The wind came straight off the North Sea, carrying the scent of salt, seaweed, and sun-warmed wood. Seagulls screeched above the dike as though they were hurling insults at one another.
Anke sat on the old wooden bench outside her little house, wearing a flowered bathrobe and cradling her coffee mug in both hands. Her white hair was tied loosely at the nape of her neck, and her red glasses had slipped halfway down her nose.
Holger Grünwald was approaching along the gravel path.
The organic butcher wore his white rubber apron and the same expression other people wore when doing their tax returns.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
Holger nodded toward the garden. “Just here to pick up the eggs.”
Anke merely raised a hand. “You know where they are.”
Holger disappeared around the back of the house toward the chicken coop.
The warm summer breeze rattled a loose gutter somewhere. Beyond the dike, the muffled chugging of a fishing boat drifted across the water.
Anke closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the gulls and the steady thrum of the boat’s engine. These were exactly the moments she loved about Lüttmoorsiel.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted old Mrs. Kruse approaching. Her mother must once have had a fondness for famous dolls, because she had saddled her daughter with the first name Käthe.
Unfortunately, Käthe knew about as much about making dolls as cows knew about knitting socks.
She wore black leggings that emphasized her skinny legs rather more than necessary and a white T-shirt bearing the words: SYLT IS JUST ANOTHER ISLAND.
On her feet, as always, were the orthopedic sandals that had apparently first seen the light of day back when she was still the village doctor.
Dr. Kruse had been retired for more than twenty years. These days, she mainly treated rumors.
“Morning, Anke,” she called.
“Morning.”
Naturally, she stopped. She always stopped. Anke suspected that even if someone’s house were on fire, Käthe would first ask who had been sleeping with the window open.
Anke took a sip of coffee and grimaced.
Cold.
Holger came around the corner, frowning, an egg carton in his hand.
“I was about to come looking for you in case you’d dropped dead among my chickens,” Anke said.
Holger raised the carton slightly. “There are only four.”
“Four what?”
“Four eggs. Not five.”
“Only four?” Käthe Kruse drew in an audible breath.
“Nonsense,” Anke said immediately. “One of them must be lying around somewhere.”
From the neighboring property came Petersen with his dachshund, Taranis—the ancient Celtic god of thunder trapped in the body of a bad-tempered, dark-haired wirehaired dachshund with very short legs.
“What’s going on?”
“An egg is missing,” Käthe Kruse announced in the solemn voice of a newsreader moments before the outbreak of war.
Petersen stopped by the fence beside Käthe and Holger. “Not five? Only four?”
Holger lifted the carton again, visibly irritated. “Yes. Four.”
Petersen looked at the eggs. Then at Anke. Then back at the eggs, and finally at Holger.
“Give me two!”
“Then I’ll take the other two,” Käthe said immediately.
Holger blinked in surprise. “People, I’ve got more eg—”
Halfway through the sentence, his expression changed. Only slightly.
“One egg, one eighty.”
“What?” Petersen stared at him. “Yesterday an egg was one twenty.”
Holger shrugged. “Supply and demand. I’ve got to make a living too.”
Anke slowly placed her mug on the weathered wooden table.
“Excuse me?”
Holger looked at her.
“You charge one twenty, now one eighty, and you only ever pay me fifty cents per egg?”
“Before I forget.” Grinning, Holger dropped two euros into the tin cup beside the door labeled EGG MONEY.
Anke looked inside.
“You’re eighty cents short.”
“What do you mean? There were only four. If there’d been five, that would’ve been another fifty cents.”
Anke gave him a merciless stare. “You said it yourself. Supply and demand.”
Grumbling, Holger dropped another eight ten-cent coins into the tin.
They clattered loudly.
Anke liked the sound.
She grinned with satisfaction.
She put her empty coffee mug on the bench and got to her feet with a quiet groan she had long since learned to ignore. The warm wind played with the ends of her bathrobe while another ship’s horn sounded beyond the dike.
“I’m going to look for it myself.”
Immediately, the others began to move.
“I’m coming with you,” said Käthe Kruse.
“Me too,” Petersen added.
Even Holger took half a step toward the garden.
“You lot stay right where you are.” Anke raised her hand. “No wonder the chickens stop laying with all this commotion.”
“Maybe one of them is sick,” Käthe murmured meaningfully.
Anke snorted. “Yes, of course. All we need now is for Wepper the vet to turn up.”
Käthe Kruse’s eyes immediately lit up. “That’s actually an excellent idea.”
She was already heading toward the road before she had even finished speaking.
“It shows how responsible you are,” she called over her shoulder to Anke.
“You’d better look after your eggs,” Anke called back. “They were expensive.”
Holger waved the empty egg carton helplessly in his hand as though he had forgotten what such things were for. Eventually, he placed it on the little table beside Anke’s coffee mug.
“Well… then… I suppose I’ll be off.”
Anke nodded. “If I find the egg, I’ll personally bring it round to you.”
She marched along the narrow gravel path and across the garden toward the chicken coop.
The warm summer wind moved through the tall grass behind the enclosure in little waves. Somewhere nearby came the smell of freshly cut grass and fried onions.
Herbert was already standing in front of the coop door.
The black rooster watched her with the tense concentration of a nightclub bouncer five minutes before closing time.
“Don’t you start any nonsense,” Anke muttered as she reached for the handle.
The moment she opened the creaking wooden door, Herbert shot forward indignantly and pecked furiously at her slipper, apparently determined to make it perfectly clear who really owned the place.
“Oh, give it a rest, you testosterone-fueled feather duster.”
Herbert flapped his wings in outrage and crowed loudly enough to personally declare the start of summer.
Behind him, five white hens wandered around the enclosure, peacefully pecking at the sand as though everything were perfectly normal.
The familiar smell of warm straw, grain, and chicken droppings hit Anke. Sunlight streamed through narrow gaps in the wooden walls, painting golden stripes across the floor.
The five nests were lined up neatly beside one another.
All empty.
Nothing beside them.
No fifth egg.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She looked behind the feed sack. Under the little wooden bench. Between old buckets and empty sacks. Even in Herbert’s corner, where two years earlier she had once found a dead herring.
No egg.
Behind her, one of the hens began clucking loudly.
Anke planted her hands on her hips and looked at them one by one.
“Roswitha?”
Roswitha continued pecking at the straw.
“Bärbel?”
No reaction.
“Erna?”
An indignant cluck.
“Gertrud?”
Gertrud calmly scratched at the sand.
“Sissi?”
Sissi was busy scratching at the ground beside the water bowl and pulled an earthworm from the soil.
Anke sighed.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Which one of you did it?”