Chickenlandia Mystery Page 16

  I eyed the pen. “They know their names.”

  Harry threw up his hands. “Really?”

  I cawed, “Ginger! Ginger! Ginger!” and the red hen popped up in a burst of feathers and stuck her beak out the wire. She pecked “hello” to me.

  “See!” I cried, feeling triumphant and mighty proud of myself.

  Harry guffawed. He hunkered down on his haunches, loosened his tie, and yelled, “Fried chicken! Fried chicken! Fried chicken!” The Rhode Island Red did the same dance for Harry as she’d done for me. The rooster joined in.

  Harry stood up, the smirk on his face as wide as White River.

  I was still stumbling for words when Phus and his sisters crowded into the glass room. Phus placed his hands on his hips, sweeping back the white tails on his jacket. “Harry showed me your text, Mrs. Waskom. I’m sure there’s some mistake. I mean, we deal with a lot of fowl. Tens of thousands. I doubt there’s anything very special about these fowl.” He turned to face his sisters. They shrugged in unison.

  Jo—I knew it was her because of her security name tag—stepped up and eyed me, then the pen.

  Phus asked Jo if there was anything special about the two fowl that I thought were Ginger and Dewey. She strolled into the pen, made a clucking sound, and got down on one knee. She managed to catch the fowl by their legs and read their numbered bands. “Dunno,” she said as she rose and brushed the straw off her knees. “These are the experimental pens, so they must be here for genetic testing.”

  Hira whipped out a mini iPad from the front flap of her coveralls. She stroked the screen a few times and popped in some letters. “What’s the number on those bands?” she asked her sister Jo.

  Hira punched in the numbers. “Hmm,” she murmured. She glanced up at us.

  “Hmm?” Harry said. “What’s that mean?”

  “Those fowl are from China. The database says they are superior-grade free-range breeders. We’re supposed to test them in two days.”

  I puzzled that. “Test them?”

  Hira nodded. “Their genetics. See if there is anything about either of them that we can pull out and genetically engineer into a line of fatter, faster-breeding free rangers.”

  “China?” I asked. “You sure?” I angled my neck, hoping to get a look at the iPad screen. Hira must have been consulting a company database that tied the band numbers on the fowl to the source and purpose of the chickens in the lab pens.

  Phus slid closer to me, blocking my view. He answered my questions. “We trade a good piece with China. The Chinese are way ahead of the United States in terms of meat breeding and egg genetics. Not as much government red tape. None of that animal rights nonsense that people here throw in the way of American poultry farmers.”

  I thought about that. “Who ordered those chickens? Can your system tell us that?”

  Hira glanced at the screen again and made a finger swipe. “Daddy. He ordered them.”

  “Is that normal?” I asked. “I mean, I thought Hiram didn’t do much in the way of daily operations.”

  Phus took over again. “He doesn’t, but he owns the place, so he pretty much does what he likes. Likes to poke around. Do deals. He must have had his reasons for ordering those particular chickens.”

  Silence swooped over us.

  Harry broke the spell by taking me by the elbow. “Let’s get going,” he ordered as he nudged me toward the door. “The Kruspskys have a mess of work to get done, and you’re not helping here.” Ginger and Dewey kicked up a fuss and started to squawk as Harry led me out of the pen. The chickens threw themselves against the mesh wire with such gusto that feathers flew. Maybe it was my imagination, but I was pretty sure all that squawking was some sort of chicken distress signal. Like an SOS. None of this felt right to me.

  But by now I was surrounded by large Krupskys on three sides, while Harry, a very determined and ticked off little man, was pushing at my backside. No way out but forward.

  I was steered back to work.

  Walking around the barn, Phus droned on about this and that detail of the operations and security. I couldn’t help but wonder if Hiram had been in cahoots with Pam, maybe ordered her to steal the chickens from Ma and Peepaw. Both of them had wanted to drive Chickenlandia out of business. Forging an alliance would have been smart business. When it came to poultry parts, Hiram and Pam were both as ambitious as the devil. Hiram could have easily covered his tracks by logging Ginger and Dewey in as imports from China once Pam delivered them. It wasn’t like the fowl could squawk up and defend themselves. Now that Pam was dead, Hiram might have decided to show me that video of her in action in an effort to throw me off scent. He could tell whatever stories he wanted about Pam. She was over at Ready’s funeral parlor, literally cooling her heels. Not a single soul was alive to defend her.

  One thing was clear: I wasn’t going to pry any secrets out of the Krupskys. They seemed determined that everything was hunky-dory. Phus had taken over, and he was leading me around by the nose explaining the security features and what they saw as their weak areas in that regard. I turned my PI brain on full alert and started taking metal notes about where they needed more camera coverage. I was in a hurry to get done in the lab and scoot home, because the longer I lingered, the more time somebody had to come up with the one question I didn’t want to have to answer: how the heck did I get into the locked lab to begin with?

  Boy, oh boy, no way Harry would be pleased to hear the answer to that question. Luckily, he never thought to ask, and Phus didn’t seem at all fazed by the incident. I don’t think Phus had all that high an opinion of me and my professional skills to begin with. He strode around in his white suit briefing me and Harry, asking questions about different options for better camera coverage in the back warehouse section.

  I was relieved when the security walk-throughs were completed for the day. Not wanting to have to explain myself to Harry any further, or to Hiram, should he pop back into his office, I split with Harry at the executive offices. Left him sharing a smoke with Phus, chatting him up, all chummy-like. Harry was yammering at Phus, trying to get him to extend our snooping contract. Harry wasn’t much of an inspiration as a boss, but when it came to shaking pennies out of our clients, he was an ace.

  Veenie and Hayley were back at the main office waiting for me. I was itching to hear what they had discovered. We all piled into the Impala, eager to race home and compare notes. As I drove home, I updated the gang on my findings in the lab and my mounting suspicions about Hiram and Pam.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was past suppertime by the time we arrived home from Krupskys, but we were all too excited to settle down and cook. “We” meaning “me.” Veenie could fry bologna, burn toast, and nuke frozen foods, but that was about it. I’d meant to put a chicken in the Crock-Pot with some carrots and onions to slow stew that morning, but this case was swirling too fast. My brain felt like it was stuffed with fuzzy feathers. Sadly, we’d already sucked down all of Hiram’s gooey chicken wings. Other than stale cereal and the hard butt end of a loaf of German bologna, there wasn’t much in the house to munch on.

  Veenie rang up Pokey’s Tavern and ordered three cheesy mystery meat sandwiches and three large, greasy onion ring orders for delivery. She added a request for extra packets of ketchup because we never bought condiments. We collected sauces in those free little packets whenever we dined out. Living on social security and the few nickels Harry rolled our way, every little bit helped. Pokey and his mama Dolly slapped together the best gooey mystery meat subs in Indiana, maybe the entire Midwest. Veenie and I got all the mystery meat we wanted for free because we’d helped Pokey, who owned the tavern, uncover who had been stealing from his bar in a previous case.

  While we were waiting for our free sandwich order to arrive, little Hayley unloaded the pockets of her coveralls. She spilled out several memory sticks which were stacked with data that she’d secretly sucked off Hiram’s, Phus’s, and Rhea Dawn’s computer stations. Also, she unloaded a wh
ole pack of felt pens, the expensive kind with the gel ink. She must have liberated those from Krupsky’s executive offices along the way. I decided to look the other way. I mean, it was not like I’d never helped myself to the supply closet at work in the last five decades. Like I said, every little bit helps.

  Hayley went to work trying to sort and view her data. She hooked her data stick into my old home laptop and printed out some pages that looked to be promising. “There’s a whole file here marked ‘China,’” she chirped.

  Veenie got excited. “Make the computer spit that out. Might be there’s something in there about Dewey and Ginger.”

  My printer, which was old enough to have been used by Gutenberg, clacked out a long roll of pages. Veenie snatched the long tongue of pages as it rolled onto the kitchen floor. She put her nose to the papers, but her macular degeneration made it hard for her to see printed words and my old printer spat out pixilated letters, making it even rougher on her aging eyes. Frustrated, Veenie slid a roll of pages across the table for Hayley and me to inspect.

  “My part isn’t interesting,” I declared after a bit. “It says here that Hiram and company make a big wad selling chicken feet to the Chinese.”

  Hayley looked up and blinked through her black-framed glasses. She fiddled with the little stud in her nose. “We studied that in school. The Chinese eat chicken feet. They don’t waste anything. They roast them, put them on sticks. The street vendors sell them.”

  Veenie looked shocked. “You mean like corn dogs?”

  Hayley didn’t look like she was familiar with the Hoosier delicacy known as a corn dog. Probably didn’t eat corn dogs all that much up north in the big city. “That’s a deep-fried, corn-battered hot dog on a stick,” I clarified.

  “Gross.” She wrinkled her nose. “Yuck even.”

  Veenie squeezed in next to me at the kitchen table. She squinted to see the reports on chicken feet sales. Krupsky had grossed half a million in sales last year on that one product alone. Pretty impressive.

  Veenie gave up trying to read and shook her head. The way her face was screwed up, I could tell she was fixing to make a long speech in which I imagined the Chinese might not fare well. “He exports chicken feet to China?” She sucked in a deep breath or two. “Boy, oh boy, can you beat that? That man sells every part of the chicken but the cluck. No wonder he can afford that fancy limo. I tell you, if the Chinese ever invade, we’ll get eaten alive.” Veenie eyed me for confirmation, but I decided not to get involved.

  Undeterred, Veenie continued. “Look at Junior and Eddie, our grown offspring. You honestly think they’d give up their extra-crispy KFC buckets with two sides and a heap of biscuits and gravy, great all-American food like that, for a pair of chicken feet on a stick? Heck no.”

  She took a swig from a bottle of Big Red and stroked her throat slowly. “I wonder if they trim the chicken’s toenails first. Bet they scratch a good bit on the way down. Those Chinese will eat anything. Used to Americans would eat anything, fried squirrel and Crock-Pot possum, but we’ve gone soft in the belly, and the noggin’. If it don’t come express out a drive-through window in ten seconds or less, we got no idea how to chase it down and plop it into a pot. It’s got so bad our national bird ought to be the Chicken McNugget. That’s the problem with them communist countries. They enjoy suffering. I’m not eating chicken feet. You want chicken toenails stuck between your teeth, you go ahead …”

  Hayley raised one hand in the air.

  “What?” asked Veenie. “You find something?”

  “Don’t you think you’re being racist?”

  “Heck no.” Veenie guzzled her Big Red, then defended herself. “I’m telling God’s truth. I’m telling you this country has gone to hell in an Easter basket. I’m saying we got the problem, not the Chinese.”

  Oh boy. I was trying to focus on reading, not wanting to get pulled into some cockeyed political debate. Hayley would never win with Veenie. Veenieville had its own constitution, and a very peculiar set of laws. Veenie was winding up for another speech on the Chinese when I came across something interesting: a string of recent emails under Rhea Dawn’s email signature. I handed them over to Hayley. “Read these,” I instructed. “Tell me what you think.”

  Veenie crowded in under Hayley’s armpit as she took the papers from me. Hayley was silent as she scanned the papers. “Who’s Willy Wetzel?” she asked, looking perplexed.

  “He’s Hiram’s muscle. Hiram said he’s Rhea Dawn’s brother,” Veenie squawked. “Why you asking?”

  Hayley bit her lip. “These emails are all about Hiram telling an HR screening firm not to do a complete background check on Willy. He’s green-lighting Willy’s hire without any further checks.”

  “Doesn’t that seem odd to you?” I asked Hayley.

  Veenie jumped in and answered. ”He’s Rhea Dawn’s brother. Family. I reckon she would have told Hiram if he was trouble of any kind. Probably just wanted to save a buck or two. Those background checks are expensive, you know.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but keep reading. Flip the page,” I instructed Hayley.

  Hayley adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose and continued. “Oh!” she said as completed reading. “Oh.”

  Veenie went wild with excitement. She jumped up, trying to see the faded print on the papers. “Read it to me!” she begged. She was hanging off Haley’s forearm like a little white-haired monkey dressed in a fluorescent poncho.

  “Well,” began Haley, stopping to shake Veenie off a little, “the HR firm wrote back that they were concerned because they’d brought up a file in Kentucky that indicated that Willy had been arrested and sentenced on felony charges. That’s when Rhea Dawn told them Hiram said to stop processing the file on Willy.”

  Veenie shrugged. “Big whoopee! I been arrested on felony charges.” She stuck her ankle out to showcase the blinking monitor. “Could be Willy was framed, like me!”

  “But,” I interjected, “Willy was convicted, and it looks like he did time.”

  “What for?” Veenie was quiet, all ears now.

  Hayley answered, “Burglary, domestic abuse, and murder. He killed his girlfriend.”

  “How?” Veenie squeaked.

  Hayley bit her bottom lip. “Bludgeoned her on the back of the head.”

  “Oh boy!” cried Veenie. “That sounds right familiar.”

  Hayley scraped back her chair and hopped over to the kitchen sink to draw a glass of water. She hesitated, eyeing the water, still suspicious of our tap, but then drank it down in one long gulp. I reckoned she was making peace with living like a poor person, sucking up tap water through a sink.

  Nobody had to say what we were all thinking. It chilled us to the bone, especially me. I mean, Willy had been swinging Veenie around by the nape of her neck like an unwanted kitten not twenty-four hours prior. Hiram knew what Willy was capable of, but had hired him anyway. In fact, it seemed likely that Hiram had hired Willy because of his special skill set. A skill set that Hiram clearly didn’t want stated on any permanent record.

  The kitchen door rattled, and we all jumped.

  “Willy?” Veenie croaked as we all turned slowly toward the kitchen door.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  But it wasn’t Willy, or Hiram either, thankfully.

  We looked up to see Tater peering in the door, his nose mushed to the glass. He was wearing his yellow DeKalb corn hat. His white hair bristled out above his ears. He clutched a white paper delivery bag from Pokey’s in his right hand, and he was waving it in the air. Pokey didn’t have a delivery guy. He sent over whoever happened to be done drinking and on his or her way home. With Gertie gone, I imagined Tater had taken to having supper, maybe all his meals, at the tavern. I waved Tater into the house.

  Tater ambled in and set the bag on the kitchen table. No one expected a tip when they delivered from Pokey’s. That made the deal extra sweet for us budget-minded oldsters. Millennials always had both hands out for a huge tip. That whole gosh-dar
n generation was annoying like that.

  Tater eyed me. “Harry said you found the wife?”

  I speared a fat onion ring on my pointy finger and popped it into my mouth before answering. Fried rings cooled off fast. I wanted a few before the crust sogged out on me. “We reckon she’s over at her sister’s in Tunnelton. Anyway, she’s alive and fine. We talked to her on the phone.”

  “She mad at me?” Tater asked, his eyes on the pile of onion rings. “Why she mad at me?”

  Veenie and I stared at each other. “We thought you might know.”

  He shrugged. “Honest to God, I got no notion.”

  Tater kept eyeing the pile of onion rings that Veenie had spilled out on a napkin on the table and squirted with a heap of ketchup. “Help yourself,” I encouraged.

  And he did.

  Veenie stopped attacking her mystery meat sandwich and wiped a cheesy glob from her lips. “Festival starts tomorrow. Gertie said she’d be there cooking. You ought to go talk to her.”

  “How mad is she?” Tater asked as he slurped down an onion ring, then licked the ketchup from his lips. “Stomping mad?”

  Veenie shrugged. “Normal mad, I’d say. She said you were eating up all her inventory.”

  “I reckon I was.”

  “Don’t blame you one bit,” Veenie said. “You just go out to that festival and tell her you’re sorry. She’ll forgive you. She’d been under a lot of pressure. It ain’t easy being the queen, you know.”

  That suggestion seemed to settle with Tater. “Reckon I could. I mean, I was fixing to go to the festival anyway.” He sniffled, then turned and shuffled toward the back door. Stopping before he stepped out, he turned to us and doffed his seed cap. “Thanks a heap,” he said.

  We shot him a wave, then went back to eagerly devouring what was left of our dinner.

  Finished with my dinner, I engaged my brain and began making a list of questions we needed answered. I gabbed ideas out loud. “We need to know what’s going on with Cluckytown.”