The Case of the Roasted Onion Read online

  At the end of the gravel path, the turnout paddocks form a U around the barn. The pastures were that new and tender green that is spring’s best harbinger. I paused to look at my barn: twelve stalls at right angles to a large indoor arena. The sunlight—pale gold and without heat—gave the illusion that the silvered oak structure was immersed in a huge transparent bowl of light.

  My big chestnut Quarterhorse Andrew grazed in the small area of these paddocks set aside especially for him. His pasture buddy is a brown-and-white Shetland named Pony; she was not, at this moment, in view. Andrew raised his head at my approach and gave a hope-filled whicker. “No carrots,” I said firmly. “I am headed into the office.” Pony, who had been hiding just behind Andrew’s tail, peered around his hindquarters, directed a snort of contempt at me, and gave Lincoln a cool appraising look. The dog, in turn, looked up at me, his ears tuliped forward in a question.

  “Undoubtedly,” I agreed, “Pony is planning more mischief. Ignore her.” Pony is a smart, sneaky troublemaker with a most unhorselike sense of humor. I rattled the gravity latch at Andrew’s gate to be sure that all was secure. Pony is a notorious escape artist, even when the place she is escaping to—the highway that runs past our farm—is far less desirable than the place she is escaping from—a pasture with shade trees and quite a nice pond in the middle.

  The shrill sound of a ringing phone dispelled my curiosity about Pony’s plans for the day and forced me to the office. I flung the door open and entered.

  “Austin? You there?”

  “I’m here, Victor.”

  “So you’ve finally decided to get some help out there.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I just talked to Madeline. She called me to see if I’d call you. Guess she wants me take over the practice for the week, assuming you’ve got any clients for that practice of yours. She said you two are off to Earlsdown?”

  “The invitation was in today’s mail,” I said meaningfully.

  “So Madeline said.”

  I have never cared for the lubricious vocal overtones that strike my ear whenever Victor refers to my wife. On the other hand, the old burke is so jealous he can’t help himself, so let him slobber away if he has to. I pressed on. “But Schumacher died yesterday morning. The invitation’s arrival today seems . . . precipitate.”

  “What? Oh. You think they asked you because Schumacher’s dead? They asked you because Schumacher begged off.”

  “Begged off?” This was most peculiar. For almost any practicing vet interested in horses, an invitation to Earlsdown was the best visibility possible.

  “That’s what I hear. Anyhow, about coverage for your patients, such as they are. I can’t take the time to come over and set you straight myself, and I told Madeline that. So she said you’d be looking for some help to take care of things while you’re away.”

  “I may be, yes. For a week or two.”

  “Madeline thought maybe longer than that. Maybe part time. Anyhoo”—a term I despise—“I’ve got a candidate in mind. And I can post a notice on the job board, too. Too bad you can’t afford a full-time assistant. Can’t be all that easy, running a practice at your age. How many clients have you picked up, anyway?”

  I decided not to answer this. Victor has a lot in common with ovines, a species easily distracted. He even looks like a sheep, if the light is right. I suspect it’s why he grew the beard.

  “And how is Thelma?” I asked politely, changing the subject to nettle him. Thelma is Victor’s wife of many years. She has a voice that would not only shatter glass, but rout the entire violin section of the New York Philharmonic at first screech. And she has a jaw like a mandrill monkey.

  “Thelma’s fine,” Victor said curtly.

  “I understand that her mother lives with you now?” My tones were dulcet.

  I had met Thelma’s mother, too. She had, if it’s possible, an even louder, ruder voice than her daughter’s. And I hadn’t forgotten the ill-temper shared by mother and daughter alike.

  “Yeah,” Victor said. “Yeah, the old bat’s settled right in.”

  The gloom in his voice was noticeable. “I’m so sorry,” I said, gleefully.

  “I’ll bet you are.” Then, in a most ramlike manner, he rounded back to the task at hand. “I think I can scrounge up a couple of candidates for you. I mean, it’s not like you have a whole carload of work out there. Ho. Ho. Ho.”

  Ho. Ho. Ho.

  “What d’ya want, that I should send them around?”

  “Perhaps. I have yet to accept the invitation to Earlsdown. Why don’t I let you know sometime this afternoon?”

  “Whatever. Madeline said the consulting gig includes the Hunt Ball, too.”

  The degree of envy in Victor’s voice was regrettably satisfactory.

  “I have to confess that the thought of Madeline in a ball gown was one of the reasons I’m considering this offer,” I said.

  Did I mention that Thelma is shaped like an artichoke? There was a short silence, in which both of us, I presume, imagined Madeline in full fig. I relented. “However, we will probably not attend. She is far happier in jeans and boots.”

  There was a short silence. Thelma is an enthusiastic shopper.

  “Well, you watch your ass out there in Lodi,” Victor said. “I’ve heard rumors about McClellan. He’s got a rep. Mean bastard.”

  “Yes. I was about to call you to inquire about him. You met him during the course of the drug investigation last year?”

  “Yeah. Jerry Coughlin asked me to review the necropsy results independently. Horse died of an overdose of adrenaline, no question about it. Only question was, was it the right thing to do in the first place?”

  “I recall all of that, Victor.”

  “I’m sure Jerry would have asked you if I hadn’t been available,” Victor said. “Thing is, prescribing adrenaline for the colic’s about as effective as a roasted onion up its butt.”

  This homely and highly ineffective nineteenth-century remedy for colic has a peculiar fascination for Victor. I don’t know why.

  “’Course, there’s probably a lot more of those cockeyed remedies that you ran into in the old days, eh, McKenzie? Ha ha ha ha.”

  “And how is Coughlin doing these days?”

  “Chickens,” Victor said flatly.

  “Chickens?”

  “Doing avian flu virus research for the CDC and a little research for some start-up company. Only work he could get. Plus, you know, that divorce of his was pretty ugly. Talk was that’s how come he OD’d the horse. Didn’t have his mind on the job at hand. Anyhow—his practice hasn’t recovered yet from the flapdoodle. Might not, even though his license was reinstated a couple months ago. And McClellan was the guy that engineered the suspension. Keep your nose clean, McKenzie. Or you’ll be out on your butt, too. That it, then? Cheerio! Keep those onions nice and hot. Ha ha ha ha.”

  Ha ha ha ha.

  I concluded the conversation with Victor by dropping the phone back into the cradle. Then I dialed the number of Brewster McClellan’s cell phone. The subsequent conversation almost put me in a temper for the rest of the day.

  I have said that I find technology an obstacle to a serene and happy life. The fruit of technology I find most loathsome is the cell phone. McClellan picked up after an irritatingly high number of rings. He was in the bath, or the barn, or a bar, for all I knew. Wherever he was, the ambient noise made it impossible to conduct a civil conversation. I concluded, between the squawks, shrieks, shouts, and profanity, that McClellan wished to stop at the clinic this evening at seven to conduct our business transaction in person. There was a contract to be signed and a check to be delivered. I also concluded that Mr. McClellan’s grammar needed a good swift kick in the dangling participle, but I let that pass me by—as I have had to do so often in these grammatically benighted times.

  I noted our departure dates for Lodi on the calendar, and then went into the main part of the barn to check on the orphaned calf we were att
empting to wean. I replenished the nursing bottle we’d rigged on the creep feeder, just as Madeline came through the barn doors down the aisle. She was wearing her Summersville All-Stars baseball jacket against the chill of the spring air and her green Wellington boots. I paused in my work to admire the pink in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eye. She joined me at the pen, her shoulder comfortably snugged next to mine.

  “What do you think?” she asked, casting a maternal eye over the little fellow. He was a Red Angus, a breed of which I am particularly fond.

  “Another week and he’ll be able to ingest a mash.” I stepped back from the pen. His weight was improving. “But for the moment, we’ll need to continue bottle-feeding every four hours.”

  Madeline sighed. “That’s going to put a hole in the day. We’ll have to come back early afternoon to give him another bottle. Right now, we’ve got to get on the road, Austin. Tyler Simpson just called. One of his dairy cows tangled herself up in some barbed wire and tore off a couple of her teats. We’ll have to put off the VanDerPlancks and the castration and get over to Simpson’s before the poor heifer bleeds to death. And I called the thingummies . . .”

  “The DeGrootes.”

  “Whatever, about the gelding and told them we’d be there right after we leave the Simpsons, but that’s not going to work if we have to come back here, so I’ll tell them we’ll see him tomorrow.” She drew breath. “Whew! Come on, sweetie. I’ve got the truck loaded and ready to go.”

  So the three of us—we travel nowhere without the redoubtable Lincoln—spent the next few hours in surgery. And since Simpson is a conscientious fellow (“Might just as well save myself the cost of another farm call and get them spring shots over with right now.”) we vaccinated the entire forty-cow dairy herd against brucellosis, bovine encephalitis, tuberculosis, and what is popularly known as “milk fever.”

  We were therefore somewhat behind time when we returned to our clinic.

  I pulled the Bronco into the drive and frowned. Andrew’s pasture was empty of either horse or pony. A battered Ford Escort was parked next to the barn that hadn’t been there when we had left. Worse yet, the air was silent, save for the twittering of the songbirds building nests in the apple trees. Madeline, busy with her calculator, was unaware of these ill omens.

  “You know, Austin, even with the volume discount we’re giving regular farm customers, we’re going to do better than break even this month.” She caught my expression and dropped her voice to a whisper. “What’s wrong?”

  I laid a warning hand on her arm. “Do you hear anything?” I whispered in return.

  “I hear you. What else am I listening for?”

  “The sound of a hungry calf.”

  Madeline frowned. “You’re right! It’s an hour past his bottle time. And I don’t hear as much as a squeak.”

  “And look,” I pointed through the windshield. The twenty-foot-high sliding doors that are the entrance to the barn proper were opened all the way. When we had departed that morning, I had left them halfway closed against the chill of the air.

  Madeline’s eyes grew large. “A burglar!”

  I smiled. “There is not much to burgle in the barn, Madeline. To be accurate, I fear we are looking at a rustler. With the current price of beef as high as it is, I am not at all surprised.”

  Madeline’s creamy brow furrowed. “That doesn’t seem likely, Austin. You’ve been reading too much Louis L’Amour, maybe.”

  I let this pass. “Stay here,” I said sternly.

  Lincoln and I slipped noiselessly out of the truck. I closed the door softly. I avoided the noisy crunch of the graveled path and tiptoed down the grass verge to the sliding doors, Lincoln ranging at my side. I felt Madeline behind me.

  We keep a tire iron in the toolbox in the rear of the truck. It was there no longer. Madeline brandished it with a cheerful grin. I nodded approval. I also appropriated it. My wife is nothing if not forward thinking, but she is inclined to the impetuous.

  The three of us approached the barn door in silence. I snapped my fingers at Lincoln and dropped my left hand, palm down. He dropped immediately into a sit. I briefly considered snapping my fingers at Madeline; instead, I drew her to my side.

  We flattened ourselves either side of the open doors, I on the right, Madeline on the left. My tire iron was at the ready. I peered around the edge to the barn’s interior.

  I don’t care for dark barns. In fact, I actively disapprove of dark barns. As a result, one of my first decisions when I purchased Sunny Skies was to place clear Plexiglas strips under the entire roofline to let the sunshine in. That precaution has served me well for many years, and it served me well now. I had a daylight-clear view of the interior. My farm tools and horse tack are usually neatly lined in their appropriate racks against the walls, hay bales and sawdust bags stacked tidily underneath. The equipment was lined up no longer. Our two saddles were askew on the pegs. The bridles hung in a tangled mess. Hay had been scattered all across the floor. And a neat pile of horse manure sat in the middle of the aisle where no horse manure had been before. I drew back and raised an eyebrow in Madeline’s direction. The disruption was clearly the work of Pony. She had done it before.

  It did not explain the presence of the Ford Escort. Nor the silence of the calf.

  My barn has five working stalls of sturdy oak on either side of an eight-foot-wide aisle. I’d converted the sixth stall on each side into a feed room and a small animal pen, respectively. The animal pen contained the orphaned calf. I peered into the barn again. And I immediately saw the rustler.

  He—or perhaps it was she—was bent over the calf’s pen, milk bottle in hand. I leaped forward, just as Madeline collared me and hauled me back. Years of farming our thirty acres have given my wife a healthy arm. I stumbled into her pillowy side and righted myself. She wrenched the tire iron from my grasp and flung it to the ground. “My dear!” I protested. “The rustler!”

  “That’s no rustler.” And indeed, his attention attracted by our little contretemps, the young man who turned to face us had no trace of burglarious intent in his face. His garb immediately proclaimed him a student. He was wearing jeans, L.L. Bean leather outdoor boots, a gray sweatshirt with the Cornell logo where a breast pocket ought to be, and most of the contents of the milk bottle. More significant than his clothing as a sign of his benign intent, Lincoln rose to his feet and proceeded into the barn, tail wagging happily.

  The young man patted my dog, then stuck out a milk-covered hand as we approached. “Dr. McKenzie? I’m Joe Turnblad. I’m a second-year at Cornell. Dr. Bergland suggested that I drop by to see you today. I must say, sir, it’s an honor to meet you. Your work on bovine back fat is a byword at the university, sir. A byword.”

  A job applicant, then. And possibly a suck-up. I ignored the proffered handshake.

  He glanced down at himself with a rueful grin. “Sorry about the mess, sir. When I drove in, I heard the calf crying . . .”

  “Bawling,” I said. “Calves do not cry, they bawl.”

  “Uh. Yeah. Bawling, and when I came in to see if there was anything wrong, I saw . . . well, the place looked like a tornado hit it. What happened, do you think?”

  “Pony staged a jail break,” I said. I craned my neck to look beyond him to the recesses of the indoor arena. A familiar squeal floated through the air. “I knew she had something in mind this morning.”

  “Yeah. Well, I tried to put everything back into place, and the milk bottle’d fallen off the feeder . . .”

  “The bottle was removed by an outside agency,” I said coldly. “To wit, the Shetland. I fastened the bottle to the feeder myself. When I affix a bottle to a feeder, it does not fall off on its own.”

  “. . . And the little guy here seemed pretty hungry, so I . . .”

  “You are too hasty, young man. Hold yourself one moment, please.” I looked at my dog, pushed my palm forward in the direction of the indoor arena, and whistled. Lincoln emitted an obedient “woof ” and trott
ed down the aisle to the indoor arena. He turned right and disappeared.

  “. . . Tried to feed him myself,” the young man continued. “But he kept spitting it up.”

  “You need to keep the bottle at an angle,” Madeline said kindly. “Otherwise calves’ll spit that stuff all over you.” She laughed. “I’m Madeline McKenzie, by the way.”

  “Joe Turnblad,” he said again, with a smile composed equally of anxiety and conscious charm. “I’m second-year at the vet school. If you could just explain to your dad . . .”

  There was a short, and on my part, markedly chilly silence.

  “My wife,” I said, stressing the noun with some humor, “need not explain a thing, young man. And even a second-year ought to know better than to feed an animal about which he knows nothing. What if the calf had been on medication?”

  Mr. Turnblad blushed. “Sorry. You’re absolutely right, of course.”

  Lincoln reappeared at the far opening to the indoor arena, looked at me, and barked once. I nodded and whistled.

  Madeline grabbed the young man by the sleeve of his milk-sodden sweatshirt and pulled him against the wall. Pony burst out of the arena and clattered down the aisle, brushy tail twitching, the dog at her heels. Every few paces, she squealed and kicked out with her hind legs. Lincoln loped along behind her and dodged the kicks with aplomb. Andrew followed at a more plodding pace, ears forward, and a look of mild anxiety in his brown eyes. The three of us followed dog, pony, and horse out of the barn. Lincoln herded the two animals to the paddock gate, nosed it open, and drove them in. I followed at a more sedate pace, and secured the chain. Lincoln wriggled under the fence and lay flat on the grass, panting happily. He is a dog that takes pride in a job well done.

  “I think we need a padlock,” Madeline said. “Honestly. I know you don’t approve of anything but a quick-release, Austin, but that Pony is just a constant pain in the butt.” She smiled at Joe Turnblad. “She’s amazing. She’s a regular Houdini.”

  I didn’t respond. I kept one eye on Andrew. Then I turned to Mr. Turnblad. “Well, Mr. Turnblad?”