by Hillary Avis
But the way home felt different. The focus that had come so easily on the drive toward Honeytree eluded me. I pushed harder through the turns, anticipating the Flats where I’d be able to let the little car demonstrate her full horsepower, but the moonlit shadows of the trees that arched over the road suddenly felt ominous. Distracting. I shook my head and took the next turn harder, pushing the car to its limits around the tight curve.
Something flickered in my peripheral vision and I slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop just milliseconds before a three-point buck leaped across the road in front of me.
Close call. Too close.
I waited there on the dark, empty highway until I caught my breath and then crept the rest of the way through the Curves, staying well under the speed limit, paranoid that another deer might emerge from the underbrush. When I made it to the Flats where the farmland on either side meant fewer hiding places for wild animals, my shoulders relaxed a little. I was almost home, and now that my adrenaline had come down a notch, I was suddenly very, very tired.
I was so tired that I didn’t even balk when headlights flashed at me from the end of the Sutherland driveway. I knew it was Eli. I pulled over and waited for him to walk to my car.
“I wasn’t speeding this time.” I was sure of it, even if I hadn’t glanced at the speedometer. I looked up at him and saw eyes as tired as mine felt. “You’ve been working late.”
He nodded, stifling a yawn. “You, too. I saw the light on in the barn earlier.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said. “Too much on my mind.”
“You want me to stay over? I’m getting used to crashing in my front seat.”
I shook my head. “No—I’ll be fine.”
He looked a little relieved and stretched his arms over his head, then used both hands to crack his neck. “My back says thank you. Plus, I could really use a shower.” He grinned.
“No kidding.” I waved my hand in front of my nose and kept my face deadpan.
His eyes crinkled around the edges. “OK. I’ll swing by in the morning to sign off on your crime scene. Blake says all they have left to do is pack up the last of the sifting setup.”
“Can’t say I’m sorry to see you all go.”
“Goodnight, Leona.” He paused. “Just curious...how fast did you get her up to?”
I grinned at him and motioned to his badge that glinted in the glow of the headlights. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
Chapter 28
I woke to the sound of someone hammering on my front door. I opened my eyes blearily, checked the time on my phone, and then when I saw it was after nine, I jumped out of bed so fast that it made me dizzy. I hadn’t slept in this late since high school.
Stumbling to the closet, I located the pair of cargo pants I’d worn yesterday and a shirt that passed the sniff test and pulled them on as I headed downstairs. I yanked the T-shirt down over my stomach and twisted my hair up into a bun before I opened the front door, squinting in the bright sun that seemed to shoot daggers into my skull. I felt like I had a hangover and I hadn’t even been drinking.
Rusty’s eyes bugged out as he took in my appearance. “Did I wake you up?”
“No,” I lied, surreptitiously sweeping the sleep grains out of my eyes.
“Then what happened to you?” He leaned closer to me, scrutinizing my face.
My fingers went unconsciously to my cheeks, where I felt the telltale lines of pillowcase wrinkles pressed into them. “OK, maybe I was asleep. I had a late night.”
Rusty grinned broadly, clearly making some assumptions. “Good for you.” He bumped the handle of the shovel he was holding on the porch floor. He’d made good on his word and brought his own tools. “Looks like the county guys cleared out already so I just wanted to check in with you before I got started.” He turned, affording me a view of the little tractor he’d already pulled out of the barn parked on the other side of the driveway next to the dirt pile.
The dirt pile looked even bigger now that the enormous forensics van wasn’t next to it. A few of my original stakes remained upright in the ground beyond it, the ends of crime scene tape fluttering from them, but I’d need to re-mark the rest of the chicken coop foundation once the ground was leveled. “How long do you think it’ll take to get it all leveled out?” I asked.
He squinted one eye, calculating. “I guess about a day, maybe two if the tractor’s ornery.”
I nodded, stifling a yawn. “I’ll let you get to it then. I’m going to make some coffee. You want some?”
“I’ll never say no to a fresh pot of coffee. Double sugar, no cream.” He flashed me a rakish smile, the kind he’d been famous for in school when he was voted class clown. It was something else to see his fifty-something face look fifteen for a second, and I felt a squeeze of love for him and his family. For Ruth. The two of them had been a part of my life for so long, they felt more like cousins than friends.
That’s it, I wasn’t letting Ruth off the hook so easy. You couldn’t just walk away from family, even if they were acting like a chicken turd. I made some quick pour-over coffee, sweetened it to cavity-causing levels, and took a mug of it out to Rusty, who, to my surprise, wasn’t working. He was standing next to the hole staring back at the house. At my Suburban, to be exact.
I turned to see what he was looking at and almost dropped the coffee.
Scratched into the paint on the passenger-side door was a message.
GO HOME. Then a word that I won’t repeat, but it wasn’t polite.
The blood drained from my face and I stood there, frozen, until Rusty gently coaxed one mug from my grip. “I need some coffee to deal with this.” He tossed back a long swill, wincing as the hot liquid hit his throat. “What do you think it means?”
“I guess someone’s not too happy that I’m back in town,” I said coolly, even though my insides were a storm of emotions. Who’d taken the time to sneak up my driveway in the middle of the night to vandalize my car? The eerie feeling someone was watching me crawled up my back, but I shook off the urge to check over my shoulder. I wasn’t going to let anyone see me crack. “Oh well, their problem, not mine.”
“Too bad about that. Gonna cost a penny to repaint.”
“Guess so.” I swallowed hard. It was either that, or drive around with an NC-17 message on the side of my car all day. All the moms in Honeytree were going to love that. Maybe Tambra had some nail polish that matched my paint job and would help me touch it up.
“Oh, I almost forgot! There’s a little surprise for you in the barn!” Rusty said.
Hoping for a distraction from the unsettling message, I headed into the barn, where I noticed I’d forgotten to pull the tarp back over the Porsche after my late-night drive. I started to pull it back over the car when I stopped in my tracks.
“What the cluck?!”
Perched on the headrests of my beloved convertible were two damp, bedraggled full-grown hens, one white and one black. They were missing half the feathers on their backs but had more than their share on their heads. In fact, they looked like Vegas showgirls wearing giant feathered headdresses.
“Rusty!” I screeched, storming out of the barn with my fists clenched. Rusty was already using the tractor to push the nearest section of the dirt pile into the hole, but when he caught sight of me, his eyes widened and he cut the tractor’s engine.
“What’s wrong?”
I planted my fists on my hips. “If this is some kind of joke, it’s really not funny!”
He shook his head, his expression bewildered. “You want me to move the dirt somewhere else?”
“Not the dirt, the chickens! Did you bring them over to prank me?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Nah, a few minutes ago some station wagon slowed down long enough to toss those two biddies into the ditch by the highway. I stuck ’em under your lamp to dry off.”
Well, they weren’t under the lamp anymore. I rubbed my face in frustration. “You’ve got to be kidding me.�
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“I was just trying to help.” His face reddened, and instantly I was sorry for yelling at him, even though the two bedraggled birds could be bringing all kinds of disease into my flock. He’d been operating from a place of compassion, not malice.
I sighed. “I’m not talking about you. You did the right thing. I’m talking about whoever dumped their hens in my lap.”
He beat a thoughtful rhythm on the tractor steering wheel. “Someone probably heard you’re starting up a chicken farm and thought you’d give their laying hens a good home. They’re trying to help.”
I snorted. They were helping my farm by dumping birds like whoever vandalized the Suburban was helping keep it clean by scratching the paint. “People are trying to unload their manure is what you mean. Those two birds could be spent, sick, who knows what. You saw them—they’re a mess. I’ve got a falling-down farm, a coop for eighty-six chickens to build, and a different dead guy popping up every day. The last thing I need is random dirty birds getting thrown into the mix.”
Ignoring my rant, Rusty started up the tractor again, and his face lit up when it roared to life. “Will you listen to that? Turned right over! I didn’t even have to crank it. I’m kinda proud of myself on this one.”
“Nice work,” I said, sighing. “I’ll let you get back to it.”
“You know,” he said, his voice raised over the engine sounds so he was shouting at me even though I was standing two feet away, “I wouldn’t put the coop here. You want to put it closer to the barn, I think, so you’re not having to constantly haul feed and water back and forth.”
I shook my head and motioned to my right ear. “Sorry, I can’t hear you over the tractor!” I lied, then turned and speed-walked back to the barn before he could yell his unnecessary opinions at me again.
Rusty didn’t know that I’d spent more than a few hours picking out the perfect coop site. The spot I’d chosen got exactly the right combination of shade and sun, had the perfect drainage and the least cover for predators, and—perhaps most importantly—gave me the best view of the coop from the kitchen window. Those chickens were going to be my livelihood during my retirement, and I wasn’t going to compromise their safety to save myself a few yards of walking.
I wasn’t going to compromise their health, either. I might not have the heart to toss the two interlopers back in the ditch out front, but I had enough sense to quarantine them from the rest of my vulnerable flock.
Back in the barn, I checked the brooder. Dr. Speckle was dozing peacefully with dozens of babies squirming underneath her, Alarm Clock had hopped inside the brooder and was gobbling up the chick starter, and the chicks that couldn’t squeeze beneath Dr. Speckle or perch on her back were back under the heat lamp. But the new hens were nowhere to be seen.
They weren’t in any buckets or hiding behind the straw bales, either. I looked above my head and spied a telltale tail feather peeking out from the edge of a beam. “Ah ha!”
I grabbed a ladder that was leaning against the back wall of the barn and set it against the beam, but as soon as I ascended, the hens squawked and fluttered to a new location. I groaned and slumped on the top of the ladder. How was I supposed to get them down when every time I got near them, they flew away? I needed to stop chasing and start luring.
I climbed down and, patting my cargo pocket to make sure I still had a few crumbles of chick starter in there left over from yesterday, climbed the steep stairs to the loft that extended over half the barn. A few small scattered piles of hay gave away its intended purpose—Amos Chapman had used the loft to store hay for his livestock. But the back corner also had a rusty old spring bedframe pushed up against the wall. This was where Joe must have slept when he was living and working at the farm.
Dropping to my knees, I scooted toward the beam where the hens were huddled just beyond my reach, careful not to get too close to the edge. I sprinkled a little bit of crumble on the edge of the beam and then moved back so they would feel safer approaching, clucking softly with my tongue. “Here, chicky-chickies.”
The hens turned their ridiculous poofy heads toward me and clucked softly to themselves, but they didn’t make a move to eat the food. They had no idea what was going on. Maybe their silly feathered hairdos were blocking their vision. I tapped softly near the small pile of chick starter, as though my fingers were a beak. That was how mother hens showed their chicks where to find food. “Here chicky-chicks. Come and eat. This is for you.”
Tap, tap, tap.
The white hen cocked her head and sidled a couple of feet toward me. I tapped again, and she scooted the rest of the way to the food and began pecking at it. At the sound of her friend gobbling up the starter, the black hen pushed her way to the loft and joined in on the feast, her back to me. I didn’t wait—I snatched her before she had her guard up again and, holding her wings firmly at her sides so she couldn’t flap away, took her downstairs.
With an apology, I stuffed the black hen into a temporary holding tank, also known as the five-gallon bucket with a lid I’d used to contain Alarm Clock, then went back for her sister. The white hen, now savvy to my hawkish predation, heard me approach and took off flapping. Thankfully she chose to fly left instead of right, perching on the wrought-iron headboard of the old bed instead of way out somewhere on a beam where I couldn’t reach her.
I slowly crept toward the bed, leaning to avoid bumping my head on the slanted ceiling and hardly daring to breathe. The hen turned around on her perch nervously, seemingly unaware whether she faced into the wall or toward an escape route. I waited until her head was pointed toward the corner before I lunged and grabbed her. I missed her wings but caught her by the leg and reeled her in, flapping and hollering, until I could clamp her under my arm and quiet her.
Success. I clutched her grimly, wiping the sweat off my forehead with my forearm. As I turned to go back downstairs, I forgot to duck and clocked my head against the rafters. I moaned in pain and rubbed the growing egg above my right eye with my free hand.
“I’m fine!” I reflexively said to no one. “I just hit my head on...” My voice trailed off as I caught sight of the offending rafter. It was crowded with generations of carved names, dark with age. Instinctively, I reached up and ran my finger over the ones I recognized.
Ruth. Rusty. Amos. Anne 4-Ever. Anne’s name had a heart around it. I traced the heart with my free hand. Joe must have carved it when he lived up here. He must have been pretty obsessed with her if he was spending his free time writing songs about her and carving her name into the wood where he could stare at it every night.
So Joe definitely had more than a casual crush on Anne Sutherland, and it made me wonder—would he carve “4-Ever” about someone who didn’t even know he liked her? Forever meant something was going on between them, right? Something that Joe wanted to last. Maybe my wild theories about Joe and Anne having a real affair weren’t so crazy after all. I just needed to find a way to bring it up to Eli without ticking Ruth off any further.
I pulled out my phone and thumb-typed, “I know you’re mad at me, but we really need to talk.”
The chicken under my arm tried to wriggle free and I clamped her there more firmly while I sent the text and headed down the steep loft stairs. I picked up a second lidded bucket and popped the white hen inside until I could find a proper place to quarantine both birds. Maybe I’d be able to convert one of the old horse stalls into a temporary holding cell until I was sure the two hens were healthy.
But first, coffee.
Chapter 29
I caught sight of a black sheriff’s SUV turning off the highway as I was heading back into the house. I stopped in my tracks and groaned. Just what I needed, Eli here to stir up the drama that had just settled to the bottom of the proverbial bucket. I glanced at my phone to see if Ruth had responded to my text yet, but she hadn’t, and I cursed under my breath. OK, maybe it wasn’t under my breath.
“What’s wrong?” Rusty looked up from the tractor’s seat, his brow f
urrowed with concern, and saw Eli getting out of the truck, balancing two giant cups of Dutch Brothers coffee. Rusty shut off the engine. “Do you want me to get rid of him?”
By then, Eli was close enough to catch the tail end of the question. “You can’t get rid of me. I’m here on police business.” He handed me one of the coffees and added, “Creamer, no sugar, right?” He was right. I took a grateful sip, scalding my tongue in the process.
Before I could say thanks, Rusty swung his leg off the tractor and got dangerously close to Eli. “Oh really? What business is that? Stalking women you have a crush on?”
To my surprise, Eli took a step back and put up his free hand, as though Rusty were the one with a gun on his belt. “Hey man, I’m just doing my job. I have a case to investigate, and Leona’s an integral part of that. I need her help.”
Rusty crossed his arms and tipped his head back to scan Eli from head to toe, skepticism seeping from his every pore. “Please. We’ve known each other our whole lives and you’re not fooling anybody. You’re hanging around here, bribing her with gifts, hoping to rekindle a fire that went out thirty-odd years ago, but Leona needs you like a hole in the head. If she wanted you, she would have married you back in the day. Her priority is the orchard now, not solving some cold case. She needs to focus on the farm.”
This time, Eli didn’t step back. Instead, he pointed a finger at Rusty’s chest, his jaw tight. “The orchard is your priority, Chapman. I’m hanging around here, living in the past? You’re the one who’s telling Leona what to do like your family still owns the farm and she’s just a sharecropping tenant. She doesn’t want to be an apple farmer! She never did. What she wants—”
“Enough!” I said sharply. Both their heads swiveled toward me, their faces registering shock as though they’d forgotten I was there even though they were arguing about me. “Neither of you have any business deciding what I want or don’t want, need or don’t need. I’m the one who decides that. You can both take a hike.”
