FOXY STATEHOOD HENS
And Murder Most Fowl
* * *
Jackie King
Paula Watkins Alfred
Peggy Moss Fielding
Denton Texas
The Foxy Hen books:
The Foxy Hens Go Bump in the Night
Foxy Statehood Hens and Murder Most Fowl
Chik~Lit for Foxy Hens
Two Foxy Holiday Hens and One Big Rooster
The Foxy Hens Meet a Romantic Adventurer
Purchase all these books and more at the publisher's website:
http://www.awocbooks.com
The Spinster, the Pig and the Orphan copyright © 2007, Jacqueline King
The Raucous Bird and a Felony Tryst copyright © 2007, Paula Alfred
Hats, Healing and Homicide in Tulsey Town copyright © 2007, Peggy Fielding
Published by Deadly Niche Press, an imprint of AWOC.COM Publishing, P.O. Box 2819, Denton, TX 76202, USA.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author(s).
ISBN: 978-0-937660-34-8
To honor our Mothers:
Delia Hodges Sprague,
Dorothy Byrd Watkins
and
Hazel Matlock Moss
Contents
THE SPINSTER, THE PIG AND THE ORPHAN
Jackie King
One didn’t buy a husband in the same way one bought a hotel or a lumberyard. Not even in the modern year of 1889. Not even in Oklahoma Territory. It just wasn’t done. But Harriet Lauren intends to do just that. Because the fact is, she desperately needs a husband to figurehead her new businesses and to father the children she longs for. And handsome Zachariah Crawford is eager to volunteer. Add a pet pig, a teenage orphan girl who wraps herself around Harriet’s heart, and a murder in her brand new hotel, and the 29-year-old spinster must reach deep into her soul to meet the challenges of this new Prairie town named Guthrie.
THE RAUCOUS BIRD AND A FELONY TRYST
Paula Watkins Alfred
On the day Oklahoma won statehood, Donnie Summersdale promises to find the fiend who hurt kindly Miz Myrtle Harrington and that noble beast, Old Red Hound. The plucky teenager takes to heart Sheriff Bob Freedom Smith’s advice, “Don’t shut the gate until all the horses are in,” and pans for gold among suspects: Sister Sally Sees, fortune teller come lately from the circus; Mr. John Bowden, a propertied man greedy for even more property; or Deputy Harris Suggs, a fervent admirer of both Miz Myrtle and her merchandise. Donnie’s investigation is made more difficult when she is forced to bunk with the good-looking Banker Perkins while trying to conceal her female identity, a burden of devilish proportions.
HATS, HEALING AND HOMICIDE IN TULSEY TOWN
Peggy Moss Fielding
Twenty-eight year old Eula Mae Kent, Spinster, leaves her longtime home deep in the woods of Indian Territory. Because she is determined to protect her virtue, she accidentally finds a new life in the tiny village of Tulsey Town. In her new home the young woman becomes involved in helping solve intertwined cases of arson, petty theft, kidnapping, rape, and murder, all with the help of a magically intelligent silver-white horse and his owner, Bartlett Starr, M.D.
THE SPINSTER, THE PIG, AND THE ORPHAN
A Tale of Murder and of Love
Jackie King
Jackie King is a full-time, published writer who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma and entertains herself by murdering, on paper, the people she dislikes. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Oklahoma Writers Federation, Oklahoma Mystery Writers, and Tulsa Night Writers. THE SPINSTER, THE PIG, AND THE ORPHAN is her second novella. Her first novella, FLIRTING AT FIFTY, appeared in the anthology, CHIK~LIT FOR FOXY HENS. She has published dozens of short stories about women and women’s problems and has also sold articles. THE SPINSTER, THE PIG, AND THE ORPHAN is her first mystery.
King is the granddaughter of Oklahoma pioneers Gilbert and Lillie Hodges, who settled in No Man’s Land before statehood. Her childhood was filled with stories of homesteading, and of life in a dugout, and of gathering cow chips to burn for heating and cooking. She claims her gutsy characters are based on the strong women who raised her. The challenge of prairie life could have crushed our Oklahoma ancestors, King says, but instead they faced hard times with ingenuity, humor and determination.
Visit King’s website: www.jacqking.com
Chapter 1
Oklahoma Territory 1889
It was madness. One didn’t buy a husband in the same way one bought a lumberyard. Not even at bargain prices. Not even in the modern year of 1889. Not even in Oklahoma Territory. It just wasn’t done. But Harriet Lauren knew, even as she silently lectured herself, she intended to do just that. Because the fact was, she desperately needed a husband to run her new business and father the children she longed for.
“Still water runs deep,” Uncle Richard kept saying, taking Harriet’s new persona in stride. “You’re your father’s daughter,” he said, “A chip off the old block.”
Of course Uncle Richard didn’t really know her. Until four weeks ago they’d never spent time together. Uncle Richard had been the family black sheep and she had been the dutiful daughter of a New York lawyer. They had both kept their assigned places in the family, just as Papa wished.
Father had ruled her life with an iron hand, and she’d felt powerless against his tyranny. But apoplexy suddenly felled him. Now he was gone. Was her newfound freedom changing her into a hoyden?
The prairie wind renewed her, blew steel into her weak spine. Like the new town of Guthrie, she had emerged from emptiness into full stature. Uncle Richard spent his days swapping stories with cronies at Reeves Brothers Casino and Harriet ran the hotel. The arrangement suited them both.
On the way from New York she had read a Kansas City newspaper advertisement. Wanted: Pioneer Wife. Must be honest, hardworking, and willing to have children.
Why couldn’t a woman contract a husband in the same manner? Harriet wondered. And now, in brand new Guthrie, anything seemed possible.
She had given up the idea of a love match. Harriet entertained no illusions. She knew that she was ugly as a mud fence. She knew no society man would want her decorating his arm in stylish New York City. That fact was pounded into her brain long ago by Papa.
After Papa’s sudden death, Uncle Richard invited her to join him in the Territorial Land Run, and Harriet decided her life was going to change. She would leave the old Harriet in New York and engender a new Harriet. It had come as a surprise to her to learn that she was now a woman of independent means. So she and Uncle Richard, both of them inferior specimens according to her father’s opinion, had joined forces to begin a new life.
Harriet smiled and smoothed her black broadcloth skirt. Uncle Richard had needed her inheritance to finance his dream in Oklahoma Territory. At first she hesitated because she didn’t trust her uncle’s judgment. But on the trip from New York City, she realized how different he was from Papa. He listened to her opinion and treated her with respect and kindness, so she had agreed to use her money. She had insisted on a partnership and a sound contract, which she wrote. A life spent listening to the negotiations of a hard-hearted lawyer had taught her much. She’d learned the value of contracts over her 29 years. Always an invisible presence, and thought fit only to serve coffee and brandy to the gentlemen, Harriet had listened and learned.
On April 23, the d
ay after the Run, western skies burst and torrents of rain poured down unmercifully. Winds never experienced back East blew down most tents. Terror entered the hearts of the more timid settlers and cries of, “Wrath of God,” were sounded. Some settlers, desperate to leave and flee back to the safety of old lives, decided to sell at any price. Some business lots were sold for as little as five dollars.
A stubborn streak that Harriet didn’t know existed, arose in her and she begged people not to lose heart. But she was only a woman and few listened. One man had a business lot and a railroad car of lumber sitting at a siding, and offered to sell the whole shebang to anyone who had a reasonable amount of cash. Against Uncle Richard’s advice, Harriet offered her hidden nest egg, fifteen twenty-dollar gold pieces she had packed in a fake-bottomed valise, to be used only in case their hotel scheme failed. And thus Harriet became what Uncle Richard jokingly called a ‘Lumber Baron.’
“Someone will steal every stick of that wood,” Mr. Mortimer Hightower said. “It’s sitting out there in the dark, just begging a thief to take it.” Hightower, a homely but distinguished looking man who had the day before set up one of Guthrie’s first banks, prophesied. The banker had just notarized Harriet’s contract for the lot and lumber, against what he said to be his better judgment. “By morning you will have wasted every cent of that gold.”
Terror seized Harriet’s heart. She knew the statement was true even though she also knew his words were spoken because Hightower had wanted her to bank the gold in his new establishment. She listened to the storm-from-hell raging and wondered what on earth she might do.
“Thank you for your concern,” she answered calmly, just as Papa had done during a risky business venture. She smiled. “I hope you and Mrs. Hightower will stay dry in the Grand Hotel tent during this dreadful storm.” And then she had excused herself, unfurled a strongly built umbrella, and dashed through the rain to the dining tent next door. The wind almost blew her off her feet, and for once she was happy to be both tall and strong.
Harriet stepped inside, collapsed her dripping umbrella, and gazed desperately around the crowded tent. Relief surged when she spotted two well-built men sharing a bowl of beans. She had met the two brothers from Ohio the day before and had been impressed with their poise when the Federal Marshall told them that the lots they had staked during the Land Run were in the middle of a city street. It seemed the U.S. Government had failed to provide the town of Guthrie with a town plat before the run. The brothers were among other disappointed settlers who learned their lots belonged to the City. She remembered their last name was Garrett.
Harriet now chose to speak to the serious one who was named Micah. His somber demeanor didn’t make her heart flutter foolishly as did his brother’s twinkling eyes and teasing smile. “Mr. Garrett, might you and your brother Zachariah be interested in working through the night? I will pay top wages.”
Hoots of laughter and a decidedly off color remark arose from men sitting close by and Harriet realized the men had deliberately misconstrued her words. She felt heat redden her cheeks and from their rude smirks, knew her embarrassment delighted the rough crowd. She froze in humiliation.
With a movement so quick that Harriet gasped in shock, both brothers stood as one. Zachariah, the one closest to the foul-mouthed man, grabbed the villain by the back of his coat and lifted him off the wooden keg he was perched on.
A look of shock and fear replaced the man’s smirk. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked Zachariah Garrett.
“Waiting for you to apologize to Miss Lauren,” Zachariah said in a deadly calm tone. “Or would you rather I pound your face into mush?”
“Put me down, I didn’t mean no harm,” the man said.
“After you apologize.” Zachariah lifted the lout a bit higher off the floor.
“All right, all right, I’m sorry,” the offender said.
Zachariah looked at Harriet. “Would you consider that a proper apology, Miss Lauren?” he asked.
Harriet glared at the oaf and enjoyed both his fear and his humiliation. Part of her wanted to deny his apology but commonsense said if she didn’t put a stop to this fight there would be a riot inside her tent. “I accept the apology,” she said. “Please put Mr. Bassett down.”
“Gladly.” Zachariah carried the fellow to the outside opening and threw him into the mud. “You are now down,” he said.
Shouts of laughter and applause filled the large tent. Zachariah Garrett walked to Harriet and bowed.
“I believe you said something about needing some work done, ma’am.”
Harriet’s hands were shaking but not from fear or anger. Her agitation came from a rebellious heart that soared each time she gazed into Zachariah’s warm brown eyes, or when he favored her with one of his wicked grins. She balled her fists, straightened her spine, and hoped her voice wouldn’t betray her girlish emotions. The man was handsome as a prince!
“Are you as good with a gun as you are with your fists?” she asked.
A slow lazy grin spread over Garrett’s face. “Well, ma’am, I have to admit that I’m quite handy with a rifle and my brother here isn’t too bad either.”
Desperation being the Mother of Invention, Harriet hired the young farmers to guard her lumber and sent them out into the black and evil night.
“Those two men will steal you blind,” a railroad executive named Luther Bingham, who was also dining in her café, warned her.
“Perhaps,” she answered vaguely. But somehow Harriet thought not. Something about the two caused her to trust them. But she was prudent enough to wonder if her decision was sound judgment or was simply caused by her own pleasure every time the tall Ohioan grinned at her.
That night Harriet again pondered contracting for a spouse. A man and a husband were a necessity. She was sure of that now. And of course she had always loved children. A babe of her own would be wonderful.
The thought of mating with this masculine creature made Harriet’s hands begin to tremble once again, and an unaccustomed heat troubled her feminine parts. She quickly forced such carnal thoughts out of her mind. Her contract with one of the Garrett boys would be a business proposition only. And of course she would choose Micah. He was the serious and quiet one. He would be the man she approached when she built up enough courage. Zachariah Garrett was entirely too disturbing for the life that Harriet Lauren had planned for herself.
* * *
Buying a husband proved to be much harder to put into action than to dream about. More than a week had passed and Harriet still had not approached either Mr. Garrett with her offer. She stood at the front desk of her newly constructed hotel and pushed marriage from her mind, forcing herself to focus on the task of hiring a new chambermaid. Harriet smiled. She was good at picking employees. She had hired all of the servants in Papa’s large house, and she had always chosen well.
She had used the Garrett men to run her lumberyard, had quadrupled her investment, and had ordered more lumber. But she had not found the courage to approach either man about her already written marriage contract. Harriet felt comfortable with her spinsterhood and hesitated to risk the humiliation of refusal or the danger of male tyranny controlling her life. But she knew she must make a choice soon because more women were arriving in Guthrie every day. Women were still scarce, but it wouldn’t always be that way.
She thought back to the day of the Land Run when she and Uncle Richard had arrived on the first train arriving from the North. Harriet had loved every minute of that adventure—even the heat and the dust and the awful confusion. They had each staked claims adjacent to one another, giving them plenty of room for both the hotel and the café they now operated. Harriet had gamely drunk cups of muddy water from Cottonwood Creek that she purchased for a nickel a cup from an enterprising lad.
In a week the hotel and café tents were gone and a clapboard hotel and adjacent café had been built by amateur carpenters. The inexperienced workmen made mistakes, but Harriet didn’t mind the flaws. Alr
eady she and Uncle Richard had plans for a brick and stone edifice they hoped would be designed by the new French architect, Joseph Foucart. At present their hotel was filled mostly with businessmen, but already a few wives had joined their husbands from the North and East.
The front door opened and a shabbily dressed but freshly scrubbed young woman, looking to be in her teens, stepped inside. Harriet drew in a sharp breath. Not even the girl’s severe hair arrangement or her plain gray dress could hide that she was a great beauty. Harriet’s heart gave a familiar twist of regret. She had been wrong when she thought all pioneer girls would be plain, and that she would be among women who were strong and uncomely. Before her stood the sort of girl who could have captured the heart of any gentlemen Harriet had ever fancied. Not even her new wardrobe would make her stand out among beauties such as this one. Then Harriet looked again and tried not to reflect the shock she felt.
One never knew what to expect in Oklahoma Territory. Pioneer women were an independent lot, but this girl was exceptional. She led a droopy-eared red pig on a rope, as if it were a pet.
“May I help you?” Harriet fingered the gold watch pinned to the shoulder of her white waist and looked uncertainly at the pig. But the girl seemed unflappable.
“My name is Radine Morgan, and I’m needing me a job.” The girl’s gaze followed Harriet’s shocked stare to the pig. “Please excuse my bringing this animal inside, but if I leave the porker outside, some light-finger will snatch her and butcher her for his supper.”
Harriet had been groomed from childhood never to act surprised. Life had prepared her to deal with any awkward social situation, but today she found herself speechless.
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