Gobble, Gobble Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “Come on over. Anytime.”

  “In an hour?”

  “Sure.”

  Lucy pounded out the obit and headed over to Ellie’s. By the time she got there, she had made up her mind. As much as she would like to save Kadjo, she didn’t really think she could take him. So far the family’s only experience with pets had been a few assorted cats through the years, and after Elizabeth was diagnosed with asthma, they hadn’t had any pets at all. Lucy had suggested getting a dog a few times but Bill had always nixed the idea. “Too expensive,” he’d say. “Too dirty.” If she pressed the point, she thought she could probably convince him to accept a small dog, like a Jack Russell terrier or a poodle, but Kadjo was enormous. Eighty or ninety pounds at least. Furthermore, he did have a reputation as a problem dog. She knew perfectly well what Bill’s reaction would be if she brought him home and she didn’t want to have to deal with it. So when she knocked on Ellie’s kitchen door, she had resolved to say she was very sorry, but she would not be able to take the dog after all.

  “Hi, Lucy. Come on in.” Ellie waved her arm at Bear Sykes, who was seated at her kitchen table. “You know my uncle Bear. He was at the meeting the other night.”

  Lucy hesitated for a minute. She didn’t want to intrude on a family meeting.

  “Sit down,” said Bear. “Take a load off your feet. I see you running all over town, chasing the news. I bet you could use a break.”

  Lucy laughed. “I sure could.”

  Bear’s black hair was combed back from his face, and he was wearing a beaded choker under his plaid flannel shirt. His skin was ruddy, and with his high cheekbones and curved beak of a nose, Lucy thought he looked very much like the stereotypical Native American.

  “Coffee?” asked Ellie. “How about a cup of tea?”

  “Tea would be great,” said Lucy.

  Ellie put the kettle on and joined them at the table. She smiled but didn’t say anything. Neither did Bear. The silence stretched on and Lucy felt she had to speak.

  “I’m awfully sorry about Curt,” she said. “I didn’t know him well, but I know you’ll miss him.”

  Bear glanced at Ellie. “Ellie was a lot fonder of him than I was,” said Bear, picking up a spoon and stirring his coffee. “He had a big mouth.”

  “He did a lot for the tribe.” said Ellie, defending him. “He made people proud of their heritage.”

  “I’ll give him that,” said Bear. “But the trouble with Curt was he didn’t know when to stop. Wouldn’t compromise. I could’ve killed him at the meeting the other night when he started talking against the casino.” Bear slapped his fist on the table. “I mean, here we’ve worked so long and come so far, and he has to start throwing a monkey wrench in things. When we all stand together, folks are a lot more likely to take us seriously. But if it seems like we aren’t agreed on what we want, well, then they’re not going to stick their necks out for us. That vote could have gone either way, you know. We got lucky with that Dunlap woman.”

  The kettle shrieked and Ellie got up to make the tea.

  “What do you think your chances are for federal approval?” asked Lucy.

  “A lot better now that Curt isn’t spouting off—that’s for sure.”

  Ellie passed Lucy a cup of tea, then sat down. She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed at her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Ellie,” said Bear, patting her shoulder. “I know you’re upset about what happened.”

  Ellie nodded, sniffling. “I’m going to miss him so much,” she said.

  “Well, I’ve got to get going,” Bear said, rising to his feet. “I’ve got a meeting.”

  “You always have meetings,” said Ellie, blinking back her tears.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” he said.

  For a moment he stood behind her chair. Then he bent down and enfolded her in a big hug. After a moment he straightened up and headed for the door, giving Lucy a little salute.

  After he’d gone, Lucy sat staring at the door, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “He talks tough, but he’s upset about Curt, too,” said Ellie, reading her mind and answering Lucy’s unspoken thoughts. “It’s funny about the tribe. It’s like a big family. We get mad at each other, but if one of us gets hurt in some way, it’s like all of us got hurt. He’s a lot more upset than he’s letting on, believe me. Especially since Curt was killed. Maybe whoever did it had it in for Curt, or maybe they hate all Indians. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Curt made a lot of enemies,” said Lucy.

  “Yeah,” agreed Ellie. “So you want to see the dog? I put him outside.”

  Lucy followed Ellie outside through the fog and drizzle to the empty chicken coop Ellie was using as a temporary kennel. Inside the wire fence, Kadjo was lying down with his chin on his front paws. He didn’t get up as they approached. He just cocked an eye at them and sighed. It was a huge sigh—a sigh that seemed to express immense sadness.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s mourning for his master,” said Lucy.

  “He is mourning for him.” Ellie pulled the hood of her jacket over her head.

  “How could he know?”

  “Dogs know. Always. Bees, too.”

  “Bees?”

  “When a beekeeper dies . . .”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Lucy, sticking her hands in her pocket for warmth.

  Ellie shrugged and opened the gate. When they entered the pen, Kadjo got to his feet, but he didn’t make any gesture. He didn’t wag his tail in welcome; he didn’t growl in warning. Ellie reached down and scratched him behind the ears. He looked up at her with sad yellow-brown eyes.

  Lucy stroked his neck, feeling the muscles beneath his thick, coarse coat, which was beaded with moisture. “Poor old boy,” she said.

  He expelled another huge sigh and leaned his shoulder against her leg.

  “I’ll take him,” she said.

  “Great,” said Ellie. “You won’t regret it.”

  Lucy was regretting it already.

  “But not until Sunday when my company has left and the house is quiet.”

  “That’s good.” Ellie patted Kadjo’s massive head. “That way you’ll be able to get acquainted in peace.”

  “Not likely,” said Lucy. “This will probably cause a divorce.”

  “Look on the bright side—at least you’ll have a dog.”

  “Might not be such a bad deal after all,” said Lucy with a small smile. She started to go, then remembered something she’d meant to ask Ellie about. “Fred Rumford called me Wednesday night. He accused Curt of taking the war club from Chris White. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Kids! Curt saw Chris and some other members of the team loading a keg of beer into a car. They also had the war club. They’d left it lying on the roof of the car, in fact, so he told them to give it to him for safekeeping. He was going to take it back to the college.”

  “Even though he thought it should belong to the tribe?”

  “Of course. The tribe doesn’t have a safe place for it now. He wanted it for the museum—the one that’s supposed to be part of the casino deal.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “But the police couldn’t find him Wednesday night. Do you know where he was?”

  A look of peace settled on Ellie’s face and she smiled. “He was with the ancestors, showing them the war club and promising to keep it safe.”

  Lucy nodded, as if she understood; then she realized she didn’t. “And where did he find the ancestors?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t being rude.

  “On the island, of course. Metinnicut Island in the bay.”

  “Did he go alone?”

  Ellie nodded. Then her face crumpled and Lucy wrapped her arms around the sobbing woman. They stood there together—two women and a dog in the cold November drizzle—for a long time.

  CHAPTER 13

  What had Lucy done? Was she out o
f her mind? How on earth was she going to convince Bill to accept Kadjo when she didn’t even know herself why she had agreed to take the dog?

  This was insane, she thought as she drove down Ellie Martin’s driveway and turned onto Main Street Extension. It must be some sort of empty-nest syndrome, she theorized. Maternal instincts gone awry. Toby had flown off to college. He preferred his friends over his family, and she was reeling from the snub. What other explanation could there be?

  All that was perfectly understandable, she could hear Bill saying as the Subaru wagon whizzed past the brown fields and bare trees, but why should the whole family have to suffer because of her motherly neurosis? Why should they have to put up with a huge, unruly, smelly beast of a dog that nobody wanted but her? A dog like that must eat an awful lot. How much did dog food cost? Did she have any idea? Not to mention vet bills. What if he got sick or was hit by a car? How would they afford that?

  She didn’t have any answers, she admitted to herself as she passed a deep stand of dark pine woods. All she knew was that she wanted to adopt Kadjo and she was determined to do it. Besides, she rationalized, she didn’t ask much for herself. She never bought anything—clothing or shoes—that wasn’t on sale, and when the kids asked what she wanted for Christmas or her birthday, she always told them to make her a nice card because that would mean more to her than anything they could buy. And it was true.

  Now, for the first time in a very long time, she wanted something. She wanted Kadjo, and she decided as she pulled up at a stop sign that she was going to have him no matter what.

  That settled, she found herself feeling remarkably cheerful and lighthearted. She could hardly wait until Monday when she could bring the dog home.

  She had just pulled out onto Route 1 and was speeding along, eager to tell the kids about her decision, when an avalanche of guilt overwhelmed her. Here she was rejoicing in the fact that she was going to have Kadjo and entirely forgetting the reason why he needed a good home. Her good fortune had come at Curt Nolan’s expense. If he hadn’t been killed, she certainly wouldn’t be getting the dog. And what about her promise to Miss Tilley? She’d been so busy feeling sorry for herself that she hadn’t given much thought at all to finding Curt’s killer.

  The blare of a horn and the zoom of an accelerating car as it passed startled her. She was halfway home and she had no recollection of the drive. Shaken, she pulled off the road and tried to collect herself.

  She took a deep, cleansing breath and closed her eyes, only to see Rumford’s image pop up. Okay, she admitted, so he hadn’t faked the war club’s disappearance as she had suspected. But what if he had encountered Nolan at the game with the club? It was extremely unlikely Rumford would have accepted Nolan’s explanation. They would have argued and Rumford might well have lost his temper and bashed Nolan with the club. It was a scenario that seemed all too probable, considering the argument she’d witnessed outside the library.

  In fact, she thought, considering the number of times she’d seen Nolan embroiled in some conflict or other, there was no shortage of people who could have argued with Nolan at the game. After all, even Bear Sykes had admitted he wanted to kill Nolan at times.

  Not that she thought for a minute that Bear had killed Nolan. It was just an expression. People said it all the time but they didn’t really mean it. For instance, at this very moment she would like to kill Toby. She’d like to wrap her hands around his neck and shake some sense into him. Of course, she would never do it. But the urge was there. He certainly knew how to push her buttons. Was that what had happened to Nolan? Had he made someone, probably Rumford, so angry that Nolan had gotten himself killed?

  Or had somebody seen some benefit in killing Nolan and cold-bloodedly taken advantage of the moment? That theory expanded the list of suspects even more. Nolan had managed to make enemies on both sides of the casino issue. By insisting on the rights of the tribe, he’d alientated the anticasino forces, and by criticizing the proposed plan, he’d made enemies of the procasino faction. There was no love lost between Howard White and Nolan, and she suspected Pete Crowley didn’t think much of him either. Come to think of it, she’d even seen him arguing with his own boss, Andy Brown.

  Andy Brown! He had more to gain from the casino than anybody, considering it was going to be built on his land. He’d be sitting pretty—no more pumpkins and turkeys for him!

  Of course, Brown had an unshakable alibi. He’d been in New York at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on the day Nolan was killed. Sara had seen Katie and the rest of the Brown family on TV.

  Suddenly, she had an unsettling thought. The Browns were in New York and Nolan was dead. That meant nobody had been taking care of poor TomTom Turkey. He must certainly need some food and water, and as it happened, she wasn’t far from the farm. She couldn’t just let the poor old thing starve, she decided, flipping on the directional signal and pulling back onto the road. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to check Andy Brown’s alibi.

  When she pulled into the driveway at the farm, Lucy was struck by the silence. When she’d been there before, it had always been crowded with people. In summer, Brown did a big business with his fruit and vegetable stand. September brought apples, and hordes of weekenders visiting the old-fashioned cider press. October was pumpkins and the haunted house, and in November, of course, it was the fresh turkeys.

  That explained the silence, she realized. The turkeys were gone. All the noisy gobblers had either been sold or frozen for Christmas. All except TomTom.

  Lucy pulled up beside the barn and got out of the car. She felt a little bit like a trespasser, but she did have a good excuse for being there. She was on a mission of mercy. Entering the cavernous barn she went straight to the corner where the giant turkey was penned.

  “Hi, there, TomTom,” she said, studying the situation. “Are you hungry?”

  The huge bird cocked his head and blinked at her. As she watched he began to fan his tail.

  “Now, calm down,” she told him. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just came to see if you’ve got any food.”

  Moving with stately slowness, the bird approached her, lifting first one enormous clawed foot and then the other.

  Good Lord, thought Lucy, watching in fascination. Suddenly the relationship between birds and dinosaurs, which she’d read about in numerous books when Toby was in his dinosaur phase, didn’t seem so preposterous.

  Her instinct was to make a hasty exit, but TomTom’s feed tray was indeed empty. Also, it was close to the side of the pen and she could probably fill it with feed without entering the cage. The water, however, posed a problem. The galvanized metal can hung from a chain attached to one of the rafters and was in the exact middle of the pen.

  “This is a pretty kettle of fish,” said Lucy, keeping a wary eye on the big bird as she explored the barn looking for the feed bin.

  She found it under a window and next to it stood a sillcock with a hose.

  Lucy first filled the feeder tray, hoping the bird would be too busy eating to bother her while she filled the water can. But as soon as she opened the gate he turned to look at her, once again spreading out his tail.

  “Okay. Be thirsty. See if I care.”

  Realizing the hose was quite long Lucy decided to try to toss it into the container, which fortunately had no lid. After a few tries she succeeded, then turned on the faucet. From the sound of the water pouring in, Lucy guessed it had been empty. TomTom immediately marched over and took a long drink, lifting his beak to let the water slide down his long neck.

  “You are indeed a strange creature,” said Lucy, watching the performance. As she turned the water off, she wondered if it really was true that turkeys could drown in the rain because they wouldn’t shut their beaks.

  “Not even turkeys are that stupid,” she told TomTom.

  He blinked in agreement.

  Returning to her car, Lucy congratulated herself. Between Kadjo and TomTom, she had really become quite a friend to animals. Furthermore,
she’d made some progress on her investigation. She could now eliminate Andy Brown from her list of suspects. All indications were that he and the rest of the family were away from the farm. His alibi appeared to be ironclad.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Sara, will you get that?” Lucy was stripping the meat off the turkey carcass so she could make soup and her hands were too greasy to answer the phone.

  “It’s for you,” said Sara, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s Miss Tilley.”

  Lucy felt exactly as if the teacher had called on her in class and she hadn’t done her homework. She washed her hands and took the phone.

  “You caught me up to my elbows in soup fixings,” said Lucy to explain the delay.

  “Is that what you’ve been doing, making soup instead of finding out who killed Curt?”

  “I’ve made some progress,” said Lucy. “I’ve eliminated Andy Brown from my list of suspects.”

  “I wouldn’t call that progress,” said Miss Tilley, adding a little snort. “Everybody knows the Browns are in New York—they were even on TV.”

  “Well, I went out to the farm to make sure,” said Lucy, wishing she didn’t feel quite so incompetent. “That’s one thing I’ve learned, you know. When it comes to an investigation like this, you can’t take things for granted. You have to check and double-check everything.”

  “Maybe you’d like to double-check this,” snapped Miss Tilley. “Rachel’s here, you know, and she told me the police have some solid evidence. It’s supposed to be very hush-hush but the police chief told Bob, Rachel’s husband. Those two are thick as thieves, you know, Bob being a lawyer and all.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  “Rachel didn’t know but she said it’s something important.”

  “I wonder what it is,” said Lucy.

  “I thought you’d be interested,” said Miss Tilley, sounding smug. “Rachel also said that Bob had a meeting with Howard White and Jonathan Franke and some other people who are opposed to the casino. Bob told her they were shedding no tears over Curt.”