Chickenlandia Mystery

by Daisy Pettles

  Thelma had never been all that fond of me or Veenie as people or as neighbors. She’d taught Veenie in first grade, and sent her to the coat room closet on many an occasion for being too boisterous. (Veenie never has liked sitting still.) These days, Thelma spent most of her time monitoring our every hiccup through high-powered binoculars. She saw it as her self-ordained duty to keep our front porch, which faced her house, G-rated.

  Keeping our porch decent was proving quite a chore lately, ever since Sassy (Sue Ellen) Smith had moved in as a boarder and begun actively auditioning fourth husbands on the front porch swing. Veenie wasn’t helping matters. She was dating Dickie Freeman. Veenie being Veenie, she sometimes put on a porch show just to get Thelma going. Lately I’d come home to find Bible verses on harlotry stuffed in my mailbox between the Hoosier Feedbag circulars and the utility bills. I generally slipped these under Sassy’s door.

  Thelma twisted her shoulders around so she could see me and Veenie. We sat over by the magazines. She gave us the evil Baptist eye. Luckily Veenie had her nose buried in a People magazine, the “Sexiest Man Alive” issue, and so missed Thelma’s death glare. I tossed Thelma a two-fingered wave. She grunted and snapped her head down again.

  Tinky Sue was standing behind Thelma. She checked a couple of the pink sponge curlers. “Almost done,” she said. “Gonna let you cook another couple of minutes. I know how you like a little extra curl up over your ears.”

  Thelma snorted.

  Tinky Sue wiped her hands on a dye-stained tea towel. “Next victim?”

  Veenie gave me a little shove out of my chair. “Ruby Jane. She’s been cutting her own hair.”

  “I can see that,” said Tinky Sue. “Interesting bangs you got going there.”

  I did a walk of shame and slumped in the chair by the wash sink.

  Tinky Sue ruffled the top of my head. “God gave you good thick hair, Ruby Jane. You ought to fuss with it a little. Most women would just curl up and die for a head of hair like yours.”

  “I don’t like fussing.”

  Tinky Sue puckered her lips. “Well, I sure as heck do. What were you thinking of by way of a do?”

  Veenie was standing by the chair now. She’d known me long enough to know I always went a little stiff at the beauty parlor. “Can you puff her up a bit?” she asked Tinky Sue. “She has a little natural curl, but a real bad cowlick on top.” Veenie poked two fingers into the crown of my head where my hair tended to stand up and wave at people.

  Tinky Sue asked me if I’d like to look at some style books.

  I mumbled, “I dunno.”

  Veenie said, “Sure would.”

  All of a sudden I had a glossy hair book open in my lap. Tinky Sue was on one side of me, Veenie on the other. They were oohing and aahing to beat the band.

  Thelma screeched, “My hair is burning off my head!”

  Tinky Sue ran over and rolled Thelma out from under the blower. She pulled out a curler or two. Fussed over Thelma’s hair. “Stop bellyaching. You’re fine.”

  Thelma clawed at her hair. “Well, I don’t feel fine. I feel like the devil’s poking pitchforks in my scalp.”

  “That’s just the color solution. You like it when I silver up the gray. To get it the way you like I have to use an extra strong solution.”

  Thelma muttered.

  Tinky Sue threw a hand back over at me. “Be back with you gals in a minute. Soon as I wash and comb out Thelma. Get her on her way.”

  Veenie had found a do she liked in the book and was showing it to me. “You could pull this off.”

  The woman in the photo was maybe sixteen. She looked like a lawn mower had run over the top of her head. The top of her hair was green, like grass. The sides were long and black, like the floppy ears of a hound dog. “Isn’t that a mullet?”

  “Kind of, but that’s sexy nowadays.”

  “I’d feel silly wearing that.”

  “You gotta loosen up, RJ.”

  “If I was that loose I wouldn’t be able to walk.”

  Veenie licked her thumb. Flipped more pages.

  “I like that one,” I said. The woman in the photo was about my age with silver-gray hair. Her hair was long enough to curl over the top of her ears. Simple. Maybe two layers. It looked like a wash-and-shake to me. No way I could mess up that style.

  Veenie squinted. “Well, I guess we have to start somewhere.”

  By now Thelma was done and paying up. She grabbed her canes and lurched toward the door. “Keep your curtains drawn!” she hissed at Veenie.

  “You know I can’t do that, Thelma. Me and Dickie, we like it best when someone watches.”

  Thelma snorted and lurched out the door.

  Tinky Sue laughed. “Boy, you two really know how to get Thelma’s goat.”

  Veenie piped up. “I didn’t ask her to watch over me. If I needed God’s assistance with my sex life I’d ask him myself. Guess that old gas bag told you I’m dating Dickie Freeman hot and steady?”

  “She may have mentioned it. Once or twice. It getting serious?”

  “I reckon. We’re getting along right nice.”

  “You getting married?”

  “Lord no. Why would I do that?” Veenie made a face like she’d licked a toad or something equally unpleasant.

  Tinky Sue had me in the chair and was scrubbing out my hair by now. Whatever she was using smelled like warm coconuts. She grabbed my scalp and dug in with all ten fingers, giving me a good massage. For a tiny woman, she had real strong hands.

  Veenie casually asked Tinky Sue if she’d seen Gertie Wineager lately. “You do her hair, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sure. She comes in every other week. Right regular. Why?”

  “Tater came to see us. Said Gertie was missing.”

  Tinky Sue wrapped a towel around my head. She flipped me up. “Missing?’

  “Yep. Last time he saw her she was headed out to see you.”

  Tinky Sue searched her memory. “She was here all right. Tuesday. Ten o’clock. Did her regular wash out and set.”

  “She say anything odd?”

  “Depends on how you look at it. She’s kind of peculiar, as a rule.”

  Tinky Sue picked a comb out of the sterilizer jar along with some scissors. She started in on my split ends, trimming around my head in a quick circle. “Hold your head up,” she quipped. “I need to get at those foul, mangy bangs.”

  Hair fell in white confetti across my eyes and onto the smock she’d swaddled me in. As soon as the hair cloud cleared, I asked if Gertie had said anything about having a fight with Tater or leaving Tater or going over to spend time with her sister in Tunnelton.

  “Nah. She talked a blue streak, like always. About all I remember is that she was mighty mad at that new pastor over at the First Christian Church.”

  “That hippie?” Veenie asked.

  The whole town had been buzzing about the new reverend, Brother Bobby, who was fresh hatched out of divinity school. He had a long, black, thready beard, like Moses, and wore loud golfing shirts, plaid knee-knocker shorts, hippie sandals, and expensive sunglasses. He’d changed the whole hymnal. He played an electric guitar and a saxophone. He tossed out classic hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross” and replaced them with pop country and western tunes he’d styled himself, like “Jesus Is My Rock and I’m on His Roll.” The older Baptists were boiling mad about the changes, but the youngsters had started warming the pews in record numbers.

  Brother Bobby had also started a men’s microbrewery tasting club, a dating discussion group for Christian singles, and a Christian Harley riding club. He wasn’t married. Since everybody assumed he might be decent looking under that beard, single ladies from all over southern Indiana had been flooding into his Wednesday night Bible study. He’d even launched a lady’s cooking club that whipped up biblical recipes like manna cakes with banana sauce. The traditionalists complained there was no mention of bananas in the Bible, but so far they hadn’t stopped him or any of his newfangled approaches
to Christian brotherhood.

  “Yeah,” said Tinky Sue. “They had the same pastor for fifty years. Old Brother Brown.”

  “Didn’t he die in the pulpit?”

  “Sure did. Easter Sunday, no less. He was quoting from Philippians: ‘My desire is to depart and be with Christ,’ when he slid down the pulpit and off the stage like a hunk of limestone. Gertie saw the whole thing. Up close. Front row. Spooked her. She’s been rambling about it ever since.”

  Tinky Sue stopped snipping. She pulled my chin up until I was staring at a blurry version of myself in the giant wall mirror. I reached over and slid on my glasses.

  “What do you think?” she asked me.

  My hair was still damp, but looked mighty good to me. She’d managed to angle in the bangs. Give me a little side sweep, pageboy style. No way I could wreck my hair, unless I took the sewing scissors to myself again.

  Veenie circled me. “That’ll do. We got to start somewhere.”

  Tinky Sue slid some gel through my hair and blew me around a bit. I looked good by the time she pumped me down and announced me done. I asked her if she knew where Gertie went when she left the hair salon.

  “Not sure. Gertie talked a blue streak, but to tell you the truth, I don’t always listen all that closely. She might have mentioned something about driving over to Tunnelton. Yeah, maybe? It was raining cats and dogs that day. And she hates to drive in the rain. She didn’t mention her sister, Lottie, that I recall. She shops in Bedford. She was going to stop at Wally World and Betty’s Buy Low, get some staples, some things for her special BBQ sauce, as I recall.”

  That sounded about right to me. Since the festival was coming up, it seemed even odder to me that Gertie would up and leave town. Prizes were hard to come by in a town as small as Knobby Waters. Nobody gave up their crown and sash unless they had to, and certainly not somebody as crotchety as old Gertie.

  The screen door on Tinky Sue’s back porch door tinkled. She had a little bell attached to the door so she could hear her hair clients come in if she was in the back of the house doing chores.

  Ma Horton shuffled into the beauty parlor. “Thank God I found you gals.” Her normally cheerful face was drawn into a dark frown. Ma wasn’t anybody’s mother. Local people had always called her “Ma” because she and Peepaw were forever taking in stray animals and outcasts. Her thin gray hair was plaited in braids that wound like a spool of thread around the top of her head. She wore a flower-print dress with a lace collar and leather farm boots, their laces half undone. The tongues on the boots flapped when she walked. Her flesh-colored support hose were rolled in bands just below her knees. “I was over to the office, but it was locked up tight. Saw the note on the door that said you might be over this way.”

  “You okay?” Veenie asked. “You look like you might be feeling poorly. You better sit a spell.”

  Ma reached up and adjusted the tiny wires that came from the hearing aids she had in each ear. She flung herself into a padded chair by the magazines. “Reckon I am feeling poorly. Me and Peepaw, we need your help something awful.” Her bottom lip quivered. “We’ve been robbed.”

  Chapter Three

  “Robbed? The pie shed?” Veenie screeched. “Some ne’er-do-well robbed the pie shed?”

  Veenie was a huge fan of Ma’s pies. In addition to Chickenlandia, Ma and Peepaw ran an emergency pie shed that never closed. The old tool shed featured shelves lined with fruit pies on one side and a small see-in refrigerator that held cream pies on the other side. Ma was a champion pie baker. Anybody who had a hankering for pie could pull in anytime, deposit ten dollars in a bucket nailed to the door, and leave with a mouthwatering pastry. Payment was on the honor system. The money bucket had been robbed once before, two years back. Peepaw had tacked up a note after that that read: “Thou Shalt Not Steal. This Means You, Knucklehead.” That had been the end of the thieving. Until now, it seemed.

  But Ma shook her head. “Pies are safe.”

  Veenie looked relieved.

  “What did they steal?” I asked.

  “Dewey,” she said, her voice shaking.

  Dewey was Ma’s prizewinning rooster. He was a tall, brawny fellow with glorious black and red tail feathers, a John Wayne movie-star strut, and a cock-a-doodle-doo that could be heard the next state over.

  I knew Ma kept at least fifty hens and other junior roosters so I asked about the rest of the flock. “Dewey the only one missing?”

  Ma shook her head. “Nope. Ginger is gone. Vanished.”

  “Which one’s Ginger?” I asked.

  Ma said she was a Rhode Island Red laying hen, the best of the bunch, and Dewey’s favorite. “Plump and sassy, pops out the biggest darn eggs you’ve ever seen.” Ma held her hands far apart, about as far apart as an ostrich egg might stretch them. “Born to brood.”

  Veenie, who’d been listening, threw in a comment. “Maybe Dewey and Ginger eloped. Sounds like they were a hot item.”

  Ma shook her head. “Chickens aren’t monogamous.”

  “How do you know for sure?” asked Veenie. “Maybe Ginger got tired of the sister wife thing. Maybe she up and laid down the law with ol’ Dewey.”

  I shot Veenie a look before continuing with Ma. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

  Ma chewed her bottom lip. “Not rightly sure. Everything seemed fine and dandy last night. Chickens were laying. Moon was full. The moon always juices up the egg laying. Ginger had dropped a pair of big ones, double yokers, the morning before. But this morning”—Ma stopped and wiped her eyes on the back of one hand— “Dewey didn’t crow. Not once. And Ginger was gone, her nest empty and cold.”

  Veenie twisted her lips. “That unusual?”

  “Oh, sure. Not normal at all. Usually Dewey is screeching to beat the band first thing in the morning. He goes full throated, like Godzilla with tail feathers. Thinks the sun can’t rise and shine unless he wakes it up. Always up before daylight. Gets busy pronto checking on the girls, making sure they are all okay. He just loves his little chicken harem.”

  I asked if Dewey had ever run away before.

  Ma shook her head. “Nah. Never. Loves his job lording it over the girls. He’d never leave them unprotected. He took down a possum last week that had dug its way into the henhouse hoping to have a free chicken supper.”

  I asked if maybe Ginger had gotten into trouble and Dewey had gone after her and gotten lost or attacked.

  Ma rubbed her chin. “If Ginger had any trouble, any trouble at all, Dewey would sure enough have rushed to her rescue.”

  Veenie asked if there were any signs of “fowl” play, and then cackled to herself.

  Ma reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a handful of red tail feathers. “Found these.” She sniffled. “A few in the yard. A couple over where the woods begin.” Her eyes misted over. “Chickens shed a bit, but this many feathers ain’t normal. Leads me to believe someone or something got hold of Dewey and Ginger.”

  Ma had to stop talking because she was choking up. She blew her nose on a tissue Tinky Sue handed her. “Peepaw tracked the feathers into the woods. He found a clump of them alongside the tractor road by the barn … and then … nothing.”

  Veenie nodded. “Sounds like a chicken-napping. You or Peepaw find a ransom note?”

  Ma shook her head. “Who’d steal a chicken?”

  “I would … if I was hungry enough,” said Veenie.

  Tears welled up in Ma’s eyes again. “Lordie, you think somebody ate my Ginger and Dewey?”

  I patted Ma’s hand. “Don’t worry. You came to the right people. Veenie and I will start snooping. If Dewey and Ginger ran away together, they can’t have gotten far, and if they were stolen, the thief must have left behind some clues.”

  Veenie asked Ma if she’d reported the missing bird couple to Boots Gibson, the Pawpaw County sheriff.

  Ma shook her head, said she reckoned Boots had better things to do than chase down chickens. “He’s a good feller, bless his heart, but he can get c
antankerous if you pester him too much about little things.”

  That was an understatement.

  I said it was probably just as well if the law wasn’t called. I said that mostly because I knew full well that Boots would have off-loaded any chicken chasing case to me and Veenie. He liked to keep his calendar clear for big he-man crimes: retrieving hijacked loads of soybeans, busting up bar brawls, locking up catfish poachers, and whatnot. Veenie and I, on the other hand, were surviving on Social Security. We were fine and dandy being chicken thief chasers. A buck was a buck.

  Ma rose from her chair. She looked lost as she shuffled toward the door. “Well, guess I better get back up the knobs and get to work. Peepaw’s working with the 4-H kids to put up the booths for the festival. I left him up there with a motley crew. Best get going. Check on them.”

  Veenie told Ma we were on our way to Tunnelton on another case but we could stop in and take a gander at the crime scene at Chickenlandia on our way back home.

  Curious, I asked Ma if she had seen or heard from Gertie Wineager.

  Ma said nope, why was I asking.

  “Tater said Gertie is missing. He hired us this morning to track her down.”

  “Missing?” Ma narrowed her eyes. “That don’t sound right. Gertie wouldn’t miss the big BBQ cook-off. No sirree.”

  “We were thinking the same. She stop in to talk to you about the cook-off or anything else in the last week?”