Stiffs and Swine (15 page)

“It wasn’t
what
they did but
how
they did it!”
Gillian raised her voice in protest.
“The birds were stuffed so tight into cages on Jimmy’s truck that they couldn’t move an inch. Then, Jimmy would unload them with a forklift and dump them on the conveyer belt. He didn’t care if some of them fell off or got … crushed by machines … or died from exposure on the road. He would keep track of the number of … casualties on each load and mark them in a notebook. He and two of the factory workers held a secret bet over who had the highest number of ‘accidents.’ each month.

“At the time Walden went on that factory tour, we’d only been married for four days. We didn’t have any money except for what we both earned working part-time at the grocery store, but Walden promised me a honeymoon week in Philly as soon as we could afford it. He wanted to introduce me to his grandparents and show me the city of his childhood. But he never got the chance.”

Silence stretched out on the tape. James noticed their waitress bearing down upon them with a laden tray. She set it on the edge of their Formica-topped table and shoved their glasses of birch beer inward as she rested the weight of the tray partly on the table and partially against her hip. James hit the pause button on the recorder and admired their server as she skillfully handed out hot plates replete with piles of home-cooked food.

Bennett received a plump bacon and Monterey jack burger accompanied by a mountain of French fries and a dish of baked beans. A long platter bearing fried catfish and hush puppies was slid beneath Lindy’s nose, and Lucy was given slices of turkey resting on pillows of mashed potatoes and stuffing. She was also served a small bowl of cranberry sauce and another containing thick, brown gravy. A basket of cornbread muffins was set in the center of the table for everyone to share.

“Be right back with your Brando, hon,” the waitress said, and she squeaked away. Within seconds, she had returned with an oval plate of spaghetti noodles drenched in a thick meat sauce. Along with his pasta, James was served a small basket of garlic bread and a condiment bowl filled with freshly shredded Parmesan.

“Y’all need anything else?” she asked pleasantly as her customers gaped at their plates.

“You got a wheelbarrow?” Bennett looked at her. “We’re gonna need one if we eat so much as half of this stuff.”

“No one ever leaves the Old Hollywood hungry.” She smiled. “Gimme a holler if your drinks start runnin’ dry.”

After twirling a strand of slippery spaghetti around and around on his fork, James gave up and began to cut the saturated noodles with his knife. He took a bite of pasta and felt some of the tension in his body instantly eased by the taste of the rich meat sauce and the perfectly supple noodles. He sighed in contentment and prepared another forkful.

“I hear you, man,” Bennett said, and he held his mammoth burger aloft. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

Lindy squeezed a fat piece of lemon over her catfish filet, creating a crooked line of drizzle over the deep brown crust. While Lindy cut into her fish with the side of her fork, Lucy scooped a gelatinous spoonful of cranberry sauce onto a slice of turkey breast. She gestured at the recorder. “Keep going, James,” she ordered and then stuffed a large bite of turkey, potatoes, and cranberries into her mouth.

James pushed the play button and Gillian’s voice emanated from the speaker.

“Walden got his tour and what he saw
scarred
him. I mean, it changed him for good. He came back to the two-room we rented and cried. He just put his face in his hands and let the power of his emotions flow out of his body. Oh, how I loved him for that. But he told me such horrible things that day. Things I’ll
never
forget! He said that after the chickens got off the truck, they were hung upside down and dipped into an electrified stunning tank, so they’re confused but not unconscious when they’re killed. So cruel!

“And the conditions on the farms were too much to bear! Those chickens spent six weeks crammed into an enclosed structure, standing and sleeping on their own waste. Genetically modified, they grew so fat so fast that tons of them had heart attacks or complete organ failure because of the sheer
mass
of their bodies.

“If they managed to live the whole six weeks in those conditions, then … then Jimmy would come for them. Whether it was pouring rain or ninety-five degrees beneath a sweltering sun, he’d stuff them so tight into their metal cages that they couldn’t move a wing. He’d take long lunches at truck stops while the birds endured
all
kinds of weather. One day, he bragged to his buddies at the plant about how a bunch of boys threw rocks at the chickens and the birds were too dumb to realize they were being pummeled in the face by stones. It’s not like they could have moved even if they
were
frightened or injured!”

Gillian paused again, but obviously only long enough to calm herself.

“Walden was desperate to achieve humane treatment for the poultry, so he started an activist group in our county. You can only imagine how unpopular that made him! The only people who would join were other college students or bored retirees.”

There was a grunt from Harding.

“After all, the plant employed most of the town. When Walden began picketing outside the plant’s front gates, his own father threatened to cut all ties with us. But Walden and his group didn’t stop. Workers threw chicken feet and … and other body parts at us. They called us traitors and names I’d rather not repeat. We tried to get the press on our side, but the local papers were
not
sympathetic to our cause. Finally, Walden got a reporter from Washington to come to one of our rallies. This journalist interviewed Jimmy following one of his deliveries, and the story of the chicken’s mistreatment got picked up all over the region, but the story was quickly replaced by the news of a missing hiker who happened to be some distant cousin of the governor.

“Nothing changed at the plant
or
at the farms. The only thing that the publicity did was to make Jimmy Lang furious! He had been portrayed as the malicious cad he was, and his boss heard about Jimmy’s monthly bet over the dead chickens. From that point on, Jimmy was told that his pay would be docked for every bird that arrived at the plant dead. Jimmy was furious. The plant had always taken all his birds before—alive or dead. Suddenly, they changed their policy and he wanted revenge. So one day …”

Gillian trailed off and fought to compose herself as she neared the most difficult part of her tale.

“Walden always rode his bike to campus. The college was about four miles from where we lived and he rode on the shoulder of a two-lane road that ran parallel to the interstate for about three of those miles. That’s where Jimmy spotted him. Jimmy was on his way to drop off some birds, and he had left the interstate to visit a decrepit truck stop that served beer. He was far from sober and had smoked a joint before getting back into his rig.”

There was a long pause as Gillian struggled to continue.

Seated at their table in the Old Hollywood Diner, James and his friends had stopped eating and were staring at the recorder as though it were a coiled snake.

“Jimmy swerved that big truck of his and laid on the horn, hoping to
scare some sense
into Walden, but once his rig started to skid, he couldn’t regain control of the truck and it flipped over, sliding down the highway, pinning Walden beneath its weight …

“The doors to the chicken cages burst open and birds went everywhere. They were strewn all over the road, the embankment, the wildflowers growing alongside the other lane …

“The State Police arrived at the scene and took Jimmy away. He was completely uninjured. I went to the courthouse every single day of his trial. He was given fifteen years for vehicular manslaughter under the influence of alcohol and drugs. That’s it! Fifteen years in exchange for the malicious act that ended Walden’s life.”

Another silence. Lindy dabbed at her wet face with her napkin.

“I thought I’d stay and continue Walden’s fight against the inhumane treatment of those poor birds, but after the incident, the other activists were too frightened to protest. I became a pariah. Everywhere I went, people seemed to make jokes about chickens crossing the road or fried chickens on the highway. It was awful. I made it through my final exams at college, graduated, and moved away. I’ve never been back to that town. I’ve never even visited Walden’s grave.
I thought I could pretend as though that part of my life never existed. It all happened so long ago. But when I saw Jimmy—laughing and alive, the way Walden should be, I felt like my husband had been killed all over again.”

The sound of weeping crept from the recorder.

“But I didn’t hurt that man, Deputy Harding. Much as part of me would like to, I didn’t. That wouldn’t have honored Walden’s memory. He was a pacifist. He was a gentle, giving soul. I wanted an apology from Jimmy. I wanted … I
needed
to know that he regretted stealing Walden’s life away. I needed to know that Jimmy was sorry for shattering every one of our hopes and dreams. But now I’ll never know if he regretted what he did. There’ll never be closure for me.”

More silence. Finally, the sound of a defeated exhalation.

“I’m tired, James. These memories … they make me so sad. May I be alone now, Deputy Harding?”

James turned off the recorder.

“There it is,” he sighed. “That’s what I heard. That’s her story.”

His friends were stunned.

“No wonder she wanted to be a vegetarian,” Lindy mumbled after a long silence, pushing her plate of half-eaten fish away. Lucy and Bennett followed suit. As they sat, digesting their heavy food and Gillian’s tragic narrative, their waitress returned, wearing a look of concern.

“Somethin’ wrong with your dinners, folks?”

“No, no,” Lucy hastily assured her. “We just wanted to save room for dessert. We’ve got some serious thinkin’ to do and for that, we’re gonna need some serious sugar. Apple pie à la mode for everyone. And coffee, please. Lots of coffee.”

The waitress nodded and bused their dishes. She wiped their table clean and came back a few minutes later with four plates of apple pie heaped high with vanilla ice cream. She then handed out white coffee mugs and placed a steaming carafe of coffee in the center of the table. She retrieved a dozen individual creamers from her apron pocket and sprinkled them in a loose circle around the carafe.

“I’ll check back on you folks in a bit,” she said and then bustled off to take the order of a family of six that had seated themselves in the James Dean section.

Lucy dug a small notepad from her purse, uncapped a pen, and gave her friends a penetrating stare. “We’ve got work to do. We’re going to make a list of who we need to interview in order to find Jimmy’s
real
killer. I think we should start with Felicity, the dog lady.”

Lindy twirled a lock of hair around her index finger. “But Lucy, you’re a deputy now. Won’t treadin’ on the sheriff’s territory get you into trouble?”

“This is
Gillian
we’re talking about!” Lucy’s blue eyes flashed. “I don’t care what rules I break, we’ve gotta find the solution to this mystery before the festival ends!”

“You’re right,” James quickly agreed. “We’ve got to get answers from Felicity, Hailey, Eleanor, and anyone else who might have a clue as to what really happened last night.” He touched Lucy’s hand, and she scribbled intently in her notepad. “But we have to be discreet or we might get sent back to Quincy’s Gap.”

“And that won’t do Gillian a lick of good,” Bennett stated.

As the four friends stared at the names on the list, James plowed his fork through the golden crust of the apple pie and scooped a generous bite into his mouth. The apples were so soft they practically dissolved upon contact with his tongue. Sugar, cinnamon, and a hint of nutmeg coated his teeth and he greedily took another bite. He then collected a forkful of the smooth and creamy ice cream and ate it slowly, blissfully, licking every drop from the tines. “This is really good pie,” he murmured.

Lucy ignored him and pushed her partially eaten dessert off to the side. Jabbing a finger at the list, she said, “At this point, our suspects are all women.”

“Makes sense. It’s a mite easier for me to picture a woman climbin’ up that skinny metal ladder to that camper roof to tape over the vents,” Bennett declared, wiping ice cream from his mustache.

“But a man could do that just as easily,” Lindy argued, splashing cream into her coffee.

“Like that pale-skinned guy with the black baseball hat I saw arguing with Jimmy,” James said quickly. “This was a serious fight. I think we should keep our eye out for this guy.”

“It won’t be easy, without the rest of us having seen him and no name to go by, but if he’s
that
pasty, he should stick out of the crowd,” Lindy said, twirling a coffee stirrer around her finger. “I also don’t think we should forget about the barbecue competition.”

“You believe someone would murder Jimmy just to be known as the barbecue champion of Hog Fest?” James asked incredulously.

“Not so much for the title as for the contract with Heartland Foods,” Lindy replied thoughtfully. “Seems like that kind of offer could change a person’s life.”