So I did. And it was almost that simple although the cop seemed slightly wary. Maybe because of my questions, maybe because I’d been near two different men who were shot to death. After asking me a few dozen questions of her own, the deputy told me what she knew about the power outage.
“Somebody pulled the plug.”
I waited for the rest of the story, but that was essentially it.
“This place must have been wired by somebody’s nephew,” the deputy said. “It’s not even close to being up to code. Anybody who could follow a line could find their way to the circuit box and cut the power with a couple flicks of their wrist. I’m going to bust the building inspector.”
She was sufficiently P.O.’d at that township official to show me the inferior set-up. Even I, whose knowledge of electricity was limited to flipping a wall switch, could see that this didn’t look right. A mare’s nest of heavy black cables fed into stacks of industrial-sized power strips under an outdated circuit box.
“So the only thing someone had to know was the location of the power source,” I mused.
The deputy nodded. “And to do that, all he’d have to do is follow the black cables.”
She was right. I’d been so preoccupied with hounds and shootings that I hadn’t noticed the obvious electrical lines crisscrossing the arena floor. The only area free of floor cables was the show ring.
Back at the concession stand, there was no sign of either Jeb or MacArthur. Chester was still there, deep in conversation with the middle-aged female food vendor, who had joined him at our table. That is, Chester was talking to her when he wasn’t licking a perilously tall soft ice cream cone.
“Look, Whiskey. I got a quadruple dip. On the house!”
I thanked the vendor for her generosity and asked Chester to follow me. He withdrew a folded bill from his inside blazer pocket and pressed it into the vendor’s palm, a gesture better suited to the senior member of a men’s club than a third-grader. The vendor glanced at the bill, gasped, and tried to return it. But Chester waved her away.
“You can afford to pay for your cone,” I told him a little peevishly.
“I know.” He slurped melted ice cream from the back of his hand. “But I’d rather let people give me things when they want to and then over-tip them to the point where they practically faint.”
He looked very pleased with himself. And his ice cream.
“Just out of curiosity, Chester, how much did you tip that lady?”
“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it, Whiskey.”
We both knew I couldn’t afford it, so I let the topic drop. I wanted to know what had happened to the rest of our team. Chester explained that Jeb and MacArthur had drawn up a list of “persons of interest,” split it down the middle, and gone off to find those folks.
“MacArthur will interview Ramona and Susan,” Chester reassured me.
“Thank you.”
“And Jeb will interview Kori,” he added.
Chester should have been much too young to understand those issues, but life with Cassina was an education in domestic drama.
“What do you know about Kori?” I said.
“Only that you don’t like her, and you don’t like the way MacArthur likes her, but you don’t think Jeb will like her, so that’s okay.”
He’d pretty much summed it up. What I didn’t want him to know, however, was that even if Kori wasn’t a killer or a dognapper, she might be a homewrecker. And the home she might wreck was at the other end of The Castle from where Chester slept. Never mind that MacArthur had Avery’s ugly mug inked on his arm. Tattoos do not an enduring relationship guarantee. Just ask Peg Goh.
“What are we supposed to do now?” I said.
Wherever we went, Chester would need a shower first. His cone had melted all over his sleeve and was now dripping onto his Italian leather shoes.
He licked the ice cream off his Patek-Philippe watch and announced, “The chopper pilot is expecting us.”
“For what?”
“An aerial tour of Amish Country. Jeb and MacArthur think that’s the most efficient approach to finding Abra. So up, up, and away!”
During my previous helicopter experience, I’d accidentally stolen the pilot’s flotation device. Since we weren’t flying over water today, at least no water larger than a small inland lake, our pilot didn’t have flotation issues. His name was Brad, and his only concerns were that we buckled up so we wouldn’t fall out, and we wore headsets so we could hear each other en route.
MacArthur had instructed Brad to take us where we wanted to go. I explained that our goal was to find a blonde bimbo Afghan hound last seen in the company of an Amish teenager and his long-haired goats.
Brad paused his preparations for take-off.
“Was the Amish kid drunk?” he said.
“How did you guess?”
“When I flew in, I saw an eastbound wagon weaving all over Route 20. It was carrying livestock.”
Chester bounced in his seat. “Take us to the drunk Amish kid!”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Even with a helicopter on our side, I couldn’t believe finding Abra could be as easy as Pilot Brad made it sound. I wanted to believe it, but experience had taught me otherwise.
Chester, on the other hand, declared that we were “overdue for a lucky break.” I couldn’t argue with that logic. I was more than ready to lift off from the Barnyard Inn, scene of murder, mayhem, and way too many Afghan hounds.
Rising straight into the sky is an experience like no other. Helicopters offer a surprisingly smooth if vertigo-inducing ascent. Given the recent state of my stomach, I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut during take-off and keep them that way for most of the ride. But Chester kept shouting into my headset, “Look at that, Whiskey! Look at that!”
Since we were on the trail of my lost dog, I felt obliged to comply.
On my first chopper ride last winter, I had been searching for Chester. Happily, the little guy was now safe and secure next to me, loving every moment of our adventure. A helicopter tour feels like an amusement park ride… except that you’re actually traveling. Skimming treetops and buildings gives you both the big picture and the small picture simultaneously. Although I wasn’t sure it was the best way to experience Amish Country, it seemed the most likely route to Abra.
Since we were in the middle of nowhere interesting, I’d expected the scenery to be one boring farmer’s field after another, broken up by look-alike houses and barns. I was wrong. With the late afternoon sun at our backs and U.S. Route 20 under our feet, we were treated to meadows of green, gold, and coffee-brown rolling away to our right and left. And the trees! Clots of vivid color greeted us wherever a patch of woods remained. This was leaf-peeping in a close-up, high-up rush. Chester squealed with delight.
I had to remind myself of our reason for being airborne: tracking the traffic along Route 20 for signs of a weaving Amish wagon.
“This is where I saw the wagon on our way in,” Brad announced. “That was 35 minutes ago. He could have turned off anywhere east of here, so start scanning the side roads.”
“Roger dodger!” Chester replied.
Brad took us up another hundred feet for a more sweeping panorama.
“Most of the Amish live south of Route 20,” he said, “so our driver probably turned right.”
My eyes were peeled for a horse-drawn farmer’s wagon. But what I spotted first was a silver pickup truck with something bluish-gray in the back. The truck was heading to our left, north, on a curving paved road. I shouted to Brad to take the chopper down for a closer look.
“I don’t see a wagon,” the pilot said.
“Oh, we’ve got way more trouble than that,” Chester told him.
Brad followed instructions and brought us down dizzyingly close to the moving truck. Until the cargo came into focus, I held my breath in suspense.