Little Black Book of Murder by Nancy Martin

Shaker-­style house looked magnificent in the morning sun.
    The whole place was eerily quiet.
    At the paddock fence, the cows and the burro lined up to watch our arrival. Even the sow with the piglets stood at attention.
    Emma stopped in front of the barn, and we got out of the truck. Emma rolled down her window and told Toby to stay.
    â€œHello?” she called. Her voice echoed back at us.
    The cows lowed, sounding plaintive. Emma walked over to the fence. She frowned. “These cows need to be milked.”
    â€œHow can you tell?”
    â€œLook. They’re full.” She pointed at the swollen udders. “They’re also miserable. And that sow looks as if she doesn’t have any water. Where the hell is the famously humane butthead who owns this place? How come he’s not taking care of his animals?”
    â€œThe code on the gate must have kept out the workers. What can we do?”
    Emma’s annoyance gave way to purpose. She pointed. “See that hose? Fill up the water troughs. Then go pound on the door. Get Starr the hell out of bed. I’ll see if I can figure out where the milking parlor is.”
    We split up. The cows eagerly followed Emma ­toward the barn.
    I turned on the water. The pig began making agitated squeals and pushed against her fence, so I dragged the hose over to her pen and aimed the water at her trough. She drank thirstily.
    But I forgot about the pig.
    Inside her pen, half-­covered in muck, lay a person.
    The body was facedown and motionless in the mud, arms flung out. The mud was mixed with blood.
    I dropped the hose and seized the fence railing to keep from collapsing to my knees.
    â€œSwain?” I said.
    Because that was who it was. I recognized his jeans, his fancy red boots, his tailored chambray shirt.
    Overhead, the sun began spinning, the light blinding. The silence of the farm became so complete that I could hear my own blood rushing in my head.
    â€œSwain,” I said. My voice barely came out of my throat.
    With shaking hands, I hauled myself over the fence and landed in the wet earth on the other side, scattering the startled piglets. I staggered over to him and stood for a horrible second, frozen with indecision. Swaying over his body, I knew that he was gone. Blood had pooled around him, soaking into the ground. The next moment, though, I knelt beside him and rolled him over. Hoping he was breathing. Hoping he was alive.
    But his body was stiff, his face a muddy mask of death. His chest had been perforated—­over and over. I reeled back from the horror of the wounds.
    â€œEmma,” I called—­still too shaken to make myself heard. I gathered my wits and shouted, “Emma! Zephyr! Emma! ”
    I clapped one hand over my mouth to hold back a sob. He’d been stabbed through the chest many times. Now on his back, his eyes half open and cloudy, he stared at nothing.
    Whoever had killed him—­was that person still around? A murky surge of darkness flooded up around me, and I felt my knees give out again. In the next moment, I was kneeling in the mud beside him, fighting to stay conscious. I touched his arm. Rigid. And cold.
    Which meant the killer had to be gone. Long gone.
    My brain steadied. A pitchfork lay in the mud near the fence, tines up. I knew instantly it was the murder weapon. I could see gore on the tines. Someone had used it to stab Swain through his chest and had thrown it down afterward. With intensified concentration, I found myself focusing on everything else about the muddy pen—­the better to block out the horror, maybe.
    Three yards away lay a half-­buried set of keys.
    My vision sharpened. I knew those keys. I recognized the high school logo on the ring—­it was the school my nephew Rawlins attended. And the second key on the ring was an old skeleton key.
    To the back door of Blackbird Farm.
    Rawlins had been here.
    Behind me, I heard Emma calling. She came up to the fence