While we were occupied with the Two L’s, a swarm of patrol cars arrived at the Barnyard Inn. Two murders in two days had to be bad for Amish Country tourism.
According to the food concessionaire, the first officers on the scene had ordered a lockdown of the exhibit hall only to discover that a third of the show’s participants had already scattered. Detectives and forensics team members were doing the best they could to analyze a “compromised” crime scene.
“At least Afghan hounds are quiet,” the concessionaire remarked. “If this had happened last week, during the Bassett hound specialty, you wouldn’t be able to hear yourself think.”
I nodded. Except we all knew this would never happen around Basset hounds.
Over cola and nachos for Chester, Jeb, and MacArthur-and ginger ale for me-MacArthur laid out his strategy. He and Jeb would track down every breeder or handler “of interest” and ask where he or she had been, and whom he or she had seen, around the time of all three shootings: Mitchell’s, Ramona’s, and Matt’s.
I pointed out the flaw in that plan: “Some breeders or handlers-like, oh, say, Kori, for instance-are already gone.”
MacArthur said, “Nobody saw Kori go. I’m sending Jeb to her room.”
At least he was willing to solicit a second opinion instead of asking us to rely solely on his. Let’s say Kori was still there. Even if she was a superb kisser, I knew Jeb wouldn’t fall under her spell. He liked his women slender and feminine. Like Susan.
Which reminded me.… “Who’s going to interview the Breeder Education Committee? And it can’t be Jeb.”
As I glared at my ex, both MacArthur and Chester volunteered for the job.
“Back to the power issue,” MacArthur said. “The electrical outage, that is. Here’s how I plan to investigate.” He pointed to the female sheriff’s deputy I had met last night, now getting a complimentary cup of coffee from the concession stand. “Whiskey, go ask her what happened.”
So I did. And it was almost that simple although the cop seemed slightly wary. Maybe because of my questions, maybe because I’d been near two different men who were shot to death. After asking me a few dozen questions of her own, the deputy told me what she knew about the power outage.
“Somebody pulled the plug.”
I waited for the rest of the story, but that was essentially it.
“This place must have been wired by somebody’s nephew,” the deputy said. “It’s not even close to being up to code. Anybody who could follow a line could find their way to the circuit box and cut the power with a couple flicks of their wrist. I’m going to bust the building inspector.”
She was sufficiently P.O.’d at that township official to show me the inferior set-up. Even I, whose knowledge of electricity was limited to flipping a wall switch, could see that this didn’t look right. A mare’s nest of heavy black cables fed into stacks of industrial-sized power strips under an outdated circuit box.
“So the only thing someone had to know was the location of the power source,” I mused.
The deputy nodded. “And to do that, all he’d have to do is follow the black cables.”
She was right. I’d been so preoccupied with hounds and shootings that I hadn’t noticed the obvious electrical lines crisscrossing the arena floor. The only area free of floor cables was the show ring.
Back at the concession stand, there was no sign of either Jeb or MacArthur. Chester was still there, deep in conversation with the middle-aged female food vendor, who had joined him at our table. That is, Chester was talking to her when he wasn’t licking a perilously tall soft ice cream cone.
“Look, Whiskey. I got a quadruple dip. On the house!”
I thanked the vendor for her generosity and asked Chester to follow me. He withdrew a folded bill from his inside blazer pocket and pressed it into the vendor’s palm, a gesture better suited to the senior member of a men’s club than a third-grader. The vendor glanced at the bill, gasped, and tried to return it. But Chester waved her away.
“You can afford to pay for your cone,” I told him a little peevishly.
“I know.” He slurped melted ice cream from the back of his hand. “But I’d rather let people give me things when they want to and then over-tip them to the point where they practically faint.”
He looked very pleased with himself. And his ice cream.
“Just out of curiosity, Chester, how much did you tip that lady?”
“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it, Whiskey.”
We both knew I couldn’t afford it, so I let the topic drop. I wanted to know what had happened to the rest of our team. Chester explained that Jeb and MacArthur had drawn up a list of “persons of interest,” split it down the middle, and gone off to find those folks.
“MacArthur will interview Ramona and Susan,” Chester reassured me.
“Thank you.”
“And Jeb will interview Kori,” he added.
Chester should have been much too young to understand those issues, but life with Cassina was an education in domestic drama.
“What do you know about Kori?” I said.
“Only that you don’t like her, and you don’t like the way MacArthur likes her, but you don’t think Jeb will like her, so that’s okay.”
He’d pretty much summed it up. What I didn’t want him to know, however, was that even if Kori wasn’t a killer or a dognapper, she might be a homewrecker. And the home she might wreck was at the other end of The Castle from where Chester slept. Never mind that MacArthur had Avery’s ugly mug inked on his arm. Tattoos do not an enduring relationship guarantee. Just ask Peg Goh.
“What are we supposed to do now?” I said.
Wherever we went, Chester would need a shower first. His cone had melted all over his sleeve and was now dripping onto his Italian leather shoes.
He licked the ice cream off his Patek-Philippe watch and announced, “The chopper pilot is expecting us.”
“For what?”
“An aerial tour of Amish Country. Jeb and MacArthur think that’s the most efficient approach to finding Abra. So up, up, and away!”
During my previous helicopter experience, I’d accidentally stolen the pilot’s flotation device. Since we weren’t flying over water today, at least no water larger than a small inland lake, our pilot didn’t have flotation issues. His name was Brad, and his only concerns were that we buckled up so we wouldn’t fall out, and we wore headsets so we could hear each other en route.
MacArthur had instructed Brad to take us where we wanted to go. I explained that our goal was to find a blonde bimbo Afghan hound last seen in the company of an Amish teenager and his long-haired goats.
Brad paused his preparations for take-off.
“Was the Amish kid drunk?” he said.
“How did you guess?”
“When I flew in, I saw an eastbound wagon weaving all over Route 20. It was carrying livestock.”
Chester bounced in his seat. “Take us to the drunk Amish kid!”