Murder Most Fowl by Donna Andrews

Author:Donna Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Chapter 19

We turned to find the chief had returned.

“You tell him,” Rose Noire implored me in an undertone. “He’ll listen to you.”

And she dashed away. Probably just as well. The chief was much too polite ever to show it, but I had the sneaking suspicion that Rose Noire baffled and irritated him sometimes. Her theory would sound a lot saner if either Vern or I explained it. And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that she was right—there could be something sinister about the sudden arrival of the geese.

Since I still had my phone out, I texted him the goose photos while Vern filled him in on the unexplained geese, the illicit campfire, and Rose Noire’s theory of how they might be connected to the murder. He made it sound not only sane but actually plausible.

“Crazier things have happened,” the chief said. “Horace, have you been listening to this?”

“Yes, chief,” Horace said. “And before you ask, I haven’t yet seen any sign of goose feathers, either here or near the body, but I’ll keep my eyes open.”

“Good.” The chief was studying my goose photos.

“And I’ll need to take feather samples from those geese,” Horace added. “I’ll be putting in for hazardous duty pay.”

“Get Rose Noire to help,” I said. “Give her a few hours with those geese and they’ll be following her around, just like the chickens.”

“Good idea.” Horace sat down on one of the chairs just outside the trailer door and mopped his face with his sleeve. “Sorry, boss, but I’m nowhere near finished yet.”

“No problem,” the chief said. “Anything interesting so far?”

“I’ll go make that call about the locks.” Vern stood up and ambled off. Forensics discussions were not his cup of tea.

“Actually,” Horace said, “the pattern of destruction is pretty interesting.”

“There’s a pattern?” I muttered, glancing involuntarily at the portion of the mess visible though the open door of the trailer.

“Oh, yes.” Horace’s normally placid face was animated—you never saw him with that keen a look of pleasure and excitement outside a crime scene, and I got the impression this was turning into a more interesting crime scene than most. “Look around—at first glance, it looks like the vandal attacked everything. Food, dishes, toiletries, clothes, books, papers, electronics—all of it swept onto the floor and stomped on.”

The chief and I both nodded.

“But if you start looking more closely … the books are fine, except for the ones that fell into the spilled food or the beer. No pages ripped out. There’s broken glass and china, but only a little, and only from things that would probably have shattered when they fell—no suggestion that the vandal stomped around to break more of them. Doritos and Cheerios are pretty easy to crush, but you could probably sweep up a couple of bowls full of unbroken ones in there if you wanted, although I wouldn’t recommend eating any of them because there could be broken glass mixed in. The vandal didn’t rip any clothes or towels or papers.

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