Read Online All Chickens Must Die: A Benjamin Wade Mystery by Scott Dennis Parker - Free Book Online Page B

mansion was two stories tall with a raised porch. The house
itself had a crawl space under it to allow the air to cool the building from
below. A white picket fence bordered the front yard. Once past the main
sidewalk view, the white fence stopped and a standard chain-link fence started.
I made my way toward that part of the fence line.
    The sun had gone down but the day’s heat was only slowly ebbing
away. Despite that, two of the windows in the first floor were partial open.
From inside what appeared to be some sort of sitting room or parlor, I heard
voices. Not surprisingly, I didn’t recognize any of them.
    I crouched low in the shrubs, making sure I didn’t step on any
dry twigs. I kept my ears open to listen to sounds from the street but also to
what the voices were saying.
    “I swear I thought she was working for you,” a small frail voice
said. It was squeaky, made all the more so by the fear in it. I made a leap and
tagged that voice as Holcombe’s. “With her previous actions for our group, I
assumed she was still with the society. How was I to know she had quit and
struck out on her own?”
    I pulled out my notebook and pencil. The streetlamps and the
yellow glow from inside the mansion gave me more than enough light by which to
see. I wrote “society” with a question mark.
    “Mr. Holcombe.” That voice was deeper than Holcombe’s, with a
sonorous tone that would have been great on the radio. “No need to panic yet.
What did she give you?”
    “This,” Holcombe said. Despite the crickets, I heard the sound of
the envelope opening and a paper unfolding.
    “Son of a bitch,” Deep Voice said.
    Another voice in the room asked, “What is it, Mr. Kruger?”
    “Marlowe’s asking our jeweler friend here to make him a fake
diamond.” That was Deep Voice. By association, Deep Voice was Kruger. By the
sound of it, he led this little soiree.
    Had I heard right? Diamond. In my notebook, I wrote that word,
circling the word “diamond” three times just to make sure I knew it was
important. As if a diamond were anything other than important.
     There was movement in the room and a man suddenly appeared
in the window. He was backlit from the lights in the room and the streetlamps
didn’t cast a strong enough glow for me to get a good look at him.
    “All I know is,” Kruger said, staring out the window, “Marlowe
better damn well not be trying to pass the fake to me.” He turned back to face
the people in the room. “Any ideas on why he’s making such a request?”
    “Certainly,” said another voice. This guy had a gravelly voice,
like sandpaper on rough wood. “He lost it at the farm when he ran from
Aldridge’s place.”
    “Why do you think that?” said Kruger.
    “Because of the slaughter order,” said Gravelly Voice. “And
that’s the reason that nosy PI is involved.”
    “Remind me why that’s my problem.”
    More footsteps sounded on the wooden floor. Another figure
appeared in the window frame, but this time, the lights helped out. I got a
good look at him.
    Amos Peete.
    My jaw ached in sympathy.
    Peete stood at the window, nonchalantly holding a cigarette
between his fingers and letting the smoke waft into the air. “The farmer and
his lawyer hired the dick to try to find out why the health department has
condemned all the chickens for slaughter.” Turned out, he was the one with the
gravelly voice. “They were the ones who got the injunction against the killings
until Monday.”
    How had they figured that out? Was my agency an open book?
    “How’s that going?” Kruger said.
    “As well as can be expected,” Peete said. “The lawyer can’t get a
new injunction so we just have to wait.”
    “So why the fake?”
    “Marlowe needs to deliver something to you by tomorrow,” Peete
said.  “The injunction put him behind schedule, so now he’s desperate. My
guess is he was trying to get Holcombe here to make a fake and pass it off to
you.”
    “Dammit,” Kruger said.
    “And