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

by Hillary Avis

I turned toward him. “Something’s not right about all this. The pieces don’t fit together. Think about it: Amelia died by the creek with the golden egg still in her hand. Even if she managed to fall face-first on a newt without getting wet or muddy, she hadn’t been there long enough to be poisoned. Doc Morrow said it’d take half an hour to develop symptoms. She was only there for a few minutes—if that.”

  “Hm.” Eli frowned and worried his lower lip, doing his own mental calculations. “She must have ingested the toxin earlier. Maybe she came into contact with a newt before she hid the eggs. Maybe she had an accident earlier that morning.”

  “It had to be before breakfast,” I said, my shoulders relaxing now that Eli seemed to believe me. “Tammy Jenson said that Amelia was acting weird at the Rx Café that morning, remember—she ran for the bathroom right after she ate her eggs. She already had the poison in her system.”

  Eli’s eyes opened wide. “You don’t think Sara...?”

  I shook my head firmly. “No. No. Again, it would take longer than that for Amelia to start feeling ill. Thirty minutes to develop any symptoms. If she was already queasy at breakfast, she ingested the poison at least half an hour before that.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “So what was Amelia Goodbody doing before breakfast on Saturday morning?”

  “That’s the question I hope Pastor Cal can answer,” I said. “If she fell down or had some other possible contact with a newt before breakfast, then we have our answer. But if she didn’t?”

  “Then maybe I’ll owe you an apology for the tongue-lashing at the pharmacy.” Eli winked.

  “I think you do anyway.” I started up the Suburban and paused, waiting for him to open the door and exit the vehicle. He didn’t, though, just sat there smirking at me. I shooed him with my right hand. “Go on, get out.”

  “Oh, no. We’re sticking together. There’s no way I’m letting you talk to a suspect without me.”

  My jaw dropped. “What do you mean? Cal’s a suspect?”

  Eli nodded, and his face turned serious. “When a woman is killed, it’s almost always the husband.”

  I stared at him. “But you were so convinced it was an accident!”

  “I just follow the evidence. I admit, I gave the medical examiner’s opinion a little more weight than yours. But the more I think about it, the more it seems likely that you were right and Amelia didn’t accidentally lick an amphibian.” Eli gave a little shrug. “Let’s go find Cal.”

  “I don’t even know where to start looking,” I said as I pulled the car out onto the street.

  “Luckily, I do.”

  I turned onto the highway. “Where’s that?”

  “My office.”

  I hit the brakes and the Suburban skidded to a stop in the middle of the road. Luckily for me, there was no traffic—pedestrian or otherwise—to witness my subpar driving, and the only traffic patrol in town was sitting in the passenger seat.

  I turned to glare at Eli. “Are you serious? Cal Goodbody is in your office right now? Why didn’t you say so?!”

  “You didn’t ask.” Eli blinked innocently, making me wonder why the universe unfairly doled out long, curly eyelashes to men who don’t even appreciate them.

  I gritted my teeth and cranked the wheel so I could U-turn. Illegal, but so what? Eli could write me the ticket, and I’d show up in traffic court to prove it was his motherclucking fault.

  This time I parked on the other side of the street in front of Ruth’s salon, getting out and slamming my door without a backward glance at Eli. He jogged around the car to catch up with me.

  “He came to see the ME’s report,” he explained as we reached the sidewalk. “Just like you did.”

  I stopped at the curb. “Why didn’t he get it faxed or emailed to him? He’s family. The only reason I came in is because the county wouldn’t issue me a copy unless I was related to Amelia somehow.”

  Eli shrugged as he walked past me and held open the door to the sheriff’s office. “Good question. You’ll have to ask him.”

  Cal had his back to the door, but I could tell from the way his shoulders were shaking as he slumped forward over the blue binder that he was crying. Not crying—sobbing. He raised his head when he heard our footsteps behind him and hurriedly dried his eyes on his plaid shirtsleeve. He closed the binder and twisted toward us, his face registering brief surprise when he saw me beside Eli.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. He stood up from his seat and rocked on his feet, shifting his weight from heel to toe and back as he twisted his hands in front of him and then, realizing what he was doing, shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “This weekend has been such a roller coaster, and now this. I just don’t understand how it happened.”

  The look on his face was almost too much to bear. He looked, in a word, broken.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I murmured. It was a stupid, empty thing to say, and I’d already said the same thing to him yesterday at church, but the flash of gratitude on his face was almost worse than the grief. My whole chest ached for him.

  “What don’t you understand?” Eli asked gently, putting a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Sit down a minute and we’ll go through the report.”

  Cal nodded and sank back into his chair, dropping his head into his hands. “It’s just—she was poisoned? With”—he raised his head and flipped open the binder, running his finger along the pages of the report until he found what he was looking for—“tetrodotoxin? Am I pronouncing that right? What is that?”

  Eli took his seat behind the desk and folded his hands. “It’s a naturally occurring poison produced by some animals. Amelia must have come into contact with it.”

  “But how?” Cal asked, bewildered.

  He turned to me as though I might have the answer, but I shrugged at him. “We were hoping you knew.”

  “Walk us through her actions on Saturday morning,” Eli said. He leaned forward over the desk toward Cal. “Did anything unusual happen? Anything outside her usual routine?”

  “Nothing was usual about Saturday.” Cal swallowed, shaking his head. “But I don’t remember any animals. We had a meeting about the Easter Scramble, then had breakfast at the Rx Café, then split up to hide the treasure eggs. I never saw her again.”

  “What about before that?” Eli pressed. “What about at home? Did she do any work in the garden? Did she take a walk? Did she trip and fall? Did she eat or drink anything before you left the house that morning?”

  Cal shook his head. “Not that I recall.”

  Eli sat back in his seat, his face grave. “Then we have a problem. A real problem.”

  Cal barked a humorless laugh. “Is that what you call it when your wife is poisoned to death? A real problem?”

  “I’m sorry,” Eli said automatically. “Forgive my phrasing. I only meant that if what you say is true, then Amelia’s death may not have been accidental. And that’s not something I take lightly.”

  “Unfortunately, we have another problem,” I said, meeting eyes with Eli.

  He frowned at me. “What’s that?”

  I drew up a chair next to Cal and directed my words to him. “You’re lying.”

  Chapter 12

  Cal stood up abruptly and backed away from me. Eli rose, glancing back and forth between me and Cal, his hand unconsciously going to his utility belt as though he might have to use something on it—to what? Defend me? Subdue me? A giggle rose in my throat at the thought of being handcuffed by Eli, but I pushed it down.

  “What is she talking about, Cal?” Eli asked, his voice calm and level even as Cal’s apparent agitation grew.

  Cal ran his hands through his carefully coiffed hair, rumpling its smooth, even comb-marks. Then he rubbed his hand over his mouth and jaw and paced back and forth across the small office. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “He doesn’t really know what Amelia did on Saturday morning,” I explained, keeping a close eye on him in case he cracked and decided to lash out at me. “He an
d Amelia weren’t living together. The whole perfect couple thing was a farce. You didn’t see her until the Scramble meeting, did you?”

  He stopped in his tracks and stared at me, seemingly at a loss for words.

  “I talked to Preston this morning,” I added. “He told me you and Amelia had an arrangement. A year, right? A year after the election, and then you’d discreetly divorce.”

  At my words, Cal’s whole body crumpled, and he collapsed into his chair again, groaning. “We had an arrangement. Past tense. But we made up on Friday night at the Chamber of Commerce cocktail party. We spent the night together for the first time in weeks.”

  Eli sat down carefully, a wary eye still on both of us. “I’m feeling a little out of the loop,” he said, shooting a dark look in my direction. Whoops. “Do either of you care to fill me in?”

  “He and Amelia were Splitsville,” I said. “They were hiding it from everyone.”

  “We were back together.” Cal jutted out his jaw and crossed his arms defiantly.

  I rolled my eyes. “No, you weren’t. You left the party separately.”

  “How do you—oh, never mind,” Cal said. “We left separately, but it was just for show.”

  “That makes zero sense.” Eli threw up his hands. “You both are making zero sense. Leona says your relationship was just for show and you say your separation was just for show. Which is it?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. I was just as confused as he was. “Don’t ask me.”

  “It makes perfect sense if you know Margie Morrow.” Cal’s tone was bitter. “She threatened to expose us—to tell everyone our marriage was a sham—if I didn’t drop out of the mayoral race. She made the threat weeks ago, but at the party on Friday, she gave me an ultimatum: announce I was withdrawing my candidacy at the Easter Scramble, or she would tell everyone what we’d been hiding.”

  “You’d lose a lot of the town’s goodwill if it came out,” Eli observed. I rolled my eyes. Thanks, Captain Obvious.

  Cal nodded. “If Margie spread her rumor—”

  “You mean the truth,” I broke in. “If she spread the truth.”

  “Whatever you want to call it. If it came out, I’d lose my wife, the election, and my pastorship. Everything,” Cal finished sadly. “So I went to Amelia. I said, ‘If I drop out of the race, will you take me back?’ She never wanted to be in the public eye, anyway. That’s why we split up.”

  Eli arched a skeptical eyebrow. “So she agreed?”

  Cal nodded. “We agreed. I’d drop out of the race at the Easter Scramble, and she’d move back in with me. In that instant, I went from losing three out of three things I cared about most to winning two out of three. We spent Friday night together. Heck, I would have cooked her breakfast in bed on Saturday morning if we didn’t have all the Scramble nonsense already planned. I wish I had just canceled everything and stayed home with her. Then she might have...”

  “I don’t buy it,” I said.

  “Be nice,” Eli said reprovingly. “The man just lost his wife.” Apparently, he’d bought Cal’s story, hook, line, and sinker. Lucky for him, I wasn’t so susceptible to Cal’s brand of bait.

  I ignored Eli’s reprimand and focused on Cal. “If you were caving to Margie’s demands, why pretend you were still separated when you left the party? Why keep up appearances when you’d been trying to hide your separation from everyone up until that point?”

  “Oh. That.” Cal glanced nervously at Eli as he stalled. “Well...the thing is...”

  “The thing is, he didn’t keep it hidden from everyone,” Eli said sharply, as though he’d just realized it himself. “At least two people knew you and Amelia were split up: Margie and Preston. I suspect Doc Morrow probably knew, too. I can’t imagine Margie would keep that a secret from him. So you were putting on a show for one of them.”

  “I didn’t want Preston to know I planned to drop out, OK?” Cal snapped. “I knew he’d try and talk me out of it, so I made my little deal with Margie and then left the party as fast as I could. Amelia did the same. We met up later at home. And everything was perfect until—until she didn’t show up at City Hall.” Cal’s cleft chin wobbled momentarily as he struggled to rein in his emotions.

  My heart squeezed for him. I almost bought it.

  Almost.

  “So why didn’t you withdraw your candidacy at the Scramble?” I asked bluntly. “You didn’t need her to make the announcement. I was there—you didn’t even try. And you didn’t seem worried that Margie might spill the beans about your separation. It’s almost like you knew Amelia was already dead and the rumor didn’t matter anymore.”

  “Excellent question.” Eli stilled as he waited for Cal to respond.

  Cal’s eyes went wide like a deer in headlights and he swallowed hard before answering. “Amelia and I decided to announce it at church on Easter Sunday instead. News media were covering the egg hunt, and I didn’t want to detract from the good press by talking about the election on camera. The Scramble isn’t about me, it’s about the Honeytree community. I brought it up to Margie at the Scramble meeting that morning and luckily she agreed to give us another twenty-four hours to withdraw.”

  I squinted at him, trying to decide whether he was telling the truth or not. Pink spots burned high on his cheeks, but it was hard to tell if they were due to the heat of being a liar-liar-pants-on-fire, or due to the burn of my accusation. “Luckily for you, you mean. Now you still have a shot at winning the election. You still have two out of three things you want most, right? Your church and the mayor’s seat.”

  “No,” Cal said flatly. “Nothing compares to Amelia, and I resent your implication that I’d ever willingly give her up.”

  Eli shot me a look and motioned with his hand for me to settle down. That really ruffled my feathers, and I scooted my chair back and stood up. “I will not!”

  “You will, or you’ll have to step outside and cool off,” Eli said, his attention still mostly on Cal. He slid a yellow legal pad toward himself and clicked his pen. “OK. Now that I have some sense of the events on Saturday, let’s run through everything that you can remember Amelia touching on Saturday morning. I’m talking toothpaste, mouthwash, food, drink—everything.”

  I stood there a minute, watching and listening as Cal began rattling off a long list of products that Amelia applied to her face. Half of them sounded worse than tetrodotoxin.

  “What’s hyaluronic acid, anyway?” I asked.

  Eli shushed me and motioned for Cal to continue. I felt the blood rush to my head. He was shushing me now that he was getting what he wanted from Cal, but if I hadn’t been here with my nosy questions, he’d have nothing. He wouldn’t have asked Cal anything at all, just sent him on his merry way after he viewed the ME’s report.

  That reminded me of my earlier question—why did Cal come into the sheriff’s office to view the report at all, when he could have had a copy sent to him? I opened my mouth to ask, but Eli sensed my question coming and held up a finger to silence me.

  A finger!

  I held up a finger of my own. I’ll let you guess which one.

  Eli continued to ignore me, so I left, taking my question with me. Let’s see if he got anywhere without my help.

  Chapter 13

  The flock was excited to see me when I got home, especially Boots, who’d been happily chilling in the bathroom sink. After I let her out and collected and sorted the afternoon eggs—my kitchen fridge was filling up fast—I let the rest of the flock out to forage in the yard while I sat on the porch, drank a cup of decaf, and watched them so they didn’t wander too far or get swooped up by the red-tailed hawk that sometimes patrolled the Flats for roadkill.

  Boots nabbed a few bugs in the yard before returning to hop in my lap and peck hopefully at the button on my jeans. Alarm Clock, my gorgeous Welsummer rooster that looked like he jumped straight off a box of Corn Flakes, flew up to roost on a fence post so he could keep a careful eye on his girls, too.

  I had a
handful of cockerels, too, the counterparts to the barnyard-mix and packing-peanut pullets. A small club of them acted as Alarm Clock’s deputies, deferring to his leadership and keeping the pullets busy with their clumsy, teenage attempts at mating. I’d only kept the nice boys and sent the scrappy ones to live in Ruth’s freezer, so everybody got along for the most part.

  The flock fanned out under the apple trees, nipping off the sweet tips of grass blades and scratching at the roots to rustle up insects and worms. I hoped the greens and bugs would make their yolks even richer and more flavorful than they already were. In a few weeks, they’d be breakfast for everyone in town—just as soon as they forgot about what Amelia had for breakfast on Saturday.

  Of course, nobody was likely to forget once they found out that she likely hadn’t died by accident. I didn’t have a chance to speak to Eli about it, but the more Cal talked, the more I’d begun to suspect him of slipping his wife some poison. Like Preston had put it, Amelia had been a real problem for Cal’s campaign—and for his job as pastor, too, and his image as the golden boy of Honeytree.

  Now that I thought about it, everything Cal did was underhanded—he’d pretended he and Amelia were together when they were separated, and then pretended they were separated when they were together. He’d promised his wife that he’d withdraw from the mayoral race and then pushed back the announcement—a little too conveniently to a date when she would be out of the picture. And for someone who’d supposedly been eager to end his candidacy, he’d stubbornly continued to campaign, even attending events the day after his wife died, when most people would have been seeking privacy to mourn.

  I sipped my coffee as I pondered how to prove my suspicions. Maybe I could sneak into his house and find residue from whatever he’d used to poison Amelia. Where did they live? All I knew about their home life was that they had a dog—the one Margie had reported for peeing on her tree. That meant they probably had a fence, so I began mentally walking the streets in town, checking off those houses with unfenced yards and those whose occupants I already knew, trying to narrow down the possibilities.