Free All Chickens Must Die: A Benjamin Wade Mystery by Scott Dennis Parker Page B

it, contrived to have all your
chickens killed, one by one, and to search for the diamond in the carcasses.”
    “But he clearly was never a farmer,” Smith said. “He never even
thought to check the manure. What made you think of it, Mr. Wade?”
    “Growing up, my grandfather worked his farm and I’d help him. I
always enjoyed getting the eggs but hated when he made me wash the chicken
house. I was surprised when I saw all the rocks and pebbles in the crap. My
grandfather told me most rocks just pass on through.”
    “You really think by giving the diamond back to that man he’d let
us alone?” Mrs. Smith asked.
    “Don’t see any reason why he would need to maintain the
slaughter.” I scowled and stifled a wave of nausea. “What do you do with the
manure?”
    Smith pointed over to a pile next to the hen house. “We compost
it and use it on the garden.”
    “How often do y’all clean the coop?”
    “Every morning,” Mrs. Smith said. “Otherwise, it gets to be too
much.”
    I sighed when I examined the mound. It was of moderate size, but
still it meant sifting through a pile of manure looking for—well—what amounted
to a needle in a haystack. Hey, some clichés just reek with truth. So did
manure.
    Smith walked over and, with a shovel, divided the manure into
three smaller piles. Nodding once, we got to work.
    I sat down on an overturned bucket and put my handkerchief around
my face. It barely kept the stench away. I had a little system. I’d pick up a
small pile and work it through my gloved hands. If I found a chunk of anything,
I’d examine it in the light. Every so often, I’d stand and walk over to the
hose and wash the junk off the small chunks.
    This went on for a few hours. When Leroy and his friend, a man
named Morales, arrived, I asked that they station themselves up on the porch.
When asked what we were doing, I shook my head and told him we were shoveling
shit, just like when I was on the force. The clock wound slowly to midnight.
Across the fields and through the corn rows I saw the lights of the rich
neighborhood and Aldridge’s house. He might be entertaining friends while I had
my hand in chicken shit.
    A little after eleven, Mrs. Smith cried out. She held something
up to her lantern. Mr. Smith and I gathered around her. In the light, the thing
glittered despite the muck caking it. The gem was larger than I expected, large
enough to want to kill for.
    “I think I found it,” she whispered.
    “I think you did,” I said.
    In a reverent voice, she asked, “How much is it worth?”
    “Don’t know, but if there are men trying to reclaim it and
willing to do anything to obtain it, it must be a pretty penny.”
    I glanced at her. In her eyes, I saw the temptation. She was
weighing the price and what that money could do for her and her husband. She
was wondering if they could get away with it. There were probably more things
running through her mind, but I eased my open hand to her. “Mrs. Smith, please
let me have it.”
    Jealousy flashed across her face. Then a moment of shame. I saw
both. She flicked her eyes up at me to see if I had noticed. I gave her a warm
understanding face. Mr. Smith didn’t see any of it so she wouldn’t have to live
with his knowledge. She turned her hand over and dropped the gem into my palm.
    “Thank you.”
    We stood and looked at the diamond.
    Mr. Smith said, “That should do it, right?”
    “Pretty sure.”
    “What are you going to do with it?”
    “Turn it over to its rightful owner.”

Chapter Fifteen
     
    Determining the rightful owner proved more
of a challenge than I had gambled on. Driving home, I tossed up the various
possibilities in my head. I could easily give this diamond to Kruger, the man
who wanted it in the first place and hired Marlowe to steal it. It was the loss
of the diamond that prompted the order to slaughter Smith’s chickens, which
was, after all, the sole reason I had been hired.
    On the other hand, the diamond seemed to