Free Nobody's Sorry You're Dead: A Hadley Pell Cozy Mystery by Jeri Green

placing the key safely in her purse.
    “Those folks interested in Eustian’s farmland are wanting to get things moving,” Bill said. “I don’t see why we should keep them waiting. They’re gonna plant Eustian in the cemetery day after tomorrow.”
    “That’s Monday. Why the delay?” asked Hadley. “Is he back at the funeral home?”
    “Yeah. Bowey Hill sent him back. Guess the good folks ‘round here don’t want him disturbing the digestion of their Sunday meal.”
    “Good point, Bill,” said Hadley. “Eustian did his best to keep the stomach acid of a lot of folks in this county churning.”

    * * *
    H adley was hungry when she returned home from Maury’s. Two pieces of coffee cake was only a snack in Hadley’s book, and she not just hungry for any old store bought concoction. Hadley was in the mood for a great big, creamy, rich, homemade chicken pot pie.
    The cell rang.
    “Hey,” Maury said. “Just checking to make sure you got home okay.”
    “What is it?” Hadley asked. “You don’t usually keep tabs on me. What do you want?”
    “Well,” Maury said, “I forgot to mention this to you. I was so caught up in starring in your latest video. I was wondering if you’d like to deliver the meals to the shut-ins in a couple of months.”
    “The surprise shut-in boxes? Hot meals to the elderly. We’ll see. There’s a lot on my plate at the moment, but maybe things will settle down, by then. Is that list long?”
    “Not very.”
    Maury read Hadley the names off the list.
    “Touch base with me in a few weeks. I’ll let you know, ‘kay?”
    “Sure thing. Later, Sis,” Maury said.
    “Later.”
    Walking to the corner shelf where she kept all her recipe books, she ran her thumb over the titles until she spied the one she wanted. James Beard’s American Cookery. That’s the ticket. Opening in up she found the section on chicken pies.
    “Serves 6, it says. Okay, this will cover my lunches for the week,” Hadley muttered.
    First ingredient – chicken. Just reading that word brought to mind Eula Miles and her pet chicken, Roosevelt.
    Delano Roosevelt Miles.
    An awfully long name for a chicken. Why name a chicken after a president to begin with?
    Even if it is your pet.
    Okay, Hadley reasoned, perhaps that bird carried itself grandly or nobly.
    Or like a president, but Hadley doubted it.
    She’d seen Roosevelt with her own eyes – in the flesh and feathers. That was a proud chicken to be sure, but Hadley could not see any resemblance to Franklin or Teddy. The hen did not wear glasses. She did not smoke cigarettes in a long holder, and she had never been, to Hadley’s knowledge, chauffeured anywhere in a limousine or charging about on horseback in a fierce and raging battle.
    The second thing that puzzled Hadley was why, if you are naming your chickens after world leaders, you picked a male name for a hen, but it went without saying that Eula Miles was a little eccentric.
    In the South, eccentric is the polite term for weird . And Eula fit “eccentric” to a tee. Hadley had never known another human being to give a grown hen regular baths. While delivering a shut-in box one Wednesday, Hadley had knocked on Eula’s back door.
    “Come on in. Door’s open,” Eula said.
    Hadley had entered carrying the box in front of her. To her utter surprise, there stood Eula at the kitchen sink. Roosevelt was standing amid a cloud of vanilla scented bubbles.
    Eula had a blob of bubbles on the side of her head.
    “I always find a good soak in the bubbles so relaxing, don’t you Hadley?” Eula asked. “Roosevelt has been a little stressed out lately. You know a lot of things have been happening on the soap operas, and I just thought she could use a little spa time.”
    Hadley had to admit, the chicken did look relaxed. Hadley wondered if a chicken could lay an egg in the bubbles, but she was afraid to ask.
    Eula had been on the shut-in list since last spring when her eyesight had gotten so bad, she gave up