Welcome back to the cozy world of Dewberry Farm, in bucolic Buttercup, Texas… where Lucy’s flock has been a victim of chickennapping. To make things worse, there’s a new tenant, Jo Nesbit, in her historic rental cottage… and Jo’s got her sights set on buying local properties and running some of Buttercup’s most treasured businesses out of town.
But when a killer dispatches Buttercup’s new would-be landlord, Lucy uncovers long-buried secrets involving one her dear friends… secrets that could be deadly.
Read on for your sneak peek of FOWL PLAY!
CHAPTER ONE
September in Texas is not the most glamorous month. After the punishing heat of June, July, and August, I always feel entitled to the northern winds sweeping through and blowing all that hot air out to sea, at least for a day or two, so that I don’t spend half my waking hours trying to give my veggies and fruit trees enough water to keep them alive. Our other source of relief, much to the consternation of our southeastern neighbors on the Gulf coast, is often a good hurricane or tropical depression that refills the stock ponds and provides the parched, cracking soil much-needed moisture. You could almost hear the earth sigh in relief when the rains of fall arrived, and the fresh, earthy smell of those first drops on heat-baked soil is one of my favorite things.
Now, though, as I surveyed the sun-bleached pasture outside my little yellow farmhouse, I felt a sense of foreboding. We’d been deluged with rain until July, but hadn’t seen a drop in almost six weeks… including all of August, which usually brought at least a little rain from disturbances in the Gulf of Mexico.
This September had been worse than usual, unfortunately. Despite a gift of early summer rains (too much, in fact—there had been flooding), we’d had a dry winter and spring, and were still behind on rainfall for the year. Wells were starting to run dry all over the county, and I was having to bring in expensive hay for my little herd of goats and cows… and make tough decisions about which crops to keep alive and which ones to let go. Every day the water stream from my well became more of a trickle, and I was worried that one day soon there would be nothing to pump. The well level was occupying my mind more and more as the heat kept coming.
I wasn’t the only one suffering, but it wasn’t much comfort. All the ranchers and farmers in Buttercup spent more time than we’d like to admit studying weather forecasts and hoping to see the temperature dip somewhere below three digits and the rain chances to go above 0%, but so far, it was midway through the month and there was no relief in sight. Already a few of the ranchers were making noises about selling up to city folks looking to buy a weekend property… and the last thing I wanted to do after spending the past several years building up the farm I’d spent childhood summers on was give up everything I’d built and move back to Houston.
Sadly, despite being just days from the autumnal equinox, the only sign of impending fall on the farm was the pumpkin spice muffins my best friend Quinn had started making at the Blue Onion cafe. I was in the mood to turn the oven on, whip up a batch of my own favorite pumpkin bread (I had a couple dozen sugar pumpkins survive both the flooding and the late summer drought, and a few of them were ripe), and turn my already struggling air conditioner down far enough so that I could pretend it was fall. My desire to be able to pay my electric bill was stronger, though, so I limited myself to washing down a crunchy, streusel-laden bite of Quinn’s muffin with a tall glass of iced tea I’d garnished with a sprig of the spearmint I’d planted under the faucet on the side of the house.
My rescue poodle Chuck whined at me from where he was splayed out under the air conditioning, and I tossed him a chunk of muffin, which he gulped down immediately. Tobias, Chuck’s vet and my boyfriend, wouldn’t approve, but Chuck and I had an unspoken agreement not to tell him. My well-padded poodle swallowed the muffin chunk, looked at me hopefully for a moment, and then dropped his head down on the floor again, apparently exhausted from the effort. I’d shaved the poor thing down until he was almost bald, but it was still too hot for him.
Smoky and Lucky, the two kittens I had rescued from the chimney of the smokehouse a while back, were the only farmhouse residents unfazed by the heat; while Chuck and I sweated, they frolicked in a sunbeam, chasing one of the catnip mice I’d picked up for them the other day.
I had finished the last of my tea and was contemplating pouring myself another when the phone rang. I picked it up; it was Quinn.
“Hey, you,” I said. “I’m just finishing that pumpkin spice muffin you gave me yesterday.”
“They’re good, aren’t they?” she asked. “I added extra pecans and brown sugar streusel to the top this time, and layered some in the middle, too, kind of like a sour cream coffee cake.”
“It’s working for me,” I said. “They’re amazing, and I love the bit of vanilla glaze, too. You should seriously enter them into a cooking contest.”
“You know, I hadn’t thought about that,” she said. “That might be good for business. But would somebody steal the recipe?”
“Absolutely they would,” I said. “But since you’re the only bakery in Buttercup, I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Besides, your maple twists are already known in three counties.”
“Only three?” she asked, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “Anyway, the reason I called is that I want your advice on something.”
I sat up a little straighter. “Is Jed back on the streets again?” Jed, Quinn’s violent ex, had stalked my friend several times in the past; he’d even come out to Dewberry Farm one night when she was staying with me. I would never forget how he’d kicked poor Chuck into a wall that night… or how things might have been different if he’d been carrying one of his guns.
“No,” she said. “He’s not up for parole for another few months at least, thank goodness. I was actually calling to talk about Peter.”
That was a relief; I liked Peter, an amazing farmer who ran an organic farm called Green Haven here in Buttercup. Not only had he taught me all about raising goats and given me my starter herd, but he was so dedicated to earth-friendly practices that he drove a fry-oil-powered bus to the farmers’ markets in Austin on weekends. Peter and Quinn had been seeing each other for some time, and I had loved watching my friend blossom in the relationship. Her laugh had become easier and she smiled quickly now, the wariness I knew from when we’d first met slowly melting away. I hoped things were still good between them.
“You guys doing okay?” I asked, feeling a twinge of worry.
“We are,” she confirmed. “In fact… I was thinking of moving in with him, and I wanted to ask your advice.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a big step. I didn’t know you guys were talking about it.”
“We weren’t,” she said. “Or at least I wasn’t. But I was out there with Pip this past weekend, and he seemed so much happier having room to run in the yard, the idea just kind of came up. At my place, I always have to put Pip on a leash and walk him around the square… it’s hard on a big, young dog.”
Pip was Quinn’s big lab-mix, who was still young; we’d found him abandoned a few years back and he and Quinn had bonded immediately. She had given him a great life, but she was right; her little apartment above the Blue Onion didn’t give him a lot of room to roam. Still, I wasn’t sure more roaming room for Pip was the best motivation to move in with Peter.
“Is Pip the only reason?” I asked, looking out at the sun-bleached pasture where Blossom, my escape-artist cow, was currently sheltering in the shadow of the barn. She looked a little listless in the heat. I needed to buy more hay for everyone, I thought, feeling another familiar twinge of anxiety at the expense of keeping everyone fed… and watered.
“Of course Pip isn’t the only reason I’m moving in,” Quinn said, snapping me back from my worries. “My landlord raised the rent a ton, so it’s also a cost-saving measure. Also, I just… I don’t know. It feels like it’s time.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I guess I’ve always pictured myself married, with kids. I’m not getting any younger. And if Peter and I are going to make a go of it…”
“You want to do a trial run?” I finished for her.
“Yeah,” she said. “If it’s not going to work, I kind of want to know sooner than later.”
“That makes sense,” I said.
“Still, I’m annoyed with my landlord. The rent went way up for both the cafe and my apartment.”
“Those pesky landlords,” I said.
“How’s your AirBnB going, anyway?”
“So far, so good,” I said, glancing out the window at the little wood house down by the creek. The Buttercup German Club had helped me move the historic building to the site a while back and even assisted me with some of the renovations, and now I rented it out short-term to help pay the farm’s bills. “I’ve got another tenant moving in later on today, as it turns out. She’ll be here for at least a month.”
“That’s a long time. What’s she here for?”
“She says she’s researching the area for investment purposes. Her name is Jo Nesbit, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. All we really did is set up the rental; I’ll find out more when she gets here.”
“I hope she’s nice.”
“Me too,” I said. “If not, at least she paid up front. When are you planning to move, by the way?”
“This weekend,” she said.
“Wow. Need help?”
“Only if you have time,” she said.
“I always have time for you,” I told her, and hung up a moment later, feeling oddly disturbed by our conversation. My friend was moving in with her boyfriend. Why should that bother me?
I was still thinking about that as I grabbed my egg basket and headed out to check on the girls. After milking everyone and watering that morning, I hadn’t gotten around to checking the nest boxes; instead, I’d come in and taken an accidental nap on the couch.
As I walked out to the coop, something seemed… wrong. Instead of the normal clucking and scratching noises, all I heard was the hot breeze soughing through the tall, dry stalks of the native grassland patch behind the fence. When I got to the coop, I realized what was wrong.
The coop door was open.
And all of my girls were gone.
Will Lucy find her chickens? Preorder or download your copy of FOWL PLAY, the ninth Dewberry Farm mystery, to find out!