“Rats,” I muttered, and killed the alarm. Mr. P jumped down from the bed and went to take care of his morning business. Winchester stirred, sighed, decided that there was nothing in the world that required a basset’s attention at this hour, and went back to sleep.
I fumbled into my clothes, splashed water on my face, combed my hair, and went downstairs to rustle up some breakfast. I had fed the cat and was finishing my breakfast burrito when Winchester made his way downstairs—backward, as is his habit, and slowly, one step at a time, feeling his way with his hind paws. Bassets live life close to the ground and stairs seem to make Winnie feel acrophobic. He was obviously hoping that somebody had already put something in his bowl, and when he saw that it was empty, he collapsed with a despairing sigh, belly and tail flat on the floor, front and rear legs splayed, head down, nose touching his empty bowl. You can be in a hurry, but no matter. When a basset goes flat, no force on earth can budge him until he decides he’s ready to get up.
A cup of strong coffee (yes, coffee is an herb, too) had already set the world more or less right for me. While Winchester’s world is never altogether right, he brightened considerably when I filled his bowl, and even more when I offered him the last bite of my burrito. But when I began to load my laptop and the carton of photographs and clippings into the car, he once again became despondent. He hates facing a long, boring day alone, with nothing to do but nap in McQuaid’s leather recliner and nobody to talk to except that stupid cat.
The sky was overcast as I drove into town, with that pearly half- light that blesses the landscape in the cool hour just after dawn. The summer sun wasn’t scorching everything yet, the air was still sweet and clean, and the morning traffic on Limekiln Road was fairly reasonable. As I drove, I thought about the photographs I had studied the night before and the story they seemed to tell—a tale of two families, although I still wasn’t sure I had sorted them correctly. I wondered what Lori would tell me about the christening dress in the photo I had texted her. And I wondered, half-apprehensively, what the ghost had left on my bulletin board this morning—and then rolled my eyes at my apprehension.
Assumes facts not in evidence, Your Honor.
Sustained. There had to be a rational explanation for the inexplicable goings-on. I just hadn’t found it yet. I needed to dig a little deeper. Now, in the clear light of day, I was doubly glad I hadn’t mentioned any of this ghost nonsense to McQuaid. He would never let me live it down.
I was so deep in thought that I missed the road to the fairgrounds and had to make a U-turn and go back. It was still early enough that the day’s activities hadn’t gotten under way and the parking lot was almost empty. I was able to park right behind the poultry tent, next to Tom Banner’s burly Dodge RAM pickup. The truck is Aggie maroon (because Tom is a Texas A&M grad and maroon is the Aggies’ team color), with a gun rack and shotgun in the rear window. At first I was surprised to see the truck, but then I wasn’t: as security coordinator for the fair, Tom was probably clocking plenty of overtime.
The check-in booth outside the poultry tent was unmanned, except by a team of hungry crows cleaning up a spill of popcorn, and the carnival’s hurdy-gurdy music hadn’t started up yet, although somewhere, somebody was hammering something, loudly. Somebody else was frying breakfast bacon, and the mouthwatering scent of it was sharp on the morning air. The flaps on the canvas poultry tent were closed, and I raised one to duck inside. It would have been totally dark in the tent, but a thin string of overhead bulbs cast puddles of pallid light across the cages. Sensing that a new day was dawning, the birds were beginning to wake up, and the air was filled with the subdued dissonance of poultry voices—chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, with a couple of peacocks adding an occasional screech.
Caitie’s birds were at the far end of Section One, past a long row of chickens that were stretching their wings and wondering where they were and what they were doing there. But when I finally reached Caitie’s two cages, I was stopped, almost in mid-stride.
Dixie Chick was settled in her cage, preening her yellow-gold feathers and clucking contentedly to herself.
The door of Extra Crispy’s cage was open. The cage was empty. Caitie’s rooster was gone. Just . . . gone.
The black rooster—Blackheart—was gone, too.
My heart did a flip-flop. Incredulously, I stared at the two empty cages, then turned and looked wildly around, searching. But that was ridiculous. Chickens don’t unlock their cages and take off for a night on the town.
No. Somebody had wanted those birds—or more likely, that rare rooster. Somebody had stolen Blackheart, and in the process, noticed Caitie’s Cubalaya (he’s an unusually classy-looking bird) and thought he might be worth money, too. I swung around, looking for other empty cages, and saw none. It appeared that the chicken thief had made off with just two birds—the best two. Caitie would be devastated, and it was a sure bet that Blackheart’s owner would be pretty upset, too. After all, that rooster had the potential to produce tens of thousands of dollars a year, doing what he liked to do best.
I stood there for a moment, trying to think. Then I remembered Tom Banner’s truck. I took out my cell phone, pulled up the recent calls, and clicked on Tom’s number, praying for him to pick up fast. He did.
“Yo, China. What’s
