Chickenlandia Mystery

by Daisy Pettles

  Phus was moving so fast we were outside the breeding barn in seconds. He hopped into a white golf cart, the sides decorated in flag decals.

  I hopped in shotgun. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Hang on!” he said as he plugged a key into the ignition. The cart hopped like a startled rabbit, and we spun out, spitting gravel. We headed full speed back to the main office.

  Chapter Twelve

  Phus nosed our cart up to the loading dock and jumped out. He motioned for me to follow. The dock featured a dozen steel, roll-up doors. Half the loading bays were empty. The other half were stuffed with semitruck trailers pulled tight to the platform. Workers wearing black, back-support braces, white smocks, and paper booties raced around the loading platform grabbing and stacking egg cartons as they snaked from the warehouse onto a roundabout conveyer system. Metal arms on the conveyor system fed stacked boxes of eggs into the empty trailers.

  But what really caught my eye was Veenie. I could see her through an open door, sitting on a forklift, slurping on a straw that was stuck into a can of Big Red pop. She was wearing her white smock and booties. A black back-support brace girdled her egg-shaped body. Phus’s wife, Rhea Dawn, was standing next to Veenie’s forklift with her clipboard pressed tightly to her ample chest. Her eyes were squinted half shut and she was shaking her head no, no, no. As Phus and I came closer to Veenie and Rhea Dawn, we could see that there had been an accident.

  Veenie stood up on the forklift and waved her can of Big Red when she saw me coming her way. The straw bobbed up and down excitedly. I sidled up to the forklift. The metal lift arms on the front were empty. Several large white cartons marked “eggs” were tossed and tumbled around the forklift. Clear slime and yellow yolks oozed out the sides and tops of the white cardboard cartons and spread across the concrete floor in a sticky puddle. “You wrecked?” I asked Veenie.

  Before Veenie could respond, Rhea Dawn was at my side. Her lips were clamped tightly shut like she was swallowing a mess of words, none of them all that polite. She turned to face her husband, who stood at my side, her face as red as a cherry. “This old lady detective thing was your father’s bright idea. Now look at this mess!”

  I thought Rhea Dawn seemed awfully upset about the loss of a few dozen eggs until I studied the mess and saw something unusual. A pair of women’s feet, wearing steel-toed, pink nubuck leather work boots, stuck out from under the pile of tumbled boxes. The feet wore white slouch athletic socks with red trim.

  I scurried around to the other side of the boxes, behind Veenie, to get a better look at the feet. Definitely women’s feet. Judging by the look of the woman, all sprawled out and motionless, I guessed that she was dead. Moreover, it looked suspiciously like Veenie might have run her down.

  The dead body helped explain why Sheriff Gibson was standing close by Veenie, shaking his head, his pointy sheriff’s hat pushed far enough back on his head that I could see the sunburn that striped his forehead. He was a tall, big guy with a closely cropped white beard.

  The sheriff sighed deeply when he spied me inspecting the body. “You in on this?” he grunted. He hitched his thumbs into his duty belt and planted his booted feet wide apart as he waited for my response.

  I scooted around Boots and kicked a couple of boxes out of my way in an effort to get a better look at the body. It was Pam Perkins, and she was laid out as stiff as a hickory stick. Her Eiffel Tower of white hair was pinned up, per usual, in little flag bows. Her eyes were shut like she’d just lay down on the concrete for a quick catnap. I didn’t see any blood or evidence of foul play. “Pam Perkins?” I stared accusatively at Veenie.

  Veenie shrugged. “I was loading the lift, and just like that I saw ol’ Cheaty Pants rolling along with the egg boxes. I stomped the brakes soon as I saw her.”

  Rhea Dawn stepped in. Her tiny blue eyes, which shined under her expensive rimless glasses, were tight with suspicion. “She ran her down. Dear Lord, she murdered Pam Perkins right out in the open. Whole factory saw it.”

  “Nu-uh. Did not!” squawked Veenie.

  Boots shook his head. “Dagnabbit, Veenie, whole county knows you didn’t favor Pam. And for those that didn’t know, the Hoosier Squealer had you online just yesterday beating on her like she was a donkey.”

  Oh boy. Of course Boots had not missed that featured photo of Veenie laying whoop-ass on Pam in the Cluckytown offices. Any fool who saw that photo would have no choice but to move Veenie straight to the head of the line for the electric chair.

  Veenie sputtered. She spread her chubby arms out and tried to explain. “I was defending myself. Yesterday. Over at Cluckytown. Pam was armed. That old biddy pulled a gun on me.”

  Boots twisted his lips. “So, you saw her here this morning and ran her down in cold blood?”

  “Course not! Why would I do that?” Veenie’s tiny, frightened eyes studied me pleadingly. “I didn’t even see her. Never saw her until I had the eggs loaded. She was laid out flat as a pancake when I first spied her. I didn’t run her down. She was down already when I saw her. I caught her body on the edge of the forklift arms. I was framed!”

  I said, “Are we even sure Pam is dead?”

  We all stared at Pam. Nothing moved on her. She looked as pale in the face as a winter moon. If she were any deader, there would have been a flock of turkey buzzards perched on top of her head.

  Boots shook his head. “I checked her over. No pulse. Cold as a catfish. I’m convinced. Coroner will be along shortly with the crime scene boys.”

  Rhea Dawn stared icily at Phus. Her face was puckered up like she’d been sucking on a basket of unripe persimmons. “This is all your fault. Your daddy is supposed to be retired, letting us run this place. Now look at this mess! He’s hired a pair of old lady lunatics, and now we have a dead body. Sheriff wants to shut down the loading dock. Crime lab has to gather evidence. Health laws require the whole place be cleaned spick-and-span before we can ship product again. You got any idea how much money we’re going to lose this morning? Well … do you?” I thought Rhea Dawn’s eyes were going to pop out of her head.

  Phus kicked at an egg box with his fancy white loafers. “Daddy’s just trying to help,” he said, sounding all the world like a little boy.

  Rhea Dawn planted her hands on her hips. “For the love of Mike, I told you he’s not helpful. He’s as outdated as this whole backwater operation. And now he’s gone and hired his girlfriend, Lucy the Hillbilly, and her sidekick, Ethel.” She pointed accusatively at me, then Veenie. “Look at those two. Do they honestly look like professional PIs to you? Do they? Because they look like a pair of coffin-dodging cougars to me.” She waved her clipboard at me, then Veenie.

  Veenie slid down off the forklift and stood at my side, her arms crossed against her chest. “Hey, I told you, I didn’t run over ol’ Cheaty Pants.”

  Rhea Dawn puffed up her ample chest. “Oh, really? How’d she get under the wheels of your forklift then?”

  “I dunno!” Panic flamed in Veenie’s blue eyes.

  Phus stepped in. “Hold your wild horses, ladies. We’re all a little upset here. Let’s not go too far with the bad-mouthing.” He shot a glance at Boots, pleading for some levelheaded male reinforcement.

  Boots pulled a set of plasticuffs from his belt and stepped toward Veenie. He towered over her so there was no contest about who was going to take charge of the situation. He grumbled the Miranda to Veenie as he her. He stared at me as he finished with Veenie. He muttered in my ear as he passed me by, Veenie in tow, “What kind of old ladies are you, anyway? Don’t you know how to knit? Go home. Bake some dang-blasted cookies.” He seemed grumpy, which honestly was how he seemed most days when it came to me and Veenie doing our professional duty.

  Rhea Dawn relaxed her shoulders as Boots brushed past her. “You’re taking her in? Booking her?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Boots as he marched Veenie toward the squad car. “There’s a dead body. Pretty much have to arrest somebody.”

&nbs
p; Veenie’s hands were pinned together in front of her, wound up in plastic. She didn’t look all that happy. “Why you taking me in?” she screeched. I was glad her hands were bound, because if they hadn’t been, she would have been on top of Boots, scratching his eyes out.

  “Dead body,” Boots said as he took Veenie by the shoulders and guided her off the loading platform toward the squad car, which was parked nearby. “And we have you on tape yesterday trying to kill said same body and shouting threats all over East Jesus. I reckon the DA might refer to all this as ‘motive,’ so let’s get you booked so we can get on with this investigation.”

  Veenie slumped, looking defeated. She gave me her “what now?” look of bewilderment as Boots shuffled her toward the squad car.

  Rhea Dawn laid a hand firmly on my shoulder. “I think you best be going now too.”

  I glanced from her to Phus.

  Phus shrugged. “She’s in charge of operations. You’d best listen to her.”

  I stripped off my white smock and booties and took up the rear behind Veenie. “Don’t worry,” I whispered to her as we approached the squad car. “Harry will bail you out.”

  Veenie looked at me sad eyed. We were on a case for Harry and the agency. Legally, it seemed to me that Harry would have no choice but to cough up bail money for Veenie.

  Harry, on the other hand, saw the whole thing differently.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When I arrived back at the office in Knobby Waters, Harry was spitting venom like a coiled copperhead. “For Pete’s sake,” he tongue-lashed me, “I told you Veenie had a big hole in her bag of marbles. Now look at this mess. Have you seen the Hoosier Squealer today?”

  Harry turned his laptop computer toward me until I could see the screen and the Squealer’s website. Today’s photo showcased Boots poking at Veenie’s backside with his night stick as she shuffled, in plasticuffs and zebra-striped poncho, toward the door of the jail. The headline read: “Murder Most Fowl.”

  Ha! Ha! That Squealer was a real jokester.

  I studied the photo before eyeing the boss. “You have to bail her out.”

  Harry’s eyes opened widely. “Do I?” His little mustache did a wiggle dance.

  “She was on the job when this happened.”

  “Show me where it says your benefits package covers bail when caught committing a felony.” Harry leaned back in his office chair and clasped his hands behind his head. He smirked at me like a crotchety possum who’d lucked his way into the henhouse.

  Harry knew full well that Veenie and I had no benefits package. We were paid minimum wage, by the hour, straight up. We could take time off, but it was never paid. No health insurance. No free lunches. Nothing. Basically, Veenie and I were senior slaves, entitled to diddly-squat. I reckoned I was going to have to soften Harry up if I wanted Veenie sprung from jail and back on the case with me.

  I studied Harry’s face. He looked like he still had a load of crank inside him that he might be fixing to dump on me. “You know full well I can’t do this job without Veenie. It takes two of us. You know that.”

  “You should have thought about that before you gave that mentally ill Mata Hari the keys to a forklift. For Pete’s sake, she can’t drive, not legally. She’s blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other. And you know she picks fights with everyone over every little thing. Her screws are all loose. Nothing but duct tape holds her brain in near as I can tell. What were you thinking?” “It wasn’t me that put her on forklift duty. It was Rhea Dawn, Hiram’s daughter-in-law. Rhea Dawn is in charge of operations.”

  “Well … you should have stopped her.”

  “Stopped Veenie?” That made me snort.

  Harry paced the office. He shoveled one hand through his thinning pewter-colored hair. “I just got our bills paid. We don’t have anything extra. She’s your crazy fiend. Don’t you have bail money squirreled away?”

  “Nope.” I had a tiny nest egg of cash, but at the moment it was earmarked for muffler repair. If I let that tiny spitball of cash go, Veenie and I would be hoofing it. Knobby Waters wasn’t exactly an urban hub. Most of Pawpaw County was cornfields and mud flats. Not like I could call a cab or one of those new Ubers—or Goobers as Veenie called them— to tote me around.

  Harry and I were tossing less than polite words back and forth like hot potatoes when the front door creaked open. Tater Wineager strolled in. He was wearing the exact same outfit as before: a lemon-yellow windbreaker and cuffed-up blue jeans. He threw himself down in a roller chair by Harry’s desk and lit a cigarette. “Howdy,” he said. The word came out in a puff of smoke.

  Harry smoothed down his stubby tie and pulled his face together until he looked halfway professional. He yanked a tissue out of a box on his desk and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Tater, how can we help you?”

  “The wife. You find her?”

  Harry nodded toward me.

  “Not yet.”

  “You check over at her sister’s place, over in Tunnelton?”

  “She wasn’t there. No one was home.”

  “Well, that don’t sound right. Lottie never leaves home. Nervous type. Afraid of being outside. Don’t own a car. Won’t talk to strangers.”

  “Veenie and I visited Lottie’s place,” I said. “No one answered the door.”

  “Course not,” said Tater. “Probably thought you was a Jehovah. There’s a whole mess of them moved into the abandoned Dixon homestead down in Fort Ritner. They go around thumping on tambourines and Bibles and everybody’s door. My cousin, Bibs, done told me nobody over that way answers their doors no more. They don’t want to be preached at or prayed over.”

  I pondered that. It was possible that Lottie and Gertie had been in Lottie’s farmhouse and had chosen deliberately not to answer the door. Even if the sisters saw me and Veenie pounding at the door they might not have answered. Honestly, most folks in Pawpaw County who knew Veenie weren’t all that eager to invite her in as a dinner guest.

  “You heard from Gertie?” I asked Tater.

  “Nah,” he said as he blew out smoke and squinted. “Not a peep.”

  Harry slid a glass ashtray across his desk so Tater could flick off his cigarette ashes.

  “I’m getting awful worried about her,” Tater said. He scanned the office, his jowls moping like he was a hound dog who’d lost his way and wasn’t sure what or who to sniff after next.

  Harry clicked into salesman mode. “Don’t let this worry you, Tater. Women get like this. Female hormones. My wife used to go all puffy and hissy like that. Man, oh man, it was shark week every time her Aunt Flo came for a visit.”

  I stared at Harry. “You have a wife?”

  “Had. Past tense.” He scrunched up his nose and lit a cigarette. “Ex,” he bellowed as he exhaled. “Ex-wife.”

  I’d been working for Harry for almost a year, since he motored into town one spring day with a ratty mattress and all his belongings strapped to the top of his Toyota, the deed to the old Rexall office building in hand. He’d never mentioned a wife before. I wondered if a sour marriage or some such tragedy had turned Harry into a champion grump and horndog. I’d always assumed he’d been born chasing skirts, but heck, a broken heart can sour just about anybody.

  Tater shifted in his chair, lifting one hip, then the other. His boots dangled heavily, not quite reaching the ground. “Sorry. Left hip hurts,” he muttered. “It’s all this gosh-darn rain.”

  I said I knew how he felt. “It’s the knees with me.”

  Tater nodded. “Well, guess I’ll mosey on home. You got my number?”

  “Sure do,” I said.

  Harry escorted Tater to the door and threw a reassuring arm around his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Give us a couple of days. We’ll find the wife.”

  Harry made it clear once Tater was out of earshot that by “we” he meant “me.” He circled me, all puffed up in boss mode. “We got two solid cases now. You need to be calling on Hiram. Apologize to him. Make him happy before w
e lose his business. He’s a corporate client. Biggest in the county. You make him happy, and we’ll be rolling in the dough. Forget Rhea Dawn. Hiram’s the one writing the checks. And when you’re done making Hiram happy, go find Tater’s wife and drag her on home.” He stood firm, hands on hips.

  “Anything else, boss?”

  Harry eyed me, trying to cipher if I was being obedient or a smart-ass.

  I could have told him it was the latter, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. I was too tuckered out to keep yammering at him. I shouldered my messenger bag and headed out the door toward home, where I meant to throw myself onto the sofa and watch something predictable and comforting, like reruns of the Rifleman.

  Alas, home, as it turned out, wasn’t as peaceful as I’d imagined. Chaos and craziness followed me there like a stray dog in search of its supper.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I arrived home, Hiram’s pickup limo was parked cattywampus on the sidewalk. The man himself was sitting on my front porch, enjoying the sweetheart swing. His white hat was in his lap. He was smiling so widely his dentures shone like white shingles in the dim porch light. He waved his hat at me as I ambled up the sidewalk and onto the porch.

  “Enjoying the evening,” Hiram said as he jumped up to greet me. “It’s right peaceful here on your porch.”

  I waved him back down as I scaled the steps. He looked to be angling for a hug, but given how boisterous he was with the handshakes, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to squirm loose if he ever got a decent grip on me.

  Ignoring Hiram’s outstretched arms, I plopped down on the sweetheart swing next to him. “I’m real sorry about Veenie,” I said. “She didn’t kill Pam, you know. She talks crazy, but she’s harmless, like a toothless badger.”

  “Oh, sure. I believe you.” He nodded thoughtfully.