1 A Cop and a Coop by Hillary Avis

Author:Hillary Avis [Avis, Hillary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hilyard Press
Published: 2019-11-22T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

I woke in the early hours when it was still dark, not to the sound of Alarm Clock’s crow, but to the sound of my phone ringing. I scrabbled it from the nightstand and held it to my ear.

“What is it?” I asked groggily. I hadn’t gotten to bed until nearly midnight, and my eyes were still glued shut with sleep. “Who is this? Is everything OK?”

“Leona Davis?” A woman’s voice I didn’t recognize was on the line. “This is Stef at the post office. Your chicks are in. Can you be here in a half-hour?”

I sat up too fast and my head spun. I’d totally forgotten about the chicks in all the chaos after Walt’s body was found. I hadn’t even finished setting up the brooder in the barn. Heck, I was still wearing my “Hens Before Mens” shirt; I’d only bothered to take off my shoes and jeans before I collapsed into bed last night. My mother would be horrified that I’d slept in my street clothes, especially street clothes that had been worn while cleaning out a dusty old barn.

“Yeah, I’ll be there. Just hold your nose when you hand over the box—I can’t remember the last time I showered.”

Stef snickered. “Will do. Come around the back of the building to the loading dock. The front door’s locked for a few more hours.”

“Gotcha. Thanks.” I’d already pulled on one leg of a clean pair of cargo pants and, after I hung up the phone and dropped it on the bed, put them the rest of the way on and pulled a clean T-shirt over my head. This one was pink and said “World’s Best Nana” in curly lavender script, a Mother’s Day gift from my twin grandchildren, Isabella-Sophia and John-William, who lived in Chicago.

Well, actually, it was from my daughter Andrea. Isabella-Sophia and John-William were only two years old and hadn’t yet mastered the art of ordering stuff from Amazon. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t the world’s best nana anyway, given that I’d only seen my grandkids once in their lives, back when they were still little pink-and-blue burritos. Andrea’s fancy heart-surgeon husband moved in Chicago’s “elite circles” and the children were already enrolled in a prestigious preschool that cost, if it can be believed, as much as Andrea’s tuition at Northwestern had. The little darlings wore their little uniforms and never visited their grandparents because they couldn’t miss a day for fear of falling behind their privileged classmates. As you can imagine, Peterson was very proud. I just missed them.

When the divorce papers were filed, I offered to move to Chicago to help out with the twins, but Andrea said no. The T-shirt was a consolation prize, I think. That said, it was very nice, thick and soft. Perfect for getting some work done around the farm. I thumped down the stairs two at a time, jammed my feet into my sneakers and a blueberry muffin into my mouth, grabbed my keys and purse from the hook by the door, and barreled out to the Suburban.

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