Blue Moon   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

They've been on private land for a little over a year. The farmer who owned the land was okay with that. In fact, he was sort of pleased. Carrie brought him up to see the first troll baby born on his land, and he carried the picture in his wallet."

I looked at him. "Sounds great."

"The farmer, Ivan Greene, died about six months ago. His son was not a nature lover."

"Ah," I said.

"But trolls are a severely endangered species. And they're not like the snail darter, or the velvet-back toad. They're a big, showy animal. The son tried to sell the land, and we got it stopped legally."

"But the son wasn't happy with that," I said.

Richard smiled. "Not hardly."

"So he took you to court," I said.

"Not exactly," Richard said. "We expected him to do that. In fact, we should have known something was wrong when he didn't keep us tied up in court."

"What did he do?" I asked.

The anger was leaking away as Richard talked. He always had to work really hard to stay angry. Me, it was one of my best things. He retrieved the towel from the bed and started drying his hair while he talked.

"Goats started disappearing from a local farmer."

"Goats?" I said.

Richard peered at me through a curtain of wet hair. "Goats."

"Somebody's been reading too much 'Billy Goat Gruff, " I said.

Richard wrapped the towel more firmly around his head and sat down on the bed. "Exactly," he said. "No one who really knew anything about trolls would have taken goats. Even the European Lesser Trolls that do hunt will take your dog before they'll take your goat."

"So it was a setup," I said.

"Yeah, but the newspapers got hold of it. We were still okay until the dogs and cats started disappearing."

"They got smarter," I said.

"They listened to Carrie's interviews where she discussed food preferences," he said.

I'd come to stand at the foot of the bed. "Why are the local cops interested in some land squabble?"

"Wait, it gets worse," he said.

I picked up the spilled comforter and sat on the edge of the bed with it bundled in my lap. "How worse?"

"A man's body was found two weeks ago. It was just one of those horrible hiking accidents at first. He fell off the mountain. It happens," Richard said.

"Having seen some of the mountains, I'm not surprised," I said.

"But somehow the body was listed as a troll kill."

I frowned at him. "It's not like a shark kill, Richard. How did they tell a troll did it?"

"A troll didn't do it," Richard said.