A Flock and a Fluke (Clucks and Clues Cozy Mysteries)

by Hillary Avis

  Ruth frowned at me and shook her head. “I don’t understand. If we’re not under the roof, how can it cover us?”

  “Underneath.” I pointed ten yards away to the leafy underbrush along the creek bank, where a narrow trail led down to the water. It was mostly traveled by deer, but on hot summer afternoons the neighborhood children would use it to cool off by wading in the shallow creek. “We’re going to have to get our feet a little wet.”

  Ruth looked down at her own feet, encased in a well-worn pair of shearling boots. It might be springtime, but that didn’t mean it was warm out. Then she looked back at me. “Uh-uh. I don’t care how much money is inside that egg—I’m not putting my feet in that ice water.”

  I looked back at the library parking lot and beyond it to the side street that led off the highway. In the distance, a couple of small figures moved toward us and I could hear the sound of raised voices, even though I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. “They’re catching up. It’s now or never, Ruth!”

  She crossed her arms and shook her head so hard that her feather earrings fluttered. “Never. If you want to go swimming, that egg is all yours.”

  I shrugged and swiftly moved to the narrow entrance, parting the vine maple leaves and ducking under a few blackberry brambles that had grown across the narrow path. I half-ran, half-slid down to the creek itself. I sat down to tug off my hiking boots—I’d worn my good shoes to town instead of the grubby barn shoes I usually wore around Lucky Cluck Farm—and left them creekside with my purse, splashing my way toward the underside of the covered bridge.

  The creek was clear and, as Ruth predicted, full of frigid snowmelt from the Cascades. My feet burned with the cold as I picked my way over the rocks, coming to a halt in the shadow that the bridge cast over the creek. The old wooden bridge now rested on new steel supports, held up on either side of the creek by concrete pylons. At the base of each pylon, a small sandy bar had formed, kind of a miniature beach. I leaped to the nearest one, dancing as my toes—bright red from the cold—pinged with the pain of the temperature change, and searched the creek bank and bridge for signs of the egg.

  The sun emerged briefly from behind a cloud, and I caught sight of a glint of gold in the bushes directly opposite me.

  “Leona! They’re coming!” I heard Ruth’s urgent cry from above, and the sound of crashing through the brush. Without thinking, I plunged across the creek, sinking up to my thighs in the rushing water. It was like moving through liquid lead, but I made it to the other side of the water, freezing, dripping, and with adrenaline ringing in my ears.

  Cheese and rice, all this for a plastic egg.

  I dropped to my knees and scrabbled under the bush for the prize. My hand closed on it—and something else. I fell back on my butt, the golden egg in hand, and then leaned forward to see if I had felt what I thought I’d felt.

  Fingers.

  A woman’s hand, neatly manicured with light pink polish, the long delicate fingers slightly blue at the tips. It was attached to a beautiful, porcelain arm with a pale blue, organdy sleeve. I followed it with dread to the other side of the bush where, sprawled out, eyes staring up at a patch of sky as blue as her dress, was a woman I recognized.

  It was Amelia Goodbody, Pastor Cal’s wife. And she was definitely, one hundred percent dead.

  Chapter 2

  “Help! Someone!” I yelled. Two searchers who’d made it to the creek and were shucking their shoes stopped and looked up at me in surprise. I stood up and waved. “Hey! Get help! Someone’s hurt!”

  They froze and then looked at each other and exchanged a few words. One of them, a bearded man in a bright blue hoodie who I recognized as one of the local gas station attendants, squinted at me across the creek. “You’re just trying to keep us away from the gold egg, lady. We know it’s around here somewhere, and we deserve it as much as you do. You take that side, we’ll take this one.”

  “This is an emergency, you idiots. I just found a dead woman. So could you please either help me or call someone who can?”

  “Leona?” Ruth’s question filtered through the brush and across the water. “Are you OK?”

  I cupped my hands to my mouth. All those years of cheerleading practice had better pay off like Ruth’s acting roles had earlier. “I found a body!” Pause. Breath. “Other side of the creek!” Shorter pause, breath. “Call Eli!” I bellowed through my makeshift megaphone.

  I turned back to Amelia beside me and felt for a pulse. I don’t know why—her blue lips and fingers, her staring eyes, and the temperature of her skin told me what I already knew, that she was dead—but I guess I was hoping for an Easter miracle.

  No such luck. In spite of the fact that she didn’t appear injured in any way—there wasn’t even a smudge on her pretty blue dress—she wasn’t going to rise from the dead.

  The idiots across the stream were still frozen and staring at me. Useless. I noticed a basket beside Amelia, empty of whatever it had held. It looked like she had keeled over just as she was hiding the golden egg. I slipped the egg into my cargo pocket so it wouldn’t get lost and reached to close her eyes. It was all I could do for her. It was clearly too late for CPR.

  I heard sirens in the distance. Ruth had come through. Minutes that felt like months later, a team of two paramedics burst out of the brush behind me, kneeling immediately at Amelia’s side. They took her vitals—which obviously weren’t good; I could have told them that—and then one crew member began CPR even though, as I’d determined, it was clearly useless. It must be protocol. I swallowed hard.

  “You can go wait by the truck for the sheriff,” the second paramedic said gently, touching my arm. Her brown eyes were sympathetic, but she didn’t have much time to spend on me and quickly turned her attention back to her partner and Amelia.

  I stood and backed down the bank to the creek. “I’ll be over by the library,” I said. “If the sheriff is looking for me.”

  I waded back across the creek, ignoring the looky-loo hoodie boys, and collected my purse and hiking boots from the rock by the creek before scrabbling my way up the steep dirt path. Ruth met me at the top of the creek bank, gnawing her lip worriedly.

  “Are you OK? What’s going on over there?”

  Another lump grew in my throat. “Everything’s fine,” I croaked. “I mean, the paramedics came. They have her.”

  “Who?” Ruth asked urgently, and then her eyes clouded with concern as she reached out to touch my goose-pimpled forearm. “Oh, Leona, you’re shaking! You must be drenched to the skin! Come on, let’s get you warm.”

  She bustled me over to the library parking lot where a marked sheriff’s SUV was pulling up. Eli got out, his face somber, and immediately went around to the back of the rig and pulled out one of those silver mylar blankets from his emergency kit. He wrapped it around me like foil around a baked potato, tucking it in around the edges, clucking like a mother hen. “Did you fall? Are you hurt? I want EMS to take a look at you.”

  “Stop! I’m fine!” I protested. “I just want to go home.”

  He sighed. “You can’t just yet. Take a minute inside the library and warm up before I record your statement. I need to go check on the scene anyway.”

  “Well, you’d better drive around. The creek’s pretty high,” I said, my teeth chattering even though the rest of me was starting to heat up inside my tin-foil cocoon.

  “Come on.” Ruth urged me toward the library, and I nodded and followed her across the small parking lot and up the steps to the main entrance.

  I could think of few places in Honeytree more welcoming than our little library, where I’d spend nearly every day after school until my mother finished her secretarial job at the law office downtown. The librarian, Lucy Patrick, had been like a second mother to me. She didn’t fuss over me or baby me, but she always made sure I had a comfortable seat and a good book to keep me company on rainy afternoons. Though Lucy Patrick was long retired, it still smelled like her inside the building, like va
nilla and paper and dried lavender. The most comforting smell in the world.

  It wasn’t until Ruth and I settled on a bench in the lobby that she asked me what I’d seen. Who I’d found.

  “Amelia,” I said.

  Ruth gasped. “Oh no! Is she OK?”

  Denial is a powerful thing. Ruth knew I’d found a body. She’d called in the body. And still she was hoping Amelia was OK. I shook my head.

  “What happened—could you tell if she was hurt?”

  Two women dressed in raincoats stepped into the lobby, huddling their highlighted heads together like hens on a roost as they pressed their faces to the window. I waited for them to go into the library before I answered Ruth, but instead they stayed near the display case by the front entrance, talking and glancing out every so often at the parking lot and the covered bridge beyond. I could hear their chatter even across the lobby.

  “Do you think they’ll cancel the whole Scramble?”

  “No—how can they? At least half the eggs have been found.”

  I fingered the egg that was straining the limits of my cargo pocket. A thousand dollars, plucked from a dead woman’s fingers.

  “I heard it was Mrs. Goodbody,” one of them said to the other. “She just collapsed or something.”

  “Did she?” Ruth whispered to me.

  I shrugged, the mylar blanket crinkling. The sound caught the attention of the twittering duo, who wheeled and descended on us, abandoning their post at the window.

  “Do you know what happened? Were you there?” They clustered around me, their faces sympathetic above their loud coats, one striped and one flowered. Now that they were closer, I could tell they were related. Sisters, maybe, or best friends so long that they might as well be sisters.

  “She found the body,” Ruth said, putting her arm around me protectively.

  Striped Raincoat clucked her tongue. “You poor thing. So...was it Amelia? I heard it was Amelia.”

  I didn’t want to answer. Maybe I was in denial, too. It felt like if I spoke it aloud to these two women it would become real—make that three. Another woman with the same blonde highlights but wearing a solid-pink raincoat joined them.

  “What’s going on? Is she OK?” The woman, who I vaguely recognized as a checker at the grocery store, leaned to get a better look at me in my silver blanket.

  Flowered Raincoat filled her in. “She found a dead body in the creek.”

  The woman’s jaw dropped, and she stared at me with new curiosity.

  “Amelia wasn’t in the creek,” I said quietly.

  “See, I told you it was Mrs. Goodbody. I knew something was up with her this morning. Our table was next to theirs at breakfast and she was not looking good. She was sweating like a pig and kept running to the restroom.” Flowered Raincoat nodded smugly.

  “Pregnant?” Pink Raincoat asked.

  “I doubt it. Have you seen her waistline? It’s as narrow as a swan’s neck.”

  “Maybe she ate a bad egg.”

  The three women giggled, and I felt my cheeks turn hot. There were only two places in town that served breakfast, the diner and the Rx Café. If they were talking about the latter, they were talking about my eggs. And my eggs definitely weren’t bad.

  I opened my mouth to wipe the silly, smug expressions off their faces, but Ruth seemed to know what I was thinking. She elbowed me and shook her head, mouthing the word ‘no’ silently. For once, I listened to her.

  “Hey, Irene!” Striped Raincoat waved to Irene Wertheimer, who was heading into the library with her walker. Irene was one of the Friends of the Library who’d dyed eggs when I was a child. Though she was pushing ninety now, she was still an active member and had likely spent the past week stuffing plastic eggs with stickers and temporary tattoos—or whatever was allowed these days now that jellybeans had been prohibited along with real eggs and common sense. “You’ll never guess what happened!”

  Irene shuffled over to join us, the tennis balls on the back legs of her walker hissing on the lobby carpet. When she spotted me all wrapped up like a tinseled tree, her face lit up. She was always happy to be on the front lines of any town gossip. “Are you hurt, dear?” she asked, picking up her glasses from the chain around her neck to peer at me. She clearly hoped so.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but no. I just got a little wet in the creek.” Understatement of the day. Even my undies were wet now that the water had seeped all the way up my pant legs.

  “Guess what!” Flowered Raincoat could barely contain her excitement. “Amelia Goodbody’s dead! She ate some bad eggs at the Rx Café and just keeled over!”

  Fury balled in the pit of my stomach. She really didn’t need to bring my eggs into it.

  “Oh my word.” Irene shook her head, her bright eyes snapping under her plastic bonnet. “How terrible. What a blow for Pastor Goodbody.”

  Pink Raincoat gasped. “Does he even know?”

  The Raincoats looked at each other, their mouths grim under their matching nude lip gloss. “We have to go and tell him! Maybe he ate the same thing.”

  “What did she order?” I blurted out. I stood up and let the emergency blanket fall to the floor. The Raincoats stared at me and even Irene raised her drawn-on eyebrows. “At breakfast. Did you even see what she ordered? Maybe she had pancakes. Maybe she had biscuits and gravy.”

  “A woman died. Have a little respect,” Flowered Raincoat said, frowning. “What she ordered isn’t really relevant.”

  I was really beginning to dislike her.

  “It’s not,” Ruth said, standing up and taking my elbow to steer me away from them.

  “It is relevant if they’re going to blame it on my eggs!” I said hotly, pulling my arm away from her. “She could have eaten anything!”

  Irene put her glasses on again. “Your eggs? Did you cook breakfast for Mrs. Goodbody this morning?”

  If the Raincoats leaned any closer, I was going to pop them in their big mouths.

  “Eli’s here,” Ruth said quickly. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Take a deep breath, find your center. This is all going to get sorted out.”

  I shrugged at the four women and turned my back on them to follow Ruth toward the entrance where Eli stood, waiting. Behind me, I heard them whispering.

  “The sheriff’s taking her statement!”

  “She made Amelia’s breakfast!”

  “I know, can you believe it?”

  “What do you think she had against her?”

  “Maybe she had a thing for the pastor.”

  “Well, who doesn’t.”

  Giggles.

  Chapter 3

  “Ruth, do you mind waiting on the other side of the lobby until we’re done?” Eli said. He had his clipboard out to take my statement, and he tapped his pen against it impatiently. “I need to interview you separately.”

  “We were together the whole time!” Ruth protested, but I shook my head.

  “No, we weren’t. Go. I’ll be fine.” My voice wobbled on the last word, and she still looked worried. “Really, I will.”

  She squeezed my hand. “Take a deep breath and find your center. I’ll be right there if you need me.” She retreated to the far side of the lobby where the raincoat ladies were still having a conference. I hoped Ruth’s proximity would dampen their enthusiasm for gossip. Probably not, though—Ruth’s chair at the Do or Dye was pretty much gossip central, and judging by their matching, very nice highlights, they’d all sat there a time or two.

  I sighed, and Eli dropped his voice so only I could hear. “Really, are you OK?”

  “Does it matter?” I asked. Just his question made a whole flood of emotions rise in my chest. You know how it is when you scrape your knee and you don’t cry until someone asks you about it? This was like that. And I didn’t like it. I motioned to his recorder. “Turn it on.”

  “I’ll be jotting some notes, too, but don’t let that distract you,” he said. I took a deep breath, found my center as Ruth so obnoxiously suggest
ed, and rattled off as much as I could remember about solving the golden egg clue, getting wet in the creek, and finding Amelia Goodbody laid out on the opposite side.

  “Was there anyone else around?” he asked when I’d finished.

  “Just the idiots in the blue hoodies, but they came after I found her. I didn’t see anyone else.” My breath caught. “Why, do you think someone did this to her?” The question sounded stupid coming out of my mouth, but I really hadn’t thought about that possibility. My adrenaline was so high after I found her that I hadn’t considered what had happened.

  “You know I can’t say at this point in an investigation.” He shut off the recorder and put it away. “If you remember anything else...”

  “I’ll call you,” I finished glumly.

  “Don’t sound so excited about it.” The corners of his eyes crinkled, and I couldn’t help returning his smile. Eli always managed to break down my defenses.

  “Good luck with your investigation,” I said, glancing over to the cluster of women by Ruth. They were all staring at us expectantly, like I was going to produce a murder weapon as easily as a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Just because I was unlucky enough to solve the golden egg clue before anyone else meant I’d forever be painted by my brush with Amelia’s death. How would they like it if the tables were turned?

  That gave me an idea. I turned to Eli. “One of them saw Amelia this morning and said she looked ill. The one in the flowered coat.”

  Eli’s face brightened. “Thanks for the lead!” He headed toward them and I took the opportunity to wave to Ruth, ditch the foil blanket in the lobby trashcan, and duck out the back exit. I speed-walked the four blocks back to the Do or Dye, where I’d parked in the side lot, hoping the whole time that nobody would look at me and think I peed my pants. I breathed a sigh of relief when my crotchety Suburban started up right away, and I headed out of town toward home.

  When I hit the Flats—in record time, since I knew Eli wasn’t on highway patrol—the Suburban’s heater had warmed my chilled legs and the drive had soothed my frazzled nerves. I smiled when I saw the familiar, hand-painted sign at the end of my driveway.