Pam peered at us disapprovingly through her huge glasses. She looked like an old barn owl studying its prey. “You gals got an appointment?”
I confessed that we did not.
Pam glowered some more. “I’m busy. Chickens stopped laying this morning. Storm spooked them. You got to make an appointment.” She pointed to her right where a twenty-something woman with a red side ponytail and a set of bright blue nails was clacking up a tune on a keyboard. The name plate on the woman’s desk identified her as Kiki Shelton.
Kiki sprung up and asked if she could help. She motioned for us to come her way. She pointed to a pair of battered folding chairs that sat in front of her desk. When we didn’t respond, she slid a pleading look our way, like she might be a bit scared of old Cheaty Pants.
Ignoring Kiki, Veenie skipped into the office and plopped down in a roller chair directly in front of Pam’s desk. Her hair was still wet, so she finger-fluffed it and gave it a twist until it was slicked up on her head like a Kewpie doll again.
“Don’t go acting like you don’t know who we are,” Veenie cawed at Pam once her hair was under control.
Pam’s gray owl eyes flicked back and forth across me and Veenie. The corners of her mouth turned downward. She wetted a finger and flipped through a clipboard of paperwork. “I know who you are all righty, but like I said, I’m busy. Chickens don’t lay, I don’t make no money.” She turned her back to Veenie and stooped to pull open a file drawer.
Pam’s brush-off did not deter Veenie. “We’re here to arrest you for chicken thieving.”
Pam’s head popped up. She clutched at her home-knitted sweater, which was white and decorated with fluffy yellow puffs fashioned to look like peeps. “That’s slander, just so you know, Lavinia Goens. You accuse me of thieving again and I’m calling in the law.”
I slid into a chair next to Veenie, hoping to diffuse the situation. “Ma and Peepaw Horton have a couple of chickens missing. We were wondering if they’d made it over your way.”
Pam snorted. “I look like the sort who runs a chicken B & B?”
“No,” I said. “I reckon not.”
“I got 5,000 hens to babysit. You think anybody would notice if a couple more waddled in? What’s this about, anyway? Ma Horton send you to pester me? She’s right jealous, you know. I’ve been raking in the moola while she and Peepaw are making doodle-squat up there on the knobs.” Pam sniveled and straightened in her chair. She went back to pawing through the file cabinet.
Veenie picked up one of the many trophies on Pam’s desk, slid her thick glasses down to the tip of her nose, and began inspecting it. A fat golden chicken nesting on a giant golden egg decorated the top of the trophy. Looked to be one of Pam’s 4-H fair poultry wins.
Pam squawked, “Put that down, Lavinia Goens! Don’t want your grubby pipsqueak paws smudging up my gold.”
Veenie spat on the trophy and rubbed at the nameplate hard with the tail of her poncho. “This another one of your cheat wins?”
Pam’s little face flamed. She stood up and crossed her arms over her chest, mushing down the sweater peeps. “You two old biddies best be leaving now or I’ll be calling the law for trespassing. Better yet, I’ll be introducing you to Betty Lou.” Pam pulled a pistol out of her desk drawer and aimed it at Veenie. I’m no expert on firearms, but this one looked real and like it might carry enough firepower to blow a softball-sized hole through a brittle old lady.
Oh boy. This was clearly not going to be the polite and informative interrogation I’d imagined. “We do apologize, Pam. We’ve been looking for Gertie Wineager. She hasn’t been home for a while, and her husband, Tater, well, he’s worried sick. Thought maybe you and she had been practicing together. You know, for the cook-off next weekend.”
Pam’s eyes softened. She lowered her gun, and her voice. “Gertie’s missing? Gone? You sure about that?”
“Yeah,” Veenie said. “We reckoned maybe you shoved Gertie into your chicken poop machine, pelletized her.”
“You think I killed Gertie?” Pam looked very offended.
“How else you gonna win that cook-off crown?”
That did it. Pam jumped over her desk. Papers flew everywhere. She was on top of Veenie. Veenie fell out of her chair. White hair and red-and-blue hair bows flew everywhere. A pair of peeps popped off Pam’s sweater. Veenie’s glasses skidded across the floor.
Kiki, the young receptionist with the ponytail, stared at me. She slapped a hand over her mouth like she was horrified. I reckoned she’d never seen an old-fashioned cat fight before. Hanging out with Veenie, I’d seen a mess of whoop-ass go down, most all of it in her favor.
“Do something, Mrs. Waskom!” Kiki screeched my way.
“Like?”
“Stop them! Something! Anything!” Kiki begged. “Ohmigod! Help!” She did a little prance and dance and threw her hands into the air like she might be fixing to wet herself.
I rolled my chair out of the way as Pam and Veenie tumbled across the linoleum, pulling each other’s hair, cawing and shouting. Pam’s white hair was standing out every which way like she’d been blasted with a ray gun full of spray starch. She was kicking her pink, steel-toed nubuck work boots, hoping to land a hard kick to some vital part of Veenie’s anatomy. Veenie had popped some buttons on her poncho and was bouncing around with her fists raised like a prizefighter.
Kiki continued to cry and wring her hands.
I strolled over to the wall by the back exit and unhooked the fire extinguisher. I aimed the thing at Veenie and Pam and pulled the pin. I steadied myself for the kick as the canister let go a stream of frothy white. Ribbons of what looked like whipped cream flooded the office.
Veenie and Pam sputtered. They slid in the wash of foam as they tried to get up and gain their balance. A glob of foam hit Pam dead center in the face and she scrambled up looking like an ice cream sundae with a patriotic bow on top.
The spray did the trick. It calmed them both down.
While Pam wiped the foam from her giant eyeglasses, I apologized for the ruckus.
Veenie tried to reignite the fight, but I took hold of her little bird shoulders and marched her toward the bathroom. “Get a grip,” I advised. “Pam’s got real bullets.”
Returning to face Pam, I said, “Like I was asking, you seen Gertie?”
Pam sulked in her chair. She used a wad of tissue to wipe the foam from her hair and then her eyeglasses. “I have not.”
“And you don’t know where she might be?”
Pam had her head down and was trying her best to ignore me. She looked a mess, but was too proud to let on about it. “Not a clue.”
I heard a toilet flush and Veenie popped out of the bathroom, looking no worse for the wear.
“Well,” I said to Pam, “guess we best be getting back to work. You hear anything from Gertie or see any stray chickens around these parts you give us a call, you hear?” I slid one of Harry’s cards across the desk toward Pam.
“I sure will,” Pam sneered as she took the card and flipped it into the trash can by her desk.
Chapter Eight
The rain kept falling, thick veils of it. We had to ford two places on 135 where the water had washed over the blacktop before we managed to slosh and slide our way out onto Highway 50. They say never ford a flooded road, but I’d been doing it in the Impala my whole life. Cars these days are strung together with spit, glue, and plastic screws. A little trickle of a stream could pick up a Hyundai, or any other foreign fart of a car, and sweep it away. But the 1960 Impala was a bull of a beast, all steel and bolts, hand-built by men and women, most of whom had clawed their way through World War II. She was like a duck boat. Even Satan couldn’t sink her.
It wasn’t yet quitting time when we arrived back in Knobby Waters, so we pulled in at the Shades Agency office on Main Street to update the boss, Harry. The Shades Agency was in an old Rexall Drugstore. Downstairs was an office with a little kitchenette. Harry, a well-known skirt chaser, kept a bachelor’s pad
upstairs. He’d inherited the building from a maiden aunt when she had died. That had been enough to get him to move to Knobby Waters from the big city of South Bend, where rumor had it he’d been born, but never managed to make much of himself, other than a nuisance.
Harry’s biggest talent was chasing married floozies. He was, for want of a better term, a big old man ho. That’s pretty much why most folks referred to the agency as the “Shady Hoosier Detective Agency.” Menfolk in particular weren’t all that fond of Harry Shades.
Veenie and I didn’t mind Harry. We’d worked for a lot of shifty polecats in our time. Job paid minimum wage, but Harry’s money spent as well as anybody’s. Between Harry’s pittance, social security, sharing a house, and hitting the grocery sales hard at the Hoosier Feedbag, we kept our bellies from rumbling.
Harry’s Toyota was parked on the street in front of the office, so we knew he was likely inside. The odd thing was that Hiram Krupsky’s stretch white limo pickup was also parked in front of the office. The beast was so big it sat half on the sidewalk and still spilled out onto the street.
Rumor had it that the pickup limo had a lighted disco floor and a bar, but since I wasn’t much into partying, the thing just looked monstrous to me. I was surprised that Sheriff Gibson hadn’t come along and plastered it with tickets. I imagined he was out in his boat scooping up nets of confused catfish. Fish went crazy when it flooded.
Veenie eyed me. “Why you reckon Krupsky is here?”
“I dunno, but he’s our only suspect besides Pam, so I reckon he’s doing us a favor by paying a visit.” The way we’d left Pam, I had my doubts that she’d be welcoming us anywhere near Cluckytown. I wasn’t worried that she’d call the law, because that would be Sheriff Gibson, whom I’d known since grade school, but I was worried about the size of both her temper and her sidearm.
When we pushed our way into the office, Harry was sitting in his roller chair, his feet on the desk. He was wearing his customary blue three-piece suit from Sears with his stubby tie loose around his neck. His fedora hat was sitting on the desk.
Hiram Krupsky was sitting across from Harry with his ten-gallon white cowboy hat perched far back on his head. They were fussing over the touch screen on Harry’s laptop computer.
Harry gave us a long, disapproving look before speaking. He messed with his tie, then his little pewter-colored mustache. “You two been over to see Pam Perkins? Over at Cluckytown?”
I bit my bottom lip. “Maybe. Why you asking?”
Harry turned his computer screen so Veenie and I could see it. We saw the familiar home page of the Hoosier Squealer news site with its line of dancing pigs in pink tutus running along the top. Also, there was a giant photo of Veenie, her face flushed, sitting on top of Cheaty Pants Pam, who had a big pile of fire extinguisher suds crowning her head. They looked plumb ridiculous. The tagline at the bottom of the photo read, “Cat Fight in Cluckytown.” No story had yet been posted. I wondered who had taken the photo. It was black-and-white, and grainy, so maybe it was a shot extracted from one of the video security cameras in the office. I’d noticed a couple of cameras mounted in the far corners of the room. It’d be just like old Cheaty Pants Pam to turn this thing over to the local news media in hopes of embarrassing us.
Not a bad strategy, but I’d been hanging with Veenie since the old days when we both worked the assembly line at the Bold Mold Plastics Factory. If avoiding public embarrassment had been a big goal of mine, I would have ditched her decades ago. That woman was a shame magnet. The harlots in the Bible didn’t get written up as frequently as she did.
Veenie clicked her dentures. “Fake news,” she screeched. “The Ruskies are putting up stuff like this to make us Americans look bad.”
I was about to tell Veenie that she didn’t need the help of Boris and Natasha to make her look bad when Krupsky stood up, tipped his hat, and extended his beefy hand. “Right pleased to see you gals again. Especially you, missy,” he said to me.
His handshake was firm, as before. He held my hand so long it made me nervous. I had to check afterward to make sure all my fingers were still intact. He had a warm, moist hand, kind of like a bear paw.
Harry eyed me as Veenie dashed back to the kitchen area to put on a fresh pot of coffee. “Hiram here tells me you and Veenie are working a case for Ma Horton about her missing prize chickens. I told him that couldn’t be right, because, if it was, I would have known about it, this being my agency and all.” He fiddled with the knot on his tie.
“We were going to brief you this morning, but the floodwaters were rising, and we wanted to make Cluckytown before the road washed out. You know you can’t get a decent cell signal over around Freetown.”
Harry stroked his mustache. “Ma and Peepaw give you gals a cash retainer?” He held out his hand, palm up, fingers wiggling, gesturing for a check.
“They’re good for it.”
Harry shook his head. “Darn it, RJ, this is not some dang-blasted charity dedicated to helping oldsters. You got no money, we got no case.” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his roller chair. “Besides, Hiram wants to hire us, and he’s got cash money.” Harry held up a check made out to the Shades Agency for five thousand dollars. He stretched the check until it snapped loudly between his fingers.
I eyed Hiram, who smiled widely, like a Cheshire cat. “Word is you gals are pretty gosh-darn good at detecting. I want to help Ma and Peepaw. Just breaks my heart that someone stole their little prize chickens.” He pressed a hand to his heart. As if on cue, tears welled in his blue eyes.
Hiram’s whole act smelled like a loaf of bad bologna to me, but Harry had already taken Hiram’s check, and we had no retainer or written agreement with Ma and Peepaw. I reckoned maybe Hiram might be trying to be neighborly, but the whole thing seemed so sneaky it sent my chickenshit meter whirling.
“You’re the boss,” I said to Harry, thinking it best to agree with him in public, per usual. Veenie and I could (and would) keep doing as we pleased once we were free-range again.
Harry, who could be pretty dim-witted when it came to ciphering out old ladies, looked pleased.
Hiram stood up and said he reckoned he’d said his piece and looked forward to our assistance. “About time someone knocked that Pam Perkins off her high horse.”
I wanted to say that most of the county felt the exact same about Hiram and his egg and wing operations, but I kept my piehole shut, being as fond of a paycheck as most folks.
Harry eyed his wristwatch and proclaimed the office closed for the day, even though it was just past four in the afternoon. I could tell Hiram’s check was burning a hole in his pocket. He’d be down at Pokey’s Tavern drinking top shelf tonight.
Veenie poured her fresh coffee into an IU to-go mug and we headed for the door, our hoods pulled up and puckered tight to our chins. I was at the door when Hiram caught me by the elbow. He leaned over, stood on tippy-toe, and whispered hotly into my ear, “I’ll follow you home. Got some personal items we ought to be discussing.” He squeezed into my side in an oddly personal way. I felt he was getting awfully chummy, but, like I said, he was paying the tab now, so like it or not I needed to be listening to him.
Chapter Nine
Hiram’s stretch pickup was too big to fit in my driveway alongside my Impala, so Fergus Senior, who was driving, parked it half on the sidewalk again. Thankfully, the rain had died down to a drizzle.
Veenie eyed the stretch. “What you reckon Hiram wants?”
“Probably wants to discuss why he hired us.”
Veenie made a raspberry sound with her lips. “You know well as I do, RJ, that he hired us to keep us from discovering that he’s behind this whole thing. He’s trying to break down Ma and Peepaw and ruin Chickenlandia so they’ll sell.”
“Might be true,” I said as I flipped up the hood on my windbreaker. “But he’s the boss of us now, so we got to be listening to him.”
“What about Tater and Gertie?”
“We’ll keep lookin
g for Gertie. Tater paid us, and Harry took that retainer. Nothing to keep us from snooping around after Gertie and looking for Dewey and Ginger while working for Hiram. We’ll just have to be sneaky about it.”
“Double agents?” Veenie looked so happy anyone would have thought she’d just inhaled two of Ma’s peanut butter pies.
My thoughts were interrupted by Fergus Senior banging on the Impala’s wet window. He made a squishy face and motioned for us to get out of the car and head toward the porch. A trickle of rain ran off the lid of his Pacers cap. Slicked back with Brylcreem and rain, his thick black-and-white wavy hair made the cap sit cattywampus on his head. Over his shoulder, I could see Hiram, in his baby-blue leisure suit and fancy white cowboy boots, ambling up the front steps of my house.
A second later, Veenie and I were out of the Impala, dashing for cover on the front porch. Hiram waited for us on the porch, at the front door, his white hat in hand. “This old place is cute as a doodlebug,” Hiram said. He used two fingers to squeegee the rain from his bushy silver eyebrows. “You’re a widow, ain’t you?” he asked as I put my hand to the doorknob.
“Yes,” I confirmed, “but Veenie lives with me to help make ends meet, and we take in boarders from time to time.” Sue Ann Smith (Sassy) was our current boarder. We’d been in the same class together all through school. Her last husband—fourth husband—was doing time in Terre Haute for a real estate scam. I didn’t see any reason to mention that to Hiram. If Sassy were around she’d be out to introduce herself as soon as she caught whiff of a single man roaming around loose in the house. She was the undisputed Queen of the Knobby Waters Senior Cougar Club. Husband hunting was her main hobby. I thought about warning Hiram, but then decided heck, he was old enough to fend for himself.
Chickenlandia Mystery Page 6