Murder at the Ostrich Farm

by London Lovett

  The front door opened and loud voices and footsteps followed. Kellan, I learned long ago, was the kind of person who stepped into a room and added a big spark of life to it. It seemed like an extra big spark inside our tiny, cozy kitchen.

  "Hey there, Duch—Poppy," he quickly corrected since Daddy was in the room.

  I pretended not to know he was talking to me. I pointed at myself and gave him a big surprised look. "Oh, you're talking to me?" I teased. "It's just so rare when you call me Poppy. I wasn't sure."

  Daddy laughed. "What are you two talking about?"

  I waved it off. "It's nothing." I peeked over at Kellan, certain that I'd catch him in one of those rare, slightly embarrassed moments, but nope, he didn't look the least bit contrite.

  Jasper was trying to act like everything was peachy, but I knew him too well. Even his face didn't have the usual energetic glow. He pulled out a chair and sat down. "Well, Charlie's up and running. Where are you going to drag me to today, sis?" he asked.

  "Nowhere," Daddy interjected. "You're staying home to nurse that sore throat and keep it from blooming into a full blown flu."

  Jasper slumped down in the chair. "Aw, Doc, I'm feeling fine. Besides, Poppy and I have a case. We've got—"

  "People and places to see," Daddy said. "I've heard. But this is doctor's orders."

  My driving skills were lacking. I could pedal the car around the block, but it generally resulted in at least two stalls before I circled the whole thing. I was most definitely not experienced enough to head out on the open road to Pasadena.

  Jasper looked at me with a frown. "What ya gonna do? Guess you'll have to take the Red Car, but I don't know about you traveling all that way on your own. You better just wait until tomorrow." Jasper was always extra protective of me, which was sweet and also kind of a nuisance.

  "I've got to keep working on the case," I said. "I want to head back to the ostrich farm and see if anyone knows where I can find Eugene Strump. I'm certain someone at the farm must have kept contact with him or, at the very least, knows where to find him."

  "Who is Eugene Strump?" Daddy asked.

  Kellan pulled up a chair at the table, and ridiculously, my hands picked up a nervous little tremor. I put down my fork, not wanting anyone to notice and no longer wanting to shovel pancakes into my mouth. It was a silly reaction. I would certainly give myself a good scolding about it later.

  Jasper reached for the pitcher of milk. "Strump used to work for the farm, but Paul Wilkins caught him stealing. Strump threatened to kill Paul because he ratted him out."

  I looked at Jasper, who was now wearing a milk moustache. "Was he just supposed to let the guy go on stealing?"

  "Poppy, I don't know about you going to see this guy Strump," Daddy said. "Maybe you should just work at the office today, then Jasper can rejoin the case tomorrow."

  "Paul doesn't have that kind of time," I insisted.

  "I'll drive Poppy out to Pasadena," Kellan suggested. "I've never seen it, so might be kind of fun. I especially want to see those ostriches. Jasper was telling me all about them."

  The tiny tremor rolled into a tremble at the notion of Kellan driving me to Pasadena. I lowered my hands into my lap and briefly searched my memory for a time when either Samuel or Wyatt had produced the same ludicrous reaction. Couldn't find one.

  "That's a great idea," Jasper cheered.

  Kellan looked at me for approval, which I gave with a hesitant nod. He clapped his hands once. "Perfect, I was wondering what to do with myself today, now I've got something. Get your royal cape, Duchess, and we'll hit the road."

  "Duchess?" Daddy asked as we stood from the table and walked out. "Did he just call her Duchess?" I heard him ask Jasper as we headed out the front door.

  "This is a first. Never been a private investigator before," Kellan said as we walked to the car.

  "Then your record remains intact because you're still not a private investigator. You're just the driver for one. Oh, and one more thing."

  He opened the door for me. "What's that?"

  "Don't call me Duchess in front of the client. It's a little pretentious."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  While I'd been tangled with a slight case of nerves as we started off on our trip to Pasadena, Kellan's charming personality helped ease me into my old self. The strangest part about my case of nerves and the tremble in my fingers was that they were quite new. The first time I'd met Kellan, we had fallen right into a friendly conversation, as if we'd known each other forever. He was funny and confident, and I felt completely at ease with him. It had been the same every time we met. The nerves had only started recently, after our encounter at the gas station and the odd conversation about my freckles. The same conversation that put a sharp and terrible end to my night out with Samuel Langston. Samuel had yet to call or visit since, and I didn't expect to see him anytime soon. I was a little sad but mostly relieved.

  I couldn't understand what'd happened to change my reaction to Kellan, but I decided to pass it off as a phase.

  Charlie sputtered courageously along the straight two lane road that would eventually take us to Pasadena. We'd rolled the windows down to feel the cool breeze, so I held my straw hat in my lap. Kellan, on the other hand, had no problem keeping his shabby, stretched out black fedora on his thick head of hair. The sun had broken through early, and it was showering the landscape with warm light. Most of the spring wildflowers, poppies, mustard and bluebells had withered away to dry weeds, leaving less than inspiring scenery for the drive. A citrus farm lay ahead, but most of the fruit had been picked long before. The glossy green leaves of the trees held tiny white blossoms, the first indication of the next crop.

  "Jasper says you're trying to prove a man is innocent," Kellan said. He had his sleeves rolled back in his usual casual style. His left arm, the one with the long scar, was resting on the open window, his elbow sticking out far enough to get tanned.

  "Yes, it's not easy. The police have some good evidence on the man, but his fiancée, our client, is certain he didn't do it. And frankly, his motive is kind of weak."

  Kellan glanced my direction. His eyes were exceptionally blue, what might be called royal blue, beneath the shade of his hat brim. "Well, sounds like your client has a very strong motive for thinking he's innocent. She's just trying to keep her guy from ending up in jail."

  I twisted to the side and would have put my hands on my hips if there had been room in Charlie's front seat. "Are you saying that she's using our agency and Jasper and me like pawns?"

  "No, no hold onto your crown, Duchess. I just meant that it seems like your client has a good reason to believe the guy is innocent, even if the cops already nabbed him. How are you going to work around the police investigation?"

  I sat back, feeling less defensive. "It hasn't been easy. But I'll figure it out. And I haven't totally dismissed the idea that Paul actually did it. That might just be where the clues lead me and then I'll have to break my client's heart." I lifted my hat and waved it. "By the way, I am holding onto my crown. I can't put it on my head with the windows open." Just as I said it, a thick strand of hair blew loose across my cheek. I pushed it back behind my ear.

  Kellan smiled at me, then faced the road. "I kind of like you without a hat. Sometimes those hats hide too much of your face. Yours is a face that should be seen . . . all the time . . . everyday."

  I turned to look out the window, to hide the blush warming my face.

  "Didn't mean to embarrass ya, Duchess," he added.

  "No, you didn't," I insisted a little too exuberantly. "The breeze just feels nice on my cheeks."

  An awkward silence followed, which he broke with a bizarre change in topic. "Hey, did you hear about that jockey who crossed the finish line at Belmont, only the guy was as dead as a doornail when he got there? Bad heart or something but that little filly, who I might add was at twenty to one, went right on to the finish line without any prodding from her deceased rider."

  "Ma
ybe she was trying to run away from the dead guy," I mused. "I heard something about it. Jasper was trying to tell me about it one day, but I was busy writing up notes for a case. So the man was dead but he stayed in the saddle. I've ridden horses, and I can barely stay on them alive. Especially when they trot."

  "Yeah? I pictured you as one of those girls who loves to ride fancy jumping horses in suede jodhpurs and all back boots. Or maybe I was just picturing you in jodhpurs and boots with no involvement of a horse." I'd known Kellan to be an outrageous flirt, giving my overly flirtatious brother a run for his money, but he was laying it on extra heavy today. And I wasn't hating it. (Even if it should have, at the very least, irritated me.)

  "Now that you know something about me." I tilted my head toward him. "That I'm not an equestrian, maybe I could ask you something."

  "I guess that's only fair. Yes, I ride because I grew up around horses."

  "Nope, not the question I was going to ask, and since you grew up in the midwest, I could have guessed the horsemanship skills. I was wondering where you got that scar on your left arm?"

  His face stayed motionless. He stared ahead as if we were entering some heavy traffic, but there was no one else on the road.

  "That's all right," I said quickly. "You don't have to tell me. I'm just being nosy."

  "Nah, that's all right. I don't mind." He pushed up the brim of his hat a bit but kept his focus straight ahead. "I got it while I was in France. It was a crazy way to get injured but then that's the story of my life."

  "Did you get it in battle?" I asked. I was silently wanting to take the earlier question back, but Kellan seemed to want to talk about it.

  "After the battle. It was a bad one. I had this friend in the army. His name was Buzzy. We called him that because whenever we were down in the trenches, the cold moisture made him wheeze and cough. Sometimes the guy could barely catch a decent breath. The medics wanted to send him away from the front, but he didn't want to leave. He said he was there to fight the Germans and no one was going to take that away from him. Well, we got overrun bad one day. More than half our guys were wounded or dead on the field."

  I sank a little harder into the familiar comfort of Charlie's front seat. I'd started this and I was going to have to be brave enough to hear it through, no matter how heartbreaking.

  "Buzzy and I had somehow gotten cut off from the others. Once the bullets and the bombs started exploding"—he shook his head—"It was just pure chaos. Sometimes you didn't even know if you were shooting at the enemy. Once the fighting died down and the smoke cleared, I found Buzzy hunched over on the ground. He was bleeding so badly, it was impossible to tell where he'd been wounded. Wherever it was, I knew it was bad. He kept pleading with me to leave him, that he'd be dead in an hour, but I wasn't going to leave without him. I threw him over my shoulder. His blood soaked the back of my shirt. I trudged around the dead bodies and bomb craters and headed in what I hoped was the right direction toward our trench. I knew the medics could get Buzzy on an ambulance and out of the mud."

  My throat tightened with each word. His tone was deep, not the usual jovial baritone resonance I was used to. It was as if, for the past few years, he had worn the horrific memories like a heavy chain around his neck, always hanging there cold and burdensome, to remind him of that day. As if he could have ever forgotten it.

  I sensed the truly heart wrenching part of the story was yet to come. I braced myself inwardly. Outwardly, I sat still as a statue, wishing I could sink even deeper into Charlie's bucket seat.

  "I must have walked for two miles," he said with a sad chuckle. "Or maybe it was only fifty feet. Buzzy was a good thirty pounds heavier than me, and he was beginning to feel more and more like dead weight. He'd stopped making sounds at one point, but I refused to let myself believe he was gone." Kellan rubbed the side of his jaw. "I kept talking to him telling him to hang on and letting him know his mom was never going to forgive him for getting hurt."

  Kellan grew quiet. He leaned his head toward the open window, listening to a clicking sound in the motor. He seemed to convince himself it was nothing. Oddly, I was thankful to Charlie for giving me a second to compose myself. I turned my face briefly toward the window to get a nice slap of fresh air. We passed a white farmhouse with fields that seemed to be planted with beans and tomatoes. Everything grew in California's rich soil. The endless sunshine could coax even the most stubborn crops out of hiding.

  I turned to him and touched his arm. I wasn't sure exactly what caused me to do it. It might just have been the look on his face as he stared ahead at the open road while his memories pulled him back to that day. "Are you all right?" I asked. Even my voice sounded unfamiliar. It was as if his story had thickened the atmosphere in Charlie's front seat.

  Kellan's smile was the kind that could make you think every day was worth living. Even with this dark memory, like so many others who came back from the war, including my own father, it hadn't dampened Kellan's zest for life. It was right there on his face. "Yeah, I'm fine, Duchess. Just haven't told this story in awhile."

  I was about to take the cowardly route and tell him he didn't need to finish, but it seemed he needed to tell it. It was one of those stories that you couldn't possibly leave half told. It needed an ending. As sad as it was going to be, it needed closure.

  "Anyhow, there I was, so much mud in my eyes and mouth I couldn't see and every swallow tasted like dirt and blood. I couldn't tell what time it was because the smoke had blotted out the daylight. I could only see ten feet in front of me. Then I heard voices . . . speaking German," he added darkly. "I could see the silhouettes of six German soldiers walking through the smoky mist. They were poking bodies with their bayonets to make sure they were good and dead." Kellan glanced at me. "Geez, Poppy, I didn't ask if you want me to continue. Should I stop?"

  "Only if you want to, Kellan. Otherwise, I'm here to listen."

  He turned back to face the road. It was easier for him, it seemed, to tell the story focused on the long, straight stretch of road. It was easier for me too.

  "I spun around looking for a place to hide," he continued. "Buzzy's arms swung limply around me. He was draped over me like a rag doll, no movement, no signs of life. But I refused to accept that he was gone. I was wearing half the blood in his body, but I was certain I could get him help if we could just reach the trench. There was no place to hide. I was out on a smoke covered plain littered with bodies, but there wasn't one darn hole or bush or tree. I whispered to Buzzy, I said, hey Buzz, don't worry. I'm not going to let them hurt you anymore. I lowered him to the ground, and I draped myself over him. I wasn't going to let them shove a bayonet into Buzzy. He wasn't dead, I convinced myself, and they didn't need to know that. I stayed as still as I could with my eyes closed. I was covered in enough of Buzzy's blood that I hoped the soldiers would assume I was dead."

  I released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding until the air ushered out of my lungs. I'd been clutching my straw hat so tightly, the brim was curled in.

  "The Germans stood over Buzzy and I for what seemed like an eternity. I was frozen in fear, wondering if I was just about to take my last breath. Then a sharp stabbing pain ripped through my arm, but my mind kept saying don't react or you're dead." He shook his head. "There isn't anything harder than not flinching or yelling or moving an inch when someone has just sliced open your arm with the end of a bayonet."

  I discretely wiped at a tear and took a steadying breath to speak without a waver. "I can't imagine how you managed it. It seems nearly super human."

  "I think about that moment a lot, how I managed not to move, just to lay there limply like a dead man. I think I was so drained mentally and physically that I was almost just a shell of a man by that time." He pushed his sleeve up and rested his arm on the windowsill again. "Wowza, enough of that. I think I've bored you my with war story long enough."

  I looked at him. He had a dashing profile with a strong jaw and masculine features. "You didn't bore me at
all, Kellan, but I think I'm sitting with an entirely different person now than I was ten minutes ago. And as much as I liked the other person, I like this one even better."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I'd been thrown a little off my stride for the morning, first having an unexpected partner switch, then listening to Kellan's harrowing, heartbreaking war story and then trying to sort out my feelings for the man. Up until recently, he was just a fun friend to have around, but I felt myself being more drawn to Kellan each day. Certainly, the last thing I needed was to lose my head over a man, any man, for that matter. Most especially today, when I was heavy in the middle of a case that didn't seem to be going in the right direction for my client.

  Kellan was like an excited kid on our way to the farm entrance. "Can't wait to see those big, funny looking birds," he said rubbing his hands together. "Do you think they'll let me ride one?"

  I rolled my eyes. "No wonder Jasper and you get along so well. No, they stopped letting visitors ride the birds after too many accidents. Probably a good decision. I can only imagine someone like Jasper or you on the back of an ostrich."

  "I was pretty darn good on a horse," Kellan said, looking a little insulted. "But then, a horse has four legs. Those ostriches look like a big ole balancing act with those bulbous bodies and two legs."

  We reached the tall arch that led into the farm. A sign had been hung on the arch that said the farm was closed down for repairs. I wasn't all that surprised. I was sure that George Dawson had decided to wait for the bad press to die down before opening again. It had to be a terrible drain on him financially. That made the notion of him framing Paul for murder to get him away from Ruby even harder to believe.