Swan for the Money: A Meg Langslow Mystery

she said. “Turn her over.”
    “Dammit, I don’t know,” my grandfather was saying on his phone. “Looks like a dying nun to me. No, dying . D-Y-”
    I reached to turn Mrs. Winkleson on her back and realized there was a complication. A pool of blood was spreading out from under her, and she had something sticking out of her back. Caroline knelt down beside me and tugged at the object. It didn’t budge.
    “My secateurs,” I said aloud.
    “Hang on, Debbie Anne,” my grandfather said to the dispatcher. “Meg’s saying something. Who did you say it was, Meg?”
    “Pull those out and turn her over,” Caroline said. “I can do the chest compression, but I can’t budge those.”
    I gulped, then grabbed the secateurs and pulled, hard. The secateurs came out. I didn’t see a lot of blood come out with them. Was that a good sign or bad? I wondered, as I rolled Mrs. Winkleson over on her back. Not good, I decided, from the look on Caroline’s face. She started rhythmically pumping on Mrs. Winkleson’s chest. I stood up and stepped back to give her room.
    “Someone used my secateurs to stab Mrs. Winkleson in the back,” I said. I could hear my grandfather repeating my words into the phone.
    Mrs. Winkleson’s face was covered with blood and mud, and there was an enormous amount of blood on her clothes and the ground— Caroline’s hands were red, and the knees of my jeans were soaked. But I didn’t see a lot of new blood flowingfrom the wound. Even in the short time since I’d turned her over, the rain had begun to dilute and wash away the existing blood.
    She was facing toward the barns, I noticed.
    “They’re sending an ambulance,” Dr. Blake shouted. “I’m calling your father.”
    Suddenly I noticed Mrs. Winkleson’s hands. Her left hand had fallen back behind her head, as if she were waving to someone, but her right hand, which had flopped out to the side when I turned her, was clutching something white. White and red, actually. A bloodstained piece of paper.
    I reached down to secure the paper, but just as my hand touched it, an enormous hairy goat head swooped down and chomped on it with large, yellow teeth.
    “Hey! Stop that!” I said, smacking the goat on the nose. The goat turned to flee and keeled over after a few steps. Unfortunately, he continued chewing vigorously, and swallowed just as I reached him.
    “What’s wrong?” Mr. Darby said, racing over. “Did someone hurt Elton?”
    “You mean the goat— he’s fine,” I said. “But he just ate some evidence.”
    “What kind of evidence?”
    “She was clutching a piece of paper in her hand, and the goat ate it.”
    “Well, you can’t blame Elton for that,” Mr. Darby said. “As I told you before, paper’s like candy to them.”
    “Can’t you make him cough it up?” I asked. “He can’t have digested it yet.”
    “They’re fainting goats, not puking goats,” Mr. Darby said, sounding rather cross.
    I went back where Caroline was still briskly administering CPR to the victim. I checked Mrs. Winkleson’s hand and found she was still holding a corner of the paper. I gently teased it out.
    “What does it say?” my grandfather asked.
    “ ‘Or else,’ ” I read.
    “Or else what?”
    “Or else, period,” I said. “It’s just the lower right hand corner of the paper. That’s all that’s left.”
    “No signature?”
    “No.”
    “Do you recognize the handwriting?”
    “It’s typed.” I showed him the paper.
    “Well, that’s not much help,” he said. “You shouldn’t have let that goat eat the rest of it.”
    Luckily we were interrupted before I could answer.
    “Meg! What’s up!”
    I turned to see Dad climbing over the fence.
    “She’s been stabbed,” I shouted back. “Caroline’s doing CPR.”
    “Oh, dear!” Dad was over the fence now. He turned back to take his black medical bag from Chief Burke, then trotted toward us while the chief climbed over the fence more slowly, as if he already knew that Dad’s medical effort was doomed to failure and his own investigative work about to begin. Or maybe it only seemed that way to me because I’d seen how badly off Dad’s latest patient was.
    The chief turned to me.
    “You found the bo— the victim?”
    “Actually, Spike found her,” I said.
    “I can’t very well question him, can I? What happened?”
    “Mind if I sit down?” I suddenly realized that my knees were shaking.
    I walked over and sat down on one end of the goats’ trough. The