I stepped out of the car and Jasper jumped out after me. I grabbed hold of his leash and knocked on the kitchen door, but there was no answer.
Jasper pulled hard, going crazy from the barnyard scents. He was straining to explore, wrenching at my shoulder, so I let him have his head, zigzagging across the farmyard, which still hadn’t dried out from the torrential rain the day before. I grimaced as his oversized paws made deep prints in the mud. I tried to step on the drier patches, glad that I was wearing boots with my jeans, not sandals. Hopefully I still had an old blanket in the trunk.
I wanted to take another look inside the barn and was trying to steer him in that direction, but he seemed determined to head for the henhouse. The chickens protested, squawking at the sight of the enthusiastic golden puppy. I stopped him a couple of feet away so he could look and smell but not get pecked.
The chickens were immaculate and healthy looking. White leghorns with red coxcombs, black cochins with their gorgeous plumage, Rhode Island Reds and pretty grayspeckled Sussex chickens all milled around inside the wooden structure.
Reenie took better care of these guys than she did her own kids.
Suddenly Jasper starting digging furiously at the ground, mud flying up behind him in a high spray. I stepped to one side to avoid the gritty shower.
“Jasper, stop it!” In a few seconds of scrabbling, he’d turned up an impressive pile of dirt.
I was kicking it back into the hole he’d made and smoothing it down with the sole of my boot when a dot of yellow caught my eye. I bent over and picked up a slim, dirt-encrusted object.
With shaking fingers, I brushed the muck off as best as I could. Fresh in my memory from the visit with Fiona was her description of a Parker Duofold Lucky Curve mandarin yellow pen.
The killer must have dropped it in his haste, and it had been squished down unnoticed into the mud. Until now.
I grinned at my dog. “Good boy!”
Jasper wagged his tail so hard his whole gangly body swayed back and forth.
I stood there for a moment staring at this new development. A crack of thunder sounded in the distance. “Jeez. I guess we’d better get going.”
I wrapped the pen in my handkerchief and stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. I opened the trunk of the car and thankfully there was a blanket stuffed in between the reusable grocery bags, flashlight, and umbrellas. I laid it on the passenger seat and installed the panting puppy with his mud-caked paws carefully on top. This time he stayed put as I got in on the driver’s side.
As I was turning the car to head back down the driveway, Reenie raced up in the pickup truck, not slowing down, as if she hadn’t even seen me.
I swerved to avoid her and crashed into a recycle container at the end of the row of garbage cans outside the barn. It fell over, spilling its contents onto the ground. I jammed the car in park and got out to start picking up the empty milk jugs, beer bottles, empty peanut butter container, and soda cans.
“Oh my God! Look what you’ve done! Oh my God!” Reenie jumped out of the truck and ran her fingers through her baby fine hair, skewing it into short tufts.
“I’m sorry, Reenie, I’ll put everything back. It’s okay.”
Her distress seemed a bit out of proportion to the situation, seeing as it was only a few recyclables that spilled, but who could blame her? She’d had a lot to deal with lately.
“Why are you poking around here?”
I cringed inside at my arrogant interference. She was right. Why was I trespassing on someone’s private property? I’d definitely gone too far this time.
“I just thought that maybe I could find some kind of clue or—”
She flung her hands out in front of her. “Oh, Daisy, Jimmy’s dead. Nothing will bring him back. I’m trying to forget he was murdered and put it behind me, but you keep bringing it up again!”
The two kids were sitting in the front seat of the truck, their eyes wide. Neither was wearing a seat belt.
She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I know you’re trying to help us with the country fair and all and I appreciate it—I really do—but I can’t take much more. I want to move on with my life.”
“I’m sorry, too, Reenie. The last thing I want to do is upset you.”
She sniffed and stared past me for a moment at the barn. “You know, I didn’t say nothing to the police, and I didn’t want to tell you this before, seeing as you and Angus are good friends, but I did hear a car pulling up outside our house early that morning. I can’t be sure, but I think what happened is Angus slept off his drunk, found the pens missing, and then came back here and whacked Jimmy.”
“No, you see, I checked the odometer and—”