All Chickens Must Die: A Benjamin Wade Mystery
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Authors: Scott Dennis Parker
All Chickens
Must Die
A Benjamin Wade
Mystery
By
Scott
Dennis Parker
Quadrant Fiction Studio
Houston
2016
All
Chickens Must Die
A
Benjamin Wade Mystery
By Scott
Dennis Parker
Copyright
© 2016 by Scott Dennis Parker
A
Quadrant Fiction Studio Book
(QFS-003)
Cover
Design by Scott Dennis Parker and David Hadley
www.quadrantfictionstudio.com
All
rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. The
characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination
and are not to be construed as real.
No part of this book may be used
or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the
Publisher or Author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
Do
you know how embarrassing it is to be a
private eye without a secretary? It means that every potential client sees you
sitting in the outer office, typing your own reports and notes, and not in your
main office with your feet on the desk, whiling away a hot summer’s day looking
at the Houston skyline. It would also have meant that clients such as Elmer
Smith and his chicken problems would have been turned away and I never would
have learned that a secret society existed here in Houston that had, as its one
rule, the obligation to avenge any wrong done to any member, real or imagined.
Why I didn’t just type my reports in my own office, I’ll never
know. I think, honestly, I wanted to convey the impression that I did, indeed,
have a secretary. I didn’t have one—yet—but I was actively looking for one. I
had placed a classified ad in all the local papers and I had been interviewing
many of the candidates over a few weeks. I found the decision to be
extraordinarily difficult. I wanted the perfect combination of beauty and
ability. To date, that type of woman hadn’t walked in my door.
That didn’t stop other types of women from waltzing in and
looking for a job. This was May 1940 and the effects of the Depression still
permeated the economy. It made me feel a little bad when I had to turn away a
few applicants because they were not quite the type I was looking for. If you
had put a gun to my head, I’d have admitted that the way a woman looked was
pretty important. I’m running a small business and the first thing clients see
is the secretary. She needs to be a knockout.
Martha Weber was sitting in the interview chair when Mr. Smith
rang the front bell. I’d faced men with guns, but for some reason, that day I
didn’t want to face a potential client without a secretary.
“You want to make five bucks?” I said.
Martha looked at me with wariness. “What do I have to do?”
“Pretend to be my secretary.”
She frowned. “So, I have the job?”
“No, but I’d like you to pretend to be my secretary for that
potential client out there.”
“Why don’t I have the job?”
I winced. That was an argument best discussed among other men.
Only they could understand the importance of an attractive secretary for
private-eye business. Martha had the typing skills in spades. But her looks
were on the homely side. She looked like she belonged in a school or public
library, not at the receptionist/typist for a private investigator firm.
“I have a few other applicants, and I need to give them a chance,
you know?”
“I’m a great typist. I can even do some field work, if you need
it. Did I tell you I’m pretty good with a gun?” She said the last with a bit
more emphasis than was necessary.
The doorbell rang again. Work wasn’t flowing as I would have
liked. I was in a dire position of having to take almost everything that came
through the door. I desperately didn’t want any potential clients to leave.
I gave her a double take. “Double my offer. Ten dollars.”
Martha looked at me sidelong. “You really got it?”
Sure, I just won’t get any gas for a week. “I’ll get the client
to make a down payment.”
“You’d better.” She rose from her chair. “I’ll be right back, Mr.
Wade.” She winked at me and sashayed out of my office. Seeing her from behind,
I had second thoughts about doing this. What if she blew it?
Through the closed door, I heard soft murmuring then Martha’s
shape through the frosted glass door. Didn’t every private eye have doors with
frosted glass?
The door cracked and Martha stuck her head in. “Mr. Wade, there
are two gentlemen here to see you.”
Two gentlemen? I rarely got pairs of potential clients. “Please
send them in…” I paused and my eyes raced across my desk until I found her
file. “Miss Weber.”
She narrowed her eyes. I shrugged. I cinched up my tie and sat up
straighter in my chair.
The first man who walked in I didn’t recognize. He wore, of all
things, denim overalls. The hat he held in his hands looked nicer than his
entire wardrobe, his pressed shirt notwithstanding. I pegged him for a farmer
and quickly dreaded needing to take any job to pay the rent. I wasn’t up for
some sort of cow theft.
The second man, on the other hand, I knew. Burt Haldeman was a
lawyer, a shyster if you ask me. He was the kind of man who used his size and
bulk to get his way when his words failed him. Half the time, that’s what
happened. His tie only reached halfway down his gut. Not flattering, but his
looks were enough to land a semi-slob like me in Life magazine.
I stood and came around my desk, extending my hand to the lawyer.
“Burt, how you doing? What brings you in my door?”
“Good to see you again, Wade,” Haldeman said. “I see you landed
on your feet after that little incident.”
I cleared my throat. “Sure did.” I pivoted and introduced myself
to the farmer.
He took my hand, his leathery, hard skin felt like some sort of
moving beef jerky. “Elmer Smith.” He was looking around, clearly out of his
element.
“Please, gentlemen, have a seat.” I indicated the two chairs
opposite my desk. To Martha, I said, “Thank you, Miss Weber. That will be all.”
She rubbed her thumb and index finger together in the universal sign of money.
With their backs to her, Haldeman and Smith were unable to see
Martha. I smiled and nodded once, then gestured her out.
I sat and leaned my elbows on the desk. “What brings you into my
office?”
“Chickens,” Smith said.
I looked to Haldeman for confirmation. He nodded in assent.
“Chickens,” I said. “I can’t say I’ve ever had a case involving
chickens.”
“Judging from how long you’ve been doing this little job,”
Haldeman said, “I’d have to agree with you. But, nonetheless, we are here on
account of chickens.” He reached into his suit and pulled out a pack of
cigarettes. He shook one out, put it between his lips, and lit up. “Tell him,
Elmer.”
The farmer cleared his throat. I got the impression he wasn’t
used to speaking in public. “Well, you see, Mr. Wade, the agriculture man, the
health inspector man, wants to condemn all my chickens and kill’em all.”
I waited for additional details. Smith, his mouth a thin line
with almost no upper lip, sat there as if he had just spoken a fact, like the
color of the sky or the humidity level in town that day. Turning to Haldeman, I
raised my eyebrows. “Burt?”
Haldeman smiled. “It’s true. Mr. Smith’s entire brood of chickens
has been declared unsanitary by the health inspector. They’re scheduled to be
slaughtered in the next few days. I got Judge Briscoe to put a temporary
injunction on the slaughter, but we’re running outta time.”
“I’m still not seeing where I come in.”
Smith frowned. “Ain’t it obvious? I need you to investigate that
bastard inspector and figure out why he’s trying to kill my livelihood.”
I
did my best to keep my mouth closed,
concentrating hard to breathe through my nose and act like what I just heard
was something you heard every day, like the weather or the news the Nazis had
invaded another country.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on, Mr. Smith?” I even
prompted the speech by getting out a yellow legal pad. I held my pen poised
over it, ready to write down notes.
“Okay,” Smith said, “I can do that. You takin’ notes?”
Opting not to restate the obvious, I merely nodded. “Ready when
you are.”
“Well, it was a few weeks ago and there was a ruckus at my
chicken farm.”
“Where’s your farm?”
“West of here, out past the bayou.”
“What kind of ‘ruckus’ did you hear?” I was thinking a wolf, but
kept my options open.
“You know, I didn’t rightly know what it was. One night, about
two, maybe three weeks ago, I’m sitting in my house and I hear the sound of
cars. They was coming to a stop, kinda hurry like, you know, like they was
speeding.”
“Is that unusual? Do you live near roads?”
“Course I live near roads. They take me to market. Anyways, I
hear cars stopping and tires screeching. I’m not sure what’s going on so I head
on outta the house to get a look around, you know?”
I nodded. I shook out a cigarette. This was going to take a
while.
“I hear something in my barn and chicken coop so I make my way
over there. That’s when I hear footsteps.”
“Running or walking?”
“Beg pardon?”
“The sounds the feet were making, did they sound like they were
walking or running?”
“What difference does that make?”
“A lot actually.” I inhaled a huge lungful of smoke and blew a smoke
ring up towards the ceiling. “If it’s running, then someone is running away
from something.”
“Or running towards something,” Haldeman said.
“Perhaps,” I said, “but unless there was a wreck or some sort of
bad accident where folks ran toward it to get a look-see or to help, chances
were the footsteps were running away from something. Any idea what it might
be?”
“Not really,” Smith said, “but the police would know. They was
the ones chasing some guy through my chicken coop.”
Great, I thought. The police. Not exactly my favorite group of
citizens, not since I got booted off the force and had to fend for myself as a
civilian without a badge and the power that went with it.
Aloud, I said, “You file a police report for this—what theft?
What did this health inspector steal?”
“He ain’t steal nothing. He weren’t there the night of the
disturbance. He came afterwards and told me that all my chickens would have to
be kilt in order to meet his health demands. On the night of the chase, only
them po-lice came around. Said they were chasing some hoodlum was speeding.”
Odd, I thought. The police don’t usually chase speeders. Then
again, speeders don’t usually ditch their cars and hoof it.
I paused halfway through an inhale. “Okay, so let me get this
straight. You have a disturbance at your farm, police show up chasing someone
on foot. You live far enough away, I assume, that anyone who comes by your
house probably has to drive out there, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hear the other car?”
Smith stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. A little tip of his
tongue actually stuck out. I thought I was watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon in
real life.
“Come to think of it, I think I might’ve.”
“Did the cops not think to ask that question?”
“No, I don’t reckon so. I ain’t all in the country, you know. I’m
only part way in the country. There’s a few roads that go past my land, pretty
much on all sides.”
“Who lives around you? Anyone famous or rich? Any way someone
could have mistaken your house for some larger house nearby?”
“On the west side, there’s just another farm. On the east side,
acrost the bayou, there’s a bunch of rich sons of bitches. They live in a
neighborhood nearby. New houses gone up in ’39.”
I frowned. “Cops look over your land and property to determine if
anything was stolen?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything?” It was like pulling teeth to get him to talk.
“No.”
Pass the pliers. I got another tooth. “You file a police report?”
“No. Didn’t seem to be a crime.”
I glanced at the lawyer. Haldeman was the kind of shyster that
gave lawyers a bad name. If there wasn’t a crime committed, he’d invent one.
“Counselor?”
“No crime or police report. Nothing out of the ordinary until the
health inspector.”
I had to stifle a chuckle. Haldeman spoke with such authority you
would’ve thought having the cops show up on your land was a routine occurrence.
“I’ll check with HPD, see if they can tell me what they were doing that night.
Back to this health inspector you want me to follow. What was his name again?”
“Brad Teague.” Haldeman cut off his client just as he was about
to speak. “He works at the local branch of the Texas Animal Health Commission.
He’s the one who is ordering all of my client’s chickens to be slaughtered.”
“Teague give a reason?”
“Said it was to prevent some sort of infectious disease. He used
some sort of fancy Latin words to tell me what it was, but it’s all bunk. I
keep that coop clean and free of all pests. He ain’t got no claim, but he says
he does.” The farmer nodded to Haldeman. “That’s why I hired this here lawyer.”
Haldeman had the gall to bow from the neck.
Seeing as I didn’t have many prospects at the moment and, if I
was going to hire a secretary, I’d need some capital, I said, “I’ll take the
job.” I made a show of opening up my calendar, ensuring the blank pages were
well hidden from Haldeman. “I’ll need a down payment of twenty-five percent
plus fifty for expenses.”
Smith didn’t bat an eye. He pulled out his wallet and slid a
small pile of cash across the desk to me. “I hope that’s enough, Mr. Wade. I
had to open my safe deposit box.”
And then the guilt pang hit my gut. Fleeting though it was, I
still felt it. Of course, it didn’t stop my fingers from handling the cash and
giving it a quick count. One hundred even. Good enough.
“Thank you, Mr. Smith.” I stood and offered him my hand. “I’ll
provide you with weekly reports.”
“That’s not good enough.” Haldeman stood as well. “We’ve only got
five more days until the injunction runs out. We’re going to need answers
fast.”
I stifled the scowl threatening to crease my face. I didn’t like
being told what to do in my own office.
Smith’s countenance changed. Gone was the weathered farmer who
spent all his days outside and the skin to prove it. He relaxed a bit. His eyes
grew softer. “Mr. Wade, I’m desperate. My chickens are all my wife and I have.
They’ve kept us out of the soup lines all during this Depression. If they’re
killed, we’ll lose our farm, especially since them damn rich folks keep taking
all the farmers’ land.”
Great, I thought. No pressure.
Inwardly, I chastened myself. Sure, I didn’t have a lot of dough,
but I had more than Smith. I shook Smith’s hand. “I’ll start right away.”