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

by Hillary Avis

  There was a blue ranch by the high school that could be it—it was near enough to Margie’s Seventies split-level that the Goodbodys might have walked their dog there. But it could also be the peach-and-brick number a few blocks in the opposite direction, near the road to the cemetery. Oh, who was I kidding? There were six or eight houses in between that fit the bill, too. Why waste time speculating on the address when I could just look it up in the phone book?

  With a quick scan of the orchard to make sure my flock was sticking close to the house and not wandering near the road, I ducked inside to check the white pages. I found it under one corner of the armchair in the living room. I’d rescued the three-legged chair from a second-hand shop intending to replace all the legs but had never got around to it. I pulled out the phone book and wedged a dictionary under the leg instead.

  I flipped through the whisper-thin pages until I got to the Gs. The Goodbodys weren’t listed. Maybe they had an unlisted number, or maybe they were young enough that they didn’t have a landline and only relied on their cell phones. It was shortsighted of them—the coverage in Honeytree was spotty at best. But if they were from a bigger city in Idaho, maybe Pocatello or Boise, they might be clinging to their urban ways.

  Ruth would know their address. I pulled my phone out of my purse and was just about to text her to ask when my landline rang. I jumped about a foot in the air. I really, really hate being surprised. Flustered, I put down my cell and picked up the cordless phone, ready to tell off the telemarketer who’d so rudely interrupted.

  “What do you want?”

  “May I speak to Ms. Leona Davis, please?” The voice on the end of the line was pleasantly neutral and clipped and surprisingly didn’t sound like it originated in a foreign country.

  “No, you may not. In fact, take me off whatever list you have my number on. I’m not interested.”

  “Oh, I think you are. I’m calling to inform you that your Oregon egg handler’s license has been suspended pending investigation by the Oregon Department of Agriculture. All sales of eggs to retailers and eateries must cease, effective immediately, and cannot resume until you’ve undergone inspection. Your case number is eight-zero-one-zero. Please make note of it and use it for future communication with the department.”

  “Pardon?” I said scrambling for a pencil. “Can you repeat that?”

  “The case number is eight-zero-one-zero. You’ll receive a registered letter with your scheduled inspection appointment window.”

  I jotted “8101” in the margins of the phone book, my heart pounding in my chest. “How long will it take to get an appointment?”

  “Law requires that your inspection occur within ten business days.”

  “Can you tell me why my license has been suspended?”

  “Ma’am, the registered letter will include the original complaint.” The voice on the phone sounded bored. “You can direct all further questions or requests to reschedule to the number at the bottom of the form. Thank you for your time.”

  Click. Dial tone.

  I stood there a minute, stunned and staring at the droning receiver, until my head swam and I realized I was holding my breath. I let the air out in a rush and put the phone back in its base. Somehow, word had reached the state level that eggs from my farm had been involved in Amelia Goodbody’s death. I shook my head wordlessly. This was getting out of control.

  Outside, I heard Alarm Clock making a sharp series of warning cries—the sound he made when a hawk or owl swooped overhead, letting his ladies know to duck and cover. His warning was echoed by a chorus of other voices, his little army of cockerels passing the message throughout the orchard. I’d left them alone too long and a predator had targeted my flock.

  I dashed for the door, dropping the phone book in my haste, and burst out onto the porch just in time to see my eighty-odd birds scattering in every direction as a frantic figure in a multicolored coat ran in circles in the orchard after them. What in the world...?

  Then I saw Ruth’s car in the driveway. Sure enough, another look at the person running around like a chicken with her head cut off confirmed that the long, rainbow patchwork coat belonged to Ruth, too. Her car coming down the driveway must have spooked the chickens, and now she was trying to round them up—but she was going about it the wrong way.

  Instead of chasing after her in the orchard, I walked around her car to the barn, grabbed a bag of dried meal worms, and emerged. I shook the bag a couple of times by the chicken run and watched, bemused, as a horde of chicken heads swiveled to look at me simultaneously. Then a mad dash began, their little legs pinwheeling toward me as Ruth stood stunned under an apple tree, staring at me with her arms slack by her sides.

  “How’d you do that?!” she hollered to me.

  I flung a few handfuls of the crispy critters into the run and stepped back so the birds could charge inside. They poured chattering and flapping into the coop and jostled each other to get the best angle on the prize—except Boots, who I could tell apart from her sixty-nine identical sisters by the green zip tie around her right ankle and the fact that she stopped at my feet to peck up the few mealworms that I’d accidentally dropped rather than running to get the mother lode like the rest of the flock.

  I nudged her with the toe of my shoe. “Go on—get inside.”

  Boots ruffled her feathers and dug her toenails into the dirt, refusing to budge, and clucked indignantly at me. I rolled my eyes and locked up the coop. “Oh, fine.”

  By then, Ruth had made it back to the house, and I joined her on the porch, Boots on my heels. Ruth swooped the hen up and tucked her under her arm, stroking Boots’s head gently with her free hand.

  “There you are, my little one. I was looking for you,” she cooed. Then she looked up at me. “Sorry about that—I thought I could get them back toward the house but it was like trying to round up raindrops. How’d you train them to come back to the coop?”

  “Doesn’t take much to get those birdbrains in the palm of your hand—you just need the right bait.” I held up the nearly empty bag of chicken treats and Boots successfully struggled hard enough toward it that Ruth set her down on the porch. I shook the last few mealworms out of the bag, along with a puff of bug-dust, for her to gobble up. We both watched the little hen chirp delightedly in between snapping up her newfound treasure.

  “Your hair still looks good,” Ruth observed, tucking a strand back into place. “I figured it’d be a mess by now.”

  “You were generous with the hair spray. Plus, I got stuck in town talking to Eli, so I haven’t gotten much work done this afternoon.”

  “Stuck with Eli, huh? That must have been horrible.” She wrinkled her nose mischievously.

  “Oh, shut up and come inside. You want some tea? I’d offer you coffee, but I just finished off the pot.”

  “I can’t stay. I just stopped by for a minute because I have an appointment to show the Sutherland place to some potential buyers!”

  My eyebrows shot up. The blueberry farm next door had been sitting empty for months. Ruth was the listing agent, but there hadn’t been much interest. That was the way with rural properties, especially ones as large and complex as that one, with acres of berry bushes, several outbuildings, and a hundred-year-old farmhouse. I knew from my own experience how much maintenance a farm like that required. People didn’t usually want to take all that on when they were looking for a new home. It took a special buyer.

  “They’re from California,” Ruth added. “Drove up here from the Bay Area to have a look at it. They want to pull out all the blueberries and plant grapes.”

  “Pinot fever,” I said wryly. It seemed like everyone who moved here from our more affluent neighbor to the south had dreams of owning their own winery and replicating the success of famous Oregon vintners. They thought winemaking involved choosing pretty stemware and orchestrating picturesque views—they didn’t realize all the drudgery that came with actual farming.

  “Annnnnnd...” Ruth drew out the wo
rd hesitantly.

  “And what?”

  “They want to meet you. Is that okay?” She cringed, anticipating my response. “They like to get a sense of the neighborhood synergy.”

  I laughed. “Neighborhood synergy? What does that even mean?”

  “You know. The community.”

  “There is no community.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Of course there is.”

  “No, seriously. The main characteristic of the Flats community is that we all mind our own business. You know that. Good fences make good neighbors, don’t turn around in my driveway, et cetera, et cetera.” I didn’t relish the idea of neighbors who wanted to collaborate. The whole point of moving up here was to be self-sufficient and avoid the scrutiny of judgy Californians, and now a couple of judgy Californians were going to move in next door.

  Ruth pursed her lips. “Well, can you do me a favor and act friendly if I bring them over? Play up your little egg farm, your organic orchard, and so forth? They’ll eat that up.”

  “I wish they would, literally,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “Eat my eggs. Nobody in town will, and now I’ve got the ODA breathing down my neck. Maybe I should sell to Californians who don’t know any better.”

  “The ODA?!” Ruth checked the time on her phone. “Shoot. I want to ask what’s going on, but it’ll have to wait. I’ll be back in an hour with my clients, OK? Promise me you’ll be nice to them. I really need this sale. Things are tight for me right now.”

  Her anxious expression bored through any resistance I’d been developing to the idea. “Of course—anything for you.”

  Chapter 14

  “We’re picturing a retail store by the highway,” the woman who Ruth had introduced as Kelly said, her hammered silver earrings glinting in her shiny auburn hair as she made an expansive gesture to the frontage of my property.

  “Uh-huh,” I said politely, not really listening to what she said.

  “Wine tastings daily. Maybe a little vegan café with wine pairings,” she said. Her husband, Sam, a tall man with the kind of carefully cultivated five o’clock shadow that was too perfect to be real, nodded beside her. Together, they looked like a magazine advertisement for an antidepressant: irritatingly natural, wholesome, and wealthy.

  “We’d have an area inside for local farmers to rent shelf space. Sort of a mini French-style market, if you will,” he explained.

  I nodded. “I sell eggs.”

  The couple glanced at each other for a long moment. The woman finally replied. “We’d prefer not to stock animal products,” she said gently. “But you could sell jams and jellies, things like that.”

  “Egg jam?” I looked at her, bewildered. “Egg jelly?”

  The man laughed broadly like I’d told a good joke. “Well, I was thinking apple. Or you might discover raspberry or strawberry is more profitable. I’m sure you’ll find your niche.”

  “I already have a niche—it’s eggs.” From behind them, Ruth shot me an apologetic look. I guess my face gave away my distaste for Sam’s brand of condescension.

  He nodded, looking up the driveway at my coop and the bobbing heads of the chickens inside. “About that...”

  A long pause.

  Kelly interrupted the silence. “What he means is that we’re hoping to persuade you to change your focus. Why chickens”—she said it the way someone might say maggots—“when you have these beautiful trees?” She reached up her hand and brushed a row of apple blossoms, sending a cascade of pink petals fluttering to the ground.

  Don’t hit her. Don’t hit her, for Ruth. I slid my clenched fist into the pocket of my jeans and pasted on a fake smile. “Um...because I want them? And I already have a productive flock and a brand-new coop. What’s your problem with chickens, anyway?”

  They exchanged another glance.

  “Well...” Sam squinted into the distance, as though he were trying to find just the right words.

  Once again, Kelly filled the empty space. “The fact is, we’re concerned about the smell.”

  “And the view,” Sam added. “We’d prefer an unobstructed view of the vineyard from the farmhouse, and right now your chicken enclosure is a bit of an eyesore.”

  Ruth’s eyes went so wide I could see the whites all around her pupils as she pantomimed frantically for me to zip my lips. Unfortunately, I was all out of zips.

  “Let me get this straight. You want to build a store that’s half on my property?” Kelly nodded eagerly, her expression bright, so I continued. “And you want to rent space in the store—the store on my property—back to me, so I can sell jam that I don’t make instead of eggs that I do make?”

  “Mhm, that would be ideal.”

  “And you want me to knock down my brand-new chicken coop and—what? Cull the chickens who live in it? Chop, chop?” I made a slicing motion across my neck.

  Sam frowned. “We didn’t say anything about killing animals. You could rehome them.”

  “All so you can see your imaginary vineyard.” My voice gained a dangerous edge. “And what do I get out of all this? The privilege of being your neighbor?”

  Kelly tittered, as though I’d made a joke instead of asking a critical question. Then, as she saw the grim set of my jaw and realized I was serious, she began blinking rapidly. “Well, you’d be part of a new, dynamic cohort of next-generation producers. You’ll be able to rub shoulders with agritourists and wine aficionados from all over the globe.”

  “Right. I’m sure the caliber of my social media followers would increase,” I said sarcastically.

  “Exactly! Wonderful! I’m so glad you understand!” She clasped her hands, her expression relieved, and turned to Ruth. “I think this is going to work out great. Let’s go back to your office and draw up the paperwork. Don’t you think it’s perfect, honey?”

  Ruth, who should have been over the moon about an eager buyer, chewed the inside of her cheek as she stared at me, searching my face for answers. I had a few answers I could give. For example, I’d rather move back to snobby Beverly Hills than live next to Jam and Jelly, here.

  But I knew Ruth really needed the sale, too. Honeytree was small, and properties didn’t come up for sale very often. She relied on both her businesses to pay the bills. I couldn’t deny her a commission that might be half her income for the year just because my new neighbors might be irritating. I could endure twenty or thirty years of bad neighbors for Ruth. I wouldn’t do it for anyone else.

  I gave a quick nod. “Good luck,” I said to the couple. “Make sure you stop by for some coffee after you move in.”

  The woman flashed a smile at me as she clutched her husband’s arm, and he beamed down at her. “You’re finally going to have your Tuscan hideaway, honey,” he said. “Bonus, we don’t even have to learn Italian. That’s the only reason we didn’t move straight to Italy,” he added to Ruth.

  Ruth smiled politely. “You might want to learn French to source your vines.”

  The woman waved her hand. “We’ll hire someone for that.”

  “Spanish could be helpful for hiring seasonal vineyard labor, as well.” Ruth gave me a sly look out of the corner of her eye. What was she doing? If I didn’t know better, she was trying to sabotage her own sale.

  Jam and Jelly weren’t derailed. “We’ll only hire locals,” the woman declared. “It’ll be good for our brand, anyway.”

  “Wonderful,” Ruth said, in a tone that belied her words. “Now let’s go over some details. Soil testing will run in the thousands—would you like to get that started?”

  “Yes, right away,” Jam said, nodding.

  “OK. And you’ll want to know about the water rights—this property doesn’t have any irrigation rights to the creek, and the state of Oregon prohibits rainwater collection. You’ll likely have to drill a new well to support a vineyard.”

  “Fine,” Jelly chirped. “Where do we sign? I want to be drinking a glass of my own wine come next fall.”

 
Ruth bit her lip. “That’s not going to happen. I’m no vintner, but I know it takes at least three years for pinot grapes to mature. And the yields will be low for the first few years. You’ll want to have a plan for the carrying costs, plus the initial investment in site prep and vines, building your retail space...if your permit is approved. There are a lot of unknowns here.”

  Jelly blinked, her giddy expression fading. She glanced to her husband. “Honey? Is that true?”

  He shifted uncomfortably, looking back and forth between his wife and Ruth. “Of course. I knew that. I’ve done my research.” Judging by his uncertain tone, he definitely did not know that and had definitely not done his research.

  Jelly frowned. She must have sensed his lack of confidence, too. “Maybe we should keep looking for a vineyard that already has grapes planted,” she said doubtfully.

  Ruth nodded. “Maybe you should.”

  I couldn’t believe she was letting this deal slip through her fingers. She had no fiduciary responsibility to these people—she was the listing agent, not their buyer’s agent! While I’d rather Jam and Jelly got on a plane to Europe instead of moving to the Flats, I really wanted Ruth to make the sale.

  “You could purchase pinot grapes from someone else for the first few years,” I offered. “A lot of people grow them who don’t have winemaking facilities. You could focus your efforts on the wine side while you wait for your own grapevines to mature.”

  The sparkle came back into Jelly’s eyes, and Jam looked at me gratefully. “That’s exactly what I had in mind,” he said. “I’m glad you picked up on that.”

  I suppressed an eyeroll. How like a man to take credit for my idea. “Great plan,” I said sweetly.

  Ruth sidled closer to me so she could poke me in the ribs without them noticing. “Stop,” she murmured. “I’m trying to help you here.”

  “Same,” I said through my fake-smiling teeth.

  Jelly stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Jam’s movie-star stubble. Then she turned to us. “We want to get an offer in as soon as possible,” she said. “Can we sign the papers here?”