Swan for the Money: A Meg Langslow Mystery

you wearing whatever you want to the crime scene, because when you show up, you’re a hundred and twenty percent professional. You don’t waste my time with all this nonsense about vampire horses. And if I catch Smoot messing around with Mrs. Winkleson’s horses instead of doing his job, I just might lock him up in a small closet and misplace the key for a few hours. Now go on and tell me what you came to tell me.”
    “Actually, I was coming to see Meg,” Horace said. “Meg, do you think you could find Mr. Darby and get him to move the rest of those goats out of our crime scene?”
    “Are they disturbing evidence?” the chief asked, frowning.
    “Mainly they’re just disturbing us,” Horace said. “Most ofthem are okay, but there’s one who keeps coming up and trying to butt us whenever we bend over. That’s why I’m carrying this.”
    He indicated the pitchfork.
    “Go back and fend the blasted thing off, then,” the chief said. “Meg, I’d appreciate your help finding Mr. Darby.”
    I was already flipping the pages of my notebook.
    “I’ve got his phone number,” I said. “Cell phone, I think. It’s what I’m supposed to call if I need anything while we’re here for the show.”
    The chief pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number as I read it. I watched his face, which grew gradually more impatient. Apparently the phone was ringing on unanswered.
    “Mr. Darby,” he said finally. “This is Chief Burke. Please call me when you get a chance.”
    He hung up and looked at me.
    “Next suggestion?” he said.
    I pulled out my own cell phone and dialed the house.
    The butler answered.
    “Hello, Mr. . . . I’m sorry; what is your real name? I can’t very well keep calling you Marston now that I know it’s not really your name.”
    “Thank you,” he said. “I have become accustomed to using the name professionally. But I much appreciate your courtesy. How may I help you?”
    “We need to find Mr. Darby to help us move the goats,” I said. “And he’s not answering his cell phone.’
    “He’s probably in his cottage, madam,” Marston said. “It’s in the woods, between the goat pasture and the rose garden.”
    “Thanks,” I said, and hung up.
    “His name’s not really Marston?” the chief said.
    “Mrs. Winkleson named him that,” I said. “I think he’s Russian, so maybe she can’t pronounce his real name. He thinks Mr. Darby is in his cottage. Do you know where that is?”
    “No.” The chief glanced up from scribbling in his notebook. “Do you?”
    I hesitated for a few moments. When it comes to finding my way around, I am an urban creature. Set me down in any city in the world, and I could probably find anything I wanted in half an hour. Fifteen minutes if the natives spoke some variant of English. Give me directions like “in the woods, between the goat pasture and the rose garden” and normally I resign myself to staying lost. But after a day of blundering around Mrs. Winkle-son’s property, I was beginning to get a rough map of the place in my head.
    “I think I could find it if I try,” I said finally, hoping I was telling the truth.
    “Good,” the chief said. “Find him and send him over here. I have some questions for him as well.”
    I slogged through the muddy goat pasture. Horace and Sammy were over to one side. They’d marked off a large, roughly circular area with yellow crime scene tape and were defending it by waving pitchforks at the encroaching goats. One of the goats left the herd and headed my way. I hadn’t yet learned to tell one goat from another, so just in case this was the belligerent Algie, I made a run for the fence and leaped over just in time to miss getting butted.
    “Bad goat, Algie,” I said, shaking my finger at the goat beforeturning to look around. I strolled along the edge of the woods, heading away from the fence, and eventually spotted a corner of Mrs. Winkleson’s rose garden in the distance. Since I was looking for it, I spotted a path to my left, leading into the woods. If it wasn’t the same path Mr. Darby had taken when he left me at the rose garden earlier, it led in about the same direction. I followed it until I arrived at a tiny, dark cottage that appeared to be squatting in a small clearing like a malign toad.
    “How unfortunate,” I muttered. If you painted the cottage white, with maybe a nice soft accent color for the shutters, it would have looked like something out of a fairy tale and almost too