The Luck Runs Out (9 page)

The only reply was a moan. Shandy went for a glass.

“It’s Stott,” he told the women. “They’ve found the van.”

“Was Belinda in it?” asked Helen.

“No. Just a ham salad sandwich.”

Iduna wiped her hands on her apron. “Where’s the brandy, Helen?”

“Right here. Ask him if he wants a doughnut.”

“Hot soup, quick.”

Snatching the bottle and a tumbler, Iduna made for the front hall. Helen began to open a can of chicken noodle soup. Her husband shook his head.

“Helen, can you tell me how that woman has managed to escape matrimony all these years?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

His wife dumped the soup into a saucepan, set it over the fire, and gave him a rather slippery hug. “Peter, do you think that sow is alive?”

He rubbed her back. “I’m inclined to say yes. Surely the pignappers must realize Belinda’s worth a great deal more as a breeder than as a barbecue. I expect a ransom note will be along as soon as they run out of nasty jokes.”

“But why do they keep going through this obscene rigmarole with pigs’ feet and ham sandwiches? They can hardly pretend it’s all a jolly prank now that Miss Flackley’s body has been found.”

“Unless whoever’s tending the pig doesn’t know about the murder,” Shandy mused. “God knows how many people were involved. It’s possible the last one out killed her without telling the others and they’ve gone ahead with their plans out of sheer ignorance.”

“Like Tom the Piper’s son,” said Helen. “I’ve always suspected it was Tom’s father who ate that pig, then whipped Tom for stealing it. I’ll bet whoever killed Miss Flackley will turn all mealymouth righteous and try to dump the blame on everyone else.”

“Very likely,” said Shandy. “Why should there be honor among pignappers? How’s the soup coming?”

“Ready, I think. Bowl or mug?”

“Mug, by all means. I don’t think he’s up to lifting a spoon. That man’s in rough shape, Helen. Do you think it’s reasonable for him to be taking this thing so almighty hard?”

“You know him better than I do, Peter. The most likely explanation for his behavior is one I’m sure you don’t want to hear.”

“If you mean that Stott killed Miss Flackley, then rigged this scene with Belinda to cover up, I certainly don’t,” said her husband crossly. “Give me that soup.”

A
FTER HE’D GOT SOME
brandy and hot soup into him, Stott brightened a little.

“Thank you. You are friends indeed. I must go back.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Shandy. “I’d like to see that van for myself. Are you sure your sow had been in it?”

“There was evidence,” Stott replied with delicacy. “Belinda must have been under intolerable stress. She is fastidious in her habits, as a rule.”

“Helen says she’s a lovely pig,” said Iduna. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

“Miss Bjorklund, you give me heart.”

Stott wrung the dimpled hand she held out to him after having given it a careful extra wipe on her apron, for Iduna, too, was fastidious in her habits. Then the two men went out to the Buick, which had been the Stott family conveyance ever since Shandy could remember.

They wound through the back roads into the foothills of Old Bareface. The mountain road was a lonely one, not much traveled except during autumn foliage time, when the leaf-lookers lined up bumper to bumper to view their Creator’s handiwork and anathematize their fellow drivers. There were still patches of ice in the shadier places, yet Stott drove with reckless abandon, often exceeding the thirty-mile-an-hour speed limit and frequently failing to obey posted admonishments about falling rocks and deer crossings. Shandy sat trying not to grind his teeth, wondering why anybody would bring a pregnant sow up here.

For ditching a no longer wanted van, of course, the site was ideal. For concealing and maintaining a valuable animal the size of Belinda, it made no sense whatever. There were no cutoffs for miles either way. From now until the case was closed, the police would blockade both ends, interrogating every driver who came along and checking by radio to make sure he came out the opposite side within a reasonable length of time. Anybody who brought the creature to this Godforsaken place would have to be either remarkably stupid or totally indifferent to her survival. But what would be the point of bringing her up here to die?

What was the point of stewing about what the point might be until he’d learned something that bore at least a fleeting resemblance to a clue? Shandy had had approximately four hours’ sleep after a day the like of which he’d hoped never to put in again, and now here he was in the midst of another mess. He leaned his head against the musty plush of the seat back and tried to doze.

The car stopped with a jolt. Shandy jerked upright. “Where are we?”

“This used to be a dirt logging road,” Stott told him. “Some of the students had the perspicacity to search here. I believe the spot is not unknown to them.”

“I believe I can guess why,” grunted Shandy. “Where’s the van?”

“Just beyond that clump of fallen timber.” Stott clambered from behind the wheel and led the way.

The van was there, all right, surrounded by a bevy of police experts and a few members of the press who were being kept at bay by Fred Ottermole and his deputy. Ottermole greeted Shandy with the ease of old comradeship.

“Oh, Jesus, Professor, you here again? I might o’ known. What the hell did you serve at that supper o’ yours?”

“Remind me to invite you sometime, Ottermole,” Shandy replied. “What have they found in the van?”

“Nothin’ you folks couldn’t use down at the gas plant. Been feedin’ her some o’ them turnips of yours?”

Ottermole was referring to the methane gas plant that provided power for Balaclava College and many of the surrounding houses, and was run solely on by-products from the digestive processes of Odin, Thor, Loki, Freya, Balder, Tyr, Heimdallr, Hoenir, and the multitude of other livestock that comprised the college herds. The turnip he mentioned so lightly was of course not
Brassica rapa
but
Brassica napobrassica balaclaviensis,
commonly known as the Balaclava Buster, that rutabaga whose superior size, flavor and texture were relished alike by man and beast and contributed in no small measure to the generation of the gas that drove the turbines that lighted the homes and heated the water and ran the electric toothbrushes, hair curlers, shaving cream warmers, yogurt manufacturers, weenie broilers, and other necessities of modern civilization for the folk of Balaclava.

Because of its eagerness to flourish in cold climates, the Buster played a not unimportant part in the economies of Canada, Britain, the Baltic states, Sweden, Norway, and even parts of Outer Mongolia, bringing sizable revenues to Shandy and Ames, its developers, and Balaclava College, its sponsor. It is said that prophets and rutabaga breeders are not without honor save in their own bailiwicks. The name of Shandy was revered in Riga and honored in Oslo; on campus, the students called him Root.

Only behind his back, though. Professor Shandy, although neither dashingly young nor venerably old, neither devastatingly handsome nor intriguingly ugly, neither faster than a speeding freight train nor able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, was nevertheless a man on the tail of whose coat none but the most foolhardy cared to tread. Nobody quite knew why. It was simply an accepted fact that Shandy was one faculty member you didn’t try to mess around with. Ottermole might venture a joke, but when Shandy approached the van, the chief didn’t try to head him off.

“No clues, eh?” he remarked to one of the police investigators who were going over the vehicle.

“No, just a few seeds. I suppose they were brought along to feed the pig.”

“May I see them?”

The man held out a folded paper.

“But these are sunflower seeds,” Shandy objected.

“So?”

“You wouldn’t feed sunflower seeds to a pig. They’re expensive, for one thing. Besides, they have hulls that must be cracked before the meat can be got at, like pistachio nuts.”

“Couldn’t the pig chew up the seeds and spit out the hulls?”

“No doubt she could,” said Shandy testily, “but why should she? There are lots of cheaper and more suitable things you can feed a pig. Where did you find these sunflower seeds?”

“I told you, in the van.”

“But what part of the van? Front or back?”

“Front,” said the man rather sulkily. “Some on the driver’s seat, some on the floor in the general vicinity of the gearshift.”

“And how many are there?”

“How the hell do I know?”

Shandy was already counting. “Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six. Are these all you found?”

“Yes.”

“You’re positive? None in the back?”

“No, there were none there.”

“Any on the ground?”

“Gosh, I never thought to look.”

“Then I suggest you do so now.”

Stott, who had been waylaid by the reporter from the
Balaclava County Weekly Fane and Pennon,
now managed to get free and join Shandy.

Showing the folded paper, Shandy asked him, “Can you think of any earthly reason why anybody would feed Belinda sunflower, seeds?”

The hog expert cogitated, then shook his massive head from side to side. “No reason. I do not believe Belinda would relish sunflower seeds. I am inclined to think Belinda would summarily reject sunflower seeds.”

“Then how would you account for the presence of sunflower seeds in the van?”

“I should assume Miss Flackley was in the habit of feeding wild birds. Seeds of the
helianthus
are much esteemed, notably by the
paridae
and the
fringillidae.”

“I’m a titmouse man, myself,” said the officer wickedly. “So that’s your answer, eh?”

“No, sir,” said Stott, “that is merely my personal hypothesis. Many alternative explanations are equally possible. As an example, Miss Flackley may have been starting sunflower plants in a cold frame or greenhouse for later transplanting. Professor Shandy could speak with greater authority than I on that supposition.”

Professor Shandy could, but he didn’t want to. The notion of Miss Flackley’s strewing birdseed around the cab of her van for any reason whatever might as well be rejected out of hand. Tim Ames would strew birdseed. He himself might happen to have a pocketful of seeds, as he often did, and possibly drop one or two while his mind was occupied by weightier matters. But Miss Flackley wouldn’t. If she had for any reason been carrying sunflower seed around, she’d have had it stored in a spillproof sunflower seed container. If she happened to drop a single seed, she’d have picked it up. Ergo, as Stott would no doubt get around to saying sooner or later, those twenty-six sunflower seeds had not been spilled by Miss Flackley.

Nor would they have been left in the van by Frank Flackley, assuming a former rodeo worker was accustomed to carrying such things about on his person, because if he had been flinging them about with reckless abandon while she was driving him back to the house, she’d surely have taken time to sweep them out after he’d been left at home with his TV and six-pack. The almost inescapable inference was that they’d been spilled by the pignappers, and since it was extremely doubtful that anybody engaged in so fell a deed would be concerned with titmice, cardinals and goldfinches, it looked as if the driver himself had been nibbling on them en route to Old Bareface.

Himself or herself. Therein lay the rub. Among the student body there was in fact a small group apt to be carrying sunflower seeds and spitting the husks about the campus as a propaganda measure. These were the Vigilant Vegetarians.

Balaclava Agricultural College had always been a bastion of that gravely endangered species, the Independent Farmer. On the subject of cruelty to farm animals, it had taken a particularly militant stand, from the time when its founder, Balaclava Buggins, first inveighed against the overloading of draft animals down to present outcries from faculty and students alike against over-crowding and other gross malpractices of certain modern growers.

No alumnus of the Class of ’73 would ever forget that electric moment when Thorkjeld Svenson in his Commencement remarks clove a solid oak podium neatly in twain from top to base as he slammed down his fist to emphasize those deathless words, “Agri isn’t a business, it’s a culture!”

As a farmer’s highest calling was to serve the earth, but to be merry withal in his labor, so was a hog entitled to its wallow in good, soft mud and a cow to its cud of sweet, fresh grass beneath a shady tree before each fulfilled its ultimate destiny. No fowl went from incubator to coop to stewpot without ever once getting its claws in real dirt to scratch up its own worms.

No student could fault the care given the livestock, but some jibed at what happened when the care was ended.

There, were several reasons why a student might become a vegetarian at Balaclava. For one thing, vegetarianism happened to be something of a national fad at the moment. For another, fresh milk, cheese, and eggs were available in any desired quantity; fresh vegetables abundant, varied, and extremely good. For a third, many young people don’t much like meat anyway, and once they’d become personally acquainted with the college’s cows, sheep, and swine, they particularly disliked the idea of meeting them at last in the form of roasts or chops. For a few, vegetarianism was a holy cause, and one of these was Birgit Svenson.

President Svenson and his wife, Sieglinde, had seven daughters, each, as a visiting professor from Dublin had once remarked, more beautiful than all the rest. The eldest four had been in their turns model students at Balaclava. One was a graduate, student at Cornell now, three were married (the first to the visiting professor from Dublin), the two youngest were still in high school. All six of these had inherited their mother’s serenity along with her loveliness. Birgit, the only one at present on the college rolls, had her mother’s looks but her father’s disposition.

Birgit’s espousal of vegetarianism had been a stormy marriage from the outset. Her successful campaign to have soybean cutlets put on the menu in the student dining room had been only a warm-up skirmish for her battle to get roast beef and similar viands taken off. She and her cohorts armed themselves with statistics abut how many tons of grain it took to produce one ton of meat, and staged demonstrations at cattle shows where other Balaclava students were showing their prize Holsteins and Guernseys.