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“It says there are some monogamous species, like hornbills, gibbons and beavers, and others that are not, like the red-winged blackbird or the coquerel’s sifaka. They weren’t clear on humans, though, but when I look at this Jock Farnsworth and his wife, I’m inclined to think maybe not.”

“I guess it’s up to the people involved,” I said. “Marge and Tex certainly are monogamous, and happy to be, and so are Odelia and Chase.”

“Chase and Odelia aren’t married, though, right? So they can cheat on each other as much as they want.”

“The same principle applies, Dooley. And I don’t think Chase cheats on Odelia, or the other way around. I think they’re pretty faithful, even though they’re not married.”

“So… why do people get married, Max?”

“I guess because they want to tell the world they’re devoted to each other.”

“So why aren’t Chase and Odelia getting married? Aren’t they devoted to each other?”

“Yes, they are. I guess they haven’t found the time. Or the money. Getting married is expensive if you want to do it right, with a nice dress and a nice venue, and a nice meal to offer your guests.” Presumably, though, Odelia and Chase simply didn’t think it was all that important. After all, they were happy together, and that’s what counted. I wasn’t going to explain this to Dooley, though. It might take me down another rabbit hole.

We’d arrived at the main house, and, as is our habit, had entered through the kitchen door. It was a large house, but it didn’t take us more than a quick visit to that kitchen to determine that Jock and Grace Farnsworth weren’t the kind of people who kept cats or dogs. No food bowls present, and no scent of any pets lingered in the house either.

“I guess they’re not the pet-keeping kind,” I finally determined with a touch of disappointment. Hard to do one’s job if the people under investigation refuse to keep a pet.

“Maybe they have a pet parrot?” Dooley suggested. “Lots of rich people keep a pet parrot.”

“We would have smelled a parrot a mile away, Dooley,” I reminded him.

“I did smell something else,” he said now as we walked through the house, just in case we’d missed something. Going from room to room it became clear the house wasn’t just old, it smelled old, too, with that musty smell that old houses have. Not pleasant.

“What’s that, Dooley?”

“I smell chickens,” he said now, a testament to his powerful sense of smell.

“Now that you mention it, I think I smell chickens, too.”

“Well, Jock Farnsworth is the chicken wing king,” he said, “so he probably keeps those chickens close by just in case he needs their wings.”

I stared at my friend. For all his silly questions, he still surprises me with these flashes of intelligence.“Of course,” I said. “He must have his chicken sheds nearby. Let’s pay a visit, and maybe they’ll be able to tell us what’s going on with Grace disappearing.”

“I’m not so sure, Max,” he said as we returned to the kitchen and then out the door again. “Chickens aren’t the most intelligent creatures, you know.”

I did know that, but that wasn’t going to stop me from trying to strike up a conversation and bringing the subject around to Grace and Fabio.

We set off in pursuit of these famous Farnsworth chickens, and simply had to follow our noses this time, the smell of ammonia and chicken feces becoming stronger and stronger as we set paw for the large sheds where they were presumably being kept.

The grounds where the Farnsworth house was located were vast and covered with different types of vegetation. There were the neatly clipped lawns, bordered by shrubs and flower beds, there were copses of trees dotting the landscape, and there was even what looked like a golf course, where presumably Jock entertained his business clients.

Behind the house I’d also spotted the obligatory swimming pool, but all these things didn’t hold our interest. Instead, we made a beeline for an adjacent patch of land, where a large chicken shed had been constructed, the smell unmistakable now. Next to the long flat building, a second similar building stood, which looked brand-new, and also several large silos had been erected, presumably for the storage of chicken feed, and a few low-slung tanks for chicken manure, as I’d once seen on a duck farm.

Inside the shed, we found easily thirty thousand chickens, all living in darkness, silently squatting on the floor. The smell was foul, and dust and feathers flew through the air, making it hard to breathe.

“So many chickens,” Dooley marveled. “And they all smell so bad!”

“There must be thousands,” I returned.

A man dressed in blue coveralls was dispensing chicken feed, paying us no mind.

We ambled along, and saw that the chickens didn’t have all that much space to walk around. In fact they were packed closely together, looking pretty miserable.

“They don’t look happy, Max,” Dooley said.

“No, they sure don’t,” I agreed.