That surprised me. I’d expected Hiram to be foaming at the mouth because we’d shut down his egg line. Instead of solving the mystery of who was stealing from him, we’d created a whole new problem: one that involved a dead body. “You’re not ticked off?”
“Gosh, no. Things happen. Whole thing got me to thinking there might more going on at my egg houses. Got to thank you ladies for prying my tiny eyes open.”
“You have any idea why Pam was at your place?”
Krupsky shrugged. “Got no idea. She used to come around every now and then to talk business. I’d made her an offer to buy Cluckytown, lock, stock, and barrel, couple of times, like I did with Ma and Peepaw, but she was as cranky as a cat with fleas. Her place was run-down, and she had a mess of problems with the health department. Had a bad E. coli outbreak a short piece back. Fines darn near ruined her, but she hung onto that egg business like it was a life raft. Fact is, it is her only source of pride. Never had kids. Somebody told me that she had a couple of loans about to be called in. I was trying to throw her a lifeline, but her claws came out and she hissed in my face. Too much pride, not enough common sense. Thought I was trying to boss her around. Tell her what to do.”
I nodded. What Hiram said sounded like the Pam I’d known all my life. “And she didn’t cotton to that?”
He chuckled. “Kind of like you. Had a lot of snap in her garters. Pretty much told me where to put it.”
“Where the sun don’t shine?”
“And then some.”
“You weren’t mad at her for that?”
“Heck no. Why would I be? Business is business. I figured she was holding out for a better offer. You never want to make it look like you’re eager to sell. She wasn’t a dummy. Pretty sharp-witted. Just hit a patch of bad ice, slipped, lost all her luck. Life can be like that. Business is always like that. Risky. Got to admire anybody who stays tough in a negotiation. I always figure you got to go a few hard rounds with any competitor. Pam threw knuckle-busting punches, but heck, so do I when I really want something.” He nailed me with his eyes, like I might be in the “something he really wanted” category.
I sidestepped Hiram’s suggestive look and stuck my head back into the facts of the case. Everything the man said sounded reasonable. I wondered if I’d misjudged him. Of course he could also have been leading me on, making nice-nice just to keep my nose out of his attempts to acquire Cluckytown and ruin Chickenlandia. Pam’s death would undoubtedly be good for Hiram, businesswise. I made a note to check who Pam’s next of kin was. If she didn’t have one, and had substantial debts, Cluckytown would come up for auction by the state or the mortgage holder. I was old enough to know some men never gave up. Hiram was many things, but certainly not a quitter. A farm auction would mean Hiram might own Cluckytown for what to him amounted to a pile of shiny pennies.
“Pam wasn’t at your place to negotiate with you?”
“Nope, not that I was aware of, but then I don’t do much in the way of everyday operations. I leave all that day-to-day stuff to Phus and Rhea Dawn. I mastermind the whole operation. Keep my eyes on the numbers so we keep growing at a good pace.”
“Phus and Rhea Dawn any good at running the business?”
He bounced his hat on his knee. “Phus could work harder, has a weakness for the womenfolk, but heck, at least he had the common sense to marry a woman who’s not afraid to swing a few cats by their tails.”
I thought about Rhea Dawn. She didn’t strike me as a woman who’d be easily intimidated. “She’s not his first wife?”
“Nah. He had two others, but they didn’t take to life with the chickens. A lot of people think they’re too high and mighty to live on a chicken farm, even if it is worth millions. His first two wives were like that. Had their noses up in the air so high it’s a wonder they didn’t drown in the spring rains. They were right pretty though. He trotted them around like show ponies.”
“They divorced him?”
“Mutual, near as I know. Phus likes shiny things. He’s got to have the latest this and that and a pretty gal on his arm or else he feels like he’s getting old. Anyhoo, Rhea Dawn is the best of his picks, if you ask me. We get along well. Real well. She’s got a head for business. Used to be in charge of operations for the Kentucky Poultry Barn. That’s how she and Phus met, at a poultry parts convention down in Louisville. She’s got a lot of newfangled ideas about expansion. I like that.”
“She honestly think Veenie murdered Pam?”
“Hard to tell. She don’t like people messing with her operations. She’s okay once you get to know her. A little hard-nosed. The men call her the Nut Crusher.”
“To her face?”
Hiram laughed, a real belly shaker. “Rhea Dawn is okay once you get used to her. Last year she raised our profit margin six percent.”
“That a lot?”
“A whooping lot in the poultry parts business.”
“How’d she do that?”
“Made some deals with the Chinese. Export.”
I couldn’t imagine talking Chinese, let alone understanding all the things about exporting and taxes and the like that foreign trade would take. If my memory served me right, Rhea Dawn held an MBA from Indiana University. If my eyes served me right, she also had breast implants. Both these facts taken together clued me in that she understood and had no problem with doing whatever it took as a woman to succeed in a man’s business.
“What do you want us to do?” I asked Hiram. “Rhea Dawn made it pretty dang clear that she didn’t want us back at the egg houses.”
Hiram ran his fingers thoughtfully around the rim of his hat. “Keep snooping. I’ll handle Rhea Dawn. Somebody’s stealing from me and that don’t sit right with me. Not one bit. I don’t want people thinking that I sent Pam to sing for Saint Peter before her time, either.
“Phus or Rhea Dawn know why Pam was at your place?”
“I asked. Neither of them had seen her for a couple of weeks. They reckoned maybe she came over to make a deal of some sort and stopped to snoop around the operation, only to meet up with Veenie.”
“You talk to the coroner or the crime scene boys when they came to pick up Pam’s body?”
“A bit. April Trueblood, the coroner, said it looked like Pam had been walloped pretty hard in the back of the head with something blunt. Said it’d take her a few days to finish the autopsy, but she was darn near certain that Pam didn’t die of natural causes.”
I thought about that. A blow to the back of the head wasn’t much to go on. I’d call April for the full report in a day or two, but at the moment all I had to go on was the distinct likelihood that Pam had been murdered. “April say if the blow might have been caused by Pam being hit dead-on by a forklift? Maybe she was run down and fell and hit her head on the concrete floor?”
“April was pretty tight-lipped.”
I saw the flowered curtains on the living room picture window across the way at Helen Nierman’s house slide open. A pair of black binoculars popped up in the slit of light. The glass glinted as the giant binocular eyes swung from side to side.
Hiram pointed his hat at Helen’s porch. “We got an audience.”
“That’s just Helen,” I said. “Helen Nierman. She’s the self-appointed morality scout for the Baptist Ladies Auxiliary, likes to make sure my front porch stays G-rated.”
Hiram’s eyebrows shot up. “You entertain men on your front porch regularly, do you?”
“According to Helen we all do.”
Hiram cleared his throat. “Folks around town say you and Sheriff Gibson are a hot item.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, who told you that?”
“Couple of folks.” Hiram’s face looked a tad bit pink in the shadowy porch light. He stared out across the street at Helen’s binocular eyes. “The town blabbermouths got that right? You and Boots an item? I mean, I just need to know if I got competition, that’s all.”
Across the way, Helen’s curtains fluttered. They opened a little wi
der than before.
When I threw Helen a big smile and a two-handed wave, her curtains snapped shut. I didn’t know why Helen bothered spying on me. I reckoned she had nothing better to do. Or maybe she was just waiting for my boarder Sassy Smith to start auditioning husbands again. Sassy knew how to put on a show, and she didn’t seem to care if the whole town had orchestra seats. In fact, I was pretty sure she enjoyed an audience. “I am not dating the sheriff,” I said, crossing my arms across my chest.
“Good to hear,” Hiram sniffled, “because, well, gosh darn, I’ve taken a fancy to you.”
And there it was.
Things grew so quiet between us that you could hear the crickets chattering. A train whistle blew in the distance: the evening CSX freight train east to St. Louis. That was the only train that still whizzed through Knobby Waters on a regular basis.
When I didn’t say anything, Hiram jumped into the silence.
“Almost forgot,” he said, standing. “Brought you a present.” He pulled a tiny, black remote out of the jacket pocket of his leisure suit and aimed it at the driver’s side of the limo. He mashed a button on the remote and I heard a beep. The limo’s windows were tinted so I couldn’t see inside. I didn’t need to see in, though. The driver’s side door popped open and Fergus Senior slid out.
Fergus limped up to the porch carrying a large white box with fingers of frost on the sides. “Where you want this?” He hefted the box over his head and rested it on one shoulder, mostly, I thought, to showcase his manly brawn. It seemed like all the men I knew were acting like roosters during mating season all of a sudden.
“What is that?” I asked, eyeing the freezer box. I was not all that certain I wanted to accept a present from Hiram. If I took his gift, he’d probably be expecting something special in exchange. And I wasn’t sure I was up to any special requests this late in the game.
“Don’t be so dad-burned suspicious,” Hiram complained. “It’s just a case of chicken wings. My company makes the best hot wings. My wife, may she rest in peace, came up with the original recipe. I figured I owed you and Veenie something for all that trouble today out at the egg house. The wings aren’t much, but it’s my way of apologizing for Rhea Dawn’s big hissy fit.”
Fergus eyed me again, the box balanced on his right shoulder. “Where you want ‘em, RJ?”
“She wants them inside. In the freezer,” Hiram snapped. “They’re frozen. Where else would she want them?”
“I dunno,” whined Fergus.
Hiram shot Fergus a look that said if he wanted to keep his job he’d better stop whining like a little Mary who had lost her lamb and hop to it.
Fergus grunted again before turning and disappearing through the front door. He’d been in my house hundreds of times, so he knew his way to the basement freezer.
As soon as Fergus was gone, Hiram asked if it would be all right if he called on me.
I pondered that request. He had the guts to ask me straight on, like a proper man ought to, so I reckoned he deserved an eye-to-eye answer. I don’t know who was more surprised when I finally coughed up a weak “okay,” Hiram or me.
Hiram’s face broke into a smile so wide he looked like a monkey who’d just been given a new banana. He stood up and mashed his hat onto his head. “I’ve got your number. Harry gave it to me. I’ll text so we can get fixed up with a day and time.”
Fergus came out of the house and looked at me and Hiram suspiciously. Before he could say anything, Hiram nodded toward the limo. “Fire her up!” he ordered Fergus.
I watched as the two men ambled down the steps to the pickup. Hiram was so happy he practically floated down the sidewalk in his white cowboy boots.
Across the street, I watched as Helen’s binoculars swung back and forth, keeping the limo in her line of sight until it rounded the corner. I reckoned Helen would report everything she saw, and then some, to the Baptist biddies. It tickled me to think that I was going to be the prayed over sinner of the week at Wednesday night Bible study. I hoped they prayed loud and hard. Given how this case was going, I’d welcome a burly band of backup angels.
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning, I heated up a mess of Hiram’s chicken wings, threw them in a lidded Tupperware, and hotfooted it to the jailhouse to visit Veenie. The jail fed inmates, but Devon Hattabough, the junior officer, was the chief cook, and he was about as good a cook as he was an officer of the law.
Young Devon was on duty wearing his customary khaki, knee-knocker shorts and shirt and a navy-blue beret. His sideburns were bushed out like squirrel tails. He’d recently graduated from the community college and was busy making his mama proud. Everybody else he simply annoyed. Being young, he took the law literally, and his job a bit too seriously.
Devon hitched his thumbs in his utility belt and eyed me and the Tupperware with an equal amount of suspicion. “Visiting hours aren’t until afternoon, Mrs. Waskom. You’ll need to come back then.”
“I brought you some hot chicken wings,” I cooed. Peeling back the lid on the Tupperware, I stuck the container under his nose so he could get a good sniff. I’d heated the wings at home. They smelled sweet and tangy. I’d licked my gooey fingers while forking the wings into the container. The goo had tasted so good I’d sucked down a couple of wings and some black coffee for my own breakfast. Honestly, the wings were the best I’d ever had. I was starting to think maybe dating Hiram wouldn’t be so bad.
Devon plucked a couple of gooey wings out of the container and dumped them onto a paper plate he pulled out of a bottom desk drawer. “Okay,” he mumbled, licking his fingertips, “I guess since it’s you, and since you’re Boots’s girl and all, and since you’re officially a lead detective on a criminal case, I can let you consult for a short spell with Mrs. Goens.”
Before I could protest that part about being his boss’s gal he’d hustled me down the hallway over to Veenie’s jail cell. He clicked the key in, unlocking the heavy metal door. Once I was inside the cell, he swung the door shut with a bang and pocketed the keys. “Yell when you’re done consulting,” he called to me as he rushed back to his desk to dig into the wings.
Veenie was sitting on the edge of her jail cot dressed in a county-issued orange jumpsuit. She looked like a lost little Easter egg. She sprang up from the cot, where she had her neon poncho rolled up as a makeshift pillow, and greeted me. Through her thick glasses, I could see rings floating under her eyes like purple half-moons. Her white hair stood straight up, like Phyllis Diller after a fitful night’s sleep.
Veenie pointed at the Tupperware. “Breakfast?” Her little eyes were lit with hope and hunger.
I nodded and scooched onto the cot next to her.
Veenie snatched the Tupperware and popped off the lid. She stuck her nose so far down into the dish that it came out covered in a glob of red BBQ sauce. “Lordie, those smell like heaven. You make ‘em?”
“Nah. Hiram brought them over last night. He makes them. His wife’s recipe. Sells them in the grocery stores.”
“These are mighty good wings,” Veenie mumbled between juicy bites. “Mighty good.” She used a napkin I handed her to wipe the grease and sauce off her lips. “You reckon you could snag us some more of these wings?”
“Probably.”
Veenie stopped chewing and studied me. Her eyes narrowed. “What did you do to get these here wings, Ruby Jane?”
A fiery-fingered flush slapped up my neck and across my cheeks. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” I mumbled before looking away. My eyes lit on the tiny window at the top of Veenie’s cement block jail cell. The window was not much bigger than a loaf of bread, yet cracked open, it let in light and air. Veenie, who was shaped like a beach ball, was in no danger of bouncing up that high to make a jailbreak.
Veenie attacked another wing and stripped off the meat while holding the wing bone with one hand and pushing her teeth back into her head with the other. When she was done chewing the chicken she started in on me. “These chicken wings … this H
iram’s way of sweetening you up for a date?”
“Might be,” I said. It was chilly in the jail cell, so I wrapped my arms around my chest and ran my hands up and down my forearms. I thought I ought to come clean and tell Veenie that I’d agreed to date Hiram, but then decided it’d be best to keep my piehole shut. If I confessed, I’d never hear the end of it. Yakety, yakety, yak, yak, yak. All of Knobby Waters would be chattering with the news.
Veenie read my face anyway. “You reckon Hiram fancies you enough to give us some more of these?” She tossed a stripped wing bone back into the Tupperware.
“You want me to pimp myself out for a case of frozen chicken wings?”
“Gosh, no. Not one case. I was thinking maybe a weekly delivery.” She licked sauce off her fingertips and eyed me hopefully.
Sometimes getting old wore on me. When I was younger, I always held out for the best deal. That’s why I married my husband, Charlie Waskom. He seemed a solid choice, and he was. No drinking. No cheating, No drama. No cursing. Nice and simple, or as simple as a marriage could be. Now, here I was rattling toward my seventies, trying to decide if I should debauch myself for a weekly delivery of free chicken wings.
On the other hand, they were the world’s best chicken wings.
I tore into a saucy wing. Tangy, sweet, hot, juicy. It was like I opened my mouth and a piece of heaven flew right in. “You think I should date Hiram for the chicken wings?”
“You have a better offer that I don’t know about?”
“There’s always Boots.” I was surprised to hear myself say this out loud.
“I dunno,” said Veenie as she chewed another wing. “You and him been dating for nigh on sixty years. Seems to me if you two were gonna take, something would have clicked into gear by now.”
“We have not been dating.”
“Maybe you haven’t been, but he sure enough has. Whole county sees you two as a couple.”
“I keep telling people we are not dating. Nobody in this dang-blasted town ever listens to a word I say. Bunch of gossips, backbiters, and tattletales.” I sighed deeply.
Chickenlandia Mystery Page 10