No Nest for the Wicket(51)

“Her,” Mr. Early said. “That’s a ewe.”

“You don’t usually get to see the shape of their bodies with all the wool,” Rose Noire said. “The wool’s beautiful, of course—but look at her! What a noble animal!”

The sheep in question raised her head just then and looked at us, as if acknowledging Rose Noire’s praise. To me, she looked distinctly odd and scrawny, but I could see Mr. Early’s face take on a gleam of pride.

“They’re Lincolns,” he said. “Largest breed in the world. Longest wool, too.”

“Magnificent!” Rose Noire said. She scrambled deftly back over the fence and drifted over to admire the sheep.

“About those fleeces,” Mr. Early said. He was looking at Rose Noire, not the piles of wool.

“Why don’t you let us clean up?” I said. “We’ll gather up the fleeces and drop them off at your place in the morning.”

Mr. Early nodded and stumbled off after Rose Noire.

Enter Mrs. Fenniman.

“What’s going on?”

“Help us gather up the fleeces,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“So you, too, will have an excuse for being covered with little tufts of wool,” I said. “Hurry, while Rose Noire is distracting Mr. Early.”

“Hmph,” she said. “Those sheep are filthy. Ought to be a law.”

“There is,” I said. “It’s called larceny. He sells the wool, you know, and can get a lot more for it if it’s cut off properly instead of hacked off by amateurs.”

“I may never look at another piece of gabardine,” she said, but she helped us pick up the fleeces. Rose Noire, in the meantime, helped Farmer Early collect his sheep and went off to help him take them home, still chattering nonstop.

Michael fetched a tarp and we gathered up the fleeces and loaded them in the back of the pickup. We still said “the pickup” instead of “his pickup” or “our pickup,” because we were still maintaining the fiction that the battered ten-year-old truck we’d recently acquired was something we’d be getting rid of when we finished the construction. I’d already figured out that, while he’d never give up his convertible, Michael got almost as much pleasure out of hauling things around in the pickup—including things that would have fit quite nicely into the convertible’s almost nonexistent trunk.

“One of us can drive the stuff over in the morning,” Michael said, though obviously he was dying to do it. Hauling actual farm paraphernalia in the pickup!

“Fine,” I said, turning to Mrs. Fenniman. “Do you need a place to stay, or will you be heading back to town now?”

“Hmph,” she said. “Rosie’ll be needing a ride.”

“She’ll charm Mr. Early into giving her one,” I said. “Or if she doesn’t, we’ll look after her when she turns up.”

“Hmph,” she said again getting into her car. “That old codger.”

Evidently, Mr. Early’s impersonation of a grizzled curmudgeon had fooled most people.

“Hide the rest of the evidence,” I said.

“‘Rest of the evidence’?”

“Whatever you used to do that,” I said, gesturing to the fleeces.

“Already did. Under your hedge.”

“I’ll get them,” Michael said, heading for the hedge.

“You didn’t happen to notice anyone else when you were fleeing, did you?” I asked.

“Like who?”

“Like whoever set Spike off.”

She shook her head and started the car.

“No one else there,” she said. “We just made too much noise and woke him.”

She drove off.

She sounded so definite that I found myself checking to make sure the screwdriver was still tucked securely in my back pocket.

“Found them,” Michael said. When we got back to the barn, I found out that “them” included not only a pair of battery-operated home hair-cutting tools but also two sets of nifty night-vision goggles, which we couldn’t resist testing.

“Cool,” Michael whispered. “These would be really useful for … doing chores at night. Stuff like that. We should get a set.”

“We just did,” I said. “Two sets. They were abandoned by the unknown intruders who viciously denuded Mr. Early’s sheep, remember?”

“Very cool,” Michael said. He was tilting his head and looking at the ceiling, fascinated by some effect he saw.

I put on my set. Yes, I could see fairly well, though all the colors vanished into a luminous gray-green tone. I crept out of the stall and peered down the barn at sleeping students. They appeared to be sleeping quite soundly. So soundly that they’d missed the entire ruckus with the sheep? I hadn’t thought to check on them when I’d dashed out, and now I’d never know whether they’d slept through the whole thing or used the diversion created by the sheep to steal back into the barn and feign sleep.