Little Black Book of Murder Page 8

  Emma laughed. “Those Rattigans have short fuses. Remember back when Tommy was in school? He broke all the windows in his kindergarten classroom. The ones he could reach, anyway.”

  “He’s turned into a bore now. He hopes to become a celebrity chef, I think, but he was giving very dull lectures about food at the party.”

  “Marybeth had all the personality in that family. Was she really going to shoot Zephyr?”

  “She was angry about something else when she arrived. But then Zephyr showed up, and instinct took over.”

  “Zephyr better watch her step.”

  “I bet she stays on the farm most of the time. She’s committed to growing healthy, organic food, and Swain talks passionately about raising animals in a humane and organic way.”

  “Organic, huh?”

  I heard derision in her tone and glanced at her. “You disapprove?”

  “Hey, I’m as humane as the next person. Just—­these new organic farmers crack me up. Organic fruits and vegetables have no more nutrients than any other kind.”

  “How would you know that? I’ve seen you pour beer on Corn Flakes.”

  “I can read a newspaper. Organic fanatics pretend everybody else uses poisons and toxins to grow their food.”

  “Big commercial farms do use pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers that get into groundwater and—”

  “So wash your food before you eat it. Besides, everybody around here has been organic for two hundred years. Need fertilizer? You plow some manure into the ground.”

  “I think the organic movement is admirable.”

  “I think the people are sanctimonious,” Emma shot back. “The way they act at the farmers’ market in town on Wednesdays? It’s like they’ve seen the Virgin Mary in a head of cabbage.”

  “You’re in a mood today. What’s up? I don’t think losing out to a grandmother put that frown on your face.”

  Emma kept her eyes on the road, but her jaw tightened. “My mood’s the same as always. Nothing new.”

  Emma had moved out of my house nearly two months ago. I knew she came to Blackbird Farm very early to feed her ponies. She arrived when Michael and I were still asleep, so I hardly ever saw her anymore. If she was galloping racehorses at five a.m., she wasn’t enjoying much nightlife. Something had her usual schedule scrambled.

  I said, “Giving up your baby can’t have been as easy as you’d like us to believe, Em.”

  She blew an irritated sigh. “Can’t I catch a break from you?”

  “I’m just saying, you can talk about it if you want. I’m not upset about the way things turned out.”

  She glanced at me, then back at the road again. “I wanted you to have the baby, y’know.”

  “I know,” I said, more steadily than I felt. “And we wanted to take him. But not if that meant losing you. Seeing your child with us would have been very painful for you. It would have driven you away from us, for sure. And I couldn’t stand that.”

  She reached for a squished pack of cigarettes in the clutter between us.

  I said, “But lately you’ve been staying away anyway.”

  Emma punched the lighter on the dashboard and waited for it to heat up. “Think I’m dodging you? Forget it. I’m just giving the two of you a honeymoon. You don’t need me hanging around.”

  “It’s a big house. Why don’t you come home? We like it when you stay with us.”

  “Does Mick say that?”

  “I know how he feels.”

  Emma didn’t respond to that.

  I changed the subject before she could get mad. “You’re not the only one with problems. I’ve been thinking I should get a second job.”

  Emma knew all about the tax problem our parents had stuck me with when they hightailed it to South America. I still owed the lion’s share of the two million they had skipped out on, and the problems of maintaining the farm had only escalated lately. There just wasn’t enough income to support the outgo. She lit her cigarette. “A job doing what?”

  “That’s the problem. I’m not really trained to do anything. I could work in a bookstore, maybe. Or wait tables.”

  Emma laughed. “I can’t see Mick letting you take orders down at the corner diner.”

  “It’s honest work. And,” I added, “he doesn’t have to know.”

  She blew smoke and shot me a derisive glance. “Mick’s got guys reporting to him all the way from Serbia. He’d learn about your waitress job before you poured your first cup of coffee.”

  “I have to do something. Are there any jobs in your world?”

  “Mucking out stalls and hauling feed. Swain Starr has hired half the neighborhood to do that kind of work at his place. From what I hear, he and his ex-­model wife aren’t getting their hands dirty. You’d have to leave your Givenchy collection at home, though.”

  I considered her suggestion. “I’m ready to try just about anything. But maybe that’s too far off the charts for me.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll keep my ears open. Here we are,” Emma said.

  The lovely green pasture and white fence had been rolling along on our right for the better part of a mile. Emma eased on the brake at the barred gate. Across the road from the gate stood an old ferry landing, which had been restored to its original Revolutionary War appearance—­a charmingly rustic landmark. A flock of Canada geese had taken up residence on the landing. They looked charming, too, but they were probably coating everything in goose poop.

  Emma pulled her truck and trailer to the gate, and she pressed the intercom button.

  We waited for a response.

  After thirty seconds, Emma pressed the button again.

  “They’re expecting you, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She planted her finger on the button and held it there.

  No answer.

  She laid her hand on the horn.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said. “For the party, I was given an access number, remember? Maybe it still works.”

  It took several tries before I remembered the combination of numbers correctly, but finally the automatic gate swung open. Emma drove through and headed down the lane. When we curved around a stand of hemlock trees, the picturesque barn came into view.

  The farmyard looked exactly as it had for the party, minus the guests. Even the white tent remained. The trash cans hadn’t been emptied. The bunting on the tables billowed in the breeze. It looked as if our hosts had walked away from the setting as soon as the guests departed. On the hillside overlooking the farm, the modern Shaker-­style house looked magnificent in the morning sun.

  The whole place was eerily quiet.

  At the paddock fence, the cows and the burro lined up to watch our arrival. Even the sow with the piglets stood at attention.

  Emma stopped in front of the barn, and we got out of the truck. Emma rolled down her window and told Toby to stay.

  “Hello?” she called. Her voice echoed back at us.

  The cows lowed, sounding plaintive. Emma walked over to the fence. She frowned. “These cows need to be milked.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Look. They’re full.” She pointed at the swollen udders. “They’re also miserable. And that sow looks as if she doesn’t have any water. Where the hell is the famously humane butthead who owns this place? How come he’s not taking care of his animals?”

  “The code on the gate must have kept out the workers. What can we do?”

  Emma’s annoyance gave way to purpose. She pointed. “See that hose? Fill up the water troughs. Then go pound on the door. Get Starr the hell out of bed. I’ll see if I can figure out where the milking parlor is.”

  We split up. The cows eagerly followed Emma ­toward the barn.

  I turned on the water. The pig began making agitated squeals and pushed against her fence, so I dragged the ho
se over to her pen and aimed the water at her trough. She drank thirstily.

  But I forgot about the pig.

  Inside her pen, half-­covered in muck, lay a person.

  The body was facedown and motionless in the mud, arms flung out. The mud was mixed with blood.

  I dropped the hose and seized the fence railing to keep from collapsing to my knees.

  “Swain?” I said.

  Because that was who it was. I recognized his jeans, his fancy red boots, his tailored chambray shirt.

  Overhead, the sun began spinning, the light blinding. The silence of the farm became so complete that I could hear my own blood rushing in my head.

  “Swain,” I said. My voice barely came out of my throat.

  With shaking hands, I hauled myself over the fence and landed in the wet earth on the other side, scattering the startled piglets. I staggered over to him and stood for a horrible second, frozen with indecision. Swaying over his body, I knew that he was gone. Blood had pooled around him, soaking into the ground. The next moment, though, I knelt beside him and rolled him over. Hoping he was breathing. Hoping he was alive.

  But his body was stiff, his face a muddy mask of death. His chest had been perforated—­over and over. I reeled back from the horror of the wounds.

  “Emma,” I called—­still too shaken to make myself heard. I gathered my wits and shouted, “Emma! Zephyr! Emma!”

  I clapped one hand over my mouth to hold back a sob. He’d been stabbed through the chest many times. Now on his back, his eyes half open and cloudy, he stared at nothing.

  Whoever had killed him—­was that person still around? A murky surge of darkness flooded up around me, and I felt my knees give out again. In the next moment, I was kneeling in the mud beside him, fighting to stay conscious. I touched his arm. Rigid. And cold.

  Which meant the killer had to be gone. Long gone.

  My brain steadied. A pitchfork lay in the mud near the fence, tines up. I knew instantly it was the murder weapon. I could see gore on the tines. Someone had used it to stab Swain through his chest and had thrown it down afterward. With intensified concentration, I found myself focusing on everything else about the muddy pen—­the better to block out the horror, maybe.

  Three yards away lay a half-­buried set of keys.

  My vision sharpened. I knew those keys. I recognized the high school logo on the ring—­it was the school my nephew Rawlins attended. And the second key on the ring was an old skeleton key.

  To the back door of Blackbird Farm.

  Rawlins had been here.

  Behind me, I heard Emma calling. She came up to the fence and skidded to a stop. When she saw what lay on the ground beside me, she cursed.

  “It’s Swain,” I said, still unable to get up. “He’s been killed.”

  Emma cursed again, prayerfully this time. “Get out of there. Come on. Let’s go. We could be in danger or—”

  “He’s been dead for hours.”

  Emma steadied herself on the fence, reassured that the killer wasn’t still hanging around. “Did you call 911?”

  “Not yet.” I turned to look up at my sister. “I’m afraid to look for Zephyr.”

  Emma met my gaze, and her jaw hardened. “You think she’s dead, too?”

  “I’m afraid to look,” I said again. “She must be in the house. She might be alive, though, and need help.”

  Emma yanked her phone from her pocket and tossed it to me. “I’ll go in the house.”

  “Wait for the police.”

  “If somebody comes after me, they’d better be prepared for a fight.”

  “Be careful,” I warned.

  Her face grim, Emma ran up the hillside ­toward the house. I heard her calling Zephyr’s name.

  My hands were trembling so hard, I could barely hit the numbers on Emma’s phone. I spoke to the dispatcher, answered her questions, but I must have hung up on her. I don’t remember how, exactly, but I must have communicated that we needed the police.

  One fact was very clear in my head.

  I put the phone in my pocket and crawled over to Rawlins’s keys.

  I picked them up and slid them into the pocket of my jeans.

  I’m not sure how long it took, but Emma came back. “Nobody’s up there. The house is empty.”

  “The police are on their way. They’ll need help getting through the gate.”

  “I’ll go. You okay?”

  I managed to nod.

  “Wait over here,” Emma suggested.

  But I couldn’t leave the body. It felt wrong to abandon him there. I knew Swain had been dead for some time, but it felt disrespectful to leave him alone. I remembered the night Todd was shot, the hours I spent at his side, knowing he could not survive, yet holding him, willing him to live. His last moments would forever be branded in my mind—­along with the dreadful notion that I had failed him. I stayed for hours after his last breath, unable to tear myself away—­perhaps arguing with myself until I reached a hazy conclusion about his life. It had not been wasted. His research had been important. His parents had loved him. His sister, too.

  So I sat with Swain out of respect for his life.

  But I could not stop myself from wondering about Rawlins. Had Rawlins come back after the party? Surely he had not been here at the moment Swain died.

  Surely not.

  Please, I said to a greater power. Please don’t let Rawlins be mixed up in this.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At Blackbird Farm, Michael was helping another one of his wiseguys into a car. The man was clutching his hand as if it pained him. Another household repair gone awry?

  Michael came over to the truck.

  “Where have you been?” he said, pulling me out of Emma’s pickup almost before she had it stopped. “There’s something going on up the road. Cops and an ambulance and everything. First I thought—­I was afraid there was another shooting.”

  “I tried phoning you. We went to Starr’s Landing. What happened here?”

  “The furnace is out again. We tried your kick-­start thing, but—­never mind.” By that time, Michael had seen the mud all over my jeans and recognized something in my face. His hands turned gentler on my shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

  “We’ve been with the police. Swain Starr has been murdered.” I began to tremble again, and I felt myself losing control. “Stabbed with a pitchfork. He’s dead, and I—­we couldn’t leave without answering a lot of questions. I phoned you from Emma’s cell, but you didn’t answer.”

  Emma leaned over from behind the wheel and spoke tersely out the open door. “It’s a long story, big guy. She needs a little TLC.”

  “Come inside, Em,” I said.

  Michael’s arm tightened protectively around me.

  Emma shook her head. “I’m going to help the neighbor who’s taking Starr’s animals to another farm. Go relax. Take it easy for the rest of the day.”

  Michael took me inside, sat me down on the library sofa, brought me a cup of tea and a piece of toast to settle my stomach. The house was stone cold again, so he threw another log on the fire and poked it until a warm flame jumped up. Then he sat on the coffee table in front of me while I nibbled the toast and told him the whole story.

  “What do the cops think?” he asked when I’d explained the grisly afternoon.

  “They didn’t share any theories with me. Swain must have been killed last night. He was—­his body was cold, and there was so much blood that I—­I—”

  Michael steadied me with hands on my knees. “You gonna be okay?”

  “Getting there,” I said with a smile that felt wan. “I just hope it wasn’t Marybeth who killed her ex.”

  Michael looked grim. “You think she went back and took care of unfinished business? With a pitchfork?”

  Although Marybeth had behave
d in a reckless way at the party, my instinct was that she’d been prepared to make a scene yesterday, but not really hurt anyone. I said, “I can’t imagine she’d do such a thing.”

  “But that’s what the cops will think, right? She was taking potshots a few hours earlier.”

  “Trying to frighten Swain, that’s all. That’s a long way from stabbing him over and over.” I had a sudden vision of Swain on his belly in the mud and realized he must have been crawling away, trying to escape, when he died. I shuddered again and tried to push the thought away. “The big question is where Zephyr has gotten to. What if she’s hurt? Or someone took her away?”

  “Or maybe she’s the one who killed her husband and ran off.”

  “Why would she do that? He changed his life for her!” I shook my head. “And she’s such a nice person—­kind to animals, so attentive to her husband. No, I have to hope the whole thing was a kind of random break-­in.”

  “In that case,” Michael said grimly, “we better get some serious security around here.” He took the empty plate from me and set it aside. “I don’t think anybody’d sneak onto a rich guy’s farm to steal an organic tomato and end up killing him by accident. On the same day his ex pulled a trigger? Coincidences like that don’t happen, Nora.”

  “I guess you’re right.” I risked taking a sip of tea and was glad not to choke on the few dribbles that made it down my throat. “And Swain—­whoever killed him left him in the pigpen—­maybe hoping the animals would destroy evidence.” My cup rattled dangerously in its saucer, and I set it down before the tea spilled. “I just can’t imagine—­I don’t understand how people can be so awful.”

  “I know.” Michael pulled a cashmere throw from the arm of a nearby chair. He wrapped it around me and kissed the top of my head. “It’s one of the best things about you.”

  He settled beside me, and I leaned against him. When I could speak again, I said, “There’s one more thing.”

  “Don’t think about it anymore.”

  But I reached into the pocket of my jeans and fumbled for the set of keys I’d taken from the mud. Instinctively, Michael put out his hand, and I dropped the dirty keys into his palm.