Chickenlandia Mystery Page 13

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” I protested. “I’m going to clean up before heading over to Hiram’s. You’re invited, Veenie. He says he has some new info for us on the case. About Pam. You coming?” I was thinking if Hiram got too frisky, Veenie might come in handy. Also, if I could distract Hiram a bit, then maybe Veenie could search his place for clues. She was pretty good at tossing places, and not at all reluctant when it came to prying open locked drawers.

  “I reckon I could tag along,” said Veenie. “But I ain’t getting involved in any threesomes.”

  Dickie looked alarmed

  Hayley was on my iPad searching records online, desperately trying to ignore us oldsters. Imagine she was trying to cipher how she ended up in the middle of a sex chat at the old folk’s home. I reckoned we might frighten her enough to make her hotfoot it back home to her mama.

  Hayley asked what she should do while we were over to Hiram’s place.

  I told her we probably wouldn’t be home until late, and that she was welcome to stay with us. I pointed down the hall to the laundry room. “There’s an old army cot. Not terribly comfortable, but if you toss a few quilts on it the mattress softens. You ought to be able to get some shut-eye. There’s a tiny TV in there too, but it doesn’t get cable, just the local channels.”

  After thinking for a minute, I turned to Hayley and added, “If a guy shaped like a beach ball wearing John Lennon sunglasses and tighty-whities bounces up the basement stairs and starts pawing through the refrigerator, pay him no mind. It’s Veenie’s son, Fergie Junior. He’s a musician. Works nights. He’s harmless as a kitten, but he eats a lot, and he might yak your ear off.”

  I was still yakking instructions at Hayley when Fergus Senior rolled up early in Hiram’s pickup limo and sat out on the sidewalk, pounding the crowing rooster horn. I stuck my head out the screen door and yelled at him to quiet down. I waved at him with both hands, indicating we’d be out shortly.

  He slammed the horn and blasted a series of cock-a-doodle-doos by way of a response.

  I slammed the door tightly so I’d not have to listen to any more crowing and ambled off to my back bedroom to wash my face, fluff up my hair, and slide into some clean clothes. I decided on a pair of seamed black stretch pants and an ironed shirt with a rose print. I wasn’t thinking about Hiram so much as I was thinking about his chicken wings. I was pretty sure we had room in the freezer for a couple more cases. If little Hayley ate nearly as much as Fergie Junior, we’d be needing the extra groceries, and then some.

  When I returned to the living room, Veenie was smooching Dickie goodbye. Dickie had promised he’d crawl under the Impala and eye the muffler for us. He already had a muffler on order from the junkyard in Mitchell, but it’d take a few days for the part to arrive.

  Hayley was sprawled out on the couch, using her thumbs to play some game on her cell phone. I’d cleaned up, applied Chapstick, and grabbed my messenger bag. Veenie and I scrambled out of the house and headed for the extended cab of the white limo as Dickie stood on the porch waving us goodbye.

  As we strutted down the sidewalk to our fancy ride, Veenie popped up and pinched my cheeks so hard it brought tears to my eyes.

  “Why’d you do that?” I bellyached.

  “You needed a spot of color in your cheeks. Men Hiram’s age like a little reassurance they’re not dating the dead.”

  “Whatever,” I grumbled. And we were off for a chauffeured ride across the mudflats to Norman.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The rumors about Hiram’s fancy stretch pickup limo were true. It was dark and cool inside, a real he-man cave on wheels. Banked red leather seats and a bar lit up with neon squiggles made it the fanciest extended cab I’d ever laid eyes on.

  Veenie oohed and aahed as she scrambled in and snuggled her butt down against the leather. “This here is one fancy ride,” she squealed. “It’s like Liberace got himself an extended cab!”

  As Fergus gunned the engine and the limo hopped off the sidewalk onto the street, Veenie and I were tossed around like eggs in a basket. I held onto my padded door handle and let the banked leather seats cradle my old bones like a glove.

  A disco floor flashed on as Fergus Senior pumped the engine and laid rubber. Veenie squealed. Her little feet tapped the lit floor, which was ablaze with disco lights. “Will you look at that! This is the bomb diggity! Hey, I bet there’s free booze!” she cried as she scooted over and popped open the door on a black mini fridge on her side of the leather banquette. She rifled inside the icebox until her pudgy hand had a grip on what she was after. “You want a cold Bud?” She pulled a sweaty can of beer out and waved it my way.

  I declined because I wanted to keep my wits sharp, my senses on red PI alert. Somewhere out there in Pawpaw County a murderer was slipping around busting old lady’s heads like they were musk melons. And that someone just might be my date. I’d paid for a new do, and washed my hair with beauty-parlor bought coconut shampoo. I aimed to keep my head square on my shoulders, not rolling down the knobs like some runaway cantaloupe.

  Veenie popped the top on her sweaty can. “Ahh! Can’t beat this,” she said as she uttered a satisfied smacking sound with her lips, put her feet up, and chugged a couple of swigs of beer. The blue lights on her ankle monitor shined like cat eyes in the cave-like interior of the limo. “And lookie there!” She pointed to a tiny jukebox attached to the wall next to the bar. She popped up and crawled over to inspect it.

  “What are you looking at?”

  Veenie fingered the music box before answering. “This thing is loaded. Good old stuff like Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash. And it looks to be free. No place to slide in your quarters. Boy, oh Boy! This is one class ride.”

  Veenie fiddled with some buttons and the '70s song “Disco Duck” blasted from the speakers. She stepped onto the lighted dance floor. Each time her foot touched the floor it lit up in a new fluorescent color. Veenie was prancing and jumping, her elbows stuck out like wings, practicing her chicken dance routine, as we rolled out of Knobby Waters toward Hiram’s place in Norman. The disco lights went crazy, popping on and off, swirling around Veenie’s feet as she bounced around.

  I watched Veenie for a minute or two until she collapsed on the banked leather seats next to me. She eyed me, gulping to catch her breath. “You’re not showing any cleavage,” she noted as she nodded toward my blouse.

  “Nothing much to show. Never was.”

  “You ought to have borrowed one of them fancy Hollywood push-up bras from old Sassy.”

  I tucked my chin down and stared at my nonexistent chest. “Not much to push around.”

  “Heck, Hiram’s probably got cataracts. Probably can’t see up close. You gotta take every advantage, RJ. That’s what dating is all about.”

  Veenie leaned back in the contoured seats and stared out the window at the countryside as it rolled by. She took a hard swallow on her beer, then another. “You know, I’m starting to feel sorry for Cheaty Pants.”

  “Why? Thought you hated her.”

  “Nah. She was okay. You know how I can get.” She swallowed more beer. “Might be I was a little hard on her. God don’t like it when the living trash-mouth the dead. Poor thing. She’s gonna be a runner-up for all eternity. Never gonna wear that cook-off crown.” Veenie rested her sweaty beer in a cupholder. She stared at me, looking kind of sad. She was uncharacteristically silent for a piece.

  “Well, we’re going to find her killer. She’d appreciate that.”

  That brightened Veenie.

  We were hopping across potholes when an intercom blurted on in the extended cab. It was Hiram. He must have had the cab wired into his home phone system. He wanted to know how Veenie and I liked our meat. Veenie said she wanted hers still mooing, while I went the other direction.

  “You got it, ladies,” he promised as he promptly clicked off.

  Turns out that question wasn’t rhetorical. When we arrived at Hiram’s mansion, he was out back on a honking huge red brick patio,
manning a grill as big and shiny as a Buick. He was wielding a pair of giant meat forks. The air was thick with the sweet smell of steak and freshly cut wet grass. Hiram was wearing a cook-out apron splattered with steak sauce and a pair of neatly ironed and creased Levi’s. He’d traded in his baby-blue leisure suit for more relaxed attire: a red cowboy shirt, the expensive kind with white pearl buttons and fancy cacti stitched across the yoke. His sleeves were rolled up. His silver hair was slicked back. Clouds of Old Spice and mosquito repellant hung in the air.

  The patio featured more furniture than most folks could either afford or fit in their homes. A round glass table was laid out with ironed linens and giant bouquets of exotic flowers—Birds of Paradise and whatnot. Must have been a couple hundred dollars-worth of store-bought flowers. Hiram speared some steaks and flipped them on the grill with one hand while motioning for us to have a seat at the patio table with the other.

  Veenie leaned over and whispered in my ear as we took our seats at the table, “Boy, oh boy, that old coot has it bad for you. That’s some expensive meat, and lookie there at them flowers. Store bought. You wearing good underwear? I hope you’re wearing good underwear.”

  Hiram loped over with a platter of steaks as Veenie and I scooted our chairs up to the table and grabbed some napkins. The platter held so many thick, sizzling slices of meat it looked like he’d cooked up half a cow. After serving the steaks, Hiram brought over a bowl of sweet corn, hot and buttered, and a plate of browned biscuits with a bowl of steaming gravy he’d been stirring at the grill. He stripped off his cooking apron and hung it neatly over a nearby chair before motioning for a fellow, who’d come from inside the house and was standing over at the edge of the patio, to take over at the grill while he joined us at the table for dinner.

  I didn’t recognize the guy who manned the grill. That was odd because I knew every living soul, and most of the dead ones too, in Pawpaw County. The grill guy must have been a recent import. He was a short, barrel-chested, bald guy, thick in middle, like a ham. He was wearing dark shades, blue jeans, and a black hoodie with black sneakers. A black Hitler mustache sat on his upper lip like a stiff little toothbrush. He had a black earpiece in one ear with a wire that snaked down into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie. He could have been listening to music on his phone, or hooked up to some secret, two-way radio thingee. Hard to tell. I squinted in an effort to get a better look at him in the dusky evening.

  Hiram caught me studying the grill guy and answered my silent questions. “That’s Willy. Willy Wetzel. Rhea Dawn’s brother. He’s my get-it-done-guy. Takes care of odds and ends for me. Cleans up my messes.”

  Veenie’s little blue eyes lit up. “He your muscle?”

  “Reckon so. Does some landscaping, Helps me tote heavy things. Gets rid of anybody or anything that might be annoying me.”

  Veenie was intrigued now. “Looks like he could tote a dead body … or two.”

  “Expect he could,” huffed Hiram as he sawed at the steak. He was being very careful with the knife, cutting the meat cleanly and neatly, not getting any juice on his fancy cowboy shirt. “You got anyone in particular in mind?”

  I kicked Veenie under the table, reminding her that Hiram was a client, and that maybe she didn’t need to blurt out her personal hit list to him.

  Ignoring me, she bent her head down, checked her dentures, and began devouring her steak.

  Between mouthwatering bites, I complimented Hiram on his grilling skills. A lot of the men I knew cooked their meat until it was as hard as moccasin soles, but Hiram’s steaks were as buttery and juicy as meat peaches. The sauce on the steak was every bit as good as what he routinely slathered on his store wings.

  “I don’t cook much, but I do enjoy a great piece of grilled meat. Love the way an open fire brings out the juices.” He poured himself a beer into a tall glass and chugged a few swigs to wash down the last of his steak.

  Veenie picked up her beer, made a guzzling sound, then cleared her throat. “This is one mighty fine piece of cow. Grass fed, I bet.”

  Hiram wolfed down a bite, then puckered and blotted his lips. “Kobe steak, from Japan. That fancy little filet you’re attacking cost two hundred bucks.” He sat back and planted his fork and knife butt end down on the table with a satisfied clink. He smiled widely, clearly proud that he could afford to serve his lady guests grade A meat.

  Veenie paused, her fork midair. She squinted through her Coke bottle glasses at the last bite of her steak. “Well,” she said, “I reckon it might be worth that.”

  My meal done, I patted my lips with a cloth napkin and reminded Hiram that he’d said on the phone that he had something to tell us about the case, about Pam.

  “Oh, sure. If you ladies are done with the eating we can go on over to the fire, enjoy the night a bit.”

  The sun had set now. Willy had left his post at the grill. He was busying himself with chucking wood and stoking the fire in a giant outdoor brick fireplace that was fancy enough to spit roast a deer.

  Veenie, like me, had finished her meal. She was fidgeting in her seat. She’d had two steaks, three ears of corn, and just as many hot buttered biscuits soaked in gravy. Add to that the two beers she had in the limo and the two she’d sucked down during dinner, and I could see why she was squirming like a wiggle worm. I wasn’t surprised when she asked Hiram about the little girl’s room.

  “Inside, through the kitchen, next to the laundry. Can’t miss it.”

  Veenie peeled out toward the patio door, leaving Hiram and me to resituate ourselves on the flowered couch by the fire. Hiram was wearing his fancy white cowboy boots with high heels. He clicked a good bit as he scooted across the brick patio, the sound of his heels competing with a chorus of katydids.

  I took a seat on the couch close to the flames and snuggled into a nest of marshmallow pillows as Hiram grabbed an iPad off a table nearby. He scooted onto the couch next to me. I would have left a bit more room between us, but he seemed to have other ideas.

  He leaned in close and whispered, “I got something special to show you.”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to see anything too “special,” and I said so.

  “There you go again,” he said with a chuckle, “getting all sassy. Relax. It’s just a video.” He flicked on the iPad. Once he had it up and running, he flipped the screen toward me. “You’re going to find this real interesting,” he promised.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hiram was right. A video unrolled on the screen. It was dark and shadowy, like one of those military night-vision things on TV. It was outdoors. A lumpy gray figure slid around in the dark brush.

  I squinted and lowered my trifocals, trying to cipher the scene. I recognized things as the video came into focus. A plump chicken was running in circles, then a scrawny rooster came into the picture and began running around the chicken. Then came a short figure with what looked to be a big sack draped over its arm. The shadowy figure wore a tall hat shaped like the Eiffel Tower. No wait, it wasn’t a hat. It was a tall stack of hair. The figure had big paws, like it was wearing oven mitts. It commenced chasing the chicken and rooster. The figure finally caught the fowl and stuck them into the bag before slinking away through a tall, dark stand of trees.

  My mouth fell open wide enough to catch the moon. “Where in the name of God Almighty did you get that footage?”

  Hiram smiled, his dentures flickering like Chicklets in the firelight. He clicked off the video. “Good stuff, eh? Got it from Jakie Starr.”

  “Jakie who owns the maple tree farm? Next to Chickenlandia? Up on the knobs?”

  “One and the same. Me and him served in Korea together. Anyway, I’ve been talking to him some about maybe buying his land. If Ma and Peepaw sell to me I’d want to expand, fast. Since Jakie’s wife passed he’s been thinking of retiring, moving out to Leisure Hills. I was talking to him about the Hortons and their missing little prize chickens. He put two and two together when he saw this footage on one of his wildlife cams. He ke
eps cams rolling because of all the trouble he’s had with the deer midnight-snacking on his maple saplings.”

  “That’s Pam Perkins,” I whispered. I touched the screen where Pam’s shadowy outline was frozen. I couldn’t make out her face, her exact features, but there was no mistaking that tower of hair. “And she’s chicken-napping Dewey and Ginger?” I stared up at Hiram.

  Hiram nodded. “Pretty much, I think so.”

  “But why would she do that?”

  “I think it’s like Veenie said. Pam resented Ma and Peepaw for stealing away so much of her egg business. She was being mean and spiteful. Wanted to upset them. Ruin the mood of the festival. You said she was petty, right?”

  “Petty, and then some. She’s been that way her whole life. Folks say her daddy was like that too. Real spiteful people.”

  Hiram leaned back on the couch, his hands locked behind his head. The firelight flickered across his silver lamb-chop sideburns. He kicked out his white boots. “Well, there you have it. Mystery solved. I hope this proves to you that I didn’t hurt Ma and Peepaw.”

  I eyed him, not sure what to say.

  He leaned in for a kiss.

  I leaned back.

  “What?” he cried. “I showed you it wasn’t me. And you know darn well that I’m sweet on you.”

  “I’m still thinking on this,” I said. “I haven’t thought about anything like … well, like romance and all since Charlie, my husband, died.”

  “That was twenty years ago!” Hiram bellyached.

  “The heart takes its own sweet time,” I threw back at him.

  Hiram leaned back on the couch and sighed. He studied the sky, which was lit with stars. A sliver of a moon was visible. Stars sprayed the black night with a twinkling glow. It was all kinds of romantic. The stretch limo ride. The two-hundred-dollar steak dinner. Enough store-bought flowers to host a funeral. The smell of Old Spice and mosquito repellant wasn’t all that romantic, but women my age were used to looking the other way when it came to nitpicky details like that. By the time you hit sixty, you realize nothing is perfect. Life is covered with pimples. Best you can do is slather on some Clearasil, keep on inching along.