Free Death in a Turkey Town: A Chloe Boston Mystery by Melanie Jackson

these up in Mr. Jackman’s and Mrs. Graves’ yards.” Alex accepted the two foot by two foot signs. Neither he nor Dad seemed to notice the cold wind that was creeping up my spine. There were no clouds, so it wasn’t the weather that was bringing the storm that I knew was about to break over us.
    “Do Mr. Jackman and Mrs. Graves know they are getting signs in their yard?” Alex asked mildly.
    “They will by the time you get there and will probably even help,” Dad promised. “Now let’s have some dogs. Got them on the grill.”
    He meant hotdogs. Alex and Blue looked enthused so I went along with it. I needed lunch anyway. One didn’t need to be psychic to know that it would be a long day.
     
    That afternoon, while at the very edges of my official route which neared Olympus, I heard a distinctive gobble and stopped my cart to listen. Blue looked east and sighed. As I had feared, the gobbling was coming from Tara Lee’s backyard. Tara Lee is the leader of the Lit Wits and a terrifying grand dame of the old school. Have you ever seen a picture of the romance novelist, Barbara Cartland? Well, that is pretty much Tara Lee. And she hates to be interrupted while she is working.
    With heavy feet and heart, I exited my vehicle, signing for Blue to stay behind. Tara Lee is one of the people on the planet who does not love my dog. Tara Lee doesn’t love any animals at all.
    I approached the door with its gleaming brass hardware. Though decorated with a seasonal wreath which wished me joy, the porch was still imposing enough to make me worry about touching things with dirty shoes or fingers that might mar the pristine white welcome mat or shiny gargoyle door-knocker. There was no doorbell, which I found to be a bit hostile. It was the gargoyle in the prickly holly wreath or bruising your fist on the hardwood panel.
    Fortunately, I heard and smelled the gardener before I disturbed the quiet with the door-knocker of doom. Mr. Costas was a smoker and indulged frequently, even though Tara Lee had threatened to fire him if she found him smoking on her property. The cost of smoking seemed high—half a lung to the Marlboro Man already and the potential to lose a job as well—but such is Mr. Costas’ addiction.
    The gardener was happy to let Blue and I in through the side gate and even carried the turkey crate for me. The tom was easy enough to capture. Like the last stray, he seemed drawn to the dead foxglove that rimmed the acres of green lawn and the contact had made him sleepy. Foxglove—digitalis—is a beautiful but poisonous flower that few people grew since it was not a hardy perennial and had to be planted every year. It gets expensive and I don’t want it in my yard since I have Blue and the cats. The turkey seemed unharmed by its brush with toxins though, so I loaded him up and took him to the turkey ranch rather than to a vet. I called Jeffrey on my cell and he agreed to cover my route while I was delivering my feathered passenger.
    I thought about the murder as I drove the now very familiar road to the turkey ranch at six miles per hour. At the heart of the mystery was the question of why. Why kill Silly and try to hurt Althea? Assuming the two things were related and my gut said they were. Surely the only thing the two women had in common was Dale Gordon, and though I was no fan of the lardhead’s, I couldn’t see him doing actual bodily harm to either of them.
    I had not arrived at an answer by the time I reached the turkey ranch, and one of Dad’s banners hanging by the gate startled me out of my grim and fruitless reverie. Though I had some doubts about my father as mayor— he had been a terrible police chief and was awfully disorganized— apparently others were not as concerned. Dad was popular, an old-timer with old-fashioned values like loyalty and compassion, and a lot of people were angry with the way he had been driven out of office. In part, by the current mayor, Andrew Cody. My own boss, the