Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

Clampitt nodded. “He was. But years ago, when he was living in New Jersey, he tried his hand at business. A chain of convenience stores, I think. I understand there were some pretty shady personalities involved.”

“Oh no,” groaned Marty DeBeck, clapping a hand to his forehead and making a little circle around Dean. He had been cutting the shaggy lawn in front of his swaybacked farmhouse with a push mower. He staggered about for a while, then shook his fist at the sky. “Why is life so unfair?”

Dean had taken his hat off in the presence of such elemental grief. “Sounds like you were really close.”

The brother stopped shaking his fist and looked at him. “Actually, I didn’t like him.” He groaned some more, kicked at a clump of mown grass, and took a second look at Dean. “Did you say he was shot? With a high-powered rifle?”

“No. With a pistol, from about ten feet away, we think. It looks like whoever killed him was having a drink with him in the library.”

“Yeah?” said Marty with a skeptical frown. “That must have been one fast, depraved human being. My brother was quick as a cobra. He was fifty-two but he could move like a twenty-year-old.” More forehead claps and groans. He wore Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt over an ample belly that said DUTTON FALLS PLAYERS, and strands of stringy gray hair stuck out from under a wrinkled cloth hat. Dean thought he looked like a bum — but a colorful, intelligent bum. “Poor bastard never had a chance,” said Marty.

“How do you mean?”

“Our old man made a pile in bathroom fixtures. Lacy inherited a couple mil and so never had to work. He dabbled in a few things, studied business in college — and flunked out — tried to run a bunch of convenience stores for a while, even thought of turning into a professional tennis player. But after each scheme petered out, he’d fall back on the old man’s coin. Like a woodchuck running back to its hole.”

“You didn’t inherit?”

A faint smile that rapidly got larger appeared on Marty DeBeck’s face. “I blew my inheritance on the horses. So now I gotta work. My wife too. I teach drama and poetry at U-37 — took today off to try to catch up on all the work around here — and my wife’s a claims adjustor for Nationwide. We’re part of the hardworking middle class, right? We wake up in the morning bitching about rich folks like my brother who don’t have to work, and we love it.”

“Won’t you inherit Lacy’s estate?”

A dark look passed over the fleshy face. “Yes. And it scares the hell out of me. On the other hand, Lacy was a notorious cheapo. Thought everyone was after his money, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he left it all to the Nature Conservancy or maybe an orphanage.”

“You’re hoping that he has?”

DeBeck didn’t answer for so long that Dean wondered if he’d heard. Finally he said, “I honestly don’t know.”

The rest of Wednesday, Thursday, and most of Friday were taken up with another visit to the crime scene, which netted nothing substantially new, phone conversations with the crime lab and the medical examiner, a bomb scare at Kellogg Union High, court appearances for a previous aggravated assault and a DWI, two car accidents, a stolen canoe on Henderson Pond, and other daily happenings in the life of a rural cop. And the usual mountain of paperwork. The crime lab had advised that the bullet in Lacy DeBeck was a hollow-point .32 and that no usable prints had shown up on any of the evidence. Finally, at five o’clock Friday afternoon, Dean, who had agreed to put in extra hours until the case was solved, ate an early supper at the Wishbone Cafe and, with Miles Davis playing “Sketches of Spain” on the tape player, drove over to Trish Hazelton’s.

It was still daylight when he pulled up outside the ranchhouse she shared with Tiffany on Catamount Road between a llama farm and a John Deere dealership. Smells of lilac and apple blossoms filled the air. A chicken coop stood next to a small, neat vegetable garden.

Stepping out of his squad car, Dean did a double-take. Mrs. Hazelton, wearing coveralls and a Blue Seal Feed cap, stood by the gate to the coop with a baseball bat in one hand. Three or four Rhode Island reds were scratching in the dirt, and soft cooing came from inside the coop where other hens were getting ready for bed. She smiled sheepishly as he came up.

“I didn’t know you played baseball,” he said.

“I don’t. It’s for getting eggs.”

“Uh-huh,” said Dean.

“It’s our rooster, Captain Ahab. Tiffany named him from a book she read in school a few years ago. You go in there for the eggs and he’s liable to end up on your chest.”

That’s when Dean saw it, standing in the doorway to the coop, sporting a bright red comb and yellow eye, a huge Plymouth Rock rooster. Captain Ahab wasn’t smiling, either. “He sounds like a mean customer,” said Dean.

“Heck, that’s the way roosters are supposed to be. That’s his job. Just like your job is to track down who killed Lacy.”

“And to ask unpopular questions.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Mrs. Hazelton—”

“Trish.”