Egg Drop Dead

by Laura Childs

  As Suzanne drove into the countryside she tried to relax. Rays of sunlight strafed the far ridgeline where hills rose up and gave way to dark forests with sandstone bluffs and moss-crusted gullies. She passed a golden field where a flock of Canadian geese were sunning themselves and searching for stray bits of already-harvested grain. Flurries of colored leaves rained down against her windshield and red leaves on oak trees shimmered like precious jewels.

  Yes, Boyle had poked at her sensibilities and tried to upset her. Actually, he had upset her. But was the man desperate or evil enough to have murdered his competitor? Of that Suzanne wasn’t so sure.

  Of course she still had her tried-and-true roster of suspects. Claudia Mullen. Noah Jorgenson. Byron Wolf. Julian Elder. She couldn’t forget them. Any one of them had serious motive, didn’t they? Well, maybe not Noah Jorgenson, but his mother certainly acted like she was unhinged. And that kind of strange, unpredictable behavior could never be trusted.

  * * *

  WHEN Elder’s farm came into sight, Suzanne slowed her car. She rolled down the window and motioned toward Elder’s driveway. Cassie gave an acknowledging wave back and then rolled in, the horse trailer bumping along behind her. Suzanne continued down the road, hoping Cassie would be successful. That at least four of the eight horses would be rescued and find their way to caring, loving homes.

  As she turned left on Country Trail, Suzanne decided, for no reason other than her own brand of burning curiosity, to stop at Mike Mullen’s farm.

  Imagine her surprise when she pulled in and found two pickup trucks parked crosswise in front of the barn. She climbed out of her car, curious as to what was going on. Then she immediately recognized Todd Lansky.

  “Hey there,” Lansky said to her as she walked toward him. In his blue jeans, jean jacket, and boots, he looked more like a rancher than a farmer.

  “I was just wondering how Claudia was doing,” Suzanne said. She glanced around. “Is everything okay here?”

  Lansky waved at a man who was standing on the lowest rail of a sturdy metal fence, looking over a herd of black-and-white cows. “That’s Dan, Mike’s brother.”

  “Oh sure,” Suzanne said. She vaguely recognized him from the funeral that morning.

  “He was just telling me that some guy over in Deer County offered to buy the cows,” Lansky said. “I guess he wants to expand his dairy herd.”

  “Wow. Just like that, the dairy farm and cheese business is gone.”

  Lansky eyed her. “Kind of a tough deal, huh?”

  “It really is.” Suzanne glanced over at the house. “Do you know if Claudia is home yet?” She winced. “From the cemetery service?”

  “Yup, she just rolled in, like, thirty minutes ago.”

  “Were you at the funeral this morning?” Suzanne asked.

  Lansky shook his head. “I’m afraid I couldn’t make it. Just the visitation last night.” He gestured toward the barn. “I’ve been checking out a couple of large aluminum tanks. Since it looks like Claudia’s going to sell the whole place, lock, stock, and barrel, I could use some of that equipment at my place. It’s used but still in pretty good condition.”

  “You’re sure Claudia’s going to sell the farm?”

  Lansky gave her a sad, hangdog look. “It looks that way.”

  “Do you know anything about the horses?” Suzanne asked.

  “There are horses? No, I haven’t heard a thing.”

  “Then maybe . . . maybe I’ll just pop in and ask Claudia.” Suzanne turned toward the house.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I tag along,” Lansky said. “I want to know if she’s got a price in mind for those tanks.”

  “No problem.”

  * * *

  WHEN Claudia answered their knock at the kitchen door, she looked more than a little surprised. “Suzanne,” she said. “Todd.” She seemed to consider their presence for a moment and then graciously opened the door. “Come in.”

  They trooped into the kitchen.

  “I don’t mean to bother you,” Suzanne said, “but I have kind of a strange question.”

  “Yes?” Claudia said. She still had on the plain black dress she’d worn to the funeral and her eyes looked dry and irritated.

  “Did Mike try to buy some more horses? More than the three that are in your barn?”

  Claudia looked slightly puzzled. “I have no idea.”

  “Because I’ve been kind of looking into that particular aspect,” Suzanne said.

  “Into the horses?” Claudia said. Now she just looked confused while Lansky looked semi-interested.

  “I guess I was trying to figure out if there was some sort of connection,” Suzanne said. “I mean, between Mike’s death and the horses he bought from your neighbor Julian Elder.”

  “Interesting,” Lansky said. Though it was probably said out of politeness.

  “I can’t imagine there is a connection,” Claudia said. Then she seemed to reconsider her words. “I mean, why would there be? What exactly are you implying?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Suzanne said. Now she had the feeling she was upsetting Claudia. “But I did mention the horses to Sheriff Doogie.”

  “He’s a good man,” Lansky said. “If anybody can get to the bottom of this, he sure can.” Then to Claudia, “Excuse me, ma’am, I wanted to talk to you about buying a couple of those aluminum tanks . . .”

  Claudia waved a hand. “Name your price. I don’t need them.”

  “Claudia,” Suzanne said, edging back toward the door. “Would it be okay if I took a look in the barn?”

  This time Claudia sighed visibly. “Go ahead. Help yourself.”

  * * *

  WITH the cows out in the pasture, the barn felt empty and cold. Suzanne walked slowly down the center aisle, past the empty stanchions until she got to the two box stalls. Those were empty, too. Dan must have turned out the horses along with the cows. She wondered if the farmer who was going to buy the dairy cattle would be taking the horses as well. She hoped he would.

  Pressing her palm against the white wooden door to Mike’s cheese room, Suzanne pushed it open. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the exact spot on the cement floor where she’d discovered Mike’s body. Where the blood had congealed around him in a ghastly sea of red.

  Were those stains still there?

  No, they were not.

  Someone, thank goodness, had tossed down a layer of hay and sawdust. Suzanne supposed it was meant to absorb the blood, but to her it only served as a reminder that something foul had happened here. X marks the spot. A nasty deed that needed to be covered over.

  Skirting around Mike’s worktables, Suzanne’s eyes took in the workroom. The whole place was scrupulously clean, all the aluminum vats and tables still sparkling. The only incongruous note in the whole place was Mike’s desk. It was an old wooden desk that had been painted white and the top of it was heaped with papers.

  Suzanne edged past the tables and went immediately to the desk. For a man who preferred his workspace nice and neat, this certainly was not very orderly. Then Suzanne remembered that Sheriff Doogie and his two deputies had probably pawed through Mike’s orders and correspondence looking for some sort of clue. Obviously, they’d come up empty, since they weren’t exactly hot on the trail of anyone in particular at the moment.

  Picking up a yellow pencil, Suzanne stirred the jumble of papers. She didn’t think she’d spot anything that Doogie had missed. Then again, you never know. She scanned order sheets, invoices, and handwritten notes. Everything seemed perfectly ordinary. Orders had come in from Busacker’s Grocery and Kohn’s Restaurant. There were hand-printed invoices that were ready to be mailed out. She saw no glaring problems, no brilliant clues that leapt out at her.

  Suzanne heard the rumble of a big engine and glanced out a window. Lansky was just leaving in his red Ford truck. He’d pr
obably managed to strike a satisfactory deal with Claudia. But really, it didn’t matter what was sold or not. If Claudia had made up her mind to sell the whole place to Byron Wolf, then it would all be auctioned off, hauled away and dumped, or sold for scrap.

  Sad, she thought, that someone’s life’s work could be discarded so easily.

  Suzanne shoved aside a stack of dog-eared papers and uncovered an old-fashioned day minder calendar. Vaguely interested, she flipped through the pages and found them dotted with notes. A few dates (delivery dates?) were circled in red. When she came to the date of Mike’s murder, she paused. There was just one word scrawled there. Gleason.

  Gleason? Who was that?

  Suzanne wondered if this notation could be somehow important, but didn’t see how it fit in. She would ask Doogie what he thought, but decided that Gleason was probably just another customer. Someone who was waiting for their wheels of cheddar cheese to show up. Now, of course, they never would.

  * * *

  SUZANNE drove home the same way she’d come, passing a mail truck and then going by Elder’s farm. She slowed and tried to peer down his driveway. Tried to see if there was any kind of horse trading—or horse purchasing—going on. But there were too many trees blocking her view and she didn’t see a thing.

  A half mile down the road, Suzanne did a double take and jumped on her brakes. A teenage boy, whom she immediately recognized from last night, stood at a mailbox.

  “Noah,” she breathed.

  Suzanne coasted in slowly and slid down her passenger side window. She drew up alongside of him and smiled. “Hi there.”

  Noah turned toward her and a frown flickered across his face. Then, in an instant, it was gone. “Hello,” he said. His voice sounded a little creaky, as if he wasn’t used to conversing with a lot of people.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Suzanne said. “I just wanted to compliment you again on your violin playing last night.”

  “Oh yeah?” This time he sounded friendly enough, so Suzanne climbed out of her car and came around to talk to him.

  “Suzanne,” she said, touching a hand to her chest.

  “Noah,” he said, smiling faintly, looking a little embarrassed.

  “You’re very talented, you know that?”

  Noah shrugged. “I just do my best. I feel the music inside my head and try to interpret it.”

  “Well, you’re very good. I imagine you’d be quite an asset to one of our local orchestras.”

  “I don’t go to regular high school,” Noah said. “I’m homeschooled.”

  “That sounds very nice, but I would think you’d miss hanging out with kids your own age. A lot of fun stuff happens in high school besides going to classes. Football games, dances, class plays, band, and orchestra . . .”

  “Maybe.” He looked shy and a little skittish, like this might have been the longest conversation he’d carried on in a while.

  “Tell you what,” Suzanne said. “Why don’t you come to the Halloween party we’re having Monday night at the Cackleberry Club? There’ll be lots of kids there. Kids your own age.”

  “You mean at your restaurant?”

  “Actually, we’re holding the party in the front parking lot. There’ll be a live band, costume contests, lots of food, a big bonfire, a hayride . . . I think you’d enjoy it. You should come.”

  “I don’t know if my mom will let me.”

  “Well, think about it, okay? And then ask her. Because you’d surely be welcome.”

  “Both of us?”

  “Of course, both of you.”

  Then, because Noah was standing there looking big eyed and nervous, like a kid desperately in need of a hug, Suzanne bent forward and swept him into her arms. “Try to make it,” she urged. She gave him a gentle squeeze and was surprised when he didn’t try to pull away from her.

  CHAPTER 19

  “SAM was just here,” Toni said as Suzanne flew through the door of the Cackleberry Club.

  Suzanne skidded to a stop. “He was? When?”

  “Ah, he left maybe twenty minutes ago. Dropped by to see you, I suppose. Though you’d never know it to see him scraping the last vestiges of Petra’s lemon pie off his plate.” She grinned. “I can see the way to that cutie’s heart is through a rich dessert.”

  “Did you tell Sam where I was?”

  Toni reached up and made a zipping motion across her lips. “No, I did not, missy. I figured your horse caper might make him a tad uneasy and I saw no reason to rock the boat. Especially with your impending marriage and all.”

  “Thank you,” Suzanne said.

  “Hey, it’s the girlfriend code. We have to cover for each other, right?”

  Suzanne looked around the café and saw that half the tables were occupied. “We’re still busy.”

  “Moderately,” Toni said. She’d changed from this morning’s black skirt and blouse to a turquoise blue cowboy shirt and faded blue jeans that looked like they were airbrushed on. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “How’s Petra doing?”

  “She’s just a regular little trooper with her marching orders. She’s got the pizza dough all made and a big pot of tomato sauce simmering on the stove. And now she’s got three ladies coming in to the Knitting Nest at two-thirty for an autumn wreath–making workshop.”

  “Are these fabric wreaths or dried leaves and flowers?”

  Toni threw up her hands. “How should I know? I’m the least creative in the bunch and always the last one to get any drip or drab of pertinent information.”

  “Toni,” Suzanne said, leaning in close, “I’d watch out for that proverbial lightning bolt from above. Because you are usually the first one to know every pesky little detail. And, if you don’t know something, you worm your way in until you figure it out.”

  Toni liked that. “It’s like I’m my own little social media platform,” she said, wiggling her hips. “Who needs Facebooking, Twittering, and tweeting when I got my own brand of twerk!”

  * * *

  MID-AFTERNOON brought only a few customers to the Cackleberry Club for tea. With Petra holding her wreath-making class, Suzanne stepped in to handle the tea service. She brewed pots of Assam and Darjeeling tea, served scones, and whipped up a dozen or so chicken and chutney tea sandwiches that she cut into dainty little triangles.

  Toni poked her head into the kitchen. “Mrs. Beckman requested a pot of Nilgiri tea. Do we have that?”

  “We should,” Suzanne said. She hurried into the café and checked her stash of tea. “Yup, here you go.” She handed a tea tin to Toni.

  Toni balanced the shiny black tin in her hand. “Just think, this tea is imported all the way from India.”

  “The Blue Mountains of India.”

  “That means that tea pickers probably plucked these very leaves by hand. The plants were probably growing on some ridiculously steep slope and they had to climb all the way up there to get it. Kind of amazing, huh?”

  “Imagine when Chinese tea was first brought to Europe on clipper ships,” Suzanne said. “It must have been quite a journey.”

  “Yeah,” Toni said. “That had to be a much bigger hassle than just shipping it by FedEx.”

  “Toni, does the name ‘Gleason’ mean anything to you?” Suzanne asked as Toni measured out the tea.

  “Not really. Oh, wait. I once knew a Patty Gleason who ran a beauty salon over near Mankato. But I think she ran away with the local undertaker. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s probably not important.”

  As the last of their tea drinkers lingered, Suzanne and Petra grabbed baskets of colored gourds.

  “We’ve got to jazz this place up,” Suzanne said. “After all, this is the kickoff for Halloween weekend.”

  “Are we gonna wear our costumes all day Monday?” Toni asked.

  “Why not? It’ll
give our customers a good laugh.”

  “But I don’t have mine done yet.”

  “I’ll help you with the tutu part,” Suzanne said. “But if you want to be a ballerina, you’re going to need a pair of dancing shoes.”

  “I have just the thing,” Toni said. “An old pair of Capezios that I bought at Milda’s Thrift Shop a couple of years ago. They’re like real thin black leather slip-ons and the soles are super flat.”

  “They sound perfect,” Suzanne said.

  “Except for the fact that they kill my feet.”

  “Nobody said being a prima ballerina was easy.”

  * * *

  ONCE the gourds were poked into every little nook and cranny and stuck on the high shelves where Suzanne’s collection of ceramic chickens reigned supreme, it was time to bring out the big guns.

  “I can’t wait to get the real Halloween decorations up,” Toni said. She grabbed a plastic skeleton by its neck and yanked him out of a large cardboard box. “Where do you think we should hang Señor Muerte?”

  “Anywhere he won’t get in the way,” Suzanne said. “Since he is life-sized.”

  “Really, death-sized,” Toni cracked.

  They hung skeletons, fluttering bats, and gossamer ghosts, then Toni made a big production out of stretching fake cobwebs across Petra’s pass-through.

  “This is really gonna bug her,” Toni cackled.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t do it,” Suzanne said.

  “No, no, this will be great. Petra freaks out if she even comes near a spiderweb. I once saw her stumble into a ginormous web in her garden and she looked like Marcel Marceau doing his pantomime act. Her arms were flailing and she was hopping all over the place. It was hysterical.”

  “As long as you’re willing to suffer the consequences,” Suzanne said.

  “And we should have some dried-flower arrangements on the tables, too.”

  “Go check with Petra, see if she’s got extra.”