Murder Most Fowl (2 page)

The life of an introverted solo farmer wasn't a smooth one. Cam hadn't realized how much time she'd need to spend schmoozing with customers, but had gotten marginally better at it since she sold her first harvest almost a year ago. It was hard to be the person in charge of all the myriad responsibilities of the farm. Seeding, weeding, harvesting. Promoting, selling, collecting. Cleaning, packaging, planning. And so much more. The rewards were myriad, too, though. She spent time alone outdoors in all seasons, with no company but the crops, the birds, the wind, and her buddy Preston. She had loads of fresh organic produce to eat, even if as the farmer she got only the second-quality stuff. And she was doing work that stretched her abilities. She knew she was a pro at putting her head down in a cubicle and churning out high-quality software. But farming and schmoozing—they widened her horizons, and she'd come to realize this was good for her.

Ruffles' crowing pierced her quiet bubble. Oh, yeah. Life. Chicks. And all the other chores of a farmer. Cam laughed and climbed out of the truck. She started to head for the barn, then looked down at her good jeans, sweater, and black leather boots, fit more for public company than for interacting with her clutch of fowl.

“No, Flaherty. Change your clothes first.” She headed for Albert and Marie's antique saltbox, now hers.

A few minutes later she reemerged, in suitably worn work pants, an old sweater, and work boots. A cloud scudded over the slanting sun and when the temperature dropped ten degrees in an instant, she shoved her hands in her pockets. Sure enough, this was March in New England. Striding toward the barn, she stopped and gazed up at a bald eagle circling high above, its white head contrasting with the dark, wide wingspan. Every year the eagles nested in several places along the broad Merrimack River, a major comeback from their former status as an endangered species. After the bird soared off toward the river a couple of miles away, Cam resumed walking.

Preston popped up and stretched, then trotted over to keep her company.

“Don't get any big ideas about those chicks, Mr. P. You've been excellent about leaving the ladies alone. I want to see you do the same with the little girls.” At least she hoped they were all females. One overaggressive rooster was entirely too much as it was.

But when she reached the warming box in the barn office where she'd left forty yellow puff balls, she saw that two lay motionless in the corner. The office door had been securely closed, so it hadn't been Preston who'd done them in. She reached in and stroked the closer chick. The warmth of its down must have come from the light because it was clearly dead. The other chicks scampered around and gave her hand fairy pecks. Cam scooped up the two dead chicks. She'd ordered them inoculated against Marek disease before they were mailed, so it wasn't that. These were her first baby hens and she had no idea what had caused their deaths.

As she stood examining them in her hand, a voice hailed her from the main part of the barn.

“Cam, you in there?” Alexandra's voice called. “Thought I'd see if you need some help today.”

“I'm in the office. And so glad you're here,” Cam called out in return.

Alexandra appeared in the doorway. “Always like to hear that.” She glanced at the chicks. “Too bad. Looks like you lost a couple.”

Cam nodded. “And I'm clueless as to why.”

“Me, too. DJ's my expert, and . . .” She opened her hands.

“Can we call him?”

“Didn't I tell you? He left a few weeks ago.”

Cam studied the younger woman, almost as tall as her own five foot eleven. The two idealistic twenty-somethings were a perfect match, and had both been active volunteers on the farm for months. DJ had taught Cam about her rescue hens' care and feeding. “I hope you guys didn't break up.”

“No way.” Alexandra laughed. “He's off at IMS on a three-month Buddhist retreat.” At Cam's questioning look, Alexandra continued. “Insight Meditation Society. Out in western Mass. They teach Vipassana meditation, which comes from Tibet. He's been maintaining a daily practice and said he wanted to deepen it. Three months without talking? Not my deal, but, hey, he's cool. Shaved his head and everything.”

“Cool, he is. And how have you been?” Cam asked.

“Good.” She beamed. “Got a job doing freelance Web and marketing consulting with an environmental group, which could lead to other gigs. I've been out of college two years—about time I moved out of my parents' house and got my own place, don't you think?”

“Absolutely.”

Alexandra frowned.

“What's the frown for?” Cam asked. She laid the dead chicks on a piece of paper on her desk and scanned the others. The rest seemed healthy enough.

“My sister. You met her. Katie?”

“The one who escaped to New York, and then came back almost immediately?”

“Yeah.” Alexandra kept frowning as she reached into the box and stroked an extra-small chick. “She's really into animal rights now.”

“You are too, aren't you?”

“Not like Katie is. She wants to throw fake blood around and try to set farm animals loose. She hangs around with those radical PETA folks. Or whatever they call themselves.”

“Setting farm animals loose? How stupid can you get? They don't know how to fend for themselves. They'd either get eaten by a predator or hit by a car,” Cam said. “Anyway, I thought Katie was back in school.”

“She is, at Northern Essex Community College. That's where she met these nuts. Hey, I got a postcard from Ellie in Florida where's she on that school service trip. Can you believe a fourteen-year-old would write a postcard?” Alexandra laughed.

“You know Ellie. She's cool. She doesn't mind being out of the mainstream, otherwise she wouldn't be a Girl Scout in high school. I got a card, too. Florida sure sounds a lot warmer than here, even if she is helping to clean up from a hurricane.”

“Wearing shorts in the sunshine instead of all this?” Alexandra gestured to her down jacket and wool hat. “No brainer.”

A
fter Alexandra left, Cam drove over to Stone Mill Road and down the bumpy dirt way to Wayne and Greta's farm. She had to figure out what happened to those chicks before she lost the rest of them, and Wayne was her closest expert now that DJ was off on retreat. The chicks lay in a shoe box on the truck's bench seat next to her.

The clouds no longer scudded but now obliterated the sun, and the air had the sharp, damp smell of impending snow. Not unheard of for mid-March, but not a bit welcome. She'd been so busy all day, what with town meeting, she hadn't taken time to check the weather forecast. She was already experienced enough at paying attention to the sight, smell, and feel of the air that she knew it would be snowing before midnight. What she didn't know was how heavy it would be and how long it would last.

A black sedan approached her on the narrow road. Cam pulled as far to the right as she could and glimpsed a frowning Paul Underwood at the sedan's wheel as it passed. He glowered at her, then sped up once he was clear. He must have been visiting Wayne and his wife, since theirs was the only house on this road. But why the mad face?

Cam drove by a sign that read L
AITINEN
P
OULTRY
F
ARM
and pulled up next to the tidy old Colonial on the rise. Mounds of mulch and several latticework trellises stuck up in the large fenced-in kitchen garden near the house. A barn with a sagging roofline and a long-ago paint job sat twenty yards away, and beyond it stretched the long narrow building that housed Wayne's hens. It was a pretty spot despite the pungency of several hundred hens living together, with fields rolling down the slope in front and woods behind the house.

As Cam climbed out holding the shoe box, Wayne appeared from the hen house, a bucket in his hand. He hailed her as he strode in her direction. An old black dog trailed behind him.

“What brings you out here, Cam?”

“Two of my new chicks died and I don't know why. Wondered if you could help me out.”

“Bring 'em on in the house,” he said as he reached her. “I'll take a look. Need any eggs?” He gestured with the hand holding the bucket, which was full of eggs of all sizes and hues.

“Thanks, but I have plenty at my farm.”

When the dog, whose muzzle had turned to gray, gave a soft bark in Cam's direction, Wayne patted him on the head. “This is Pluto. Pluto, meet Cam.”

“Hey, Pluto.” Cam extended her fist for Pluto to sniff, and stroked his head when he pushed it into her hand.

“Right this way,” Wayne said. He beckoned to Pluto. “Come on, boy.”

“You sure have a pretty place out here, Wayne.” Cam gestured at the fields. “Was there a stone mill on this road at one time?”

Wayne laughed softly. “Still is, down by the creek. But the name used to be Pig Turd Road. Can you believe it?”

“You're kidding.” Cam looked at him with astonishment.

“Nope, I am not. Sure was glad when the town decided to change it to Stone Mill. Heck of a lot nicer.”

A minute later she sat at a plank table in a kitchen that looked a lot like hers—unrenovated but functional and clean, with fifties-era linoleum on the floor and white painted wooden cabinets on the walls.

Wayne ran water into the bucket of eggs and let it stand in the sink. “Coffee?” he asked, pot in hand.

“Sure. After that all-day meeting, I could use some. With a little milk if you have it.”

“The meeting was an endurance test.” He shook his head as he poured them each a mug, then set them on the table along with spoons. He took a glass bottle of milk out of the refrigerator and set it in front of Cam. “Hope you don't mind unpasteurized. It's clean—don't worry—and straight from Betsy, the milk cow. Sugar's in the dish there, too.”

“Not worried.” Cam poured a bit of the creamy stuff into her coffee.

“An all-day town meetin',” Wayne said. “And nothing got resolved, neither. I couldn't believe they continued the article.”

“Kathleen said they needed more than a certain number of votes on any one choice for it to win out.”

“I can't remember how many they needed. What this town needs is housin', but you already heard me say that.”

“I agree with you,” Cam said.

Wayne took a mouthful of coffee. “Ah. Good and strong, just like I like it.”

Gazing around the room, Cam spied a key holder exactly like the one at her house. It featured a split-rail fence with the carved smiling heads and upper bodies of a man and a woman peering over it. The heads on the one at Cam's house turned a hundred and eighty degrees, so the couple could look like they were either friendly, not speaking, or both looking off in the distance in the same direction. On Wayne's hung several bunches of keys, including one that appeared to have a small magic wand attached to it.

“I have the same key rack,” Cam said with a smile.

“It was my folks'. Came with the house.”

Greta's voice called out from another room. “Wayne? Who's that you're talking to?”

“Cam Flaherty, hon.” Wayne gazed at the doorway until Greta, dressed in jeans and a blue fleece top, appeared. “She's got some dead chicks she wants me to look at.” He gave her a gentle smile, which she didn't return.

Greta greeted Cam and sank into a chair. She blinked several times and drummed sensibly trimmed nails on the table. The set to her mouth looked like she'd eaten a rotten egg.

“But you weren't talking about chicks,” Greta said. “I heard you hashing over the town meeting again. Nothing's ever going to get done there. Nothing right, anyhow, with all those new bankers and whatnot telling us what to do with our land.”

“Greta, they've been here for years,” Wayne said. “The land belongs to all of us. You know that. Democracy means we get to have our say and then vote on it. If the vote doesn't go the way we want it to, well, we just have to accept it.”

“I was surprised that Judith”—Greta said the name as if it were an obscenity—“didn't add her ever-so-valuable opinion.”

“Now, hon, Ms. Patterson's our neighbor. We can't help it that she has some opinions we don't approve of.”

“That
you
don't approve of, you mean. I don't know why you aren't willing to sell off a portion of the back woodlot to her. It'd get us out of the financial hole we're in.” She looked at Cam. “I don't know where all our money goes. Seems like it vanishes into thin air, like some magician swooped his wand around, said ‘
Evanesco
,' and whoosh, it's gone.”

“Evanesco?”
Cam asked.

“You know, Harry Potter's vanishing spell. If I didn't work as an aide at the Newburyport Library, we'd be in sorry shape,” Greta added. “Chicken farmers don't exactly rake in the big bucks.”

Cam didn't quite squirm in her chair, but wished she didn't have to witness this domestic argument. She sipped the coffee, which was strong enough to stand a stick in, and set the mug down.

“We'll talk about that later,” Wayne said, reaching out to pat Greta's hand until she snatched it away. “Cam don't want to hear our problems.”

Whew
.

“Show me those chicks now.” He pointed at the box.

Cam pushed the box toward him and watched as he lifted one little body out and examined it, turning it every which way in his long-fingered hands.

“How old are they?” he asked, picking up the other chick.

“I got them in the mail on Thursday, so only a few days.”

“Afraid they both got pasty butt.” He glanced up with a half smile.

Greta snickered, but when Cam looked at her, she raised her eyebrows and said, “It's a thing.”

“Ick. What in the world is that?” Cam asked.

“Their vents got clogged up by loose droppings that stuck to the down,” Wayne said. “When the feces builds up and forms a blockage, little chicks can up and die from it. Like these two did.”

“What causes it?” Cam asked. “I mean, the other chicks seem fine. Do I have to watch for it and wipe their little rear ends for them?”

“Nah. Could be these were too hot or too cold.” Wayne laid both chicks back in the box. “Or something they ate. But since the rest are fine it might have been the stress of getting shipped. You know?”

“Totally,” Cam said. “I can believe going through the postal service in a straw-lined box is stressful to the newborns' systems.” She nodded.

“And maybe these girls were runts from the start and just couldn't take it. Anyhow, they're gone now. May their souls rest in peace.” He bowed his head.

Surely he saw—no, caused—plenty of chicken death right here on his farm, since he sold meat birds. But this gentle man still grieved the demise of two newborns.