“I’m eighteen. That’s illegal,” Hayley cranked.
“So sue me,” Brenda chirped.
“Not funny, Mom.”
I remembered that Haley had said her mom was a lawyer up in South Bend.
Brenda’s eyes darted around the barn. She bit her bottom lip. “I can’t believe you came here, of all places. For the love of God, what were you thinking?”
“You know what I was thinking!” Hayley hunched over. Her brown eyes dropped until they were fixed on the rubber toes of her Converse sneakers. She rocked on her heels, her hands balled and stuffed in the pockets of her coveralls.
“Does he know?” Brenda asked, her arms locked over her chest. “Dear Lord, tell me he doesn’t know!”
“No.”
“Great.” She rolled her eyes toward the heavens. “Let’s keep it that way. If you’ve got any stuff, gather it up.” She cast her eyes around the barn again. “We’re going home. I’m taking you home. Now.” She reached out to take her daughter’s hand.
Hayley looked at me pleadingly. “Mrs. Waskom???”
Brenda glanced at me like this was the first time she had noticed that I was there. “And who are you?”
I introduced myself and tried to explain the situation as best I could.
“Harry? You work for Harry Shades?”
“Technically, we both do,” I said, pointing to Hayley. “Harry hired her as an intern.”
“Oh, for the love of Mike!” Brenda eyed Hayley. “He knows?”
“No, Mom. I told you, Harry doesn’t know. I didn’t tell him.”
I stepped forward, intrigued. “Tell him what?”
Brenda sighed deeply. She studied me carefully before replying. I reckon she trusted what she saw because after sighing again, she threw her hands up and hissed quietly, “Harry Shades is Hayley’s father.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
I felt like I’d been struck in the head by a two-by-four. “Hayley is Harry’s daughter?”
Brenda nodded. “That’s what I said.”
“And he doesn’t know?”
“No, he does not know, and I, for one, wish to keep it that way.”
“Wait,” I said. “You and Harry were married?” I remembered that Harry had briefly mentioned to Tater that he had been married once, but then he had brushed the whole thing aside.
“For ten seconds.” She grimaced. “Long story that basically illustrates how stupid I was at seventeen. Also, I drank too much. I’m sober now. Hayley is the result of two bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine that Harry generously gifted me, coupled with the fact that I was mad at my own mother and hell-bent on running away with Harry just to show her. I never told Harry about Hayley. Didn’t see the need.”
I stole a look at Hayley who, now that I knew the full story, I noticed did kind of favor her father, mostly in moodiness, but she also carried herself a bit like him. Married to Harry for ten seconds? Boones Farm? Lordie, it seemed Harry had always been fast and cheap. Moreover, he’d always lacked taste. From what I recalled, Boones Farm had tasted pretty much like rotten berries muddled in turpentine. Not exactly top-shelf. But then neither was Harry.
My heart panged a bit for Brenda, but then she had Hayley, and that kid was no slouch. I’d be proud to call her my own. It always amazed me how much women could take and still get back up and kick their way through to a decent life.
“Get your stuff,” Brenda ordered Hayley softly.
Hayley was about to reply when the barn door creaked open.
Hiram was standing there. His face was red with tiny sweat beads dancing across his forehead. He eyed the gang of us.
I was frozen to the ground, uncertain what to do. Hiram appeared equally perplexed.
After a few seconds, Hiram slid the barn door shut and turned to face us. “Nobody is leaving,” he said quietly. He used his hat to motion for us to have a seat on the hay bales.
Brenda stepped forward. “I don’t know who you are, and furthermore, I don’t want to know. I’m taking my daughter, and we’re leaving.” She nabbed Hayley by the crook of her arm and steered her toward the door.
“Nope!” bellowed Hiram. “I said sit!”
Uh-oh. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
We were all frozen in place when Veenie popped in. “Ruby Jane!” she called into the darkness as her eyes adjusted. “Dickie said he saw you and Hiram disappear into the barn. You rolling in the hay? You decent?”
“I’m here!” I shouted. “Come on in!”
Veenie hopped forward, her weak eyes blinking in the dim light. A mess of her tail feathers had come loose in the heat, maybe in the fever of the dance. One wing was dirty and drooping. She looked like a ragged fowl who’d been chewed on by a possum. She and Dickie had won the chicken dance contest though. She was wearing the “Dance Queen” sash and a tiny rhinestone tiara.
“We won!” she yelped as she caught clear sight of me and rushed forward. She stopped when she saw all the people in the barn. “What the—?” she squawked.
Hiram was holding a pearl-handled pistol now. Waving it, he motioned for Veenie to sit down on a bale beside me.
Veenie looked to me for direction, her face tight with confusion.
I nodded toward the bale. “Best do as he says.”
We sat there silently, yielding the floor to Hiram.
Hiram pocketed his little peashooter and adjusted the rooster slide on his bolo tie. “Now that I have everybody’s attention, let’s get this gosh-darn mess straightened out.”
“It looks pretty straight to me,” I said. I was mad as a wet hen at the man. He could shoot me if he wanted, but I wasn’t shutting up.
“You are the most mule-headed woman I ever did meet,” Hiram cried out in exasperation. “If you’d just hush up for a minute, maybe I could let you in on what’s going on.”
“Okay,” I said grudgingly as I made a zip-lip motion across my face. “Give it a whirl, you little weasel.”
“Ruby Jane,” he bellyached, “you need to set some of your sass aside for one gosh-darn minute.”
“Fine,” I said. “Explain away.” Crossing my legs, I leaned back on the hay bale as best I could—my back was sore from inchworming around the loft—and opened my ears wide.
Hiram cleared his throat. “I am not the bad guy here. I did not steal Ma and Peepaw’s chickens. I did not kill Pam.”
I rolled my eyes.
Hiram blew his lips out in exasperation. “Did you see me band them chickens?”
“Well, no,” I admitted.
“Course not, because I did not do it.”
Veenie puffed up and flapped a wing. “Computer said you did.”
“Exactly, but any one of several dozen people could have logged on and tagged that computer order with my name.”
He made a decent point.
“Fine,” I blew out. “If you didn’t band those chickens and hide them, who did?’
Hiram twisted his lips. He looked to be chewing the inside of his cheek. He was holding words there tucked into the pouch of his cheek, words that he was clearly reluctant to spit out.
Growing impatient, Veenie jumped in. “What about Willy? You hired a murderer. He killed his girlfriend the exact same way Pam died. Mashed her head in like she was a rotten tater.”
Hiram yanked off his cowboy hat and waved it in the air. “There you go again. Ruby Jane claimed the same thing. I did not do the background checks on Willy. I never do those things.”
“Who does?”
“Rhea Dawn, her gang. She does all the HR.”
“But—” I thought back to the emails that Hayley had read to us. Those actually had not come from Hiram. They were between Rhea Dawn and the HR background firm. It was Rhea Dawn who’d told the checkers to stop looking into her brother’s criminal background. She cited Hiram as the source of that order.
I eyed Hiram. “Did Rhea Dawn tell you that Willy had a felony record?”
“Oh, sure. Said he’d had some trouble with th
e law, all back when he was young. Sticky fingers. Robbing pop machines. Minor stuff.”
“And you hired him?”
“Well, gosh darn, sure. I needed muscle. Didn’t want some baby-faced college guy who was tied to his mama by the apron strings. I wanted a man who could get rough if that was what was needed. I’ve hired a mess of guys with records over the years. A lot of security men are ex-cons or military grunts. You have to bend the rules sometimes when you’re in business. You want men around who know how to handle the world, warts and all.”
That all sounded reasonable. “But the HR firm said straight out that Willy had murdered his girlfriend.”
“I had no notion about that. I wouldn’t have hired him if I had known he had done something as bad as that. I don’t cotton to killers. If it’s true that Willy is a killer, I’ll be letting him go.”
“Well,” I started, feeling defensive, “but you ordered Willy and Fergus to steal from Ma and Peepaw. I saw them not an hour ago, with my own eyes, out behind the barn. They dragged most all the chicken feed out of here and loaded it up into a van. Whole time the festival has been going on the pair of them have been stripping Ma and Peepaw naked.”
“Well, that don’t surprise me none. It shouldn’t surprise you neither. Who you think has been stealing feed and supplies from my place? I already had a hunch about Fergus. Frankly he’s not the brightest thief, but I didn’t know that him and Willy were in cahoots. Makes sense, though. Once a thief, always a thief. As my daddy always said, you can’t shack up with the devil and expect Jesus to pay the rent.”
Hmm. I hated to admit it, but Hiram was making a darn good case for his own innocence. “Okay,” I said, “but you own Cluckytown. You lied to us. It wasn’t the bank that held the second mortgage on Pam. It was you. You had controlling interest all along. Now, with Pam out of the way, you own the whole operation, you’re planning to convert it to free range so you can drive Chickenlandia out of business.”
“Who in the Bejesus told you that?”
I got a sinking feeling in my gut. “Kiki Shelton,” I said weakly.
Hiram guffawed. “Not surprised. Phus has been messing around with that girl for the last year, using her to weasel his way into Pam’s operations. I told him not to do that, but he’s always had trouble when it comes to womenfolk. Look, I don’t like admitting this, frankly it hurts me a good bit, but it’s Phus who legally owns Cluckytown. He leveraged everything he owns and then some to get control. He’s gotten himself into a heap of trouble. Too much debt. I’ve been trying to pull his little ass out of the quicksand, but he’s in too deep.”
“Kiki told us that Phus owned everything, not you.”
“Now, just hold your horses there. That’s not true. I own Krupsky Enterprises, most all of it, whole kit and caboodle. Phus is on salary for me. He owns the thirty percent that his mama left him. That’s not a controlling interest. I hold that by far. Little idiot overleveraged his thirty percent to buy into Cluckytown.”
All the details of the case were coming together now. “Phus and Pam went into cahoots to steal the Horton’s chickens? Phus logged Ma’s chickens in for his sisters to analyze and breed for his own free-range division? Phus killed Pam?”
Hiram heaved a sigh. I saw his throat tighten. “Afraid so,” he said quietly. “I’ve been protecting him, trying to get him to turn himself in, but he insists he didn’t kill Pam. The rest he admits to, but he refuses to accept the consequences. He wanted to make something of his own, so he started working with Pam. She mistakenly thought he had my blessings, near as I could tell.” Hiram looked like he was ready to confess everything, but he never got a chance.
The barn door slid open. For a minute we were all blinded by the bright afternoon light, but as our eyes adjusted and the door slid shut, we saw Rhea Dawn standing there with Willy by her side.
Willy was holding a gun. “You’re supposed to be tied up,” he barked at me sourly.
“Sorry, change of plans,” I quipped. I probably shouldn’t have been so sassy, but if this was the day I was getting my wings, I was hell-bent on landing a swift kick or two before I fluttered away.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Pam Perkins stormed in to see me after you two visited her.” Rhea Dawn nodded at me and Veenie. “She thought Phus or I had done something to Gertie … kidnapped her, hurt her in an effort to ruin the festival. She said she wanted nothing to do with murder or kidnapping. Pranced around my office squealing about how murder wasn’t her style, all high and mighty with that ridiculous hair. Said she was going to the police. I tried to reason with her. Told her neither I nor Phus had a thing to do with harming Gertie. But she was crazy, addled, spitting threats. My patience was already thin because I had a tracer on Phus’s email and knew he was having an affair with that hillbilly Barbie doll over at Cluckytown.”
I was curious. “You cared about Phus?”
“God, no,” she sneered.
Hiram stepped in. “She cared about losing control of the business. She and Phus had a prenup that stated that if they remained married for five years, she’d hold full entitlement to all his assets.”
“Oh,” I said, my brain gearing in. “Any chance it’s been about five years and Phus was planning to divorce her?”
Hiram laughed. “Already had the paperwork drawn up. Phus’s ego never could take how good Rhea Dawn turned out to be at the business end of things. He could see control of his whole inheritance slipping into her hands. And he was right. Rhea Dawn has a solid head for business. Phus is nothing compared to her.”
I eyed Rhea Dawn. “So you killed Pam?”
“I did not.” She threw a sidewise nod at her brother. “He did.”
Willy grinned. “Think of it as my hobby,” he said, his toothbrush mustache twitching. “I don’t like it when someone gives my little sis a hard time.”
Okay, I thought, good to know.
Brenda, who’d been silent, piped up. “Look, I don’t know what any of this is about. So since my daughter and I are not involved, we’re going.” She slid forward, taking Hayley with her by the crook of her arm. The two inched slowly toward the barn door, Brenda in front, shielding her daughter.
Rhea Dawn stepped in front of them, halting their progress. Her eyes were as hard as nailheads behind her rimless glasses. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Brenda stopped, but didn’t back down. “I said we are leaving.” She put some growl in her voice and slid her body further over Hayley’s, hoping to shield her daughter from reach.
Rhea Dawn pulled herself to her full height and growled back. “And I said that you are not.”
Oh boy.
Nobody moved. The only sound was the loud whirl and sudden crack of the livestock fan above our heads. And then all hell broke loose and the demons began to dance. The fan came crashing down. Hay flew everywhere. We all split apart and rolled around like bowling pins, dust blinding our eyes. I ended up on my back on the barn floor, staring straight up at the rafters.
I saw stars, big, bright, white ones that blurred into each other, and through the stars I saw not the beautiful face of an angel, as I was hoping, but the craggy old face of Fergus Senior. He was grinning so widely that I could see the black hole on the right side where there should have been a molar. Fergus waved what looked to be a ratchet wrench in one hand. His curly hair was frizzed out, his bushy mustache drooping in the humidity.
“Oops!” he called down. “Hey! Watch out below!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Quit your crabbing,” Veenie snorted at Boots.
We were still in the barn, which was crawling with cops and medics. Someone had stretched yellow crime scene tape across the open barn door. Devon, the junior law officer, was standing at the door trying to keep the crowd of lookie-loos from contaminating the crime scene. He was waving his beret, trying to get the crowd to break up and part a path so that the medics could wheel Rhea Dawn out on a gurney.
Rhea Dawn wasn’t conscious, but she
was alive, and they had her belted tight to the gurney. Willy had already been escorted out in handcuffs.
Boots was directing the crowd of emergency personnel while bellyaching at me and Veenie about the big mess we’d made. “You should have called me in,” he muttered.
“Why in tarnation would we have done that?” Veenie asked as she yanked at her right wing, which had gone from drooping to hanging like a broken wing in the ruckus.
“I’m the law,” he brayed. “It’s my job. My job—not yours.”
“You’re just sore that we solved this case while you were out lollygagging with the catfish, all moon-pie eyed over Ruby Jane.”
“Now, you listen hear, Lavinia Goens, you can’t talk to me like that. I’m the law in this county. I could arrest you, and your pal over there”—he tossed a shoulder my way—“for obstructing justice.” Boots placed both hands on his hips and glowered at first Veenie, then me.
I shrugged and threw my hands up in the air while casting a double eye roll in Veenie’s direction. Best to let Boots and Veenie spit at each other until one of them gave in to a bad case of dry mouth.
Veenie stuck her dentures out at Boots, and then, before he could muster a comeback or get a hold on her, she darted under his arm. She ran over next to a state trooper and started yakking at her about her fancy riot gear. The woman, who was over six feet tall, looked like a black-clad Star Wars stormtrooper. The ruckus hadn’t fazed the trooper—she was busy checking her munitions belt—but Veenie swarming around her seemed to take her aback.
Fergus Senior was over by the water trough yakking it up with a pair of TV news reporters. He was beaming like a Boy Scout about to pin on his first merit badge. I hated to admit it, but the old geezer had practically saved our lives. Of course he’d come into the barn the back way to see if there was anything left worth stealing and, seeing what was happening, had crawled into the loft and used the wrench—meant for more devious things—to drop the fan on Rhea Dawn and Willy.
It wasn’t entirely clear if Fergus meant to steal the fan or had meant to deliberately drop it on Rhea Dawn and Willy and save us all. He claimed the latter, so I decided to let him bask in glory. I’d leave it up to Hiram and the Hortons to decide if they wanted to press charges for the thieving. Fergus had spent half his adult life studying the world through iron bars. Another stint in the pokey wasn’t likely to damage him too badly.
Chickenlandia Mystery Page 19
