A Flock and a Fluke (Clucks and Clues Cozy Mysteries)

by Hillary Avis

  “Are you trying to kill me?” I asked him. “You know I hate being surprised.”

  Eli put his hand over his heart. “On my honor, I am only here to serve and protect.”

  “Oh, Sheriff Ramiiirez!” Margie trilled from her table. “So good to see you out and about in the commuuunity!”

  Eli rolled his eyes and turned around slightly to answer her. “That’s my job, ma’am.”

  Margie nudged her husband who was slouched down in his chair and seemed to be falling asleep. “Invite him to golf, honey.”

  Doc made a face. “I don’t really like golf, Marge. I keep telling you that.”

  “Pish!” Margie said gaily, waving her hand. “He doesn’t mean that. He loves golfing, especially with important people. Like you.” She beamed at Eli, who turned back around and rolled his eyes again for our benefit.

  Sara emerged from the kitchen with her order pad and stopped short when she caught sight of Eli sitting with us. She took a deep breath, blew it out, and headed for our table. “Are you joining the ladies, Sheriff?” she asked politely. She shook her head slightly “no” as though hoping for that answer.

  “Yes, he is!” Ruth said firmly. “My treat.”

  “It’s always a treat to eat with you, Ruth.” Eli winked at her and Ruth flushed happily. He was such a shameless flirt. It did make him fun to have around, even if it caused me the teensiest bit of jealousy when he gave his attention to other women. I didn’t have a claim on him, though—and I didn’t want anyone to have a claim on me—so I tried not to let it bother me.

  “Great. Just great,” Sara said through slightly clenched teeth. “What’ll you have?”

  Eli leaned so he could see my menu, his well-muscled bicep pressing against my shoulder. I have to say, I didn’t mind a bit. I could admire the merchandise even if I didn’t want to purchase, right? We placed our orders with Sara, and she left us and went to the Morrows to get theirs next. Eli nudged my foot playfully under the table and I elbowed him.

  “Do we have to order off the special menu?” Margie trumpeted. Her husband sank lower in his seat. “Can I get something else?”

  “Sure. Well, I mean...if I have it in the back,” Sara mumbled, darting a guilty look at me. Obviously, she didn’t have eggs, since she’d refused my order. I crossed my fingers under the table and hoped Margie ordered an omelet.

  Margie rubbed her hands together greedily. “Do you have any more of those itty-bitty smoked salmon thingybobs you made for the cocktail party? I want a whole plate. Amelia hogged all of ’em on Friday and I only got one.”

  Sara’s hand holding her order pad trembled slightly as she gave a panicked glance at Eli’s back. I froze in my seat. This is what she’d been worried about earlier. Amelia didn’t just eat Sara’s food for breakfast on Saturday—she’d eaten it Friday night, too.

  “What party?” I asked. I thought I knew everything going on in this town. “I didn’t hear about a party.”

  “Sure you did,” Margie simpered. “It was the Chamber of Commerce meet-and-greet for the mayoral candidates. Everyone was there.”

  “Not everybody. I wasn’t,” I said. “Ruth wasn’t, either.”

  Ruth cleared her throat, a small, dry, polite sound. I stared at her. Small, dry, and polite were not things that Ruth Chapman was—ever.

  “Actually, I was there.” She gave me an apologetic shrug. “What? I have two businesses in town! Of course I’m a member of the Chamber of Commerce.”

  I frowned at her in surprise. “Why didn’t you invite me? I’m always your plus-one.”

  “You hate parties.”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “You hate this kind of party. Anyway, it was only for constituents. You live out of town, so you can’t vote in the election.” Ruth winced apologetically, and the room fell into awkward silence. Sara took the opportunity to flee for the kitchen.

  “Why didn’t you say anything about the party when we were discussing what Amelia ate last night?” My voice came out a little louder than I intended it to, but I was pretty ticked off. She’d clearly been avoiding the topic or it would have come up naturally—there was something about it she didn’t want me to know.

  She shrugged, avoiding my eyes.

  I squinted at her. “Who was your plus-one?”

  Eli butted in. “I was. Why are we talking about Amelia Goodbody’s dinner?”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “That’s when she was poisoned, obviously. Try and keep up!”

  Margie Morrow gasped and put a hand to her chest. I thought for a second she might throw her head back and pretend to faint like in a bad movie. “You don’t think someone tried to kill her at the Chamber of Commerce cocktail party?!”

  “Of course not,” Eli said firmly. “I know what happened to Amelia. The official medical examiner’s report will be released tomorrow, but I can say that her death will be ruled an accident.”

  Margie let out a dramatic sigh of relief. “Thank heavens. I wouldn’t want to think that anyone in Honeytree would do something so...so...reprehensible. Am I right, Warren?” She poked her husband in the arm and he jerked his head up. Had he really been sleeping through all this?

  Doc wiped a bit of drool from the corner of his mouth. “Yes, dear, quite right.”

  Margie clasped her hands. “Wonderful. Then I hope nobody will argue if I order a round of mimosas.”

  Nobody argued.

  That is, until we left the restaurant.

  Then we all turned on each other.

  “Don’t give me a guilt trip, Leona.” Ruth glared at me as we stood on the sidewalk in front of her shop.

  “I’m not!”

  “I see that sour expression. You’re mad about sitting home alone on Friday night. But don’t tell me you wouldn’t have turned me down if I’d asked you, anyway! You’d have said, ‘I’m not attending any party where I have to wear hose.’”

  Eli turned to me. “Are you upset Ruth invited me?” he asked, butting in as usual.

  I made a face at him. “Actually, you’re the one I’m mad at, not Ruth.”

  “Me?!” His eyebrows shot up. “What’d I do?”

  I tapped my foot, waiting for him to figure it out. But of course, he didn’t. Men. “How in the world can you say that Amelia’s death was an accident when Aaron Alpin was poisoned six hours after he gave her CPR? That’s preposterous.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “You know I can’t discuss details of a pending investigation. You can get a copy of the report tomorrow from the county if you call, though.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You can be sure I will. I can’t help wondering how Amelia was accidentally poisoned.”

  And as I looked between my two best friends, I couldn’t help wondering what else they were keeping from me.

  Chapter 7

  Monday, Day 3

  The next morning was dark and drizzly. Boots, my crooked-toed house chicken, perched on the arm of my chair as I finished my coffee, peering hopefully at my breakfast muffin. I’d given up on trying to get her to sleep in the coop with the rest of the flock. Now she nested in an old dresser drawer near my bed at night and followed me around the house and yard during the day, chattering and clucking as I did my house and yard work. She’d even sit on my lap in the evening while I watched TV or read. It turned out that she was pretty good company, especially once I figured out how to rig her with a calico diaper that kept the hm-hm off the upholstery.

  I plucked a blueberry out of the remaining half of my muffin and gave it to her. She snatched it and flapped down to the floor, trilling and gloating over her prize. I crammed the rest of my muffin down the hatch, slugged my coffee, and pulled on my muck boots over my sweatpants just as my phone alarm pinged. Time for chores.

  I had a daily routine on the farm that I executed with precision. Routines made things easy because I never had to think about whether I’d done a task. I didn’t have to decide whether to do something—I just did it. Did I put out the oyster shell crumbles so
the layers would have enough calcium? Yep. Did I refill the waterers? Yep, whether they needed it or not. Did I collect the eggs? Yep, twice a day, every day.

  I put up my hood against the miserable weather and headed outside. Boots followed me down the steps but changed her mind when she felt the first few drops of rain. She retreated to the porch, squawking at me from her roost on the railing that I was making a terrible mistake.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not a turkey!” I called to her over my shoulder. I’d heard from old timers that some breeds of turkeys were so dumb, they’d look up at falling rain until they drowned. That probably wasn’t true, but it seemed like the kind of rumor chickens would believe.

  The rest of my birds were perfectly content to be out in the weather. All eighty-something of them were out in the enormous fenced run, anticipating my arrival—and all eighty-something looked pretty soggy and bedraggled with their wet feathers clinging to them. Phyllis and Cher, my two Polish hens, looked like they could hardly see; their feathered topknots were plastered over their faces. Maybe Boots was right to stay on the porch.

  I filled the feeders, much to the flock’s ever-clucking delight, and threw out some scratch to keep them busy. I buzzed through the rest of the chores until I reached the last task. My favorite, collecting the eggs. I hummed as I filled two wire baskets with the morning’s haul and then gingerly carried the baskets around to the back porch to wash, sort, and store in the egg fridge. I filled up a full 30-egg flat with pullet-size eggs and another half full of eggs that were approaching regular size.

  My babies were growing up. Sniff.

  Boots came around to investigate and I shooed her away before she got too curious and pecked an egg. I fed my chickens plenty of protein to ensure they didn’t turn into egg-eaters, but that was a habit that was hard to break once it got started. “Go lay your own,” I admonished her.

  She scratched at the porch floorboards and pretended to eat something, then fixed me with one beady eye.

  “Go on,” I said, nudging her with my boot. She hopped over into a potted plant and snuggled into the leaves. Sometimes I swore she could understand me—and sometimes I swore I really was turning into a crazy chicken lady. There were worse fates, I chuckled to myself as I scooped up the flats of sorted eggs and took them to the porch fridge. I swung the door open and was dismayed by what I saw—the fridge was completely packed. There was no way I could fit even a single flat inside.

  “Shoot,” I muttered. I’d have to store them in my kitchen fridge for now, at least until I could unload some of these eggs. In another era, I’d have just stored them in boxes on the porch—unwashed eggs could keep for weeks, if not months, at cool spring temperatures. But state guidelines said I had to wash and refrigerate, and I wasn’t going to jeopardize my business.

  I took them inside and cleared out the middle shelf of the fridge so the large flats would fit. And they barely fit. This afternoon’s collection would double the number of eggs. And tomorrow’s eggs would quadruple them. There was no way I could fit that many eggs in my fridge even if I took all my regular food out. I had to find somewhere to sell them or they’d go to waste.

  I poured another cup of coffee and called Sara. She answered with a cheerful, “Rx Café, we’re good for what ails you.”

  “How many eggs do you think you’ll need this week?” I asked.

  “Oh, hi Leona.” Her voice was suddenly hesitant. “I’m afraid I won’t need any.”

  “Even if you don’t have eggs on the menu, pancakes and waffles use a lot of eggs,” I protested, panic sliding up my throat. “You didn’t order more from the grocery store, did you?”

  “Nobody’s coming in, even for pancakes. I decided to just close this week.” Sara lowered her voice. “This Goodbody stuff is all anyone is talking about. People don’t feel safe eating here. They’re worried about getting salmonella and keeling over like Amelia did.”

  “But she didn’t have—”

  “I know.”

  “And factory farms are worse than—”

  “I know.” Sara sounded genuinely sympathetic. “It’s just going to take a few days to get sorted out. Hang onto my order. I figure by next week, everyone’s going to be dying for an egg breakfast and I can re-open. Ugh, that came out wrong.”

  “I’ll say,” I said wryly. “Let’s not have anyone else dying for eggs around here.”

  “No kidding.”

  We hung up, and I fortified myself with a few more sips of coffee before I dialed the Greasy Spoon. I held my breath while I waited for the line to answer.

  “It’s a great day at the Greasy Spoon. This is Jillian. What can I help you with?”

  “Hi, this is Leona from Lucky Cluck Farm. Just checking to see if Ed needs any eggs this week?”

  “Let me ask.” She put me on hold and returned a few moments later. “Doesn’t look like it. People are being very picky about where their eggs come from. Sorry about that.”

  “I’m offering them at half price due to a surplus,” I said desperately.

  “Maybe next week? Try back then.” Jillian hung up the phone.

  I let out a sigh and bumped my fist gently against the kitchen tabletop. This whole thing was stupid. If only Amelia had eaten breakfast at home before the Easter Scramble. Then people would be blaming her death on kale smoothies or whatever she ate. Not that I’d wish this on kale farmers, either.

  But that’s the thing—people weren’t blaming it on eggs in general, were they? They were blaming it on my eggs. Sure, they might forget I was the egg supplier eventually, but I couldn’t afford to wait for that. It might take years. There was only one way to sort this out, and it was to show that salmonella poisoning had nothing to do with Amelia’s death. And that meant I needed to see what actually killed her.

  The county coroner’s office phone was answered by a nasal woman with a brisk, businesslike clip to her voice. “Yes?”

  “I’d like to get a copy of Amelia Goodbody’s autopsy report,” I said sweetly.

  “Mhm.” Clicking keys. “Fax or mail?”

  “Fax, please.” I gave the fax number for Ruth’s salon.

  Clickety-click. “And how are you related to the deceased?”

  “Uh...” I paused, debating whether to mention the truth—I’m the one who found her body—or offer some sanitized version. “Concerned citizen?”

  The clicking stopped. Bad sign. “I can’t issue you a copy at this time.”

  “Isn’t the report considered public information?!”

  “Mhm. But we can’t send you the report unless you’re a family member or involved in the case.”

  I groaned internally. I was going to have to go there. “I’m involved. I found her body. And she—well, she ate something that was produced by my farm.”

  A pause. More clicking. “Have you been charged with a crime?”

  “No—not yet,” I added, hoping that the mere possibility would gain me some traction.

  She sniffed. “You can review a redacted copy at your local sheriff’s office, ma’am. Have a good day.” A final, decisive click, and the line went dead.

  Now I had to put on real pants and go to town. Motherclucker.

  I located some mostly clean jeans and a flannel shirt and then wrestled my mane of blonde-and-gray curls into a bun and stabbed it with a few bobby pins to keep it that way. If the rebellion of freckles across my face didn’t give me away, I almost looked civilized. Certainly cleaned up enough to pass as a regular person who just wanted to know regular stuff like how a nice dead lady bit the dust.

  “No, you cannot go with me,” I said to Boots, who was waiting for me on the doormat, having laid her egg in the pansies. I put her egg in the fridge and left her locked in the bathroom with a mayonnaise lid full of mealworms to keep her out of trouble while I was gone. Well, she’d probably find trouble, but hopefully not too much.

  In town, I parked my Suburban across from the Do or Dye, right in front of the sheriff’s office. Eli’s grinning f
ace greeted me as soon as I pushed through the gilt-lettered door. Shoot. So much for flying under the radar. Eli’s radar always honed right in on me.

  “I knew you’d be in here today,” he said, chuckling and shaking his head.

  “How’d you know when I only just decided?” I asked tartly. When he wisely didn’t answer, I added, “Well, if you know why I’m here, then you know what I want.”

  He slid a blue binder across the desk, and I sat down across from him to flip through it. The pages of the report were in individual plastic sleeves, and certain personal information like surname and address had been blacked out with permanent marker to protect Amelia’s privacy—like we didn’t know all that stuff anyway.

  I quickly scanned the pages. As Eli had hinted at yesterday, her death had been ruled an accident, but the cause of death was “poisoning by tetrodotoxin.” I let out a sigh of relief. Not salmonella. Not E. coli. Not listeria. Nothing that I’d ever heard of in relation to food poisoning or chickens or eggs.

  But then—what had poisoned her? I pointed to the word. “What is this, anyway?”

  Eli came around the desk and looked over my shoulder. “Oh, yeah. I asked the medical examiner the same thing. Apparently, it’s a really toxic poison that some animals make naturally, including the newts that live in the creek where Amelia was found. They think she probably fell into the water while she was hiding the egg and somehow got one in her mouth.”

  I stared at him. “She died of accidentally swallowing a newt?”

  He shrugged. “Seems that way.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” I snapped the binder closed. “Don’t tell me you buy that.”

  His brow furrowed as he studied my face. “I take it you don’t.”

  I shook my head. He pulled a chair over so it faced me and took a seat, scooting forward until our knees almost touched. “Why not? What did you see that a highly trained medical examiner missed?”

  I made a face. “Now you’re making fun of me.”