and apron opened the front door and called off the dogs before he got out.
Alice Miller was petite with serious blue eyes and bobbed gray hair. She led him around the back of the house to a chicken coop.
“There you are,” she said as if that should clear things up for him.
He looked into the empty coop. Yep, things were clear as mud. “How many chickens did you have?”
“A dozen layers, four roosters and three old stewing hens.”
“Nineteen chickens and they were all gone this morning,” he said.
She nodded and waited as if she expected him to produce them like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat.
“That’s a lot of chickens to disappear,” he remarked. When he’d found this job, he’d been amazed at the kind of calls a deputy sheriff in Whitehorse, Montana, had to deal with. Dog at large, owner warned. Drunken disturbance at rodeo, citizen given ride home. Missing resident, found two doors down.
As a big-city cop, he’d dealt with every crime imaginable. At least he thought he had. But he’d never been called out to investigate nineteen missing chickens.
He was out of his league and he knew it.
“What do you think happened to them?” he asked Mrs. Miller.
She cocked her head and looked up at him as if he might be pulling her leg. “Clearly someone stole them.”
“How do you know a coyote or something didn’t come in and eat them all?”
“You see any feathers?”
Actually, he did. There were feathers all over the chicken coop.
“You see any blood, any bones?” she asked with growing impatience. “Where are you from anyway?”
“Houston.”
“Where’s your Texas accent?” she asked.
“I wasn’t born there. My father was in the military. We traveled all over.” It was the story he’d come up with. It made things simpler. And safer.
Mrs. Miller let out a little huff sound and put her hands on her hips. “Aren’t you going to look for fingerprints? Tracks? Something?”
Fingerprints? She couldn’t be serious. As for tracks, it had rained the night before. There were lots of tracks, all appearing to have been made by her dogs.
“I got wash to do,” she said and headed for the side yard.
He circled the chicken coop, feeling like a fool. He’d never tracked anything in his life. This was nothing like chasing a convenience-store robber down an alley and over a couple of fences.
To his surprise, he found some tracks that looked out of place. He squatted down next to one of the prints. The sun had already baked the surface of the yard. The print was that of a boot. A small one. A kid’s.
Nick walked around to where Mrs. Miller was hanging sheets and towels on a clothesline.
“Who all lives here?” he asked.
“Me and my husband. He’s out cutting hay. Why?”
“You have any grandchildren, any children who have been over to visit in the last day or so?”
“No. What does that have to do with my chickens?”
“No neighbors with kids?” he asked.
Alice Miller wrinkled her brow. “There is that boy, his aunt and uncle are renting the farm next door.”
Nick pulled out his notebook and pencil. “What do these chickens look like?” He glanced up when she didn’t answer and saw her expression. “Okay, would you be able to recognize them if you saw them again?”
“Just find my chickens,” she said and went back to hanging up her wash.
Nick followed the boy’s tracks, wondering how the kid had pulled it off. Nineteen chickens were a lot. Wouldn’t they have caused a ruckus that could be heard up at the house?
He could envision Mrs. Miller with a shotgun coming out in her flannel nightgown, blood in her eye. So why hadn’t that happened?
He glanced up at the sound of a dog growling and realized he’d reached the farm closest to the Millers’.
“Hello!” he called and eyed the dog. It wasn’t a blue heeler, but some kind of mutt, large and hairy. “Hello!” He feared the dog would key on the fear in his voice and attack. Easy, Cujo.
“The chickens aren’t hurt,” said a young voice from the back steps of the house. The kid was twelve tops, lanky with sandy-blond hair and big ears.
“That’s good,” Nick said. “Could you call off your dog?”
“Prince, no,” the boy said. The dog eyed Nick for a moment, then ambled over to the kid and sat down.
“I’m Deputy Sheriff Nick Rogers.” He’d taken the Rogers from an old western he’d seen on television the night he’d left town. “What’s your name?”
“Chaz. It’s actually Charles, but that’s what everyone calls me,” the boy said. “My aunt and uncle are in town if you’re going to arrest me. I’m not sure when they’ll be back.”
“Where are Mrs. Miller’s chickens?”
He pointed toward a shed at the back of the property. “I was going to return them. Really.”
“Why’d you take them in the first place?” Nick asked, glancing toward the house. “You need the food?”
“No,” Chaz said indignantly as they walked back to the shed. A ruckus was coming from inside. “I got plenty to eat and I didn’t take anyone’s chickens.”
Right. That was why Nick had just followed the kid’s boot prints to his house straight from the chicken coop.
At the shed, Chaz opened the door a crack so Nick could see that all nineteen chickens were there. The chickens looked a little funny to him, their feathers kind of glued to them, but what did he know about chickens other than buying cut-up fryers in plastic wrap at the grocery?
“We need to get the chickens back to Mrs. Miller,” Nick said.
“I know. I was thinking about how to get them to her,” the boy said.
“Why not take them back the same way you stole them?”
“I told you, I didn’t steal them.”
“Right.”
Just then one of the chickens made a beeline for the door, slipping through to take off at a run across the yard.
Before Nick could react, Prince darted after the chicken. “No!”
