All Chickens Must Die: A Benjamin Wade Mystery Read Online Free

you hear?”
    “About a week ago, a man I had never seen came into the office. I
remembered him because he looked out of place by the way he dressed. Kinda like
you in a way, but he dressed nicer, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
    “Not at all. I tend to dress medium most of the time. You ought
to see me when I’m playing ball.”
    She leaned in closer to me. “Here’s the thing: I wasn’t supposed
to be there. It was Danny’s turn to stay late, but she couldn’t do it, so I
volunteered for her.”
    “Who’s Danny?”
    “Danielle Bowie. The other secretary you saw in the main office.”
    I put that name with the image of the redhead. They seemed to go
together.
    “Okay. Y’all staying late, that a regular thing?”
    “Usually once a week, one of us stays late and works with some of
the inspectors on outstanding cases. You wouldn’t believe how far behind we get
when we’re neck-deep in all the inspections.”
    “I can imagine. Most of those cases come into your office how?”
    “Random inspections. Or regularly scheduled ones. We do both.”
    “So, if a farmer knows you always come on the fifteenth of a
month, he can, I assume, always be ready for you?”
    “Theoretically, yes. Which is why we do spot inspections. Catch
them off-guard if they are not keeping their farms and animals clean.”
    “But what about tip offs? You get a lot of them?”
    “We get some.”
    “You obliged to follow them all up?”
    “Usually, yes.”
    “You always send out an investigator?”
    “Yes.”
    “Any advance warning?”
    “Not usually, no.”
    “Tip offs ever come from disgruntled rivals?”
    “From time to time.”
    “You write them off as frivolous or do you have to investigate?”
    “We always investigate. It’s the law.”
    “You ever get tip-offs you know are bogus?”
    She paused, thinking. “Sometimes. The accused, just like in a
real court, gets to defend himself. He has to prove his innocence, however.
That’s a bit of a change over the typical court system.”
    I sipped my coffee and took more bites out of my sandwich. The
bacon had just the right amount of crispy and chewy. Jake’s is one of the few
places that sprinkle brown sugar over cooking bacon. The flavor is sublime.
    I couldn’t help noticing the way she ate her food and drank her
tea. It was all dainty. She wiped the corners of her mouth with her napkin.
Again, I got the sudden realization she must be truly upset to show up in a
greasy spoon.
    “Back to what you heard. Tell me about it.”
    She drank off some of her tea and wiped her mouth. How’d she do
that and still keep her lipstick in place?
    “So, last week, I was working in Danny’s place. She had to take
her elderly mother to the pharmacy and she needed to swap days with me. We did,
no big deal, and I saw her off.
    I pulled out my notebook and opened to a blank page.
    “It was just after closing time when the man I told you about
showed up in the office. He wore a very nice blue suit and a yellow tie. He had
one interesting thing: a tie clip in the shape of a sideways eight.”
    “A sideways eight?”
    “Yeah, you know, a figure eight but on its side. Give me your
pen.”
    I did as instructed and she drew the image on a napkin.
    “Oh, that’s the infinity symbol.”
    “Maybe,” she said, “but it didn’t actually meet at the middle.
There was some space in there. Not sure why.”
    “So this guy wearing an infinity tie clip comes to your office
and what?”
    “He met with Mr. Teague. But before that, the new man gave me a
weird look. The first thing that was weird was when he saw me. He looked
surprised. It was like he was expecting someone else.”
    “Who?”
    “Danielle.”
    I took my pen back and recorded that fact. “What did this guy do
when he found out you weren’t Danielle?”
    She paused, thinking. “He gave me a weird look, like the look you
give someone who is in the wrong place. It was really strange.”
    She finished off her sandwich and washed