“Your reporter will love that,” Horner put in cynically. “The crime was plenty to spice up the story. She’ll paper the Eastern Seaboard if you hand her a big bad wolf to go with it.” Charlie kept his face stoically blank.
“I don’t think it’s worth bringing up wolves,” I said. “The prospect is doubtful, anyway. Fossils wouldn’t generally attract scavengers.”
“Of course they would,” Jackaby said. “Especially the sort of scavengers who read newspapers. I think it is high time we got to know the rest of the neighborhood.”
Neighborhood was not the right word for the environs of Gad’s Valley. Charlie, Jackaby, and I had to walk half a mile before we reached the nearest farm.
The front walk was unpaved and the house was modest, just a bit smaller than Brisbee’s by the look of it, and its paint had faded to a peeling beige. Charlie and I stepped up to the door, but Jackaby sauntered around toward the back of the house.
“Sir? What are you doing?” I asked.
“Investigating,” Jackaby replied flatly.
“Well, you can’t just walk into someone’s yard unannounced. Besides, doesn’t investigating usually involve questioning people?”
“I’ve nothing against people as a general rule, but people don’t tend to have the sort of answers I’m looking for.” The fence post just above Jackaby’s head exploded in a spray of splinters with a resonating BLAM! A woman stood in the open doorway across from him, a plain white apron tied around her waist and a fat-barreled rifle in her hands. “Of course, people do have a way of surprising you from time to time,” my employer added.
The woman held her chin up high and stared down the barrel at Jackaby. It was not the most intimidating glare, but her rifle more than compensated. “You’re on my property,” she said.
“I am indeed,” Jackaby replied. “And you noticed. Well done.”
From inside the house came the sound of excited barking. The woman held the rifle steady as a black-and-white sheepdog bounded past her and into the yard, circling my employer repeatedly and sniffing him in all of the customary awkward places before rolling over and awaiting a scratch on the tummy.
The woman sighed and shook her head. “If you’ve come to steal the world’s least intimidating guard dog, I’m real close to just letting you have him.”
The dog flopped his head back to look at his mistress upside down.
“Nobody’s impressed, Toby.”
“Please lower your weapon, Mrs. Pendleton,” said Charlie, hurrying forward and holding out his badge. “The gentleman is with me.”
Mrs. Pendleton nodded to the policeman and let the rifle down gently.
“You know this woman?” Jackaby asked.
“We met recently,” said Charlie.
“That’s right,” Mrs. Pendleton said. “Just last week. Mr. Barker here put my Abe in lockup overnight. My old man can get a little goofy when he’s had a few too many.”
Charlie nodded. “Mr. Pendleton was heavily intoxicated, singing loudly and brandishing a firearm in the middle of Gadston’s Goods and Grocery.”
“He was celebrating,” she explained with a hint of a smile. “It was our anniversary.”
“Which does account for his choice in love songs,” Charlie said. “He has a fine tenor voice.”
“Doesn’t he just?” Mrs. Pendleton loosened and leaned on the door frame. “I know he can be a handful, but he’s a good man underneath. Oh, did his pants ever turn up?”
“You will be the first to know. Mrs. Pendleton, please allow me to introduce my associates, Detective Jackaby and his assistant, Miss Rook.”
Mrs. Pendleton nodded toward Jackaby. “Detective, huh? What’s that thing on his head?”
I suppressed a giggle. Jackaby’s cap looked a bit like a child’s wobbly sketch of a hat—the sort of sketch you might accidentally mistake for a lumpy elephant or perhaps a floret of broccoli, if you weren’t holding it the right way up. At best, it was yarn trying very hard to be a hat.