Chickenlandia Mystery Read online

  Once we were inside, everybody spilled across the living room, happy as a sack of wet puppies to be in out of the rain. Hiram claimed a seat on the couch by the TV. Veenie plopped down in her recliner and popped up the footrest. Fergus Senior removed his cap and stuck it, folded double, into a back pocket. He chose to stay standing at attention over by the front door. I excused myself to scoot into the kitchen and put on water for coffee.

  When I came back out with the coffee on a tray, everybody was yakking. Veenie had brought out her handmade costume for the Chickenlandia chicken dance competition. She hadn’t put it on, but had brought it out to show it off to Hiram and Fergus Senior. It involved a mess of feathers and red sequins, a plunging neckline, feathered red knickers. and a pair of white leotards with yellow chicken feet house slippers attached. She and Dickie Freeman had been runners up in the chicken dance competition last year.

  This year she’d pulled out all the stops by inviting Twinkles Tatlock, the youngest and gayest Tatlock boy, to help with costume redesign. Together, they had made Veenie’s costume more risqué. They’d also spiced up the choreography by adding more twerks, twirls, and twitches.

  I’d seen Veenie and Dickie rehearing their chicken dance together and had been pretty much knocked speechless. It was like watching some hillbilly version of Dancing with the Stars. It’d take some fancy footwork to beat those two.

  Fergus limped across the room to get a better look at Veenie’s chicken dance costume. His mustache twitched and his black-and-white bushy eyebrows drooped over his disapproving eyes. “You can’t be wearing that out in public,” he snorted. “It ain’t decent.”

  “You ain’t the boss of me,” Veenie retorted.

  Fergus grunted. “You dressing all floozy like that for that little runt, Dickie Freeman?”

  “That’s none of your beeswax.”

  “I reckon it is my beeswax.” Fergus Senior pushed out his chest. “I reckon you could say I’m particular about who my wife dates.”

  “Ex-wife.” Veenie’s face wrinkled up into a mean wad. “You and me got nothing going on. Also, you owe me about forty years of child support.”

  “Why you got to bring that up again?” Fergus Senior whined. “You know full well I can’t work a whole normal week because of my disability.”

  “Stupidity ain’t a medical disability. Lots of stupid people work. Ain’t you ever shopped at a Walmart?”

  “I meant my leg.” He pointed to his gimpy right leg.

  “You shot yourself.”

  “By accident.”

  Fergus Senior’s “disability” had been a heated subject of debate for a few decades. Truth was he had been drunk one night, up on the knobs, with some shiftless friends. They were taking turns shooting rats off the rusted carcasses of old cars that had been shoved over the hillside into the old dump. This was before there were environmental disposal laws. Back then, if you had anything large you wanted to get rid of, like a refrigerator, you loaded it up in the back of your pickup and climbed the knobs. When you reached the tip-top of the knobs, you backed up to the sheer drop, flipped the gate down on your pickup, and pushed off whatever garbage you had.

  Fergus Senior was already on probation for a pair of drunk and disorderly convictions when Sheriff Gibson rolled up the knobs, saw him and his gang shooting off firearms, and moved in to make an arrest.

  Being intoxicated and not much of an Einstein even when he wasn’t liquored up, Fergus crammed his loaded pistol into his pants. When Fergus hitched up his pants in a misguided effort to make the point that he was unarmed, the pistol went off and shot a hole clean through his thigh.

  “You know full well,” whined Fergus as he ran both his hands along his bad thigh, “that this here leg was injured in battle.”

  Veenie slapped the heel of her hand to her forehead. “Oh, I plumb forgot. Which battle was that, again? Oh, wait, now I remember: The Battle of the Nitwits.”

  I was about to intervene between Veenie and Fergus when Hiram cleared his throat a few times. He waved his cowboy hat around the room as if clearing the air.

  Fergus shot Hiram a look, grumbled, then limped back to stand at attention by the front door. He didn’t look happy. He pulled some white earbuds out of the pocket of his Levi jacket, plugged them into his cell phone, and stuck the buds into his ears. He looked up at the tin ceiling like he was inspecting it for cracks.

  Hiram said he wanted me and Veenie to come over to his chicken farm as soon as we could.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Got trouble,” he said. “Think we need more security. Thought you gals might help out. I saw that video of Veenie taking down bossy ol’ Pam Perkins. I reckon you two could shake the spit out of a copperhead if you had a mind to.”

  A smile as wide as Hiram’s white limo stretched across Veenie’s lips. “Pam pitched a big ol’ hissy fit. Somebody had to knock her off her high horse. What kind of trouble you got?” she asked Hiram. Veenie wasn’t afraid of much of anything. I could tell by the way her eyes shined through her Coke bottle glasses that she was up for another tussle.

  I wasn’t quite so eager myself.

  Hiram motioned for me to put the coffee tray down and come sit next to him. He smiled big and patted the sofa a couple of times.

  I sat down by him, careful to keep a few inches between us. Didn’t want the old coot getting fancy ideas about my being single and why he’d hired me.

  Hiram hitched up on the sofa and slid my way until our thighs were touching. “You’re one tall drink of sparkly water, ain’t you?” he said, his voice kind of low and grumbly.

  Uh-oh. It’d been awhile, but that sounded like a definite come-on to me.

  Veenie chimed in. “She’s single too. And a mighty good cook.”

  Hiram took my hand. Some long-forgotten, rusted-up part of me started burning. He looked me dead in the eye, like a man who was long used to getting his way. “My wife, Marjorie, bless her soul, was a right tall gal. I got a thing, you might say, for long, lean women.”

  I yanked a memory of Marjorie Krupsky out from some moldy basement drawer in my brain. She had been tall. From a distance she’d always looked to me like a telephone pole with a mop of red hair that had somehow managed to learn how to walk. She was a hard worker though. Hiram owed much of his success to her solid business sense and tightfisted ways if the lip-flappers around town had the story right.

  Veenie was into the conversation now. She’d been trying to get me mated up forever. No way she was letting this opportunity slip through her chubby fingers. “I bet you like a lot of spit and sass in your ladies, don’t you? RJ is all spit and sass. She’s kinda quiet at first, but you give her much trouble and she’ll just kick your teeth in.”

  Hiram’s blue eyes sparkled. “I do enjoy a challenge.”

  I scooched a little further away from Hiram on the sofa, grabbed my PI notebook, and started firing questions. “You said you needed more security. Let’s start with that.”

  Hiram fiddled with the brim of his hat, which lay in his lap. “Okeydokey. Well, this ain’t common knowledge, and I don’t want it to be, but lately things have been disappearing from the egg farm, our main operation over in Norman.”

  “What’s missing?”

  “Nuisance stuff, mostly. Pallets of feed vanishing. Antibiotics—we give those to the hens—came up short at the quarterly inventory.”

  “This ever happen before?”

  “Nope. And I aim to keep it from happening again. That’s the real reason I hired you gals. It’s just little things missing now. But once you get thieves working a place, things can escalate fast, and I got a bad feeling about this. Real bad.”

  Veenie leaned forward in her recliner, eager to hear more. “You got cameras? Electronic eyes? They see anything?”

  “We got a few cameras scattered here and there, but we’re behind the times. Jay Bob Burris, he’s been working security for us, reliable kid, don’t drink, don’t do wacky weed. Nice boy. He runs around the place
on a golf cart, but it’s a big operation and his eyes can’t see into every nook and cranny. He’s real upset about all the thieving.”

  Veenie sat up in her chair. “Jay Bob? He’s the reigning chicken dance king.”

  Jay Bob was a natural born hoofer. He and his fiancé, Lissa Hounshel, from the Vallonia Hounshels, could cut a rug better than Fred and Ginger. Veenie and Dickie were hoping to beat the youngsters this year by pouring on some fancy new footwork.

  I thought about this for a moment. It seemed to me that bad stuff was happening to most everybody who had a starring role in the Chickenlandia Festival. I doubted all of this was a coincidence, and I said so.

  Hiram fiddled with his rooster bolo tie. “Been thinking the same. Don’t rightly know how all this is connected, but I reckon you gals can come over, poke around, connect the dots. Harry says you two can help me decide on a new security system. Get us updated with all that fancy electronic eye and computer stuff.”

  I was beginning to think maybe Hiram was on the up-and-up, not just trying to stop us from helping Ma and Peepaw or itching to park his fancy white boots under my bed.

  “You want us to come on over tomorrow?”

  Hiram stood up and buttoned the jacket on his baby-blue leisure suit jacket. “I’d sure like that,” he said. “We’ll bring you in as new hires. Suit you up so you can snoop in secret.” He mashed his hat onto his head. “How’s six sound? First shift starts then.”

  That was early for me. Harry didn’t make us punch in until eight, and it’d take almost half an hour, maybe longer with the river being out, to sail over to Norman.

  “No problem,” Veenie promised as everybody marched toward the door. She was so wound up with the excitement of being a double agent that I could see sparks flying off her Kewpie doll topknot. I wondered how long it would take her to shake off the secret agent excitement and realize that she’d just volunteered to babysit a barnyard of cranky hens.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning, the river was quickly slithering back into its banks. Veenie and I filled up the Impala at the Go Go Gas. While Veenie scoured the Go Go for discounted breakfast snacks, I crawled under the Impala to check if we still had a muffler. Satisfied the car remained street worthy and that we’d not lost any vital parts fording water, I hopped in. As soon as Veenie came back, her arms loaded with snacks, I stomped the pedal and we zoomed off toward Krupsky’s chicken farm in Norman.

  I wiped the sleep out of my eyes on the cuff of my windbreaker and munched on some local deer jerky that Veenie had gotten for me in the Go Go. I drove one-handed around the potholes as I clamped down on the jerky and tugged with my back teeth. I chewed carefully so as not to crack any of my expensive porcelain crowns. Didn’t want to swallow any high-priced dental work. I was extra careful because the client in our last case had been a local dentist, and right at the moment the Knobby Waters Business Bureau was busy recruiting his replacement.

  Veenie was wide awake, fiddling with the eight-track tape deck which wasn’t working that morning, and chattering like a hen who’d scratched up a nest of fat grubs. “Hiram ain’t so bad. Bit of a runt. Not enough gravy in his taters when he was young. Has his hair. Good eyesight. And them faded silver lamb-chop sideburns are all the dope with the kids these days. Heck, he even favors you a bit.” She was rattling on about what a cute couple Hiram and I would make and how we sort of matched up nicely as a set.

  “I don’t have sideburns,” I protested.

  Veenie guffawed. “Course not. I meant he’s not the type to waste time nor money on keeping up with the styles. With them high-heeled white cowboy boots and that ten-gallon hat, he’s darn near as tall you. You could slump down a bit so he could kiss you without having to hop up on a chair. You’re already a little hump shouldered.”

  “Am not.”

  “Give it another five years.”

  “You been reading too many romance novels.”

  Veenie stuck her dentures out at me. “Lighten up, Ruby Jane. Love ain’t got an age. Look at my pappy. He’s over the hill, stuck in the swampy end of life, but he’s still got a date every Friday night.”

  Pappy Tuttle, Veenie’s dad, was one of the Men of Leisure, a resident at the Leisure Hills Retirement Village. He used a power chair to scoot around and was never all that certain what decade it was. Nonetheless, he was definitely getting more nookie than me.

  I was trying to keep an open mind about Hiram. He was our boss. We needed to work with him as best we could, but I’d not dated anyone since my husband, Charlie “Whiskers” Waskom, died a couple of decades ago. I’d have to do some fancy tiptoeing and sidestepping if Hiram kept sparking on me.

  “It’s that new do,” said Veenie. “Makes you look all hot and girly.” She’d opened a pack of Twinkies and was trying to get a grip on one with her teeth as we bumped along. The rain had stopped, but the roads were rough. She had Twinkie crème all over her face because she was trying to suck out the crème before eating the sponge cake and we were bouncing across a line of potholes. I slowed for the turnoff to 58 toward Norman, and Veenie finally got a grip on the sponge cake.

  She swallowed, and then mumbled, “I dunno. I reckon he is awful short, but some men like a challenge. Look at Puddles, the blind wiener dog, and Lolly Shepherd’s hussy Saint Bernard dog, Bernice. Lolly left them alone for a couple of minutes to trot down to the IGA and get some eggs for her banana cream pie. Came home to find Puddles clamped onto Bernice’s backside like a bowlegged cowboy, with the kitchen chairs all upturned. You know how men can be when they decide it’s time to get their corn dogs battered. He’ll figure out a way to get it done.”

  I did not find that visual very romantic, and I said so.

  “Oh, heck, Ruby Jane, why you always got to be so negative? Hiram could be the love of your life. How you going to know if you slam the door in his pruney face before you even get a good whiff of him?”

  “Hiram farms chickens for a living. Honestly, I’m not all that eager to get a better whiff of him.”

  “He don’t sleep with the chickens. He’s got that big fancy brick house, and a Caddie limo, and more money than God. Give the man a fair try. I mean, if he was sparking on me I’d sure enough let him.”

  “He’s old enough to be my pappy,” I protested, still unable to imagine myself lip-locking with a man that short.

  “Oh, heck, even better. He’ll be doing handstands, taking you out to fancy dinners in that limo to prove he’s worthy of your affections. Ain’t nothing wrong with having a sugar daddy. Whaddaya worried about anyway? Getting knocked up? He’s probably shooting blanks. And, in case you ain’t looked in a mirror lately, all your eggs are long cracked.”

  Veenie was making a good case, as depressing as it might be, but I still couldn’t see myself dolled up and dating. Truth be told, my long-gone husband was the only man I’d been amorous with. Dating at my age was sure to take a mess of work. When Sassy Smith, senior cougar, went into the bathroom to prepare for husband hunting, she didn’t come back out for hours. Getting pretty was a production at our age. I wasn’t convinced that it’d be worth all the extra cost, or effort.

  After sucking down her second Twinkie, Veenie started in on me again. “Of course Sheriff Boots ain’t gonna be happy about this. Nope, not happy at all. His head just might pop off when he gets a whiff of this.”

  Boots Gibson had been waiting for me to jump into his arms since he gave me an unsolicited valentine in grade school. Lately, he’d kind of been growing on me, but not enough for me to consider shucking my undies and getting tangled up with him. Maybe there was a little pilot light in my heart for Boots—shucks, you had to admire a man who kept after you for decades—but I wasn’t sure I wanted my pilot light—or anything else for that matter—lit up at this stage of the game.

  The morning sun had crowned and we were driving east. I had to squint to see the road. Pieces of it were washed with mud and driftwood from the flood. My eyes searched for the turnoff to Krupsky’s ch
icken farm. I flipped down the sun visor, but that didn’t help. What did help was the humongous barn side billboard that read “Krupsky’s: Egg-Cellent Home of 500,000 Happy Hens.” A few feet further ahead another giant billboard read: “Hiram Krupsky: Hoosier Chicken Wing King. Buses Welcome.” A mess of red arrows pointed to a parking lot as large as a football field.

  Veenie squawked that the turn was coming up. She pointed out the window at a giant American flag that flapped in the pink waves of rolling sunrise. Rows of long, narrow chicken barns lined up like white pencil cases next to a large aluminum pole barn. The largest barn housed the main office, egg processing facility, and shipping. A line of semitrucks, most of them branded with Krupsky’s name pasted over a super-sized American flag, snaked from the turnoff road to the back of the main processing plant.

  Hiram, who’d won all sorts of medals for shooting down planes in the Korean War, was known for his giant American flags. Everybody who worked for him got a free flag and flagpole for their yard, and a free flag decal for their car. According to one of my third cousins, who was a Krupsky lifer, every morning before the egg line started rolling the whole warehouse stood at attention and recited the Pledge of Allegiance while facing a giant flag that hung on the packing house wall. Krupsky was the largest employer in Pawpaw County. He offered family medical, free eggs on Fridays, and a year-end bonus that escalated for each year people stayed with him, so most everybody paid attention to him, even if they didn’t care for his showy manner or his politics.

  The parking lot was bustling. All the good spots were taken, so I squeezed the Impala in at the edge of the lot. Veenie and I hopped out of the car and fell into the stream of blurry-eyed workers. We bumped in a slithering line toward the employee entrance.

  A young woman with streaked, bright-blonde, shoulder-length hair was waiting for me and Veenie. She plucked us out of the stream of workers as we spilled into the building. “You from the Shades Agency?” She held a clipboard tight to her ample chest. She was buttoned up in a white knit suit with a pencil skirt. A matching waist jacket was trimmed in flag-blue piping. Her long legs were clad in fancy, white, paisley-patterned nylons. She wore the cutest navy-blue, velvet kitten heels. A red-white-and-blue silk scarf with a flag name tag pinned to it to hold it in place revealed that her name was “Rhea Dawn Krupsky.”