Chickenlandia Mystery Read online

  “Don’t get your tail in a twist,” Veenie said as she wiped her fingers on her orange jumpsuit. All the chicken wings were gone; a pile of tiny white bones were stacked high like pick-up sticks in the Tupperware container. “I ain’t telling Boots.”

  “There is nothing to tell Boots,” I protested.

  Changing the subject, I updated Veenie on what Hiram had told me about not knowing why Pam had been at his egg factory. I also told her what April, the coroner, had told Hiram about Pam likely dying from a hard blow to the back of her head.

  “Told you, I didn’t kill Pam. If it was me, I would have jerked her bald, then blew a hole straight through her using her own gun. Some sneaky weasel did Pam in. Knocked her in the back of the head when she wasn’t looking.”

  “None of this is hard evidence that would rule you out as the killer in a court of law.”

  “If I was going off the rails and popping people in the back of the head, don’t you reckon I’d start with someone more deserving?”

  “Like?”

  “Fergus Senior.”

  She had a point. “Who you think killed Pam?”

  Veenie rested her chin in a cupped hand and gave my question some thought. “Hiram?”

  “Why him?”

  “He’s been trying to buy her out.”

  “Yes.”

  “So maybe he got tired of waiting. And if she’s got no legal heir, whole place will go up for auction to pay off her debts. Hiram will get the whole kit and caboodle at a discount.”

  “I dunno. Hiram said Pam was neck-deep in a hot tub of financial trouble. Said she was in default over at the bank because of some fines she had to pay to bring Cluckytown up to snuff for the health inspector. According to the town gossips, Pam Perkins has been eating sorrow by the spoonful the last couple of years. Maybe she up and offed herself?”

  Veenie squinted at me. “Seems unlikely Pam smacked herself in the back of the head. Besides, Hiram is as slippery as a pocketful of pudding. He would say that, wouldn’t he? You believe him?”

  “I might.”

  “You know that man is liable to say anything. He wants to impress you, and you know how men get when their willies wake up.”

  I decided to ignore that comment. “The county DA been in to see you?”

  “Nah. Boots said I’d see him and the judge this morning. You reckon they’ll let me go?” Veenie stretched her short little arms over her head and wiggled her butt about. “This here mattress is hard as a slab of limestone. My back is plumb ruint.”

  “You’ll need bail.”

  “Money?”

  “That’s most likely what the judge will have in mind.”

  Veenie sighed. “How much we got in the cookie jar?”

  “That’s muffler money. You know that.”

  Veenie’s lips drooped.

  I tried to encourage her. “I’m working on Harry, trying to get him to slap down bail money.”

  “Harry don’t like me!” Veenie cried.

  “He likes you all right. He can’t leave you here. We were on a case for the agency.”

  “How much you think bail will be?”

  “Hard to say.” The judge would set bail according to the facts of the case, the severity of the crime, and the flight risk presented. Bail for first degree murder, if the judge believed that was what had happened here, was usually high. “Could be as high as a quarter of a million dollars.”

  Veenie’s jaw dropped open. “But I didn’t do nothing!”

  “Let’s hope the judge thinks so too.” I wasn’t about to tell Veenie that I’d seen a docket note on Devon’s desk on my way in to see her. Judge Roy Slaughter would hear her case. Most folks credited him with earning his surname when it came to sentencing. Word on the street was that he once sentenced a man to hard time just for stealing a look at his young wife. He didn’t take kindly to busybodies or chatterboxes. Since Veenie was well blessed in both these departments, her future was looking bleak. “It’ll be fine,” I reassured her. “We’ll figure something out.”

  The look on Veenie’s face—her forehead was all crumpled—told me that she had a slippery hold on hope.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I dropped in at the agency office hoping to catch Harry and plead Veenie’s case again. I also aimed to update the boss on what Hiram had told me about Pam and us staying on the case.

  Harry was at his desk, his hat pushed far back on his head. He looked to be playing kissy face with someone on his cell phone. I couldn’t hear who, but I suspected, by the way Harry’s tie was hanging loose and the tone of his whispers, that he was having some sort of X-rated phone adventure.

  Harry shot me a look that would have made a stray dog tuck tail. I’d raised two kids, so Harry’s death glare didn’t faze me. Ignoring him, I went to the kitchen area. Finding the coffee cold, I put on a fresh pot. The old coffee maker hissed and bubbled loud enough that I could only snatch a word or two of Harry’s conversation. He wasn’t yakking with a client or a bill collector because his voice was too low, the conversation dotted with chuckles.

  I reckoned if Harry had a new lady friend it was none of my business, but then again, last time he’d gone skirt chasing Veenie and I had been the ones forced to outrun a disgruntled husband’s shotgun showers. Nobody took kindly to seeing their wife pawed over by another fellow. With Harry it was a hobby. Why he couldn’t leave his zipper alone and take up fishing like a normal Hoosier fellow was anybody’s guess. He seemed to enjoy getting chased out of town every now and then.

  By the time the coffee was done, Harry was off the phone. The heaping-full glass ashtray on his desk told me he’d been jawing for a good while. He didn’t offer any details about his phone conversation. Instead, he laid into me about making nice with Hiram and finding Gertie so we could issue another bill to Tater. “Our liability insurance is up for renewal.” He got up and poured himself a cup of coffee. “And the roof upstairs is leaking. I got bills to pay.” He smacked his cup down so hard the coffee sloshed over onto his desk.

  “I talked to Hiram,” I said.

  “He mad?” Harry asked as he whipped off his tie and used it to blot up the coffee that was seeping over onto a pile of bills. He tossed the tie in the trash when he was done.

  “Nope.”

  “Why the dickens not?” Harry looked relieved, but his raised eyebrows told me he didn’t trust what I’d said.

  If Harry found out that I’d agreed to date Hiram I’d never hear the end of it. I hadn’t made it through almost seven decades by blurting out every little thought kernel that popped in my mind. I decided to zip lip and keep Hiram and his saucy chicken wing seduction a secret for the time being. I wasn’t in any mood to hear Harry’s opinion on the matter. It’d all come out in the wash, and then Harry and Veenie could bellyache and speculate together about my nonexistent sex life.

  “Hiram,” I continued, “says he still wants Veenie and me on the case. He wants us to find out who’s stealing from him, and who whacked Pam on the back of her head so hard that her lights went out and God’s porch light flipped on.”

  “He’s willing to pay us to solve Pam’s murder?” Harry pumped a fist in the air like he’d just won the lottery.

  Considering how much money Hiram was rumored to be worth, the idea of a steady monthly paycheck cheered me a good bit too. “Said he’d pay. He doesn’t cotton to the notion of people painting him as a lady-killer.”

  “He gave you another check?” Harry held out his hand and wiggled his fingers, looking for me to hand him cash money.

  I shook my head. “Hiram gave you five thousand dollars two days ago.”

  Harry rolled his eyes. “That’s spent.”

  “You want these crimes solved, I need help,” I pleaded as I sipped my coffee.

  Harry huffed. “Don’t go yelling at me about Veenie again. I told you we don’t have bail money. We’re tapped out.”

  “Can’t we hire her a decent lawyer?”

  Harry snorted. “Pub
lic defender will represent her.”

  “You mean Merry Lumpy?” I practically screeched the woman’s name. Merry’s first name was a real misnomer. She was anything but. Her surname was about right, though. She had a body like a melted Coke bottle and was married to Gerry Lumpy, also no catch. Merry was just past fifty, and she had short, home-dyed hair the color of marigolds. The county didn’t have much of a budget for legal defense, and they certainly got their money’s worth from Merry Lumpy. As a woman, Merry was right up Harry’s seedy alley.

  “Was that Merry you were talking to when I came into the office?” I asked, curious.

  Harry puffed up. “Merry is a fine woman, and as a public defender she works for free. I pay my taxes. Might as well get something back from the government for a change.” Harry avoided my gaze, busied himself arranging and rearranging the pile of paperwork on his desk.

  Oh boy. Merry hadn’t been sober since Richard Nixon got kicked out of the White House. And she was a lot like the Knobby Waters basketball team; hadn’t scored a court win in two decades. Veenie needed to be packing her bags. She’d sure enough be taking a trip up the river if Merry was masterminding her case. “Merry’s a big lush,” I said, “and she’s married.”

  Harry wrinkled his forehead. “So?”

  “So … drunks aren’t the most reliable people, and some people—I’m thinking of Merry’s husband Gerry here—seem to take marriage seriously.”

  “Why you have to be so harsh on all my friends?” Harry asked, looking a bit hurt.

  “You need a better class of friends,” I advised.

  Harry snorted. “Hey, it’s not my best friend who’s in the pokey for murder.”

  That got my dander up. “Veenie is not a murderer.”

  “Then she’s got nothing to worry about, does she?”

  I could tell by the tight look on Harry’s face and the way his little mustache danced around that he wasn’t about to give in and bail Veenie out, or hire a competent lawyer. I was pondering my next move when the office door creaked open.

  Hayley Peters, the young runaway artist Veenie and I had met out at Chickenlandia, stood in the doorway. She had both her hands stuck in the front pockets of her blue overalls. Her short black hair was slicked back, the white skunk stripes on each side shining like reflector strips. She eyed Harry. “Ma said you all had some work for me.”

  Harry rushed over and threw an arm around Hayley. “Meet your new sidekick,” he announced. He turned Hayley until she faced me.

  “You hired her?”

  “Intern. Ma Horton sent her over. Said she needed money for the road.”

  I eyed Hayley, who looked down at her shoes—purple high-top Converses—as if she expected them to jump into the conversation.

  “You ever do any professional sleuthing?” I asked Hayley.

  She nodded no, her eyes still on her rubber-tipped toes.

  Harry rushed to Hayley’s defense. “I hired you and Veenie, and neither of you had any experience in the justice field.”

  That was true, but what we lacked in experience we’d overcome through sheer nosiness and pigheaded rutting around. Nothing stopped Veenie, and I was pretty much the same, just a bit gentler in my technique. Hayley was awfully young. I felt like Harry had just sentenced me to a stint of babysitting. “She legal age?” I asked.

  Hayley surprised me by answering. “I’m eighteen,” she coughed up proudly. She looked me straight in the eye, daring me to bad-mouth her.

  I threw up my hands mentally. “This is a murder case. You could get shot at or worse,” I warned.

  Hayley shrugged. “Give me a gun. I know how to use it.”

  Oh boy. As if Veenie wasn’t bad enough, I’d now been sentenced to chasing down hillbilly hoodlums with Billy the Kid at my side. I eyed Harry. “She’s just a child. What do you expect me to do with her?”

  “Get to work,” Harry said. He slipped into his suit jacket and crammed his fedora on his head. “I’m headed to Pokey’s, meeting Merry for lunch. She’ll be done at Veenie’s bail hearing by then and we’ll know where we stand.”

  As Harry rushed past me and out the door, I felt I knew where I stood. I was pretty much knee-deep in river mud with the tide rising. I reckoned I needed to suck it up and do the best I could; Veenie, Harry, Ma and Pa, Hiram, dead Pam, and now Hayley were all counting on me to wench us out of this murderous mess.

  “You got any ideas?” I asked Hayley as I cradled the side of my face in my hand.

  Hayley slid her hands deep into her front pockets and rocked back and forth on her rubber-soled heels. “I’m hungry. You got anything to eat?” I heard her lean little stomach rumble.

  That wasn’t the answer I was hoping for, but I was feeling peckish too. “You like chicken wings?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Okay.” She shrugged.

  I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder and we headed out the door to my house. Hiram’s chicken wings were weighing heavily on my mind. If the man meant to seduce me with poultry parts, he was succeeding. My stomach was all his. We’d all have to wait a good while to find out about the rest of me.

  Of course there was that tiny little problem that Hiram might be a cold-blooded lady killer. The only way I was going to find out was to dive right into his personal life and start digging. I shot a quick prayer to the man upstairs asking that he let me hit pay dirt, and not another dead body.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “How you know about these things?” I asked Hayley. She was sitting at my kitchen table. I’d told her about Veenie and the bail money. She seemed to know all about district attorneys, bail, and criminal proceedings.

  “My mom.”

  “She a teacher?”

  “Lawyer. Works with poor and abused women.”

  I pondered that for a minute, recalling that Ma had told me that Hayley was an orphan. “I thought your mother was dead.”

  Hayley shrugged. “Don’t know where you got that idea. I mean, she’s old.” Hayley studied my face for a moment before continuing. “Not old-old like you and Mrs. Goens, but, you know, like, we don’t get along all that well. She’s pretty strict.”

  I asked Hayley if her mom knew where she was. If one of my kids had run away when they were teenagers I’d have been all over East Jesus with a shotgun searching for them. Kids Hayley’s age imagined they had superpowers. Young girls like Hayley weren’t well equipped to deal with the likes of snaggletoothed old wolves like Harry.

  Hayley didn’t answer me. Instead she grabbed another chicken wing.

  I scooted over to the refrigerator and came back with two cold cans of Mountain Dew.

  Hayley wrinkled her nose. “That stuff is poison. It’ll rot your teeth.”

  I popped the ring on my can and took a swig. “I’ll take my chances. What do you normally drink?”

  “Water. Bubbly. You got any Pellegrino?”

  “That stuff’s from Italy. I got what comes out of my tap. It comes from the White River. It doesn’t bubble much since they closed the plastics factory and stopped pouring acid in the drain ponds.”

  Hayley’s brown eyes grew bigger. I could tell she didn’t know how to handle me. I reckoned I ought to be gentle with her. She was as cute as a kitten, and probably just as naïve.

  Hayley got up and ran herself a glass of tap water. She held it up to the window and stared at it, trying to decide if it was clear enough to drink before gulping it down. She eyed me after taking a long gulp. “Harry seemed mad at you. Back at the office. You get along okay with him?”

  “I wouldn’t pay Harry too much mind. Most days his brain rattles around like a BB in a boxcar. If he had a decent thought, it’d likely die of loneliness.”

  “He always been like that?”

  “I dunno. He’s only been in Knobby Waters for a little more than a year. He’s from the city, up north, South Bend, like you.”

  “How’d he get way down here? No offense, but this town feels like the kind of place fun goes to die. Why on earth would a
nyone move here?” She stared out my kitchen window, her brown eyes sad. With the white stripes in her close-cropped hair she looked kind of like a baby skunk who’d lost her mama. That melted my old heart a bit.

  “Maiden aunt left him the old Rexall building.”

  “He married?”

  Oh Lord, I had enough problems without babysitting under-age jailbait. “No, and you better not be messing with him. He’s too old and crotchety for you. That man don’t give women anything but grief and VD.”

  “He’s kind of cute.” Hayley got a faraway look of admiration in her eyes.

  “So is a baby crocodile, but you don’t want to be kissing on him.”

  “Ewww!” Hayley made a face. “I’m not into that.”

  “What? Kissing crocodiles or older horndog men?”

  “Neither. Doesn’t Harry have any good qualities?”

  I shrugged. “He’s tough as a pine nut. Got some hustle in him.”

  “He got any kids?”

  “Not that I know of. Why you asking?”

  “Just curious. I like to study people, figure out what makes them tick.”

  I reckoned she had a right to be curious. She wasn’t born in Pawpaw County. How else was she going to learn about life and people if she didn’t poke around and ask a mess of questions?

  Hayley scraped back her chair and took both our plates to the sink. She ran water and a scrub brush over the dishes and stacked them neatly in the drainer. She brought a sponge over to the table and swiped up some gooey dribble that I’d let spill off the barbeque. She was a neat kid. Someone had taught her manners. She didn’t seem to want to talk about her folks or her situation. I made a mental note to snoop online later, see if I could find any record of her being an official runaway. Hayley seemed fine with her situation, but she also seemed to be hiding something.

  It was different working with her versus Veenie. Veenie had a ten-gallon mouth. Hayley chose her words carefully. It was like she only had a precious few words in her squawk box and she wasn’t about to waste a lot of them on a nosy old lady like me.