1 A Cop and a Coop

by Hillary Avis

  As I drove by, I saw the forensic team had finished their sugar-bomb breakfast and were starting to work, half of them digging and half of them sifting through the dirt they’d piled up yesterday. Every time they came across something bigger than a pebble, they bagged and tagged it. They were going to be bagging and tagging for a long time, given the trash-to-dirt ratio that I’d observed while working on my foundation trench.

  Just a hundred yards down the highway, the Sutherlands’ driveway was smoother than mine. Walt must have paid special attention to it for blueberry season so the U-pickers didn’t have trouble coming and going, and the extra grading and graveling he’d done really paid off. I’d have to do the same on my driveway, or pretty soon I’d be risking my axles. One more line on the to-do list.

  I rolled up to the house and spotted Anne hanging laundry on the clothesline stretching from the porch to the blueberry shed. I got out and waved to her. “Just bringing back your dish!”

  “Set it on the porch there.” She jerked her head toward the house, her hands full of the wet bedsheets she was pinning to the line.

  Their porch was as tidy as their driveway, swept clean and empty of any of the usual porch clutter—yard tools, boots, empty flowerpots, seasonal decorations past their expiration date, faded furniture. None of that. Instead, a cheerful pot of well-watered geraniums sat near the steps where it’d get some sun, and a single wrought-iron chair was pulled up to a small telescope on a tripod.

  I set the casserole dish on the chair before I registered that the telescope was pointed straight at my house. I didn’t know how I felt about that. I leaned over to look through the eyepiece and saw the crime scene techs milling around. I could see them better through the telescope than I could through my kitchen window. I turned and narrowed my eyes at Anne’s back.

  “You’ve sure got a good view,” I said, loudly enough for her to hear.

  She flung a towel over the line and fastened it with a clothespin before turning around to see what I was talking about. “Oh, that. It’s Walt’s,” she said, and went back to hanging clothes. Socks, now, clipped in pairs.

  How long had Walt been surveilling my place? Was his interest in the law enforcement activity, or had he been watching my trench digging, too? Likely both. That’s probably why he came over to investigate my project in the first place. Spying wasn’t very neighborly, but people didn’t move out to the country because they had good social skills. “Does he spend a lot of time doing Neighborhood Watch?” I asked.

  Anne joined me on the porch and swooped up the empty baking dish from the chair, setting it inside the empty laundry basket balanced on her hip before answering me. “He’s had a telescope on that porch since before I married him,” she said. It didn’t answer my question, but on the other hand, it did.

  “Well, if he sees any murderers...”

  Anne’s eyebrows jumped so high they nearly hit her hairline. “What?!”

  “I’m joking. Sort of. Eli says the guy buried in my yard didn’t die of natural causes, that’s all. I thought you and Walt should know, since you’re right next door. I didn’t want you hearing it from someone else.”

  Anne gave a brisk nod, apparently recovered from the initial news. “Well, nobody else will hear it from us. We’ll keep an eye on your place and you do the same for ours. Oh, speaking of”—she set down the laundry basket, hurried back down the steps and into the blueberry shed, and then came back out with a cardboard box and shoved it into my hands—“I believe this is yours.”

  I pulled back a flap of the box to look inside. Two beady eyes under a dashingly floppy comb stared back at me...this morning’s alarm clock, no question. “Oh! He’s not mine! I don’t have a rooster.” I held the box back out to her, but she picked up the laundry basket and turned away.

  “Neither do we. Someone probably dumped him when they heard you had a chicken operation out here. Happens all the time. You pet a dog in town and say you’ve been thinking about getting a puppy, and you’ve got a box of squirming little spuds at the end of your driveway the next morning. He’s yours now. Do keep him off our porch, please. Walt’s very fussy about birds because of the berries.” She gave me a little half-smile and went in the house.

  I frowned at the alarm clock in a box, who pecked hopefully at a speck on the cardboard flap as I closed it over his head. A hollow thunk-thunk emanated from the box as he searched for his breakfast in vain inside. I didn’t need a rooster—a rooster wasn’t part of my plan. Eggs, yes. Hens, yes. But roosters...that was a hard no.

  The feed store had a colony for unwanted roosters, I remembered. I could drop him off there and be done with it. I put him in the back of the Suburban and headed for Honeytree. While I was there, I could warn Tambra that Eli would be coming to question her and kill two birds with one stone.

  Chapter 10

  Tambra’s Prius was parked on the street in front of the grocery store in the spot unofficially reserved for people who were just grabbing a few things, so I spotted it easily. I pulled in behind her and caught her just as she was leaving the store, a cantaloupe cradled in each arm.

  “Nice melons,” I said.

  Ruth would have laughed at my joke, but Tambra just raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows, her expression cool. “They’re for the back-to-school picnic. What brings you to town?”

  “You, actually.”

  “Oh?” She popped the hatchback open and rolled the cantaloupes into a mesh compartment so they wouldn’t roll around while she was driving.

  “You left so quickly last night—I wanted to make sure you were OK. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

  Tambra shut the back of her car and passed a hand over her face. Her nails were lavender with mint-green stripes today and matched her sporty yoga pants. “I guess I did. Being at the Chapman place brought back a lot of memories. I haven’t been over there since I was a kid, and I’d rather forget those years. They were tough ones.”

  “Well, steel yourself. I think Eli’s going to come talk to you. I told him what you said—you know, about knowing who the victim was.”

  “The victim,” she repeated, her expression dazed.

  I waited a beat, and then when she didn’t continue, prompted, “The skeleton in my yard. You recognized his guitar case.”

  “He was murdered?” Her eyes welled up, her lavender-frosted lower lip trembling.

  “Eli thinks so. If you have any information about the guy, it’ll be useful to the police. Do you know who it is?”

  Tambra scanned the sidewalk and then looked across the street at the few people who were going shopping or heading to work—it was rush hour in Honeytree, after all, and I could tell she didn’t want anyone to overhear our conversation. She grabbed my hand, inspected my orange nails, then said, “You chipped your polish already. I’ll touch you up.”

  I cracked a window for the rooster in my back seat and then followed her on foot the half-block to the salon, where she nervously unlocked the door and then closed the blinds so nobody walking by could see inside. She sat down behind her station and patted the table. “Sit, sit. Show me your paws.”

  I sat and submitted to her ministrations in silence until I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Well?”

  “There was a guy,” Tambra began, never taking her eyes from my fingernails. “He worked for Mr. Chapman the summer I was seventeen, so it was twenty years ago. He was a train-hopper, you know? From Canada. We called him Toronto Joe to his face and Hobo Joe behind his back. I got to know him at the bonfire nights—he’d sing and play his guitar. When I saw the guitar case ...”

  “You thought it might be him,” I finished. “You thought the skeleton might be Toronto Joe.”

  Tambra’s shoulders sank and she nodded. “He disappeared one day with no warning. Just...gone. I wanted to file a missing persons report, but everyone said he probably just hopped another train and headed back to Canada, so I didn’t. I should have trusted my gut and filed a report.” Her lower lip trembled. “I di
dn’t even know his last name, though. So...” She gave a small, sad shrug.

  “You were just a kid.” I watched as she slicked a topcoat on over my repaired nail. “You can do something now, though. I bet your information will be really helpful to the investigation. They’ll at least have a first name. I can go with you to the sheriff’s office for moral support, if you want.”

  Tambra gave me a wobbly smile and shook her head no. “I’m sure someone else in town already came up with the name. Joe had a ton of friends; everyone liked him.”

  “Not everyone,” I said quietly. “Someone wanted him dead. Can you think of anybody he didn’t get along with back then? That might be helpful to the police, too.”

  She shook her head again, but her brow was furrowed.

  “What is it?” I pressed. I could tell she was holding something back.

  “I just—I remember the last time I saw Joe was at a bonfire night. We were sitting on a hay bale chatting, and then Rusty interrupted us. He seemed upset about something, and Joe went to talk with him. I could tell they were arguing, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying because the fire was roaring. I’m sure it was nothing, though. I don’t know why I even mentioned it.”

  She looked so pale and worried that I reached across the table to pat her hand. “This is great, Tambra. This is exactly the kind of thing that will help catch whoever killed Joe.”

  She pushed back her chair and stood up. “I don’t want to get Rusty in trouble! Please don’t tell anyone what I said about their argument, OK? You know how it is around here...rumors stick, even when they aren’t true.”

  I knew, but I also knew that Eli had nothing to go on for the investigation, and that meant that the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department was going to be sifting through my yard for the next three years unless they figured this thing out another way. “You have to tell Eli. Let’s just walk across the street together and you can make a report. It could be really important!”

  “Or it could be nothing. Maybe I’m not even remembering it right—it’s been a long time. I’m not going to tangle my friends up in police business without a good reason.” She pressed her lips together tightly.

  “What if Rusty knows something, and that leads to the killer?” I pleaded.

  “Well, ask him. If he knows something, he can tell Eli himself. I’m sorry, Leona—I have to make melon balls.” She flashed me an apologetic smile. “Now, go get yourself some of those gloves I was talking about!”

  I swallowed and nodded. “Thanks for fixing my nails. How much do I owe you?”

  “Not a dime.” She held the door open for me, her face a mask of tight politeness.

  I could tell I had already overstayed my welcome, so I hurried back to my car, my mind swirling. I felt responsible for Toronto Joe, somehow—maybe because I unearthed him—and I wanted to know what happened to him. It was more than simple curiosity, and Tambra’s reluctance to share what she knew didn’t dampen my interest; it only increased it. What had Joe and Rusty argued about that night?

  I needed to find out. I put the Suburban into gear and flipped a U-turn right in front of the grocery store; Eli was still busy out at my place, so there were no cops around to write me a ticket, anyway. I drove on the street parallel to the railroad tracks until the road turned to gravel. When the road crossed under the tracks, I knew I was getting close. Ruth’s place—and Rusty’s—was only a quarter mile further.

  I pulled up to the house and heard a thumping in the back of my car. At first I thought maybe I’d scraped the muffler with a rock on the bumpy dirt road, but when the thumping turned into scratching and squawking, I remembered the bird in the box. Alarm Clock was clearly trying to make his escape.

  “Chill out!” I reprimanded the back seat as I turned off the car. The scuffle stopped immediately at the sound of my voice. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  Ruth’s car wasn’t in the driveway, so I bypassed her turquoise-painted front door and walked around the exuberant dahlia bed to the brown-and-white single-wide trailer behind the house. It was no wonder Ruth had planted tall flowers in front of Rusty’s place. Unlike her tidy, charming vintage home, Rusty’s was aging badly. Green algae grew on the aluminum siding, and a layer of fir needles covered the concrete pavers that led to the door. The wood porch looked ready to capsize, and the windows hadn’t been washed in months—if not years. I could hear the faint noise of a television game show through the trailer’s thin walls.

  I knocked and stood back from the door. Nobody answered, so I knocked again, louder. This time, Rusty appeared in his tighty-whitey underwear, his hair sticking up even more than usual. He yelped when he saw me and slammed the door in my face.

  “I thought you were Ruth!” he howled from inside.

  “I’m not! Put your pants on, I need to talk.” I leaned against the porch railing to wait, but it started to give, so I quickly stood up again. When the door reopened, he was in a much more presentable jeans-and-Coors-Light-sweatshirt ensemble. “Even your sister didn’t need to see that.”

  He flushed and avoided eye contact. “What do you want? Ruth’s running errands, I think. She won’t be back until after work.”

  “I came to see you, actually. I dug up a skeleton over at my place, and Eli is pretty sure he was murdered.” His eyes bulged, and I nodded. “You heard me right. I’m pretty sure it’s Toronto Joe. Remember him?”

  Rusty clearly did. He took a step back from me, his mouth hanging open. “You dug up Hobo Joe?”

  I bulldozed on. “I heard you had a fight with him the night he disappeared.”

  “I never did!” Rusty blurted out, running his fingers through his hair. “I swear, I never threw a punch.”

  “An argument,” I amended. “At the bonfire.”

  “Oh—that. Yeah, we had some words.” Rusty looked back over his shoulder. “You want some coffee? It’s already made.”

  I nodded. “Sure, if you’re having some. Milk, no sugar.”

  He brought out two mugs and, slipping on a pair of flipflops from the porch, led me over to Ruth’s back patio and set the mugs down on a mosaic-tile table.

  “Pretty,” I said as I sat down, running my hand admiringly over the colorful tilework after I took a seat on one of the bright patio chairs.

  “Ruth made it,” Rusty said, plopping down in the chair across from me.

  I figured. Ruth was always applying her artistic talents to new mediums, whether that was pottery, jewelry, or hairdressing. When we were kids, she was the one with the cool sneakers decorated with Sharpies and stick-on gems when the rest of us just had plain white Keds. I picked up my mug and took a sip. “Good coffee,” I lied. “So tell me about Joe. I hear he was a friendly guy...what was your problem with him?”

  Rusty sighed. “He had a problem, not me. I found out that he stole something from Walt Sutherland. I was trying to convince him to return it, but he didn’t have it anymore. I told him that unless he admitted what he did and paid Walt back, I was going to tell my granddad that he was a thief. Granddad liked to help people out, but he had a low tolerance for sticky fingers.”

  “He would have fired Joe if he found out?”

  “Yup. And Joe knew it—he’d been at the farm long enough to see how things worked. Some farmers will look the other way to keep good help during the harvest, figuring it’s the cost of doing business, but not Amos Chapman. He found out you were stealing? Didn’t matter if you were friend, foe, or family—he’d fire your rear end so fast, your pants would smoke.”

  “So did you tell your grandfather?”

  “I did, actually. The next morning, I told Granddad first thing. We went out to the barn to confront Joe together—that’s where he stayed, in the hayloft—but he was gone. We figured he’d hopped a freight train out of town. Maybe he went back to Canada or something.”

  I swallowed, thinking of Rusty and Amos walking around the farm looking for Joe, when he was right under their feet. “But he didn’t leave. He was there. You didn�
��t notice the ground was disturbed?”

  To my surprise, Rusty laughed. “Of course the ground was disturbed! Granddad was putting in a duck pond, of all things. I think it was just an excuse for him to hire Joe, to be honest, because as soon as Joe left, he had me fill it in. I spent a good week shoveling dirt into that hole. Boy, I was glad to see the end of that job. I think I cursed Joe the whole time I was doing it. Freakin’ Canadian!” His face shifted and grew more serious, and I could tell he was thinking about how he’d shoveled all that dirt on top of Joe’s body without knowing it. “I liked the man, honestly. He was a hard worker. We broke our backs on whatever harebrained scheme my granddad came up with that summer. I’d call him a friend—I think everybody did.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “He must have ticked someone off, though. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had his skull smashed in.”

  Rusty winced at my poor choice of words.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s OK. It’s just a lot to take in, Joe being dead. I thought he was up in Canada all these years, married to a moose and having maple-flavored babies. I can’t think of a single person who disliked Joe.” Rusty paused, his face thoughtful. “Well...”

  I raised my eyebrows and scooted to the edge of my seat. “What? What are you thinking?”

  He shook his head, the movement so slight it was barely perceptible. “I don’t want to point fingers.”

  “It didn’t come from you,” I assured him.

  “Well...” he repeated, pausing uneasily. “Walt was missing his porch telescope, right? He came over and asked if I’d seen it. I may have said I’d ask Joe about it. I knew Joe’d been working over there a lot, so it was a natural assumption. I’m just afraid that Walt...” He trailed off, letting the words sit between us for a minute.