Queen Anne's Lace

by Susan Wittig Albert

  The second snatch didn’t come off as easily as the first. Extra Crispy had been awakened when Rodeo boosted Blackheart. When the thief reached for him, he hopped away, aiming a barrage of furious pecks at the guy’s bare hand and wrist. Rodeo jerked his hand back, then—angrily—cornered the rooster and grabbed him by his tail. He was successful this time, although feathers flew as Extra Crispy, wings flapping wildly, struggled with all his might against his abductor. That was when Rodeo lost his exhibitor’s badge, although he didn’t appear to notice. He was busy shoving the second rooster into the crate with the first. A moment later, he was out of the picture, and the camera clicked off.

  But it had given us what we needed: proof that the badge belonged to the jerk who stole those chickens. “How fast can we get Gibbons’ address from your database?” I asked. “It won’t take him long to discover that Caitie’s rooster isn’t all that valuable—except to her, of course. I don’t want to find my daughter’s chicken in the frying pan when we get there.”

  Tom narrowed his eyes. “When we get there?” he asked warily.

  “Damn straight,” I said. “That’s Caitie’s pet rooster. I have to make sure she gets him back, alive. Let’s find that address, Tom. Maude Porterfield lives about six blocks from here.” Maude is a justice of the peace, and in Texas, justices have the authority to issue search warrants. “On the way to Gibbons’ place, we can stop at her house and get a warrant. The exhibitor’s badge and this video give us plenty of probable cause.” I scowled at him. “And if you think you’re doing this on your own, think again. You’re not leaving me behind. Now, hurry up. With any luck, we can catch Maude before she heads for court.”

  “Mmm,” Tom said, frowning. “Well, in the interest of quick action—” He took out his cell phone and called the main office at the fairgrounds. “It’s early. Let’s hope Susanna is at her desk.” After a moment, he said, “Hey, Suze. I need a quick address check on an exhibitor. Can you pull up that file for me, fast?” After a moment, he said, “Name, Dana Gibbons. Exhibitor ID: 20245.” He pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. There was a pause, then he said, “1116 County Road 12. Got it. Phone number?”

  Another pause, while he scribbled quickly. He flipped the notebook closed and tucked it back in his pocket. Into the phone he added, “Thanks. Yes, actually there is a problem. Gibbons made off with a couple of birds from the poultry tent last night. One of them is a rooster that’s apparently pretty valuable. You might let Charlie know that I have an ID and a video on the thief and am on my way to get a search warrant for the address you just gave me. I’ll check back with him later.” He clicked off the phone.

  “Charlie?” I asked. Obviously, fair security was very well organized.

  “Charlie Powell. He’s in charge when I’m out.” He took his vehicle keys out of his pocket. “Put that carrier in the bed of my truck. And bring your computer. Porterfield may want to look at that video before she issues the warrant.”

  I moved fast. Of course, we had no way of knowing whether Gibbons had taken the chickens to his house or somewhere else. But we had to start somewhere. And there was no point in going anywhere without a warrant.

  Maude Porterfield, who presided over my marriage to McQuaid, may well be the longest-serving justice of the peace in Texas. She has been on the bench for over fifty years and knows everything there is to know about her job. This morning, we caught her sitting down to a plate of pancakes, wearing a red tracksuit with black racing stripes, her white hair still in curlers and her cane hooked over the back of her chair. She hadn’t put her hearing aid in yet, so we had to ring the doorbell several times before she came to the door.

  But while Maude may be one of Pecan Springs’ older citizens, she is one of the sharpest. She put in her hearing aid, listened to Tom’s story, looked at the exhibitor’s badge, and watched the video on my laptop.

  “What do you reckon this feller wants with those chickens?” she asked, peering at the screen over the tops of her glasses.

  “He might want that black rooster for breeding,” I said. “Caitie said somebody on eBay was asking a hundred and seventy-five dollars an egg. This guy may already have a black hen—or know where he can get one.”

  “Or steal one,” Tom muttered.

  “Jiminy crickets,” Maude muttered. “I’ve been on this earth longer than Noah, but I’m always surprised by the things some folks will get up to.” She reached for her pen. “Better include ‘vehicles, premises, and all buildings’ in the warrant. The birds could be in the chicken coop. Or the toolshed.”

  “Maybe make it a search-and-seizure warrant,” I suggested. “We’ve got a carrier in the truck. If we find those chickens, we ought to confiscate them. To ensure their safe return,” I added. “That black bird is wearing a hefty price tag.” And the other was priceless, at least where Caitie was concerned.

  “Right,” Maude said, and began filling in the warrant. “You’ll want to get them back to the fair before the judges get around to the chicken section.” She gave me a sympathetic glance. “Wouldn’t be right for that daughter of yours to miss out on a chance at a blue ribbon because some jerk made off with her chicken.”

  “Thank you,” I said, although I wasn’t sure that Extra Crispy would be in blue-ribbon shape. He’d lost quite a few feathers in the tussle.

  Maude paused, looking at Tom. “This isn’t a no-knock warrant, is it?”

  “Nope. No need. I’m not looking for drugs.” The Fourth Amendment—and Texas law—requires that even if the police have a search or arrest warrant that justifies entering a property, they must knock and announce themselves and their purpose before they enter. One important exception: the cops don’t have to knock and announce if doing so would give suspects the opportunity to destroy the evidence by flushing the drugs down the toilet. If an officer thinks he’ll need to enter unannounced, he can request a no-knock warrant that gives him authority to barge right in without so much as a hey-there. I go into full defense-lawyer mode when I hear this, of course. It can make for a lively discussion in the courtroom.

  “Makes sense,” Maude said. Finished, she signed her name with a flourish and handed the warrant to Tom. “China riding shotgun on this one?”

  “I don’t think—” Tom began.

  “You bet I am,” I broke in emphatically. “That’s Caitie’s rooster.” I frowned at Tom. “And when we get those birds, they need to go straight back to the fair. I don’t want them shut up in the sheriff’s evidence locker for who knows how long.” Or taken to a shelter, as are animals seized in cruelty cases.

  “I agree with China,” Maude said. “Special case. The chickens go back where they came from. The poultry tent.” She frowned at Tom. “And if I were you, I’d take her, Tom—unless, that is, you’re sure you can personally identify both of these stolen birds. You figure you can do that?”

  Tom muttered something under his breath, but Maude only smiled.

  “I thought so,” she said briskly. “You two better be on your way, then. It would be a damned shame if that jerk decided to barbecue the evidence.”

  * * *

  • • •

  COUNTY Road 12 took us out into the wooded hills south of Pecan Springs, along the Pecan River. A narrow, asphalted two-lane with no shoulders, the road hugged the twisting river for five or six miles, then crossed it on a rusty iron bridge and headed west into the Hill Country. I called Ruby to ask her to open the shop for me.

  “Tom Banner and I are pursuing a pair of stolen roosters,” I said. “One of them is Extra Crispy.”

  “Somebody stole Caitie’s chicken?” she exclaimed incredulously. “Who would want to do a thing like that? Why?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “I’ll fill you in later. Anything going on there?”

  “Lori came in a few minutes ago. Her phone quit working, which is why nobody could reach her. She got it fixed, but in the p
rocess, she thinks she lost a text from you. She says maybe it had an attachment?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. That would be the picture I had texted Lori of the baby in the white christening dress. I wanted her to tell me whether it was anything like the christening dress her aunt had given her. “Tell her I’ll resend it when I get a minute. Not right now.”

  “I’ll do it. When do you think you’ll be in?”

  “As soon as we’ve got the chickens back. I hope it won’t be too long.” I clicked off and brought up the map on my cell phone. “Looks like it might be seven or eight miles,” I told Tom, calculating. “Maybe twelve minutes?”

  “Working on it,” Tom said.

  The houses along the road were mostly double-wides and small frame dwellings surrounded by poorly tended yards and patches of uncut weeds, with junky cars parked in the driveways or propped up, without tires, on concrete blocks. Once, we passed what looked like an auto junkyard shielded from public view by a screen of Ashe junipers, and Tom made a note to check for the permit. The county licenses junkyards, but unless the neighbors report violators, they can fly under the radar for years. Meanwhile, all those abandoned vehicles are leaking noxious fluids into the groundwater, potentially poisoning the neighbors’ wells.

  As we drove, I kept an eye on the painted numbers on the mailboxes. We were making good time until we got behind a tractor pulling a trailer loaded with hay bales. We crawled along behind it on the narrow road until Tom finally got to a place where he could pass. We got around it and sped up.

  I slanted a glance at Tom. I was impatient to get where we were going and nervous about retrieving those roosters, but he was confident and relaxed, his big hands light on the steering wheel of the heavy truck. He has the look of somebody who knows what he’s doing, with a firm jaw and eyes that seem to see things the rest of us can’t. There’s a wariness in him, too, that I suppose comes from his Delta Force deployments, when he had to be constantly on the lookout for invisible threats to his buddies and himself. His wife, Sylvia, told me once that his war experiences, which must have been horrific, still trouble him. He has violent nightmares—dreams that sometimes scare her as much as they disturb him. I know that he keeps his marksmanship skills up; he has a gun range at his house, and on weekends when I’m home, I can hear him target shooting.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the gun in the window rack—a Remington twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun with a pistol grip, like the one McQuaid had taught me to use. Tom was also wearing his sidearm holstered on his right hip. He was ready for whatever came next, I thought, but he wouldn’t get to use his weapons today. Nobody was going to the mat over a pair of roosters, so we could both relax.

  Tom’s truck was equipped with a two-way radio. When we left Maude’s house, he had asked the dispatcher to run a make on Gibbons. Now, she radioed back. The man had two priors: a misdemeanor domestic violence and a Class C misdemeanor for shooting a deer from a public road. “What have you got on him today?” she asked.

  “He stole two chickens,” he said, in answer to the dispatcher’s question, then: “C-h-i-c-k-e-n-s. As in Kentucky Fried.” He glanced at me. “Sorry,” he said, cutting the mic. “Poor choice of words.”

  I could hear the dispatcher laughing.

  Tom clicked the mic again and said: “No joke, Phyllis. One of them is supposed to be worth twenty-five hundred dollars, maybe more if he gets to be a regular daddy. The other one is a little girl’s show rooster. They were lifted from the poultry tent at the county fair last night.” He gave our location and asked, “Who’s patrolling out here today? Where is he?” Then: “Good. Give Roy my destination. ETA: five minutes.”

  “Do you always check on the backup?” I asked as he keyed off the mic and replaced it.

  “I’m cautious,” he said, “especially this far out in the country.” He didn’t say, And especially when I have a civilian riding along, but I knew he thought it. I was a liability.

  “Where is he?” I asked. “Roy, I mean.”

  “About fifteen minutes away from our location,” he said. “Available if we need him.” He jerked a thumb to the left, where a gravel road dead-ended into the county road. “Out here, you never know what you’re going to bump into. A couple of months ago, Roy and I closed down a meth cooker at the end of that road. Arrested two guys and a woman, all three of them armed. There’s more of that going on in these hills than people think.”

  “How’d you happen to find them?” I asked curiously.

  “A tip. A neighbor’s bull got out and he was repairing his fence. He just happened to smell the acetone they were using to polish the red coloring out of their product, and recognized it. The meth heads had moved their mobile lab to the back of the property to get it as far from the road as they could, thinking that would be safe. But they backed it right up against the neighbor’s fence line.” He grinned. “This ain’t the Wild West some folks think it is.”

  “Wild enough,” I said, glancing back down at my cell phone, where I had brought up Google Earth. The image showed dark green wooded hills and ravines cut into the limestone, with a few patches of open meadow, the road twisting like a narrow white ribbon through the valleys and along the crests. The houses were scattered like miniature Monopoly pieces across the rugged terrain. Seen from the satellite, this part of the Hill Country was a wilderness, only thinly populated.

  “The place is about two miles ahead,” I added. “On the right.” It was nearly nine now. The sun had risen high enough to feel warm through the window, and Tom turned up the truck’s air-conditioning. It was going to be another bright, hot day, with humid air streaming up from the Gulf. By noon, the temperature could easily be in the upper nineties. I hoped we’d have those chickens in custody by then—or that they were in a place with good ventilation. Chickens die of heat stroke even easier than people.

  In a few minutes, Tom slowed. The numbers on the rusted, tilting mailbox—1116—told us that we had arrived, and he made a sharp right turn. The house itself was at the end of half a mile of rutted caliche lane, marked by several large No Trespassing signs. The lane wound through a section of overgrazed pastureland, heavily infested with broomweed and prickly pear cactus and dotted with mesquite trees. The house at the end was small, with weathered siding, a narrow porch across the front, and a rusty metal roof. Off to the left was a pen enclosing a mama goat and several kid goats, a couple of black Barred Rock hens scratching around them. In the yard, I saw a compact tractor with a hydraulic loader on the front end and a cultivator on the rear. An older-model black Chevy pickup was parked in the driveway—a ranch truck, judging from the mud on the rear tailgate and the bales of hay and sacks of feed in the bed. Gibbons, I thought, was a homesteader.

  Tom pulled up and stopped close behind the Chevy. “Stay with the truck,” he said, “unless I tell you different.” He shut off the ignition and pocketed the keys.

  “But, Tom—” I began.

  “That’s an order, China.” His face was stern. “I doubt that there’ll be trouble over a couple of chickens, but there’s no predicting. I don’t want to have to explain to my friend McQuaid how I managed to get his wife shot up.”

  “Ridiculous,” I muttered, but I didn’t press the point. Tom knows his business, and anyway, he’s the law. I just wanted to get this over with and get Caitie’s rooster back—and the black rooster, too, of course. And Tom was right. This wasn’t a drug bust or a high-profile arrest. Gibbons was just a guy who had a yen for an expensive all-black rooster and thought he could get one for free. I had my fingers crossed that retrieving the chickens was going to be a relatively simple matter.

  But despite the evidence of the truck parked in the driveway, nobody answered Tom’s repeated knocking at the front door. He knocked and called, waited a reasonable time, and called and knocked again. Then he left the front porch and walked around the back, out of sight.

  I sat there, wait
ing, listening to the mutter of the police dispatcher on Tom’s radio as deputies around the county checked in. I noticed a red-blue strobe flasher light on the dash, and to the right of the steering wheel a box of digital switches that monitored lights and siren. Tom was well equipped. He must be more involved with the reserve deputy program than I had thought. He had turned off the AC with the ignition and the truck was hot, so I opened my door and got out. He had told me to stay with the truck—he hadn’t said “Stay in it.”

  I stood there, letting the cool breeze wash over me and taking a look around. Off to the right was a thick cedar brake, and between it and the driveway a rocky, unmowed strip of native goldenrod, hemlock, poverty weed, and buffalo gourd. Ahead of us in the driveway was the Chevy ranch truck. And lying at the edge of the driveway a couple of feet from the Chevy’s passenger side door was a wilted green plant stalk, a couple of feet long. I frowned. Ragweed? Hemlock? Or—

  “Hey, China.” Tom had come around the back of the house and was beckoning to me to bring the carrier and join him. He must have seen the chickens, I figured, or someone in the house had told him where they were. I hauled it out of the back of the truck and took it to him.

  “You’ve found the roosters?” I asked eagerly. “Where are they?”

  “Haven’t found them yet,” he said, taking the carrier from me. “But I heard one crowing. And there doesn’t appear to be anybody at home, so you might as well help me round up our missing chickens. If they’re here, that is. You’ll know them when you see them, I hope?”

  “I’ll certainly recognize Caitie’s rooster. That black one shouldn’t be too hard to pick out, either. And they should both be wearing leg bands, unless Gibbons has removed them.” I heard a rooster crow, too, then. “Sounds like it’s over there,” I said, nodding toward a rickety wood-frame barn on the far side of a fenced vegetable garden and an empty corral.

  The crowing was followed by a loud cackling. “Well, that’s not our rooster,” Tom said dryly. We walked up to the barn. He stopped, put down the carrier, and rapped on the door frame. “Sheriff’s deputy,” he shouted, his right hand on his holster. “I have a search warrant. Anybody here?”