“Yes, ma’am.”

His capitulation was impressive. Back when she was a kid, Clare would have whined and pleaded a full twenty minutes longer. Clearly, Vicki MacEntyre was doing something right. “Aaron, do you remember anything else from that afternoon? Anything you might have seen at the Van Alstynes’, or along Peekskill Road?”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. Sorry.”

“And what was it you were doing out there that day?”

“We were just driving around.” He gave his mother a deliberately mischievous look. “Maybe finding a few icy spots to do doughnuts on.”

“Aaron!”

Clare hid her smile behind folded hands. Intentionally spinning a pickup wasn’t exactly the smartest thing to do, but considering the range of misbehavior two boys that age could get up to, it fell into the reasonably harmless camp.

“Can I go do my chores now? I want my computer time, too.”

Vicki gestured toward Clare. “Anything else?”

“No. Thank you, Aaron.”

“Anytime.” The boy rose and ambled into the mudroom. After he had closed the door behind him, Clare could hear the rustle of a parka coming off the hook and the thud of boots.

“He’s a good kid,” she said.

Vicki knocked against the kitchen table. “I could wish he’d spend less time on the computer and more on his homework. But what the heck. So long as he graduates and has enough skills so’s the army doesn’t stick him on the front lines, he’ll do fine. Craig and me never went to college, and we’re doing just as well as the Traceys. And they have degrees up the wazoo.”

Clare collected her empty mug and spoon and stood up. “What is it you and your husband do?”

Vicki stood as well. “Let me take that.” She hooked both mugs on one hand and pointed toward where the enormous barn sat across the road. “Organic meats. Beef and poultry. Guaranteed free range, pesticide-and hormone-free.” She opened the dishwasher and set the mugs inside. “We bought this farm from my folks, back when it was all dairy. But, you know, it’s damn hard for a small dairyman to compete these days. You gotta have something the big agribusiness companies don’t have.”

Clare retrieved her coat from the back of a chair. “So you went organic.”

“Yep. It can be tough. You gotta get certified, you can’t use antibiotics or treated feed, but in the end, we net forty percent over what my dad did on a per animal basis-and that was back when the Northeast Milk Compact kept prices high. We’re thinking of expanding into exotic meats. Bison. The restaurant trade is hot for bison.”

One of the best meals Clare had ever had had been stewed bison. “Do you sell locally?”

“We butcher stock here for special orders, and we send some poultry to Pat’s Meat Market in Fort Henry. Turkeys before the holidays, that sort of thing. But most of it goes down to New York.” She gave Clare an entirely different sort of assessment than she had at the door and flicked a card out of a holder. “Here’s our number. Smallest order we do is a side or a half steer, but once you’ve tasted our beef, you’ll be glad you have the freezer packed with it.”

Clare took the card. “I may take you up on that.”

“You can get it cheaper, but you’ll never get it better.”

Clare pulled on her parka. “Thanks for the cocoa, Vicki. And thank you for letting me come in and pester your son with questions.”

Vicki smiled a little. “I got a lot of experience with quirky folks. Craig’s great-uncle holds meetings for a group that believes the Cubans are trying to spread Communism through fluoridated water. And my father-in-law down in Florida’s convinced a super-macrobiotic diet and sheep embryo injections are gonna keep him alive till he’s two hundred. So when you come along wanting to play detective…” She shrugged. “Seems like pretty small potatoes to me.”

It was full dark outside now, and the falling snow flashed like a thousand stars in the light from the MacEntyres’ garage. Clare was surprised to see Alanna MacEntyre behind the Subaru, stomping her feet and beating on her arms to keep warm.

“My brother would like to see you,” she said, jerking her thumb back toward the barn, where a row of cell-like windows glowed with liquid light. “There’s something he wanted to say without Mom listening in.”

So. She and Russ had been right when they guessed the boys had been up to something more than spinning tires on country roads. “Thanks,” she said. “Are you headed back that way?”

“Un-uh. My chores are done.”

“And you waited around in the snow to give me your brother’s message? You’re a good sport.”

The girl looked at her disbelievingly. “No,” she said. “I’m smart about not pissing my big brother off.” Then she shook her head-grown-ups!-and disappeared into the mudroom without another word.

Clare crossed Old Route 100 cautiously. The blacktop was whitetop now, even the recent boot prints of the MacEntyre children fading fast as the snow accumulated. The massive tractor-and haywagon-sized doors that had caught Clare’s eye when she drove past earlier were, she realized, on the second floor of the barn, atop an earthen ramp that was slick with snow. The row of windows was below it, at waist height. She found the door, an ancient accumulation of boards so low she had to duck to go through it, and entered into a blast of warm air and smells: the musky green of sweet hay and clover, the plowed-earth scent of manure, the acrid methane sting of urine. Once down four steps she could straighten comfortably, although a tall man would still have collected cobwebs in his hair.

“Aaron?” she called. She was in a narrow chute, its wooden walls hung with farm implements that could have doubled for medieval torture devices, its floor crowded by tightly covered galvanized cans. She walked forward and found herself near the midpoint of an aisle stretching from one end of the barn to the other, dividing two long rows of stalls where scruffy red-haired cattle gazed upon her in rumination. Halfway between where she stood and the far wall a low wagon squatted, half filled with a reeking mound of wet straw and manure.

“Aaron?”

“Down here,” he called, and emerged from a stall near the wagon leading a steer, which, as Clare got closer, seemed to be the approximate shape and size of an Abrams tank. He clipped the beast’s lead to a ring and pulled a pitchfork from where it stood quivering in the muck.

Clare skirted the behemoth and peered over the edge of the stall. “Your sister said you wanted to see me.”

“Yeah.” With quick, efficient motions, he began pitching the soiled straw out the stall door, grunting with the effort.

While Clare waited for him to continue, she glanced around. The beams and joists showed its age, but like every other working barn she had seen in the North Country, it was meticulously clean. Farmers might neglect their children, their spouses, themselves, but they never neglected their cows. She caught the dark and liquid eye of the stall’s inhabitant, and the steer lowed at her. Red freckles dotted its pink nose. It was so sweet-faced, it was hard to imagine anyone turning it into hamburger and ribs.

“It’s a Gelbvieh,” Aaron said in her ear. She jumped. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, no,” she said. “I hadn’t noticed you’d finished. What’s a Gelbvieh?”

“Prinz.” As if recognizing its name, the steer thrust its nose into Clare’s palm. It was soft and cool and snuffly wet. “It’s a German breed known for the flavor of their meat. They have just the right, you know, mix of fat and muscle.” He reached up, grabbed a long loop dangling from a trapdoor, and, stepping into the center aisle, pulled it open. Straw torrented into the stall. Clare couldn’t tell how much was enough, but apparently Aaron could, as he snapped the door back into place and picked up his pitchfork again. He had his routine down pat. The bedding scattered across the floor without a single wasted motion on his part.