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 before turning 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 cute for my taste. But since Mrs. Winkleson had painted it dark gray with matte black shutters and had shingled the roof in black, the poor cottage looked like the perfect home for a wicked witch. As I walked toward it, I more than half expected to hear a gleeful cackle and then a cracked crone’s voice saying, “Come in, my pretty.” Instead, silence.
I knocked with my knuckles before noticing that there was a black wrought-iron knocker on the door, almost invisible against the black paint. After a minute or so I tried again with the iron, and added my voice.
“Mr. Darby!” I called. “It’s Meg Langslow. Are you there?”
Chapter 22
I was reaching for the knocker to try again when I finally heard a stirring inside Mr. Darby’s cottage. A thud as if something had fallen from a table. A scraping sound, like a chair being moved.
The door finally opened, and Mr. Darby peered out. He looked a little befuddled.
“Wha’s up?” he asked. There was a faint odor of bourbon on his breath.
“The goats are interfering with the crime scene,” I said. “Can you move them to another pasture?”