Chicken Scratch (The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series Book 1)

by Becki Willis

With a disgusted sigh, Brash threw his napkin onto the table and stood up from the table. As he unfolded himself to his full height, he towered over the sputtering woman by almost a full twelve inches. “Ladies, why don’t we have a seat and talk this over? I’m sure these good people would like to eat their meal in peace.”

  Not at all ashamed of eavesdropping, at least a dozen of the people scattered throughout the restaurant shook their heads in denial. From three tables away, Virgie Adams spoke for most of the patrons. “Actually, I’d like to hear what the young lady has to say.”

  “Yeah, speak up, would you? I can’t hear you over here!” Henry Bealls said, cupping his ear over his hearing aid.

  Beside him, his wife tapped his arm and admonished, “Oh, hush up, Daddy, you couldn’t hear them if they were sitting at our own table!”

  “Heard the little gal tell her she weren’t a nice lady,” he grumbled.

  Ignoring the entire room, Brash circled around to put his back to them. It might not keep the nosy crowd from listening in, but it let them know what he thought about it. Taking the girl’s arm, he gently led her to one of the empty chairs at their table. Cutter got up and went to stand beside Genesis, but neither offered to leave. They hovered nearby as the blond haired boy went to stand behind the girl who was obviously his sister.

  When Brash held a chair out for Myrna, she shook her head and remained standing. He murmured, “Suit yourself”, as he returned to his own seat. “Miss, I did not catch your name.”

  “Bethani. Bethani Reynolds.”

  “Maddy’s daughter,” he nodded. Glancing up at the boy, he added, “And son, I presume?”

  Blake was confused as to why the policeman was calling his mother by the familiar nickname, but he nodded and politely offered his hand in a firm handshake. “Blake Reynolds.”

  Impressed by the youth’s manners, Brash shook his hand before returning his attention to the girl. “So, Bethani, tell me where you were when this took place.”

  “Mom and I were on our way back from getting pedicures. We came up behind the Hadley family, walking their show animals and family pets down Third Street. We were trying to go around them when all of a sudden, this woman came racing down her walk, waving a broom and yelling. The little girl jumped off the sidewalk and starting crying, bumping into Buddy Ray. The show steer got spooked and almost ran in front of us. Jimmie Kate tried to hold on, but the goat jerked its rope out of her hand. She even has the rope-burn to prove it. And the pony just took off, even with her father on its back and trying to stop it.”

  As she told the story in full detail, it was easy for her listeners to imagine the scene in their heads. Genesis bit into her lip to keep from laughing, but Cutter was less successful. She ended up elbowing him and keeping the pressure of her arm into his side, until he was able to control himself. Many of the other patrons did not even try to hold in their laughter. One even called out, “You should see the video!”

  “Video?” Brash asked in confusion. He turned to Myrna. “You have surveillance cameras in your yard?”

  “No,” the woman said thoughtfully, “but that’s not a bad idea.”

  “Bethani, how did this little fiasco make it onto a video?”

  For the first time, the girl looked unsure of herself. “I-I took it on my phone.”

  “And did what with it?” the officer prodded.

  “Uhm, I -uh- I shared it with a few friends.”

  “We saw it on You-Tube!” someone offered from the crowd.

  Myrna Lewis gasped. “You take that off! You can’t do that, not without my permission! I’ll sue you!” She turned to the policeman, jabbing his shoulder with her stubby finger. “Chief deCordova, arrest this girl! She has infringed on my civil rights! She has no call to be posting pictures of me on the internet without my consent!”

  Brash clenched his jaw and stared straight ahead, deliberately not looking at the irate woman. His voice was a growl as he warned, “Mrs. Lewis, if you do not remove your finger this instant, I will make an arrest, all right, but it will be yours, for assaulting a police officer. Move. Your. Finger.”

  The woman snatched her hand away, visibly shaken by his threat.

  Bethani sat at the table trembling, her big blue eyes swimming with tears and fright. Blake had his hand on her shoulder in stoic support, but his own Adam’s apple worked up and down nervously.

  “Bethani, maybe we should call your Mom to come down here. But don’t worry, honey, no one is going to arrest you,” Brash assured the frightened youth.

  “Madison is on her way. I’ve already texted her,” Genesis offered, holding up her cell phone.

  “And I never said I was dropping the charges!” Myrna insisted, although her voice held less bravado than before.

  “The girl is a minor. She will not be arrested,” Brash reiterated firmly.

  Myrna Lewis crossed her arms over her shapeless body and tapped a red-clad foot. “I’d like to see this video. That will prove, once and for all, that the barbaric goat ate my cabbage roses!” she said with a satisfied sniff.

  “As I recall, Mr. Hadley admitted as much.”

  “He admitted to the snap dragons, not the cabbage.”

  “Snap dragons, cabbage roses, daisies, whatever. He admitted that his goat trampled your flower beds and ate your flowers.”

  “But these are my prize cabbage roses! That makes a considerable amount of difference in the cost of damages. That is why I insist that you inventory this latest evidence.” She held out the tattered tidbit of the all-but-forgotten cabbage.

  “Of course, I will also have to take into account the evidence that Miss Reynolds has.” Fed up with the woman’s incessant complaints about such trivial matters when he had a murder investigation to conduct, Brash crossed his arms across his wide chest and studied her thoughtfully. His steady gaze was stern enough to make her squirm.

  “Ev-Evidence of what?”

  “It sounds to me like you assaulted the Hadley family. A child, no less.”

  The bell above the café door jangled, announcing a new guest.

  Without thought to her dirty, ragged clothes or the odor that clung to them, Madison rushed inside, worried because of the cryptic message on her phone.

  Bethani needs you at café, ASAP.

  She stepped into a café full of people, all staring at her. The entire place was so quiet they could hear the rustle of her clothes. And she could hear the tiny sniffs as those nearest her got a whiff of her foul smell and discreetly covered their noses. Madison would have apologized, but she caught sight of her children, at the back of the room with Brash deCordova. The Chief of Police. No longer worried about apologizing, Madison left a trail of tainted air as she hurried to the back.

  “Bethani! Blake! What is wrong? Genny, I got your text. What is happening?” She shot the questions off in rapid-fire succession, not waiting for the answers. “Brash, what is this about?” she demanded of the officer, her hazel eyes dark with worry.

  In spite of himself, Brash grinned. This was how a woman should look with her hands on her hips. There should be this distinct boundary between her slender waist and the curve of her hip. There should be this enticing rise and fall of her breasts as she labored to get a steady breath. There should be this fire flashing from her eyes, little sparks of blue and green that made a man think of kindling another kind of fire, another kind of flame. His eyes slid back to Myrna, who had propped her fists onto her sweatpants again, her dark eyes dulled with bitterness.

  No comparison.

  Biting back the smile, Brash rose and asked, “Mrs. Reynolds, would you like to have a seat? Mrs. Lewis, have the other chair.” When Myrna started to protest, he changed her mind. “Now.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It did not take Madison long to discover that people treated her differently, once they knew of her work in the chicken houses. Even though she took long, hot showers and removed all trace of the chicken smell, she soon discovered there was a mental stigma associated
with the chicken industry.

  Those opposed to having poultry farms in the area were fighting the growth of more houses. With no thought to old friendships and community alliances, they fought the progress with heated words and any legal grounds they could think of. Never mind that this was a farming community and animals of any kind created their own particular odor. Never mind that the chicken industry breathed new life and new wealth into the rural area. Never mind that it increased the tax revenue and boosted sales in the local stores; it also dropped property values for the surrounding properties. Often driven out by the unpleasant smell, neighbors were forced to sell their homes —some of which were passed down through generations— only to find they could not get top dollar for their property. Even if their homes or ranches had been there first, the value decreased because of the proximity to the newly built chicken houses. For a small community still healing from old rivalries, this new strain of contention was an unneeded complication.

  Nor had the ordeal with Myrna Lewis helped matters any. Although most of the people in the café had taken Bethani’s side and applauded the girl for standing up to the local busy-body, there were some who took one look —and one whiff— of Madison and decided that her daughter had not been properly raised. Based solely on Madison’s temporary job in the chicken houses, they agreed with Myrna that the teenager’s ‘eye witness’ testimony could not be trusted. And without Myrna’s permission to be filmed, they felt the video should not be used, even in the court of public opinion. The fact that it aired on public media was not only downright disgraceful, it showed poor parenting and a lack of good judgment.

  The upside was that Bethani was now heralded a hero at school, particularly among the kids involved with the livestock show. In an ironic twist of fate, the video she had taken to poke fun of the organization had somehow endeared her to the very people she mocked. It did not hurt that the cutest boy in school, Drew Baines, was president of the Future Farmers of America and personally thanked Bethani for defending their right to walk their animals on public streets. Even though Chief deCordova and her mother strongly ‘suggested’ she take the video down —meaning, of course, that she had to— the memory of it lingered in their minds, as well as on one or more hard-drives. And Bethani was invited to her very first party in Juliet, hosted by none other than Jimmie Kate Hadley.

  With more time spent at the Gleason farm, Madison had less time to spend asking questions on Don Ngyen’s behalf. She felt guilty for not doing more to earn the money Lucy Ngyen paid her, so she squeezed in questions every chance she got, even if they were few and far between.

  She tried asking Eddie Menger more questions the next time she saw him, which was only a few days later. Since he knew the Vietnamese man, she thought he might have some insight to his personality and the likelihood that he had, indeed, committed the crime.

  “Personally, he didn’t seem the type, but the police have arrested him, so I guess that’s that,” the Service Tech said with indifference. “Now, about these last few days with the flock. There are a few special things you’ll need to take care of.”

  “If ‘special’ translates to heavy, I’m not sure I can manage,” Madison admitted.

  “Is there someone who could help you with some of the heavy lifting? A man, maybe?”

  “Well, Benny Ngyen offered, but I didn’t feel right about it, since-”

  “Benny Ngyen!” the man broke in, clearly aghast. “Why in the hell would he offer to help you? And you can bet Ronny’s wife won’t let him step foot on the place, since his son was the one who killed Ronny!”

  “We don’t know it was Don for sure,” Madison countered. “And since I’m helping them, Mr. Ngyen offered to help me.”

  “Helping them? How?”

  “Actually, they hired me to do some work for them.”

  “What kind of work?” Eddie Menger asked, his tone suspicious.

  “I’m not sure I’m at liberty to say,” Madison hedged. “My contracts with my clients are confidential.”

  “Fine. That’s fine, whatever,” he said, waving both hands in a signal of dismissal. “Just know that it is against Barbour policy for growers to have personal contact with one another, particularly to be visiting one another’s farms. It could lead to cross-contamination.”

  Madison frowned, biting her lips in concern. “I-I wouldn’t want to cause trouble for the Ngyens. Nor for Ramona, after all she’s been through. But I’m not a grower. I’m contract labor.”

  “Doesn’t matter. For the next seven days, you are acting on behalf of Ronny Gleason. You need to put off your job with the Ngyens until after we sell this flock.”

  “But by then it may be too late!” she cried in dismay. “I need to find the evidence now, while it’s still fresh on people’s mind!”

  “Evidence?” he asked sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  Realizing her slip, Madison made mental notes on why she was not qualified to be a private investigator and should not have taken the assignment to begin with. Then she thought of a thousand reasons why she had, all of them green.

  “Tell me about these special tasks,” she said, quickly changing the subject.

  “I’ll show you how to take down back fences in one house, but you’ll have to do the others on your own.” He made the offer grudgingly, even as he grumbled, “I’m already late for an appointment.”

  An hour and a half later, Madison struggled with the long fence panels in House 4. This house always gave her the heebie-jeebies, because this was where she had found the body. Try as she might, she still had trouble walking down that fateful path toward the fan ends. As she managed to wrangle the holding stake free and take the fence apart, she fought memories of the fence Cutter Montgomery erected around the prone form of the dead man. She shook off gruesome images in her mind as she hauled the fence to one side of the house, where it hung on pegs when not in use.

  Madison was making her way back along the waterline, almost to The Spot, as she had come to think of it, when suddenly the house went dark. With not even the fans cycling to provide light through their spinning blades, the house was pitch black. When off, the fan covers folded inward to close, meaning there was now no natural light to guide Madison’s path. She stumbled over a chicken, heard its angry cluck, and stopped in her tracks.

  Logic told her not to panic. If it was a power failure, the back-up generators would kick in and keep everything in working order. And just because she was only feet away from where she found Ronny Gleason’s’ body six days ago, it did not mean his ghostly form would suddenly appear to traumatize her.

  Logic, however, was not always her strong suit. Just before hysteria overtook her, the lights came back on. Madison practically ran to the back of the house and to the freedom just beyond the big end doors. That last fence panel could stay there until tomorrow; she was not going back in that house today.

  With foul play suspected, an official autopsy was performed on Ronny Gleason’s body. Unlike on television, the process was not immediate. Several days after Madison discovered his ravished form, officials released his body for burial.

  Out of respect for her brief client, Madison went to the funeral. Her heart ached for his grieving parents, but Ramona’s theatrical performance failed to move her. Perhaps it was the form-fitting black dress the woman chose for the service, or the way she clung to Reverend Greer afterward, but Madison thought the woman’s tears were of the crocodile variety.

  “So there were a lot of people at the service?” Genesis asked, pouring her friend a cup of coffee. The two women practically had New Beginnings to themselves, with most of the afternoon crowd still lingering at the graveside services. Madison had declined going to the final service, deciding the funeral had served in paying her respect.

  “The church was packed. Standing room only.”

  “Everyone was probably hoping for an open casket, thinking they might get a glimpse of something gory.”

  “Unfortunately, I had mor
e than a glimpse, and I am still seeing it in my sleep!” Madison shivered visibly. “And again yesterday, when the lights went out in House 4. It was all I could do not to get hysterical.”

  “Ever figure out what happened?”

  “No, but I guess it worked itself out.”

  “Just six more days and you’ll be done with this job.”

  “They cannot come soon enough.”

  “Oh, hey, I think I may have you another job lined up. I’ve been singing your praises to Dean Lewis. Has he called you yet?”

  “Would that be Dean Lewis from the Dean Lewis Insurance Company, husband of Myrna Lewis? I doubt she would ever allow him to hire me!”

  “One and the same, but there’s an insurance convention coming up, and he doesn’t have anyone to man the office for him. Myrna is going with him this year, because it coincides with some big garden show she likes to attend. We’re thinking she’ll want to go badly enough that she won’t bother to ask who’s watching the shop.”

  “We?”

  Genesis grinned. “I’ve been pulling hard for you, girl. Trying to work all the angles. He should be calling you any day now.”

  “Hmm, well, we’ll see,” she said, her tone doubtful. “By the way, you should have seen the dress Ramona was wearing.”

  “Sinful?”

  “More suitable for a nightclub than her husband’s funeral. And you should have seen the way she was hanging all over the preacher.”

  “But isn’t he yummy?” Genesis grinned, displaying her dimples.

  “I can see why all the women are flocking to his church. He is definitely an advertisement for God’s fine workmanship.”

  Giggling like two teenagers, the friends indulged in Genny-doodle cookies and a second cup of coffee.

  “And speaking of fine workmanship… here comes Brash. Funeral must be over,” Genesis said, nodding as the chief of police stepped from his car, dressed in dark pressed slacks and a long sleeve white shirt. He even wore a jacket and tie for the occasion. From inside the café, the friends watched with unabashed appreciation as he removed the jacket and tossed it back inside the cruiser. The movements pulled material taut against his best features.