by Hillary Avis
“Could be why he was there in the parking lot. Maybe he was stalking them to make sure Jillian didn’t blow his cover to McKenzie.”
“So, cover blown, he took out his anger on McKenzie, then stuffed her body in Tambra’s trunk so nobody would see.” I closed my eyes and walked through the scene in my mind. The inky dark of late evening, the heat of a July day fading. Tambra’s Prius and my Porsche lined up in the back row of the upper lot, framed by the blackberry bushes on the hill behind them. Lights from the fireworks illuminating them periodically, reflecting the sparkling display. My eyes flew open. “Why’d he put her in Tambra’s trunk instead of in the backseat of my car? The top was down. It would have been easier than opening the back of the Prius.”
Eli licked his lower lip thoughtfully. “I was thinking about that earlier. My guess is that in the back of his mind, he blamed Tambra, too.”
“He was trying to frame her?”
“I doubt he put that much thought into it. He would have been operating on adrenaline at that point. But I think maybe subconsciously, he wanted to send Tambra a message. Kind of a ‘see what you did?’ kind of thing.”
My stomach squeezed. “No wonder Jillian is afraid of him, if he’s capable of that.”
Eli nodded gravely. A movement beyond him caught my eye. It was Ruth at the window, waving me back inside. Beside her, Dylan’s face was pressed, pig-nosed, against the glass.
“I have to go,” I said apologetically.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, planting a kiss on top of my head. He released me in one motion. “Be safe,” he admonished.
“I’m hanging out with kindergarteners, not killers,” I reminded him. “You be safe.”
He gave one quick nod and walked away. Toward what, I didn’t know. I hoped just toward his office, where he’d make a call and let someone else handle Archer Clark.
Chapter 18
Inside the Greasy Spoon, Jillian was hustling to get food to people under Ed’s watchful glare. He didn’t look happy that she’d spent so long outside talking to us. Ruth wasn’t amused, either, even though she’d already eaten half of her plate of biscuits and gravy. The boys’ plates—which, judging by the pools of syrup, had once held pancakes—were decimated, and they were currently taking turns pinching each other in some kind of weird boy-child game.
“Have a nice date?” Ruth asked sweetly, but with a dangerous edge to her voice. “I ordered for you, but it’s probably cold.”
“Sorry that took so long—I’ll take it to go so you can get back to work.” I grabbed a container from the server stand and slid the turkey sandwich and fries into the box. I swiped a couple of them and popped them in my mouth. Around them, I said, “Time to go, kids.”
Ollie and Dylan paused their pinching and scrambled out of their chairs to stand eagerly beside me.
“I get to hold Boots first!” Dylan proclaimed.
Ollie’s face fell. “You can’t call dibs. We’re not even there yet.”
“Sure I can—I can call dibs whenever.”
“Then I call dibs on your dessert!”
Dylan smirked. “I don’t even have a dessert.”
“Not yet. But you will. And then it’ll be mine.” Ollie stuck out his tongue at his brother.
“No, it won’t!” Dylan’s voice took on a shrill, panicky edge. He turned to Ruth and me. “Will it?”
“No,” we said simultaneously. I added, “You’ll both get your own. Or maybe you’ll both get none, if you keep up this bickering. Now, follow me and keep up. I’m parked over at the feed store.”
We split off from Ruth where the highway bent around a curve. She headed back downtown, and we turned toward the feed store. The boys tagged behind me, and I could hear their argument continue in heated whispers that I pretended to ignore so I didn’t have to start our afternoon off on a sour note.
“You stink, Ollie.”
“You stink.”
“You smell like pickle juice.”
“You smell like rotten pickle juice.”
“Well, you smell like...like”—Dylan paused, searching for the worst thing he could think of—“like manure.”
I couldn’t stop the giggle that erupted from my throat. “That’s enough, you two. I swear, if you keep this up, I’m going to—”
“Tell Mom?” Dylan asked in a quiet voice. My heart stilled. I knew this moment was coming—the moment when the fun of hanging out with Ruth and me wore off and they started thinking more about their missing mom. They’d start asking more questions soon and not accepting it when I dodged the answer. At some point, I’d have to tell them what was going on—but this wasn’t that point.
I turned around to face them. “Worse. I’m going to make you wait in line at the grocery store without getting any candy.”
They groaned in unison as they caught up to me. I grabbed Ollie’s hand with my free one and he took Dylan’s. “We’ll be good,” Ollie said.
“I know you will.” I winked at them as we entered the feed store parking lot together. Ollie dropped my hand made a beeline for my Suburban, tugging Dylan behind him. He opened the door to the back seat, but I stopped them before they got in.
“Hang on, I need to pop in the feed store for a second to ask Sherm something.”
Dylan frowned at me. “Is that like grocery shopping?”
“Nope—it’s way more fun than that,” I said. I dropped off my leftovers in the car and took the boys inside. A converted old barn, the feed store had the ambiance of a church, with a peaked roof above open rafters and light filtering in from high clerestory windows. It smelled of molasses oats, alfalfa hay, and machine oil—a comforting smell that was like time travel to my childhood on my dad’s chicken farm. If they made a perfume that smelled like the feed store, I’d probably wear it every day—not to attract anyone else, but so I could catch a whiff every now and then and get that feeling of lying in the hay loft without a care in the world.
I left the boys to play at a shelf of die-cast tractors and went to the register where Sherm was perched on a stool, one elbow on the counter as he flipped through the paper and snapped his gum. He looked up, a gap-toothed smile spreading across his stubbly cheeks when he saw me, the wad of gum clenched between his teeth. He pointed to it. “Tryin’ to quit.”
“Good luck,” I said. “Hope it sticks.” Sherm spent more time out back smoking than he did behind the counter, but he was always trying to kick the habit, usually because his wife asked him to.
He jerked his head in a quick acknowledgement. “What’re you here for? Need a couple of muzzles?” He barked a laugh.
I realized, too late, that he meant for the boys, whose squabbles from the toy tractor display were audible even across the store. “Oh. No. I just wanted to pick your brain about my chickens if you have a minute.”
Sherm shut his newspaper and settled back on his stool. “I’m listening.”
“My birds stopped roosting in the coop all of a sudden. I’ve had to move them in by hand the last two nights. Any idea why they might do that?”
“The heat, maybe,” Sherm said. “It’s been pretty hot. Those coops heat right up and it takes a while for them to cool down in the evenings.”
“I thought of that—it was warm inside, but not bad.”
“Hm. Well, if it’s not heat, it’s gotta be one of three things.” He counted off on his bony, calloused fingers. “Bad roost, mites, or predators scaring the daylights out of ’em.”
I frowned, thinking of my safe, comfortable, clean coop. “I don’t have any of those problems, though. It has to be something else.”
Sherm clicked his tongue and shook his head. “I’m telling you, it’s one of those three, even if you can’t see it.”
Irritation prickled under my skin. Sherm hadn’t seen my coop, so how could he be so certain? “I’m not sure how to solve an invisible problem,” I snapped.
His eyes twinkled underneath his bushy eyebrows. “You’ve gotta look for the ev
idence. If your roost is wrong, you’ll see foot problems. Mites, you’ll catch little bugs running around if you go in with a flashlight. Predators—they’ll leave something behind. Feathers, doo-doo, footprints, fur. Get those two rascals over there to play detective, and you’ll figure it out.”
My annoyance faded now that he’d given me a course of action. What had felt like criticism was well-intentioned after all. “Thanks, Sherm. I appreciate the help.”
“And I appreciate the business.” He winked at me and only then I saw the two boys headed toward the counter with hopeful expressions, each holding a small, green tractor.
Ten dollars and ten minutes later, we were back at Lucky Cluck Farm. The boys tumbled out of the car clutching their new toys.
“Put those on the porch so they don’t get lost in the orchard,” I called to them. I don’t know if they heard me because they were already halfway to the coop, pumping their little arms as their sneakers pounded the packed earth and gravel of the driveway. Ollie pushed up on tiptoes to unlatch the carabiner that secured the door to the run while Dylan stood back to watch.
Much to the boys’ delight, the chickens poured out, their legs pinwheeling as they made a mad dash for the orchard and the hundreds of grasshoppers that took to the air on their approach. A few hens dawdled around my feet, hoping for treats, and I scooped up the nearest one. It was Dr. Speckle, the broody I’d inherited when I bought the farm.
Holding her wings so she wouldn’t flap me in the face, I flipped her over to examine her feet. In the winter, sometimes their toes were muddy, but this time of year, the run was dry, so her feet were relatively clean. Smooth, healthy skin stretched between her toes. I let her go and scanned the rest of the flock, paying close attention to their gait and whether they were favoring one leg over the other. They all seemed perfectly fine.
To make sure, I checked another dozen, and not one bird had even a hint of bumblefoot, the bumpy, painful foot infection that could be caused by a poorly sized or poorly made roost. As I’d already known, the size and shape of the roost wasn’t the reason my flock had decided to roost in the run.
Feeling slightly smug, I went inside to grab a flashlight to check for bugs. While I was there, I let Boots out of the bathroom, where she’d laid an egg in the laundry hamper while I was gone. I checked her feet for good measure, even though she rarely roosted on anything other than the back of my recliner due to her crooked toes. She was fine, of course, and followed me into the kitchen, smoothing her ruffled feathers while I put her egg in the fridge and rummaged around in the junk drawer to find my hi-beam flashlight. I finally located it behind a wad of used twist-ties that were underneath a sheaf of grocery store coupons.
Clicking it on and off a couple times to make sure the flashlight didn’t need new batteries, I headed back out to the coop and ducked inside. Even with the light coming in the windows, the interior of the coop was dim due to the large roof overhang—a good thing, because that kept it cool on these hot summer days and dry on the wet winter ones. I shone the flashlight on the roosts, leaning close to peer at the crack where the roost met the wall. There wasn’t even a hint of movement.
“Whatcha doing?” A voice came behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin, whirling to see who it was. Ollie leaned against the doorframe, squinting as the flashlight beam skittered across his face. “Are you looking for eggs?”
My heart still thumping like a flat tire, I shook my head. “Nope—but you can check the nest boxes if you want. There’s a basket hanging on the wall outside. Just be careful you don’t drop it when it’s full of eggs. Go ahead and put the eggs up on the porch when you’re done.”
Ollie’s face lit up, and I couldn’t help reflecting his smile. I’m sure if Tambra made him collect eggs at their house, he wouldn’t be so keen on it, but here it was a treat. There was nothing like the feeling of doing a chore that wasn’t yours. Ruth and I often joked that we should clean each other’s houses, just because it was more satisfying when it wasn’t your dirt.
Speaking of dirt...I swept my flashlight around the corners of the coop, looking for evidence of other animals. Now that I knew my roosts were fine—no bugs or splinters were keeping the chickens off them—I needed to rule out a predator at work. I worked my way around the edges of the walls, looking for newly gnawed rat holes or a crack where siding had warped that might allow a critter inside. A mink only needed an inch-wide gap to squeeze through. But I didn’t find any spaces. My little coop was tight as a drum.
So much for looking for evidence. Maybe old-timer Sherm didn’t know everything, after all.
The egg door creaked open and Ollie peered through the nest box at me, then dropped the door and opened the next one. The light penetrating the coop from the open door illuminated the nest boxes, where, much to my dismay, I saw far fewer eggs than usual. Another day of disrupted lay. And if I were the betting type, I’d wager that my hens weren’t going to roost tonight, either.
Was all this because I’d trusted someone else to take care of them? I knew Eli had done his best, but maybe the flock was registering a complaint about their temporary caretaker. Maybe they were mad at me. Was this...payback?
I shook my head. If I knew anything about chickens, it was that they didn’t hold a grudge. They didn’t hold much of anything in their lovable little pea brains. If Boots wasn’t upset about sleeping alone in the house, surely the rest of the birds weren’t upset about eating out of Eli’s hand instead of mine. They weren’t holding in their eggs out of protest, like a toddler holding her breath when she didn’t get her way. They were laying them...just maybe not inside the nest boxes.
I left the coop and, squinting in the bright sunlight, clapped my hands to get Dylan and Ollie’s attention. “Guess what! Time for an egg hunt!”
Ollie came around the side of the coop carrying the half-full egg basket. He lifted it up with both hands. “I already found some.”
Dylan dropped down from an apple tree branch he’d been swinging on and hurried over to join us. “No fair—you got a head start.”
I took the basket gently from Ollie’s hands. “You don’t need a basket. Just look around the yard and see if you can find any more eggs. I bet they’ll all be together in one big nest. Check under bushes and in the long grass but stay inside the fence. Whoever finds them gets a prize!”
With that, they were off, running pell-mell around the property, poking around under the trees and in the low brush around the edge of the orchard. Satisfied that they’d be busy for a while, I put the eggs in the porch fridge and settled in the shade on the steps to eat my lunch leftovers. The turkey sandwich was slightly warm, so I mostly nibbled around the edges and filled up instead on the salty, greasy fries.
When I wasn’t paying attention, a couple of hens sneaked up the stairs and stole bites of bread and lettuce off my abandoned sandwich, squawking and dashing away with their prizes. It’d only be a few seconds before the rest of the horde descended, so I scooped up the takeout container and stood to take it in the house.
“I found it!” Ollie’s shout came before I got inside.
Abandoning the sandwich to the mercies of the chickens and instantly regretting all the hm-hm I’d have to hose off the doormat later, I ran around the side of the house looking for the boys. I found them laying on their bellies next to the pumphouse, staring into the few inches of dark underneath it.
Chapter 19
“I see the eggs!” Dylan announced, turning his head to look up at me. “A bunch of ’em.”
I kneeled down beside them and squinted at the gap between the dirt and the bottom of the pumphouse siding. Faintly, pale shapes came into focus a few feet back, some brighter than others. They were eggs, all right. Some light brown and some the rainbow eggs from my packing-peanut layers. There had to be four dozen eggs in there, minimum. The stinkers must have been attracted to the cool earth under the pump house and decided to lay there instead of in the nest boxes.
I blocked any thought of
lurking spiders and reached my arm under the shed. But to my chagrin, the nearest egg was still a good foot past the end of my arm. I struggled to my feet and retrieved the flashlight from the porch—which was now devoid of both chickens and sandwiches, although they left plenty of evidence behind—and returned.
In the glare of the hi-beam, the nest of eggs was fully revealed. It quickly became obvious that they weren’t whole eggs. They were caved in, broken, and in some cases, halved or totally smashed. My heart sank. These eggs hadn’t been laid here. They’d been stolen. Destroyed.
Beside me, Ollie gasped. “Look!”
He pointed to the right of the cache of broken eggs. Way back in the recesses of the space, six pairs of eyes glowed. I shifted the flashlight beam, illuminating the silver-white fur of a mama opossum with five small babies clinging to her back. She hissed a warning at us, showing her yellowed, ratty teeth.
That explained my flock’s reluctance to go into the coop. This little family must have been making regular visits to the nest boxes and scaring the tailfeathers off the birds in the process. I wasn’t sure how they were getting in, but judging by the pile of eggs, it was clear they were getting in. If it wasn’t through the walls or windows, it was probably through the wire. Mama Possum was too big to squeeze through—the gaps in the welded wire were only two inches by three inches—but those babies...they weren’t so innocent.
Dylan whimpered, and I clicked off the light, casting the stowaway family into darkness again.
“Don’t worry, she’s not mean,” I said. “She’s just scared.”
“Scared of what?” Dylan asked, scooting closer to me but keeping one wary eye on the pump house.
“Scared we’ll take her babies away, probably. Moms are always the most scared of that.” I bit my lip, thinking of how much Tambra must miss these babies of hers. I patted Dylan on the back and stood. “Come on, get up. I need to go inside and call the exterminator.”
