Arthur Pendelton was a large man who wore his success in visible denominations: a custom John Deere in immaculate green, a farmhouse that had been professionally landscaped three years ago, and a banner across his lane gate that read PENDELTON'S CIDER WORKS — AWARD-WINNING SINCE 2014. Silas knocked on the front door of Pendelton's farmhouse at nine-thirty in the morning with Barnaby at his heel, the leash attached to Barnaby's collar more as a prop of respectability than any genuine restraint—Barnaby went on leash only when he chose to.
Arthur Pendelton opened the door in his dressing gown with a cup of coffee and the expression of a man who had not yet decided what kind of day he was having.
"Silas," he said. "And that animal."
"Good morning, Arthur. I'm missing seventy-two apples. Thought we'd have a conversation."
The conversation took place on Pendelton's porch, which was wide and recently painted and had a view of the Pendelton orchard where his commercial Gala trees stood in tidy rows. Pendelton denied everything with a fluency that Silas found almost impressive—not defensive, not flustered, simply a smooth and consistent account of exactly where Duchess had been the previous night (locked in the prize pig shed), what his operational plans for the fair were (competing with his established Gala variety, thank you very much), and how he took some offense at the implication.
Barnaby spent the conversation ignoring both men entirely. He was inspecting the porch. Specifically, he was inspecting a pair of work boots standing beside the porch door. Large, rubber-soled, the tread pattern thick with dried clay.
Barnaby sniffed the boots once, then moved to the porch steps and inspected the base of each step. Then he looked at the driveway, where Pendelton's custom John Deere was parked, and walked to it. On the front left wheel arch, where road mud accumulates at a specific angle during farm vehicle operation, there was a dried smear of deep red-gold.
The precise color of Willow Farm's Honeycrisp peel. Silas was watching Barnaby from the corner of his eye while maintaining the conversation with Pendelton. He kept his expression neutral as his goat completed this inspection with systematic efficiency, returned to Silas's side, and sat down with the composed authority of a creature who had gathered what he needed.
"Fair enough, Arthur," Silas said, finishing his coffee. "Apologies for the implication. Hope Duchess is in fine form for the show ring."
Pendelton relaxed visibly. "Best year yet for her. Thirty-one pounds over last year's show weight."
They shook hands. Silas and Barnaby walked back down the lane. At the gate, out of Pendelton's line of sight, Silas looked at his goat.
Barnaby looked at the tractor. Then at Silas.
"I saw it," Silas said quietly. "Apple peel on the wheel arch. Which means that tractor moved something apple-related recently. But we need more. A smear on a tractor is not evidence. The Sheriff would say it's circumstantial."
Barnaby turned toward the road back to Willow Farm.
"We need to find where those apples went," Silas said.
They walked in companionable silence back up the hill, the morning warming into the golden kind of September day that the Willow Creek valley specialized in, the orchards on both sides of the road heavy with fruit, the air carrying the sweet-sharp smell of ripe apple and dry grass. Three days until the Fair. Two days to find proof.
Silas said very little on the walk home. Barnaby said nothing, but then Barnaby never said anything, which Silas had once found calming and now found merely appropriate. The apple skin on the tractor wheel arch had been small—the kind of detail a man in a hurry would miss, or a man in good conscience would not be looking for because he would not expect to find it there.
But Pendelton had not been a man in good conscience. He had been a man who had used his prize pig as a tool, used his employee as an errand-runner, and used the valley's pigeon routes as a surveillance system, and who had calculated—correctly, as it turned out—that a retired farmer with one pygmy goat was unlikely to outmaneuver him before Thursday.
He had not calculated for the particular quality of Barnaby's attention.
The Willow Creek market square was busy with the usual Tuesday morning bustle of farm carts and market stalls. Barnaby moved through the crowd with surprising dignity for a pygmy goat, pausing only when a particularly interesting scent trail crossed his path and demanded his complete professional attention.