“They’ll be fine,” Michael said, noticing the direction of my gaze. “As soon as Norris hears they’re in trouble, he’ll show up and face the music.”
I smiled, and nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. Norris had been letting Caroline and Clarence clean up after him for years. I wouldn’t want to bet that he’d stop now.
Our caravan stopped in front of Dunsany Hall, where Michael’s office was, and paused while we dragged our luggage into the lobby. Then I climbed back in the truck.
“You’re all right driving in this?” Michael asked, looking around rather dubiously.
“I’ll see she gets safe to the college barns,” Randall called back.
“And I’ll walk back over once I get the llama settled,” I said.
The truck peeled off at the courthouse, where I could see a lot of idling cars—presumably the Boy Scouts’ parents, come to collect them. I kept following the tractor. The going got rougher as we neared the Ag Sciences barn on the edge of the campus. I slipped and slid into what I hoped was a parking space and not a part of the surrounding organic farmland—it was hard to be sure with all the flat bits uniformly coated in snow. I waved good-bye to Randall and went to lead Ernest inside the barn.
I worried briefly about taking him out in the biting cold and driving snow, but I reminded myself that with his unsheared coat, Ernest was more warmly dressed than I was. After all, llamas routinely braved the cold of the Andes. He could handle a Virginia snowstorm. He stepped out of the horse trailer, sniffed the frigid air appreciatively, and looked around with interest as I led him to the barn.
Of course, the barn was still occupied by the animals that had been in the parade. Everyone had probably spent the brief interval between storms shoveling out their own houses, and even if anyone had had time to consider taking the animals home, it wouldn’t have been safe to try.
So Ernest might not get a stall by himself. I hoped he wouldn’t mind.
If Clarence and Caroline were still busy down at the police station and Dr. Blake presumably snowbound somewhere, I should check on the animals.
To my relief, the barn was heated, and I stopped just inside the door to shed my wraps.
The friendly beasts around me stood—Cousin, the donkey, was stretching his neck over the top of a stall, as if begging for rescue. I gave him a wide berth, in case he was feeling crankier than usual. Several sheep were inside the next stall, and the ox and cow beyond them. The various fowl cooed, clucked, or fluttered in a series of coops nearby. The coops all had full food and water compartments, and I could hear the sound of crunching hay from somewhere in the barn, so I relaxed a little. Someone had been looking after the animals.
I led Ernest into the stall with the sheep—since they were Seth Early’s sheep, they had probably spent as much time in our yard with Ernest as they had in their own pasture. Ernest seemed happy to see the sheep, and they didn’t seem to mind him, so I shut the stall door and breathed a sigh of relief.
I leaned on the door and watched Ernest and the sheep for a few moments. I found it strangely soothing. Maybe a few more llamas wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But no more than we could fit in the horse trailer.
I saw a bin of fresh carrots just inside the barn, and I fed a few to Ernest. And then one to Cousin, being careful to pull my fingers back as soon as he reached out for it, since no one had quite convinced Cousin that donkeys were not carnivores.
I could see the camels, Larry, Curley, and Moe, a little farther down, just beyond the cows, and realized that I had never gotten around to asking Clarence what kind of treats camels liked. Well, no time like the present to satisfy my curiosity.
All three camels accepted carrots—Larry and Moe eagerly, and Curley with an ill-tempered grumble, as though he were only doing it to avoid hurting my feelings.
Strange, but like llamas, camels had a curious calming effect on me. I stood watching their slow, meditative chewing. Almost instinctively, I began doing the breathing exercises Rose Noire was always nagging me to try when I was feeling stressed.
Everything would be fine, I told myself. Sooner or later, the chief would figure out who’d killed Doleson, and if I had the chance, I’d do what I could to make it sooner. The audience might be smaller, but Michael’s show would go well; and if we couldn’t get home, we had a place to sleep.
Suddenly I spotted a flicker of movement at the other end of the stable, behind some hay bales.
“Who’s there?” I called, and reached into my pocket to finger my probably useless cell phone.
Chapter 26
“Don’t mind me,” a quavery tenor voice said.
A large, disheveled shape swaddled in a voluminous khaki overcoat appeared from behind the hay bales. After a moment, I realized I knew him.