the matter of Thelma's two-and-a-half-million-dollar inheritance.

 

T
HE
Monrovian Embassy is a byword in Summersville. Rudy Schwartz's breakfasts are close to incomparable; nowhere else will one find such crisp hash browns, such smoky-flavored bacon. At lunch and dinner, the Monrovian hamburger smothered in beer-battered onion rings is second to none. But it is the Friday night fish fry that brings Summersvillians out in force. It is fortunate indeed that Rudy's steers are regular clients of the McKenzie clinic; we would have trouble getting a table otherwise.

The Embassy sits on Main Street; the rear parking lot is on the edge of a small tributary to Cayuga Lake. At quarter to seven, I parked our Bronco near the Dumpster, the scene of the crime in our recently closed murder case. “That brings up memories,” I said, gazing at the rusty metal sides with some affection.

“And what does that bring up?” Madeline said with unaccustomed tartness. “Your breakfast, I bet.” I followed the direction of her forefinger. An enormous red Hummer sat on the grass verge between the parking lot and the stream. It was trimmed in brass: brass bumpers, brass surrounds on the headlights, brass handles on the doors.

“Victor's?” I said in some surprise.

“Thelma's auntie didn't leave her millions to Victor,” Madeline said. “It's Thelma's.”

Although Thelma is shaped like an artichoke and has the voice of a mandrill monkey, she is a sound liberal. A Democrat you can count on. The Hummer was an anomaly of no small order.

We made our way through the crowd at the front door and into the belly of the restaurant itself. The interior—like the shambling exterior—is comfortably shabby. Battered wooden booths line one wall; a long wooden bar lines the other. The middle is occupied by a higgledy-piggledy collection of tables and chairs. The back wall has three doors: one on each side leads to the bathrooms; the center goes into the kitchen.

Victor sat in our regular booth, the one nearest the Gents. He rose and waved us on. Thelma was next to him; I didn't see all of her until I sat down next to Madeline.

“Good heavens,” I said. “What happened to you, Thelma?”

My wife put her hand on my knee and pinched it.

“Howdy, Thelma,” Madeline said cheerfully. “Lila and I missed seein' you at lunch today.”

“I spent most of the day in Syracuse,” Thelma said. “Shopping.”

I wondered what store had exploded over Thelma's person—although I didn't say that aloud.

Madeline tells me one can infer a number of things about human beings from they way they look. She has a point. Exterior clues can reveal many things about health. A staring coat can be evidence of malnutrition or parasite infestation. A dull hide or a shelly hoof may indicate an endocrine imbalance. A generally unkempt appearance has a lot to say about the responsibility of one's caretaker.

We've known Thelma Bergland for more than twenty years, and she's always looked like an artichoke. She didn't resemble an artichoke anymore. Something had pinched her figure in, in places where formerly it had bulged out. Her hair was a bright yellow instead of liver brown. She had a lot of stuff on her face. Glittery blue stuff on her eyelids. Pink stuff on her cheeks. She clanked when she moved, due, I assumed, to the amount of gold jewelry on her bosom and wrists.

“So, Austin,” Victor said, rather loudly. “Have you changed your mind about Neville Brandstetter's offer yet? He's anxious that somebody gets a look in at the dairy. Seems the somatic cell count keeps coming back well over a million.”

“Have I what? No,” I said rather testily. “I haven't.” I stopped looking at Thelma and looked at Victor. His somewhat stocky self was stuffed into a sports coat. His hair was shorter and glistened with something very like Show Sheen. With his banana-shaped nose and wooly hair, Victor always reminds me of a Suffolk ram; at the moment, he looked more sheepish than usual.

“See something funny?” he asked in rather a dangerous way.

This new Victor would not appreciate my little pun, so I said, “Not at all.” Then taking the ram by the horns, so to speak, I said, “I understand congratulations are in order. I hear you've come into a bit of a windfall.”

“Well, of course,” Thelma said in her corvine screech—at least her voice hadn't mutated into something strange and wonderful!—“it's
my
‘windfall' as you call it. Victor didn't get a penny.” She withdrew a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at each eye. I was curious to see if the glittery blue stuff rubbed off. It didn't. “My poor aunt Violet. Such a loss.” She tucked the cloth back in her bag and snapped, “Victor, would you
please
check on our drinks? We put our order in ages ago.”

“Of course, dear.” Victor got up and headed toward the bar.

“Victor!” Thelma said.

He stopped halfway there, shook his head as if he had a fly in his ear, and came back.

“Austin and Madeline would like something, too, I'm sure.” She smiled. There was a bit of red stuff on her teeth. Her teeth looked a lot whiter than they had before. And more pointed, somehow, although that may have been my imagination. “Please. Order what you like, you two. It's on me.”

“Scotch for you, old man,” Victor said heartily. “Maddy? What about you?”

Thelma tapped her glass with a fingernail. Her fingernails had grown a lot longer in the week since I'd seen her last. This was puzzling. “Try a Campari and soda, Madeline. It's delicious.”

“Thank you,” Madeline said. “That sounds just fine.”

Victor bumbled off to the bar.

“Thelma,” I said, “your appearance has changed. What…” Madeline's warm hand tightened warningly on my knee.

I subsided into sheer confusion for the rest of the evening.

 

“
T
HELMA
inherits two and a half million dollars and Dr. Bergland ends up putting Show Sheen in his hair?” Allegra said gleefully. “Oh. My. Goodness.” She burst into giggles. Allegra's giggle is infectious, and the rest of us around the breakfast table couldn't help but smile. She is a pretty girl, with greenish eyes and hair the color of a Hershey bar. She was about to enter her first year as a veterinary student and was preparing by taking a few summer courses in small animal husbandry.

“That's not what it's all about, though, is it?” Joe said. Joe, about to enter his third year as a veterinary student, just manages to keep afloat with a combination of scholarships, our clinic salary, and an occasional odd job as bartender at the Monrovian Embassy. His shift at the Embassy had started at nine last night, just as Madeline and I were leaving. He'd started his breakfast by regaling Allegra with tales of Thelma's behavior. “Bossed him around, buying exotic drinks for anyone they even knew remotely. Rudy doesn't stock half the stuff she asked for. She's using the money to beat poor Doc Bergland over the head.” He hunched disapprovingly over his oatmeal. “It's pretty brutal.”

“Well, I'm sure they'll work it out just fine,” Madeline said.

Saturdays are less frenetic than weekdays, and we begin breakfast at nine, rather than the usual seven o'clock, which meant the mail had been delivered. Madeline sorted through the stack and said somewhat absently, “Getting that kind of money dumped in your lap all of a sudden is like being out in a storm in a tippy boat. Hard to keep your balance.”

Allegra's laughter deserted her abruptly. “Money,” she said darkly. Her own family had nearly been destroyed by her father's pursuit of it. Sam Fulbright had paid the price—one to three years in a downstate prison—but Allegra still dealt with the aftermath. Thanks to a legacy from her grandmother, her own studies at Cornell were paid for, but she needed her assistant's pay to supplement it. “She's going to be sorry she ever cashed that check.”

Madeline, perusing a letter, said, “Ally, honey, it's no use fretting over stuff like money…good glory!”

In twenty-two years of happily married life, I'd never heard that tone of voice from my wife before. Joe half rose out of his chair. Lincoln began to bark. Juno, our half-bred Akita, chased her tail in an agony of excitement. Even Odie the cat stopped her methodical tail washing and stared at us, her gold eyes wide.

“My dear, whatever is the matter?”

“Taxes!” Madeline smacked the letter flat on the table. “It's this year's bill for taxes!”

I settled back in my chair. Lincoln looked at me, yawned, and curled himself at my feet. Odie abruptly resumed the ministrations to her tail. Only the people in the room remained attentive. “I had heard we were due to be reassessed,” I said. “I take it the news is not hopeful?”

“You know what's not going to be hopeful? That tax assessor's future ability to bear children, that's what's not going to be hopeful.” Madeline's eyes are a deep sapphire; when she is irked, they turn navy blue. On these very rare occasions, it's wise to give the woman room to breathe.

Joe and Allegra exchanged glances. “Well,” Allegra said brightly, “I'm off duty today, so I think I'll go out and school Tracker for a bit.”

“And since we've got a barn call to make, maybe we'd better get a move on, Doc.” Joe shoved himself to his feet and began to clear the table.

“Excellent idea, my boy,” I said. “Unless, my dear, you need me here to fight the good fight for you?”

“Oh, no, darlin',” Madeline said with an exceptionally sweet smile. “I'm takin' care of this myself!”

A
T
some time during the course of our first farm call that morning, a person or persons unknown coshed Melvin Staples, the milk inspector, over the head and dumped the body into the four-hundred-gallon bulk tank at the Tre Sorelle Dairy.

I was not to discover this fact until later.

And Cases Closed, Inc., was not to take on its third case of murder until later still.

But I am getting ahead of my story.

We left Lincoln at home, under the cool of the willow that hangs over the pond, and Joe and I were on the road at 9:45 precisely. The first of our two barn calls was a progress check on two cases of mastitis at the Crawford Dairy; the second a follow-up on a case of founder at the Swinford Vineyard. I confess to being quite at home in the environs of a professional operation like the Crawford Dairy. Abel Crawford milks more than five hundred cows and ships a little less than three thousand pounds of milk a day. The place is efficiently run, the animals well treated, and the veterinary bill promptly paid. Both human and bovine employees are happy. Madeline says that such farms are my natural milieu.

She is far less sanguine about my attitude toward the ill-equipped hobby farmer. My wife knows me well. In the face of such clients as Jonathan and Penelope Swinford, I tend to lose my aplomb.

I apprised Joe of this as we pulled into the drive leading up to the Swinford barns. “You will discover, my boy, that the amateur farmer can create holy havoc with his animals, with the best of intentions.”

Joe looked around and whistled in appreciation. “Some amateur,” he said. The winery was one of many such that have sprung up in the Finger Lakes area within the past fifteen years. As the reputation of our grapes spreads worldwide, growers are buying up local farms and transforming them into showplaces like this one. The winery itself sits at the top of a high hill to the right of the house and barn. It resembles an elegant ship, with the prow hanging over the lip of hill. Visitors to the tasting room have an unparalleled view of the rich valley of grapes below.

On this Saturday morning, the August heat lay like a comforter over the vines, concentrating the sweetness in the fruit. It was a lush and welcome view.

The house was an expensive reproduction of a nineteenth-century Carpenter Gothic. The barn was straight out of the glossier ads in
Equus
: a copper cupola topped the cedar shake roof; the four stalls each debouched to neatly fenced paddocks; flowerbeds alive with marigolds, geraniums, and lavender surrounded the whole.

It was all very pretty.

A brand-new four-horse specialty trailer was parked at the far end of the outdoor arena.

It was all very expensive.

“Oh, the vineyard itself does very well. Swinford knows his grapes. He makes a tolerable red zinfandel and an extremely fine Chardonnay. If his wife and daughter had as much knowledge of horse care as the family does of oenology, we wouldn't be here at all.”

Joe flipped through the file. “You and Ally saw the mare Sunny on Monday. Diagnosis was laminitis secondary to overfeeding.”

“Correct.” I set the emergency brake, got out of the vehicle, and retrieved my case from the trunk. I headed toward the barn. Joe followed me, still absorbed in the case file.

“You treated the animal with anti-inflammatories. Hey, this is the third visit in six days.” He looked up, a slight frown creasing his brow. Joe is tall and skinny. His skinniness is deceptive, as he is quite muscular. “What's going on? It should have resolved itself by now if it was just because the mare got into the feed bin.”

“Correct,” I said again. We walked to the barn, and I pulled the main door open. A blast of cold air met us. Joe's jaw dropped. “It's air-conditioned?”

I made no response to the obvious. Instead, I called out, “Halloo!” and Penelope Swinford came out of the tack room.

Penelope would benefit from a month or two of Madeline's cooking. She is skinny, and she was dressed in immaculate breeches, paddock boots, and a white sleeveless shirt that smelled faintly of bleach. Her hair was white blonde and roached as short as any filly's for the summer. “Dr. McKenzie!” she said. “I am so glad to see you! Ally's not with you today? She gets on so well with Sunny! But of course, you do, too!” She smiled at Joe. “I take it this is your other assistant?”

Joe reached out and shook her hand firmly. “Joe Turnblad, Mrs. Swinford.”

“Delighted to meet you, Joe.” Penelope turned to me. “Ashley's just up at the house. They sent her home from work today, of course. I mean, you heard about the trouble at Tre Sorelle.”

I was not interested in any trouble at the dairy. Wherever Doucetta Capretti wielded that goat-headed cane, there was bound to be trouble. “I'd like to see the horse,” I said.

“Oh! Sure! Of course! Sunny's not doing too well, I'm afraid. I suppose it's just as well that Ashley's home today so she can talk to you directly. I'll give her a call and get her down here. Come into the tack room for a moment.” We followed her into the lavishly appointed room, which I, of course, had seen, and Joe had not. There was a small but well-equipped kitchen. A sectional couch sat in front of wall-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the outdoor arena. The wall opposite the windows was hung with two Steuben saddles, sleek leather bridles, and turnout blankets embroidered with the initials APS.

Penelope buzzed the intercom, chirped brightly into it, then turned to us. “She'll be right down, Dr. McKenzie.” She gestured toward the kitchenette. “Can I get you some iced tea? Or coffee?”

All this opulence made me testy. “And the mare?”

“Oh! Of course. Please come this way.”

The Swinfords had four horses, an Arab, a Throughbred-Quarterhorse cross with superb hunter conformation, and two Hackney ponies. All were expensive. All were immaculately groomed. All were unexercised, overfed, and had the temperaments of spoiled children.

Sunny was one of the two Hackney ponies. She stood cautiously in the middle of a pile of pristine cedar shavings. I had ordered a strict reduction in feed. Founder is a real danger to a fat horse, and Sunny was still as fat as a Duroc sow. As I approached, she pinned her ears flat against her head, and swung around her hind end. It is the supreme irony of a veterinarian's life that—just like people and dentists—your patients sometimes loathe the sight of you. Sunny was eager to kick me from here to kingdom come.

“Sunny!” Penelope said, as one would to an overindulged baby. “How's my girl today?” She put her hand in her pocket and withdrew a granola bar. “Here's a treat for my girl.”

“Stop!” I roared.

Penelope, Joe, and the horse all jerked to attention. I took the granola bar, broke it into pieces, and threw it into a nearby garbage tote. In a considerable state of irritation, I said to Joe, “The twitch, if you please.”

Joe removed the twitch from the carryall and followed me into the stall. The twitch is one of the most basic and useful tools available to the veterinarian. Mine is constructed of a length of soft leather—actually, any soft, pliable rope will do—and one pinches it around the animal's upper lip. It operates quite well to get a badly behaved animal's attention. Joe applied the twitch to Sunny's muzzle. He is deft, and he is fast. Sunny didn't have to time to do more than sneeze and give me an evil grin.

I bent to examine the mare's hooves. “Laminitis is an extremely painful condition of the horse hoof, Mrs. Swinford,” I said. “The blood pools in the hoof, and there is nowhere for it to go. Imagine, if you will, that you have whacked your thumbnail with a hammer. And then you have to walk on it.”

“Oh.” Penelope shuddered.

Sunny rolled a cranky eye at me.

“I do see that you have been giving her the bute,” I said. “She isn't in pain, although with these feet, she should be. That's good.” I dropped Sunny's left fore and picked up the right. Then I pinched a roll of fat on the mare's barrel. “You have been feeding her grain and hay, have you not? This mare hasn't dropped an ounce since I saw her last.” I pulled at my mustache in frustration. “That's very bad. As a matter of fact, it is close to criminal.”

Penelope peered at me over the stall door. “But she's starving. Surely just a quart or two of grain can't hurt.”

“Absolutely not!” I roared. “You will load this horse up and deliver her to my clinic. Instantly!”

“Yes, Dr. McKenzie.”

“And you will not give her one ounce of feed of any kind!”

“Yes, Dr. McKenzie.”

I stepped back from the mare and nodded at Joe. He released the twitch. Sunny sneered at me, then nudged at my pockets, presumably looking for sugar. I stepped into the aisle. “You can pick her up in three weeks or so. And I warn you, there is going to be a considerable farrier bill. It's a certain bet that the sole on the left fore has rotated, and the hoof will have to be trimmed and shod with speciality shoes.”

“Yes, Dr. McKenzie. Of course, the cost is not a problem. We love Sunny. She was Ashley's first pony.”

“You are loving her to death, madam. If you need help loading the pony up, Joe will give you a hand.”

“You mean right now, Dr. McKenzie?”

“If not sooner.”

“Hey, Doc. Hey, Ma. What's going on?”

Ashley trotted into the barn like an Afghan hound on parade at Crufts: long, lean, and blonde. She flipped her hair and batted her eyelashes at Joe. “How's Sunny doing?”

“Dr. McKenzie's taking her to the hospital, honey,” Penelope said. “The treatment he's been giving her here just doesn't seem to be helping.”

I bit my mustache. “It is the treatment you are giving her, madam, that—”

“I don't think I've seen you around before,” Joe interrupted. “Ashley, is it?”

“There is a great deal too much of her to see at the moment,” I pointed out. The child was dressed—half dressed—in a top that ended far short of her belly button and a pair of shorts not up to the job of covering her buttocks.

Joe put his hand on my shoulder. “Joe Turnblad, Ashley,” he said, extending his hand. He shoved me gently aside. It is not at all like the boy to be rude. Perhaps I was being a bit testier than necessary. Madeline occasionally reminds me that human beings deserve the same sort of consideration one gives one's animal patients.

“Hey, Joe,” Ashley said. “I
know
I haven't seen you around before.” She wriggled in front of her mother. The two of us withdrew to the side, while Joe and Ashley circled around one another. It reminded me of the ritual mating dance of the bowerbird.

“Is Sunny going to be okay, Dr. McKenzie?” Penelope asked anxiously. “I'd just die if anything happens to her.”

I frowned. The woman loved the horse, that was clear. But she had to understand that the animals are not children in horse suits. “Madam,” I said. “How would you fare if your routine was to walk twenty miles a day, eating plain, low-protein grass at twenty-minute intervals, drinking five gallons of water a day from untreated streams, sleeping standing up?”

“Me?” She blinked rapidly. “I guess I'd starve to death.”

“I guess you would. But that, Penelope, is an ideal life for a horse. Movement. Grass. Fresh air. Water from the stream. You are killing your animals with kindness. Get rid of the air-conditioning! If you must keep the animals in a stall, at least keep a rational amount of manure in the shavings. Not a lot—but a small sufficiency. Keeping the stalls this clean dries out the hoof. Better yet…” I threw my arm in a wide circle. “Put the animals outside where they belong! Otherwise your horses will be…”

“Deader than a doornail,” Ashley said in a thrilling voice. “Honest to God. Right there in the bulk tank.”

The mention of a corpse got my attention.

“What did you say, my dear?”

“You haven't heard?” Penelope said. “Oh, my goodness. That poor milk inspector, Melvin somebody…”

“Staples,” Ashley said. “And oh. My. God. What a hunk. It's a shame, that's what it is. I was, like, totally freaked out.”

“Ashley found him stark-staring dead. My poor baby!” Penelope shuddered and drew her daughter close. Ashley shrugged her mother's arm away with an absentminded pat of affection. Clearly, the discovery of Melvin Staples's body, hunk or no, hadn't discomposed her much.

I smoothed my mustache. “How unfortunate for you, my dear. Please tell me what happened.”

“It's my summer job. I do, like, data entry for Mrs. Capretti. Anyhow, so I'm sitting at the computer keying in all this crap about pounds of milk per goat and I hear a whack-bang!”

She paused. All eyes were on her.

“It came from the milk room. So I get up and I go over to the door and pull it open a little bit. It's a big, heavy door, you know, so I tug it open a little bit more and I see the door at the other end of the room closing, like.”

“Closing like what?” I asked.