A Streak of Bad Cluck (Bought-the-Farm Mystery Book 3)

by Ellen Riggs

  Jilly raised skeptical eyebrows and I grinned at her as we followed the happy couple outside. Keats was far from a people pleaser, but he obliged now with an enthusiastic wag, probably only because he’d been left alone for longer than he’d like.

  “What was that about?” Jilly asked, as we walked back to the truck.

  “Just getting Keats’ take on Ted and Linda. They were a little too gleeful about Edna’s death for my liking. But they got a pass from Keats.”

  “Well, maybe divine justice will take care of things for the inn, too,” she said.

  “I wish I could count on that, but I’m guessing there’s one heck of a line up ahead of us,” I said. “Even in Clover Grove.”

  “Where are we?” Jilly asked, as I pulled up outside a large, pretty house on the outskirts of town. The landscaping was impeccable, with the last of the hardy flowers putting up a brave front beside red Japanese maples.

  “We’re just dropping by to say hello to Kathleen Mayfair,” I said. “People still do that out here. Drop by and say hello.”

  Jilly was instantly suspicious. “Maybe my question should be, why are we? Here, that is. I’ve never heard you mention a Kathleen Mayfair.”

  “Her maiden name was Grainer.”

  My friend gave an exasperated sigh. “As in Old Doc Grainer. Edna’s former boss.”

  “Precisely. You have a great memory for details, my friend.” Opening the door, I released Keats. “I just want to make sure she’s heard about Edna.”

  “Please. She heard about Edna almost before it happened. I already know this town’s ability to spread gossip at lightening speed all too well.” She opened the passenger door. “What are we really here for? You can’t think Doc Grainer’s daughter had anything to do with Edna’s death.”

  Coming around the truck to join her, I shook my head. “Honestly, it is a drop-in. After all the negativity, I guess I just want to hear another point of view.”

  Kathleen opened the door at the first knock and I was surprised to see how much she’d aged. She was my mom’s age, but obviously there was something to be said for rotational dating. Mom fought aging with the ferocity of a cougar, and she was coming out on top.

  “Ivy,” she said, stepping back to let us in. “How lovely to see you and your beautiful friend. Not to mention a very handsome dog.” Keats offered a brisk swish of his white plume, giving Kathleen a gold star in the character department. “Can I make you a coffee?”

  “We’d love a coffee,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind a drop-in.”

  “Not at all. You know how we old-timers are: there’s always a cake in the house, just in case.”

  Mom didn’t operate that way, but it was a quaint tradition and normally I’d be all over it. The triple cone had taken the edge off my appetite, but as we chatted I worked my way valiantly through the generous wedge of coconut cake she set before me, and Jilly did the same.

  “I suppose you heard about Edna,” I said, after a respectable interval.

  Kathleen nodded. “I’d like to say a few words at the funeral, if you’re making arrangements.”

  “I certainly intend to help out.” If Edna had a will or an executor, Kellan hadn’t mentioned it yet. “Were you fond of her?”

  “Well, fond would be the wrong word,” Kathleen said, tactfully. “She didn’t exactly promote fondness. I respected her, though… because my father did.”

  “They worked together for decades, as I recall.”

  “He said he couldn’t do his job without her—that when Edna said jump, he asked how high.” Sipping her coffee thoughtfully, she added, “Dad also said she helped him diagnose many a difficult case. That in another era, she’d have made a brilliant doctor. His words, not mine.”

  “Wow, that’s very high praise,” I said, forcing down another mouthful of cake. “She told me it wasn’t easy having a career in her day.”

  “Three choices, right?” Jilly said. “Nurse, teacher or secretary.”

  “Exactly,” Kathleen said. “I chose teacher, which is how I know that Edna was also tough on children. There was something a little dark there.”

  “True. I was the recipient of many of her gleeful vaccinations.” I set my fork down, unable to take one more bite. “Maybe it’s because her hopes for a family blew up.”

  “She told you?” Kathleen said, clearly surprised.

  “The day before she passed, actually. I was sorry to hear about her heartbreak.”

  “There was a terrible misunderstanding and they were both too proud to heal the rift. Merle Randall was a lovely man. Is a lovely man,” she corrected herself. “Still very much alive in Dorset Hills.”

  I downed most of my coffee in one gulp before saying, “Maybe regrets about pride are exactly why she told me about it. I let pride stand in the way of healing a rift for a long time.”

  Kathleen grinned at me over the rim of her cup. “I ran into your mother. She’s practically planning your wedding to Chief Harper already.”

  Looking helplessly at Jilly, I saw a similar grin above her cup. “Me, too,” she said. “It’ll be the event of the season.”

  “Let us have a date first,” I said, getting up.

  “You had plenty back in school,” Kathleen said. “I saw you two mooning over each other. Seize the day, young lady. As a doctor’s daughter, I feel qualified to remind you that you never know how long you’ve got.”

  “Heard and understood.” I let Keats lead us to the front door. “Do you have any idea who might have wished Edna ill? I mean, beyond every child who suffered her needles?”

  “I’ve given that a lot of thought,” Kathleen said, as she opened the front door. “The only people I knew to speak ill of Edna openly were members of her bridge club. Personally, I think they were worried she’d spill secrets that came out in my father’s office. But Edna valued her job too much to do that. Perhaps something blew up on that front eventually.”

  “Were they the type of secrets that could blow up decades later?” I asked.

  “Perhaps.” Kathleen winked at me. “Secrets have a nasty way of doing that, don’t they?”

  Before I could press further, she closed the door on the discussion with a firm click.

  “You’re dying to talk to Merle, aren’t you?” Jilly asked, as we climbed into the truck.

  “And his wife,” I said. “But how about I leave that to Kellan, just to make you happy?”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, my friend,” she said.

  “Then I won’t promise to eat any of that chocolate mousse cake you ordered,” I said. “Because a bumpy ride home is going to do some terrible things to my innards.”

  “That’s the price a wannabe sleuth has to pay,” she said.

  “I know you enjoy a little investigation, too, Jilly, no matter what you say.”

  She gave an uncharacteristic snort. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Because you just welcomed Keats into your lap without his even asking. You’ve got a detective buzz.”

  “I’ve got a sugar buzz,” she said, as his tail dusted her face.

  After we drove for a while, I said, “It’s hard to reconcile the many sides of Edna, isn’t it? She was loathed by children, yet saved lives with Old Doc Grainer. She fed feral cats, yet she was a mean and nosy neighbor.”

  “It’s a good thing we had cutthroat corporate careers before moving here,” Jilly said. “Otherwise we probably wouldn’t survive the complexities of the simple life.”

  “Good point,” I said. “I used to hate being known as the grim reaper. Now I see it as a distinct advantage because you can’t keep a grim reaper down.” Rolling down the window, I let the air blow through my hair. “Remind me to pick up a scythe.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  We didn’t make it back to the farm before my phone buzzed with a summons: “Mafia 911. Chow Chow. ASAP.”

  “Are we in the Rescue Mafia now?” Jilly asked, staring at my phone while I made a rather treacherous U-t
urn and headed in the opposite direction.

  I geared up surprisingly smoothly. It was as if the truck enjoyed a special mission as much as the rest of us. “At best we’re in the minors. From what Charlie says, there’s a lot of auditioning and hazing from Cori Hogan before you hit the major league. We haven’t done any hard-core rescues yet. Archie the calf and a handful of hens wouldn’t count.”

  “But we’ve contributed to murder investigations. And you’ve confronted stone-cold killers.”

  I shook my head. “Those were just humans. To make the grade with the Rescue Mafia, it’s all about animals, and more specifically dogs.”

  “Keats doesn’t count?” She tried to adjust him on her lap. When she’d invited him aboard, she hadn’t expected such a long ride. “That was a pretty spectacular rescue.”

  “True. And it counted with Hannah, since it got me the farm. Cori’s a little harder to impress. She’s all about climbing and ziplining and elaborate schemes. The black ops of the rescue world.”

  Jilly laughed. “I’ll stick to the minors, thank you very much. I’ve had enough adventure in the past few months to last me a while.”

  Keats braced himself on the dash, ears forward, tail up. He was leaning right into whatever adventure awaited. An adrenaline junkie.

  My attitude was somewhere in the middle. A little adventure now and then was good to make you appreciate the peace of regular life. But a long string of murder investigations I did not need.

  We passed the first of many huge bronze Labrador Retriever statues that marked the perimeter of Dorset Hills and turned right to circle the city. The chow chow meet spot was on the far side of Dog Town. We both fell silent, and I started speculating. Last time it had been a small group. With it being an emergency, we could be even more outnumbered. Yes, I’d faced stone-cold killers but it was never voluntary. Somehow these women were equally daunting—a force of nature.

  Bridget’s battered old lime-green van sat in the parking lot at the base of the trail beside Remi’s sedan and an SUV. It was early afternoon now and the sun was still high enough to light the trail. It helped that much of the foliage had fallen away. Still, it was heavy going and I wondered why City Council had seen fit to place one of the more stunning statues way out here where few ever saw it.

  “It’s about time,” Cori said, as we trudged into the clearing. In addition to Bridget and Remi and Andrea, there was another redhead and a beautiful blonde woman I recognized as Arianna Torrance, a dog breeder.

  “We couldn’t have arrived faster without teleporting,” I said, shaking my head as Keats frolicked around her like a starstruck teenager. “We were already in the truck outside of Clover Grove.”

  Cori raised her orange-fingered glove and looked at Remi. “Tell her I don’t like excuses.”

  “I’m quite sure she heard you,” Remi said, laughing. “And probably knew it already. It kind of goes with the gloves.”

  Flexing her fingers, Cori tipped her head like a little brown bird. “We only 911 if it’s something critical. Obviously.”

  A woman with a head of curly red hair and bright green eyes stepped forward and offered her hand to me and then Jilly. “We haven’t met. I’m Evie Springdale.”

  “We loved your show!” Jilly’s voice overlapped with mine.

  Evie was the creator and producer of The Princess and the Pig, which chronicled Hannah’s early days at Runaway Farm.

  “I watched it over and over, trying to learn every nuance about the farm,” I said. “Thank you for that. You’re a cat lover, right?”

  “I do love my Roberto,” she said, smiling. “Having married a veterinarian, however, I’m expanding my horizons as far and as fast as my allergy meds allow.”

  I told them about Edna’s feral cat colony. “I saw at least twenty cats, and those were just the bold ones.”

  “The cat colony is kind of redeeming, right?” Evie said, turning to her friends.

  “Definitely,” Remi said. “So Edna wasn’t all bad.”

  Cori threw them a glare. “Well she certainly wasn’t good. You’ve heard the stories.”

  “We were just talking about that in the truck,” Jilly said. “There’s so much gray area in life, isn’t there?”

  “Saving a few cats doesn’t cancel out all the negatives,” Cori said. “And this Edna had plenty of blots on her character.”

  “But it’s a mitigating factor,” I said.

  Cori shrugged. “She’s got a lot to mitigate.” Glancing at Bridget, she added, “We’d better look into the cat colony. Winters come in hard in hill country, Ivy.”

  “I grew up here, remember?” I said. “That’s why I mentioned it.”

  “Is that tone?” Cori brushed back her Audrey Hepburn hair with more orange middle finger on display than strictly necessary. “Maybe you’ll throttle that back when you see what we have to show you.”

  She leaned over and pulled a tablet out of the backpack at her feet. Pulling off a glove, she cued something up. Meanwhile, I looked around the circle and realized from the curious expressions that whatever Cori had to show me, only Bridget had already seen. Her black dog, Beau, leaned into her to offer comfort and her fingertips found his feathery ears.

  That made me nervous. If Bridget needed Beau’s help to get through this revelation, it couldn’t be good. She’d seen some terrible things in her Mafia work, and was no shrinking violet.

  My throat was bone dry by the time Cori handed me the tablet. Jilly leaned in and Keats left Cori to wedge himself between us, mumbling something under his breath. Staring at the screen, I tried to get my bearings. The image was steady but dark. It took me at least 30 seconds to realize I was watching my own henhouse.

  I looked up at Cori. “You guys have a spy cam on my henhouse?”

  She shrugged. “Hannah set up cameras everywhere but we turned them off until this little problem of yours arose.”

  “Which problem in particular?” I asked.

  “The murder problem,” Cori said. “Do you want to talk or watch?”

  I lowered my eyes. There was movement on screen now. It looked like someone was placing an aluminum ladder against the coop.

  “When was this?” I asked.

  Jilly gestured to the bottom corner of the screen. “This morning at six. Right after you left the coop, I’m guessing.”

  “Bingo,” Cori said. “We edited you out to get to the good stuff.”

  On screen, someone in baggy camouflage—pants, jacket, and a hat with earflaps—was climbing the ladder carefully, gripping it with black gloves.

  “Is it a man or a woman?” Jilly asked.

  “Skinny man?” I guessed. “Human scarecrow?”

  “All shall be revealed,” Cori said, clearly relishing every moment. “This really is worth the watch, so please be patient.”

  When the intruder reached the large, screened window over the door, he or she pulled something out of their pocket and sliced into the wire mesh. The knife slid around three sides of the window easily, and then the intruder pressed the wire up, back and out of the way.

  Two more steps up, and the intruder was able to lean into the henhouse with a flashlight. The confident, efficient movements made me think it was a man, especially when he didn’t hesitate before raising a leg to climb inside. He might not have been nervous but I held my breath, despite knowing there was shelving on the other side to provide stable footing. With only a modest amount of wriggling and squirming, the intruder managed to get the other leg inside, brace himself with gloved hands, and back inside the coop. Now he was more or less facing the camera but the henhouse eaves threw darkness over him.

  I gripped the tablet harder and grunted in frustration.

  “Patience,” Cori said, her voice filled with suppressed glee.

  Just as the intruder on screen was about to disappear completely, he hit his head on the upper ledge and exclaimed, “Dagnab it.”

  I gasped as I recognized that voice.

  “What?” Jilly s
aid. “Who is it?”

  “Keep watching,” Cori said. “The reveal is nigh.”

  Sure enough, as I tapped the screen to zoom in, the person’s camouflage hat flipped off and tumbled to the ground outside the henhouse. For just a second or two before the head withdrew into the henhouse, Jilly and I got a very good look at our intruder.

  And her perm.

  Cori had edited the video so that it only took a minute or two more for us to watch Edna Evans climb back out of my henhouse. She descended the ladder with relative ease, stooped to pick up her hat, and then carried the ladder around the barn to where Charlie usually left it.

  And just like that, she was gone.

  “You gotta give it to her, she did great for eighty. Dagnab it,” Cori said, chuckling. “But why on earth was Edna Evans climbing into your henhouse?”

  “More importantly, why on earth isn’t Edna dead?” I asked. “If she’s alive and fit enough to climb into my henhouse, who exactly is down at the county morgue right now?”

  “That’s a very good question,” Bridget said, at last. “You saw her, right? After what happened? I mean, up close?”

  “Very close. It was definitely Edna Evans, and she was definitely dead. I was still there when the paramedics pulled her out and confirmed it.” I glanced helplessly at Jilly. “We’d spent enough time together recently for me to know.”

  “And yet here she is,” Cori said, taking the tablet from me and handing it to Remi. The others crowded around to watch.

  “You’re sure the time stamp is correct?” Jilly asked.

  Cori nodded. “We doubled checked it and dropped by to inspect the camera. I only wished we’d turned on the interior hen cam. I wanted to, but the others said you were a little touchy about our vigilance.”

  “I was. I am.” I shrugged. “At the same time, I’m grateful.”

  “We just feel such an obligation to Hannah,” Bridget said. “And when you mentioned someone had tried to break into the henhouse the other day we thought it couldn’t hurt to have a lens on it.”