by Hillary Avis
“OK.” Eli shrugged and dropped his phone into his bathrobe pocket.
“Thanks for watching my birds,” I said stiffly, avoiding eye contact and therefore avoiding melting into a puddle of embarrassment. “You can go home now.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but I brushed past him on the way to the chicken coop. Then I stopped. “Wait a minute. You came running over here when you saw that picture. What did you think was going to happen?”
Now it was Eli’s turn to look embarrassed. He adjusted his bathrobe and tightened the belt a little. “Nothing. I didn’t see any picture. It never happened.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m seriously asking—what did you think, when I sent you a blurry, sideways picture of my cleavage, that caused you to hop the fence in your bathrobe?”
“Honestly, you want to know?” When I nodded, Eli made a face. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Then I definitely want to know.”
“I thought maybe...” He genuinely looked miserable, and for the first time, I started to worry that I really didn’t want to know. “I thought maybe you had a stroke.”
“A stroke?!” Before I could stop it, a hysterical giggle escaped. “You see my boobs, and your first thought is ‘oh no, she’s stroking out’?”
“I genuinely couldn’t think of any other reason why you’d message me something like that.”
“Really? No other reason?” I smirked at him. “I can think of at least one other reason.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Oh, really?”
Uh oh. I got myself in a little too deep on that one. See? This is why I don’t flirt. “Well, I mean, I can think of one. But it really was an accident. I was unloading the car and holding the phone under my chin, and the movement must have hit the shutter and then bumped to the messaging screen and selected the photo and...you know what? I think you’re right. I must have had a stroke.”
A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “I see. Well. I’m happy you’re OK.”
I cleared my throat, still a little embarrassed. “Totally fine. Thanks again for holding down the fort while I was gone. I owe you one.”
“Nah. You’re back so early today, I hardly had to do anything. The only hard part was putting them to bed. Otherwise, it was a cinch.”
I frowned. The chickens usually put themselves to bed when the light started to fade. “Did you use the mealworms like I told you?”
“Yeah. But they all were roosting in the apple trees. They didn’t want to go inside. I ended up having to carry them in individually. Picture me, plucking birds out of the trees and trying to convince them that I wasn’t trying to murder them in their sleep.” Eli chuckled.
Weird. That had never happened before, but then again, this was only my first July as a chicken farmer. Maybe it was just too warm in the coop. Despite having excellent ventilation, the coop did heat up under the peak summer sun. I might need to install some solar-powered fans. I certainly didn’t have time to carry the hens inside one-by-one every night, especially not when the new chicks moved to the coop and doubled the flock. “Sorry you had to go to the trouble. I should get back to work.”
“Farmer’s market?”
I nodded.
“I’ll let you get to it. Don’t mean to interfere with your business.” He gave me a crooked smile. His expression and the way he said it send a wash of guilt flooding over me. I really needed to tell him about Archer and McKenzie. But I also really needed to get my eggs ready to sell.
“Keep me company while I finish up?” I asked. “I have something I need to talk to you about.”
Eli looked down at his bathrobe and untied bootlaces and then back at me. “As long as there’s no dress code.”
“Nope. I slept in mine. I probably smell like a campfire.” I grinned at him over my shoulder as I headed around the back of the coop to the nest boxes. I grabbed the wire egg basket off its hook and opened the first door to collect the morning’s lay.
To my surprise, there were no eggs in the first four boxes. It was common for all the hens to squabble over a few choice boxes where the majority of eggs would be laid, but usually there were a couple eggs in each box, minimum. I shut the door and opened the next one.
Only three eggs.
I collected them, puzzled, and opened the last door, expecting to see the rest of the boxes overflowing. They did have more eggs, but still nowhere near the number I anticipated. The morning lay was usually the bigger one. Maybe their adventure last night roosting in the apple orchard had stressed the flock and paused down their production. It happened sometimes.
Eli crouched beside me to help transfer the eggs into my basket. “You said you wanted to talk?”
“Right.” I’d forgotten. I took a deep breath, braced myself for his disapproval, and asked a question I already knew the answer to. “Do the state police have any other suspects in McKenzie’s case?”
He gave a slight shake of his head. “Just Tambra.”
“They really need to interview McKenzie’s boyfriend, Archer Clark,” I said. I closed up the nest box and stood. Maybe I’d get lucky and Eli’d just run with that.
I could almost feel his frown behind me as he followed me to the house. “I didn’t know McKenzie was dating anyone.”
“Secretly. The pageant rules prohibit contestants from dating, so they were hiding it. Tambra found out, though.” I sidestepped Boots on the way to the porch fridge, where I found the flats of eggs Eli had collected yesterday.
Eli ran his tongue thoughtfully over his lower lip as he processed the new information. “How do you know this? Did Tambra tell you? She didn’t say anything about it in her interview.”
I sighed, carefully balancing the eggs in my arms as I attempted to open the back door with my foot. “Please don’t ask me how I know this, but her report to the pageant board is folded up inside the red book on her kitchen counter. It’s all there, except Archer’s name. But if you talk to Ollie, he’ll tell you it’s Archer. He saw them making out on the covered bridge during his Little League game. That’s how Tambra found out to begin with.”
Eli finally opened the door for me, and we went into the kitchen. Eli sat down at the table and watched while I drew the eggs a bleach-solution bath in the sink. I had one eye on the clock that was ticking mercilessly.
“This isn’t good for Tambra,” he finally said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Why didn’t she tell me about that in her interview? It’s almost like she was trying to hide it.”
My heart sank. Here I was trying to help Tambra, not make things worse for her. “Maybe she just forgot. Or didn’t want her eight-year-old mixed up in a murder investigation. Or didn’t think it was relevant once McKenzie was dead.”
“Information about the victim’s relationships seems pretty relevant to me.” Eli’s voice was skeptical.
“Well, this Archer kid is hiding something, too,” I said defensively. “He told me he didn’t go to the festival. But he definitely did.”
“You saw him there?”
I shook my head, drying eggs and sorting them as fast as humanly possible. “Look at the front page of yesterday’s newspaper. He’s right there in the background, watching McKenzie. He’s hiding something, Eli. You have to talk to him. Or at least pass this on to someone who’s working the case.”
“I will.” He got out his phone as he rose from the table and moved toward the door, swiping and typing as he went. “I’m taking this seriously, I promise.”
Chapter 14
It wasn’t until Eli was gone and I had all the eggs washed and dried that I realized how few I had to sell. Even accounting for the diminished lay this morning, I was a several dozen short. I checked my lay logs for the last week, where I recorded the number of eggs I collected each day. They were all on target, so yesterday’s count must have been low, too. Eli didn’t mention it, but he wouldn’t have known any different.
I grabbed some of my “rainbow” eggs from the kitchen fridge
and scrubbed them up to take, too. Maybe some people would get a kick out of having a variety of colors and sizes in their carton. I loaded the washed-and-dried eggs into my special coolers and, huffing and puffing and crossing my fingers they didn’t leak all over my leather upholstery, wedged them in the backseat of the Porsche.
This poor little car was probably in shock. Here she thought she’d spend her days bopping around the streets of Beverly Hills, visiting boutiques and bistros, and I had her going camping and hauling eggs to the farmer’s market. Well, even loaded down with my coolers, she made good time, and I squeaked into the library parking lot two minutes before the farmers market opened.
About a dozen booths were spaced around the fairgrounds between the library and the covered bridge. I spotted all the regulars under their colorful banners: the berry stand, the nut hut, the woman who makes goat cheese and goat milk soap, the candle-and-honey beekeeper booth, the organic vegetable folks. A travel trailer selling coffee drinks was parked in the lot on the edge of the grounds.
I snagged a cup of iced honey coffee on my way by, balancing the drink in one hand as I dragged my stacked coolers-on-wheels with the other. My table and pop-up tent were waiting for me on the far side of the market, and a short line had already formed in front of my “Fresh Eggs” sign. I didn’t even have time to sit down in the provided folding chair before people were dropping off last week’s empty egg carton and picking up another dozen as fast as I could unload them from the cooler.
Even with the mismatched, multi-size rainbow eggs, I sold out in ten minutes. Usually, that’d be a good thing, but since I didn’t have as many eggs as usual, it was just a thing, kind of like putting on your last pair of clean underwear one day before your vacation is over. I mean, it’s clean, but what about tomorrow?
After I sold out, I sat there like a dummy for a half-hour, drinking my honey coffee and telling people no eggs, sorry, before I realized I should just probably just leave. I felt so bad, though. I’d dragged Ruth and the kids away from the lake for less than twenty minutes of sales. I was supposed to staff my booth for a full two hours, according to the farmers market rules, just to make it worth it. But the other part of me was pretty tired of apologizing for something that wasn’t exactly my fault.
Could I sneak out without being noticed?
Probably not, given that I had to drag two giant coolers through the middle of the market to get back to my car. I checked my phone—an hour to go. I slumped down in my folding chair and swigged the last of my drink as I watched the market browsers mill around, sniffing produce and showing off their tote bags. I was surprised to see Jillian among them. Usually she was working at her uncle’s diner in the mornings.
I waved to her and she looked startled before she gave me a small smile and nod. I motioned her over and, with a quick look over her shoulder, she made her way to my booth.
“Day off?” I asked.
She chewed her lip as she played with the end of her ponytail, worrying the hair between her fingers. “I wasn’t feeling up to working. Everyone keeps asking me about McKenzie. It’s like—we weren’t even really friends!”
I nodded, feeling a little guilty that Ruth and I had been some of those people. “People are just curious. They don’t mean anything by it. They’re trying to put together the pieces so they can understand why something so terrible happened. Probably figure you knew about her life since you’re the same age and have the same friends.”
“I guess.” She sighed. “I’ll just be glad when it’s all over. Maybe people will stop asking me about it after her memorial on Sunday.”
“I doubt that will stop them. Maybe when they catch whoever did it.”
At my words, Jillian stiffened. “You don’t think—?”
She left it unsaid, but I knew what she meant. Of course, she was thinking of Tambra. I’d forgotten that Jillian wasn’t only affected by the murder of her sort-of friend, but by Tambra getting locked up for the crime, too.
“I don’t think it was Tambra, no,” I said in a low voice. “I think someone else did it. And I think someone else saw what happened.”
Jillian paled and wobbled, and for a moment I thought she might faint. I leaped up and swiftly guided her to my chair. She sat down, her legs still shaking. I ran and got her some ice water from the coffee cart. When I returned, she had regained some of her color. I handed her the mason jar, moisture already beading on the outside, and she sipped the water gratefully.
She set the jar down on the table. “Who do you think”—her voice caught and she cleared her throat—“who do you think it was?”
I checked around the booth to make sure nobody was nearby before I pulled the newspaper page out of my purse and unfolded it. I scooted it so she could see and tapped Archer’s scowling face.
Jillian swallowed hard. “Archer?”
“You know him?”
She nodded mutely.
“He looks angry, doesn’t he?” I asked. When Jillian didn’t say anything, I added, “And he wasn’t supposed to be there. He told me he wasn’t there, actually.”
Jillian jerked her head up to look at me, her eyes narrowed and fierce even as they welled with tears. “He said that?! He’s lying!”
“Obviously, he was lying. He’s right there on film. That’s why I think he knows something. Maybe he saw what happened.” Or maybe he did it, I wanted to add. But I didn’t want to scare Jillian off. “Do you know why he was so upset in this picture? Did he and McKenzie argue?”
“He wasn’t mad at her,” Jillian blurted out. Then, seeming to think better of her words, she clamped her lips shut and stood up, the half-empty jar in her hand. “I better take this back.”
Before I could ask her what she meant about Archer, my purse began to buzz insistently. I checked my phone—it was a call from Edison & Sons. “Sorry, Jillian—I have to take this. It’ll just be...”
But she was already gone.
“Hey, Gary,” I said, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder as I scanned the crowd for a glimpse of Jillian’s ponytail. The faint sound of calypso music drifted through the line. “Tell me some good news.”
Gary chuckled. “Well, the good news is, Terry got your car going yesterday. Gave her a jump and she started right up.”
“I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
“Well, the battery’s fine and the connections are fine.” His voice was dreamy and spaced out, and I guessed maybe he’d had a little wacky tobacky along with his coffee that morning. It was legal now, though, so who was I to judge? I just wanted him to speed up the flow of information a little.
“Where’s my ‘but’?” I asked impatiently.
“Look behind you.” Gary guffawed. “Get it? Your butt’s behind you.”
I rolled my eyes at his dad joke. “I get it. Want to tell me what’s wrong with my car?”
“Oh, sure. I was just joshing.” Gary’s voice assumed a more businesslike tone, although his amusement at his own cleverness was still palpable. “It’s probably a bad alternator.”
“Probably?”
“Well, won’t know ’til we poke around in there. And by we, I mean Terry. Got your car over here already, but he’s got another job in front of yours. If you give me the go-ahead for a new alternator in case it needs one, it’ll be ready for you to pick up tomorrow morning, though.”
“Sounds good!” It was only after I hung up that I realized that I’d agreed to the work without any clue how much it’d cost. Well, I’d better get home and tend my flock, because those little chickens were the only things standing between me and bankruptcy.
I gathered my coolers and, with yet another I’m sorry to a new batch of plaintive customers, put a “SOLD OUT” sign on my table and bailed on the market a few minutes early.
As the coolers bumped across the gravel lot on the way back to my car, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jillian had said before she ran off. She said that Archer wasn’t mad at her. McKenzie.
But the
way Jillian said it...well, it sure sounded like Archer was mad at someone else.
But who?
Chapter 15
While I was doing dishes that evening, I spotted movement in the driveway outside the kitchen window. Just a tiny flash out of the corner of my eye. Worried that I’d accidentally left one of the chickens in the orchard when I closed up the coop, I dried my hands and went out to check.
I didn’t find a feathered fugitive, though. Instead, I found a bunch of sweet peas wrapped in brown paper laying on my doormat. I looked up and saw Eli on the other side of the barbed-wire fence that separated our two properties, heading back toward his house. Of course.
He looked back toward me and I raised the flowers. “Thanks!”
He scratched his head as he gave a huge, pantomime shrug. “Guess somebody likes you,” he called.
I couldn’t help laughing as I felt my cheeks turn as pink as the flowers. Guess I like somebody back. I turned to go put the sweet peas in water before I thought better of it. “Hey, wait!”
Tossing the flowers down onto the porch chair, I jogged over to the fence, trying not to make a fool out of myself as Eli watched me with an amused expression. I shudder to think what kind of slow-mo Baywatch moment he was envisioning as I made the fifty-yard dash. I arrived only slightly out of breath but all the way out of dignity. “Do you think you could give me a ride to Duma in the morning?”
“Got a hot date?” He smirked.
“I do, as a matter of fact. A hot date with a burly mechanic.”
“Are you talking about Terry or Gary?”
I giggled. “Whichever one fixes my car.”
“Terry, then. Didn’t know you were a big fan of mustaches. Maybe I should grow mine out.” Eli stroked his upper lip thoughtfully.
“Please don’t. I’m not interested in being kissed by a toilet brush.”
His face lit up. “So you are interested in being—”
“Driven to Duma tomorrow morning,” I finished. “Will you do it?”
“What’s in it for me?” he asked with a wink.